Comments on: KC on Proof and Belief

By: Plato

Plato — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 17:19:47 +0000

Harris believes the same neural process is involved in sensing beauty; truth and beauty, in other words, are linked by the brain’s “reward-related circuitry.”

If one thought one less then the ego developed, strong enough, to venture into the forest, would one have shared the beauty of what propelled the original seer by what “strokes” one could get?

INvention is more then just the mother of, it take its counterpart too, in rearing the young students, to possible futures of independance, in recognition of valid science and the years of school? That we should be lead by, until the day we fall out of the nest:)

There had to be a deeper motivation, for the “seeker of truth” and what remains as, “self evident.”

Graduation to the non euclidean realm, let’s say? GR prepared one on the way, and it’s “historical message” is quite clear? You are more now then just the student in the way you see, yet there is still ever more to learn in what God/nature might reveal?

Understanding that paradigm change of who you were and how you shall now see in the world, is about change?

Maturity has its psychological reqard having reached the pinnacle of scholastic career? Has it quelled the wanting for more? I don’t think so. Science in regard of age, is still not deserted.

Some, would like to think them senile:)

By: brad bucher

brad bucher — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 14:16:43 +0000

On proof and belief. I had thought that mathematicians had shown that there was no proof of anything, fut perhaps I am wrong. To prove something I presume means to have demonstrated it beyond rational disbelief, which would require a definition of belief. Good luck on that.

By: Plato

Plato — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 11:32:02 +0000

Clifford, even though I answered with #9 here, “a trackback” should have followed to “KC on Mathematics and String” as well, after that entry?

By: Short Cuts | Cosmic Variance

Short Cuts | Cosmic Variance — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 20:04:03 +0000

[…] Bits and bobs accumulated while I was traveling, offered up as I recover from the traumatic trip back to Chicago. (I wasn’t at Don and Crystal’s wedding, but many congratulations to the happy couple!) I had an early flight scheduled Sunday, but I was feeling lazy and unmotivated to arise at dawn to return my rental car, so I called United and asked whether I could go standby on a later flight. They indicated that there should be no problem, as the later flights had plenty of open seats. This turned out to be one of those things they believed even though they couldn’t prove, in fact even though it wasn’t true. After sitting in LAX, watching two flights to Chicago take off full without me, I finally squeezed onto a plane that was scheduled to reach O’Hare at 10:44 p.m. Of course, it took off only after an hour-and-a-half delay, and then landed safely around 12:30 a.m. Sadly, it landed not in Chicago, but in Rockford IL, since it was apparently a bit breezy in Chicago. (Windy city and all that.) After some tense moments when it appeared as if we might all climb aboard busses and drive the rest of the way, the plane did take off again, landed safely in the appropriate airport, and I endured a tense half an hour in which everyone on the flight retrieved their luggage except me. Finally mine came out, allowing me to proceed to the character-building exercise of standing in the rain for another half an hour to get a taxi. Arriving to my chilly lakeside condo at 3:30 a.m., since apparently some bozo left the window open when he left for L.A. For as much as I travel, it’s been a long time since I’ve been subjected to such delays, so I suppose I was due. […]

By: Plato

Plato — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 04:37:09 +0000

A Sense of the Mysterious by Alan Lightman Pg 78

The great irony and mystery of mathematics, and the ultimate example of matter succumbing to mind, is that pure mathematics often becomes applied mathematics. That is, purely mathematical ideas emmanating from the minds of mathematicians, with no physical meaning in sight, often later become essential to understanding the material world.

It goes on with information that I had mentioned in the “other thread” of KC and string theory, about imaginary numbers and of one called “i”. Another example stated, was “non-euclidean geometry.”

The question is then asked.

Pg 80 to book above

Why does it happen that pure mathematics so often finds application to nature.

Because maybe we found something that worked?

By: Pyracantha

Pyracantha — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 04:12:30 +0000

It is indeed the Age of Certainty. For instance, Sean and many other scientists are certain there is no God and that religion is not only useless but harmful. They are as certain as those who have faith.

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 03:02:07 +0000

I would take issue with Irene Pepperberg concerning parrots. As linguist John McWhorter has pointed out, the parrot will not go out into the forest and teach other birds to speak and, therefore, is a poor example for human speech studies. Native languages are not learned. They happen in humans..There is just a window of time during childhood in which we can utilize the skill. After that we must do some adult rote thing to learn other languages. Bands in Africa called the “Dobe Ju/’Hoansi” (called ‘San’ by others) speak about 7 distinct clicking languages, 3 fluently. Nobody goes to school to learn any of them.

http://www.teach12.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/1600.asp?id=1600&d=Story+of+Human+Language&pc=Literature%20and%20English%20Language

By: Kenny Easwaran

Kenny Easwaran — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 02:08:56 +0000

FH is right that the sense in which Belizean says even a simple proof, as of the irrationality of sqrt 2, is in some sense “uncertain” distorts the usual meaning of the word “uncertain” to the point of uselessness. However, I think the same is true of Leonard Susskind’s mention of the million sequences of coin flips. It’s actually probably more likely that I’ve somehow made some conceptual error every time I’ve considered the proof of the irrationality of sqrt 2 than it is that a particular fair coin will come up heads on its next million consecutive flips. I’ve discussed this development somewhat on my blog here (talking about the incompleteness of ordinary proofs) and here (talking about the usefulness of probabilistic proofs with certitude as good as Susskind’s coin flips).

By: Count Iblis

Count Iblis — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 02:03:18 +0000

Even pure mathematics isn’t always very clear cut, take e.g. Skolem’s Paradox.

By: fh

fh — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 00:36:56 +0000

Belizean, this is not really the point. In some fundamentall sense what you say is tautologic, but I’m not a fan of rendering perfectly good words useless by insisting on considering some abstract absolute tautologies with no relevance whatsoever.

If the likelyhood of the proof being wrong exceeds the likelyhood of earth spontaneously self destructing it becomes operationally meaningless to distinguish certainty from this likelyhood.
The new thing is that mathematical proofs are so complex that we can distinguish likelyhood and certainty.

This is of course a graduall process, but therefore no less real, and no less well described by the words certainty and uncertainty.