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FDR3870 The Postmodernism Debate | Thaddeus Russell and Stefan Molyneux


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29 minutes ago, Wuzzums said:

No it's not.

I explained what science is.

I explained what math is.

Saying math is science is like saying a motor is a car.

Science is purposeful and math is methodological if you want to use those terms. 1+1=2 is math. Using 1+1=2 to explain something about reality is science. Richard Feynman (mathematician extraordinaire) explained this in depth at his lectures and the reason why he's referred to as a "scientist". His passion was always math and the moment he reached a dead end with the subject and decided to put his math into practice he became a scientist.

Each time someone removes the realm of reality from science you're in the realm of bullshit. Science cannot possibly be "ABOUT ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY, MEASUREMENT" because a measurement is a human construct meaning a measurement can be made within and outside of reality.

 

You are wrong.

You are wrong because mathematics is the science of measurement.

1 + 1 = 2 is just shorthand for 1a + 1a = 2a. We drop the a and forget about it, thinking that 1 + 1 = 2 is somehow meaningful, it isn't. 1 of nothing + 1 of nothing = 2 of nothing is a meaningless statement.

 

You are also wrong because you think man is apart from reality. I have noticed this in almost every thread I post in though. Man does not exist apart from reality, my dude.

 

I'm am sorry this wasn't taught to you, but tbh, that science is measurement is not really hammered home anywhere. We need science because there exists facts of reality which we can not directly measure. We can not directly measure them because we can not directly perceive them (but we can their effects). Thus, we measure them indirectly, relating them to that which we can measure directly, which is to say to that which we can directly perceive.

 

Referring back to momentum: we can not directly measure it. We can directly measure mass, but, we can not directly measure velocity, but, we can directly measure position and time so we can indirectly measure velocity. If you want to know more, research dimensional analysis.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Wuzzums said:

I see. You're talking to yourself.

Carry on.

 

5 hours ago, Wuzzums said:

Each time someone removes the realm of reality from science you're in the realm of bullshit. Science cannot possibly be "ABOUT ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY, MEASUREMENT" because a measurement is a human construct meaning a measurement can be made within and outside of reality.

 

Measurements can be made outside of reality............

 

o_rly_original1.jpg

 

Is it that reality is outside of reality, or man is outside of reality, my dude?

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15 hours ago, Wuzzums said:

I see. You're talking to yourself.

Carry on.

 

Bants aside, if you want a good book on math as measurement check out R. Knapp's Mathematics is About the World. H. Binswanger's How We Know, for epistemology (coupled with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding). Reading both know, didn't know I needed to know it.

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From what I can see, Knapp reinterprets maths to fit into Rand's objectivism. Nothing wrong with that, but that's not what maths is about when you learn it at university. There are no negative or imaginary numbers in nature, but they were introduced to make maths symmetrical.

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1 hour ago, ofd said:

From what I can see, Knapp reinterprets maths to fit into Rand's objectivism. Nothing wrong with that, but that's not what maths is about when you learn it at university. There are no negative or imaginary numbers in nature, but they were introduced to make maths symmetrical.

 

True, eh. From what I have gathered it is the application of "Rand's" theory of concepts extended to mathematics. As I said, I haven't fully read and digested, and I didn't study mathematics at university. I did study physics though, so the idea that an expression is incomplete without units (dimensions), fits with my conception of physics. I totally get there are no negative numbers, and no complex numbers in nature. But, there are also no real numbers, hey? There are waves though, and complex numbers are pretty fundamental in their description. And you might argue that things in mathematics are introduced for symmetry, but I don't know why you would assume that those symmetries aren't a fact of nature discovered by mathematics, which I think Noether's theorem implies, like, there is symmetry in mathematics because there is symmetry in nature.

If it makes sense: I think mathematics is about relationships of phenomenon in reality. The discovery of the phenomenon and the measurement you would call physics, the techniques of relating the phenomenon you would call mathematics. Like, I don't think Leibniz invented calculus (or Newton for that matter) but I think they discovered calculus as descriptions of the particular phenomenon they were trying to describe.

I think philosophically it would go something like: there is nothing in the mind which isn't first int the senses, and the mind can only rearage (only! like it is some trivial task! i wish), and so the product of the mind (any concept, but take mathematics) can only be a product of what was first in the senses (and what was first in the senses was first in nature).

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Like, I don't think Leibniz invented calculus (or Newton for that matter) but I think they discovered calculus as descriptions of the particular phenomenon they were trying to describe.

Sure, you have those cases but there are instances when the mathematical theory was invented first (Riemann and Hilbert) and later there was an application for it in physics (relativity and QM).

 

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I think philosophically it would go something like: there is nothing in the mind which isn't first int the senses, and the mind can only rearage (only! like it is some trivial task! i wish), and so the product of the mind (any concept, but take mathematics) can only be a product of what was first in the senses (and what was first in the senses was first in nature).

I get that from a Lockean perspective, but evolutionary psychology made other discoveries ;) Many of our base behavioural actions were selected for. The way we behave today is an adaption to living in small groups of hunterer and gatherers some 100 000 years ago.

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On 11/4/2017 at 3:03 PM, ofd said:

Sure, you have those cases but there are instances when the mathematical theory was invented first (Riemann and Hilbert) and later there was an application for it in physics (relativity and QM).

 

I get that from a Lockean perspective, but evolutionary psychology made other discoveries ;) Many of our base behavioural actions were selected for. The way we behave today is an adaption to living in small groups of hunterer and gatherers some 100 000 years ago.

 

Yeah, but there is an application because the relationships exist in nature, hey? And they didn't invent nature. Maybe  theoretical physics is a branch of mathematics?. p.s.

 

Yeah right, hey?

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eah hey, a while ago I resolved to knock out a MSc in Math because I figured it would be more useful to understand physics

I switched from physics to maths when I noticed that physics was really tedious (for me) and when I realized I liked doing maths a lot more. Nothing is as frustrating as preparing an experiment for weeks for it to fail only because some noob hit your desk and changed the configuration slightly ;)

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On 11/9/2017 at 2:03 PM, ofd said:

I switched from physics to maths when I noticed that physics was really tedious (for me) and when I realized I liked doing maths a lot more. Nothing is as frustrating as preparing an experiment for weeks for it to fail only because some noob hit your desk and changed the configuration slightly ;)

I know right! My experience with experiments wasn't as bad. I think I went into physics as a flight from humanities. Rand talks about this a lot. Like, in other areas of study there is an absence of rationality so some people, seeking some semblance of rationality, take up the sciences as a sanctuary of sorts. Because I don't think I ever really cared about understanding a lot of what was being "taught" (old professors handing out partially filled out lecture notes and then filling in the blanks and talking around the notes, seriously, this was at a "very good" University too). I think, with hindsight, I was looking for epistemology, because whenever I was presented with a topic which was something of a unifying topic (classical thermodynamics or the principle of least action) I became very interested, but then immediately stopped caring when it came to something quantum physics or astronomy.

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