Nice intro to must be an applied mathematics course…. Couldn’t agree more with this guy…
Very strong opening to a math video. Ok, you have my attention. pic.twitter.com/2h2O2b6Oxo
— William Rose (@dodecahedra) November 2, 2022
I could just imagine an Art Degree teacher dude saying “FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE DESCRIBES THE WORLD!!!” yeah right!! 😂😂😂
38 comments:
No coffee needed.
Even overblown rhetoric can be described by functions.
Then there's testosterone poisoning.
Functions describe the world
No they don't.
Functions are based on causality, and causality does not and cannot exist. What functions are describing is the illusion of causality. To wit, David Hume's "constant conjunction", which he got from Al-Ghazali:
The philosopher David Hume used the phrase frequently in his discussion of the limits of empiricism to explain our ideas of causation and inference. In An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume proposed that the origin of our knowledge of necessary connections arises out of observation of the constant conjunction of certain impressions across many instances, so that causation is merely constant conjunction—after observing the constant conjunction between two events A and B for a duration of time, we become convinced that A causes B. However, this position raises problems, as it seems that certain kinds of constant conjunction are merely accidental and cannot be equated with causation. For example, we might observe sunrise following the crowing of rooster for a long period of time, but it would still be irrational to then believe the crowing causes the sunrise. Along these lines, a more modern conception would argue that scientific law is distinguishable from a principle that arises merely accidentally because of the constant conjunction of one thing and another, but there is considerable controversy over what this distinguishing feature might be.
British empiricism and associationist philosophers elaborated on Hume's fundamental idea in many diverse ways, and metaphysicians like Immanuel Kant tried to dissipate the position.[verification needed] Kant was motivated to develop his philosophy by Hume's argument, which he considered to be an attack on science.
The force of Hume's arguments has remained remarkably robust, and they have found unexpected support in three scientific discoveries of the 20th century: Ivan Pavlov's laws of conditioning; Hebbian neural networks; and spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). —Wikipedia
The connection (iqtirân) between what is habitually believed to be a cause and what is habitually believed to be an effect is not necessary (darûrî), according to us. But [with] any two things [that are not identical and that do not imply one another] (…) it is not necessary that the existence or the nonexistence of one follows necessarily (min darûra) from the existence or the nonexistence of the other (…). Their connection is due to the prior decision (taqdîr) of God, who creates them side by side (‘alâ al-tasâwuq), not to its being necessary by itself, incapable of separation. (al-Ghazâlî 2000a, 166)
Ahmed,
Consider you are screwed up by the ancient Greeks…
Suggest stick to your Muhammad… forget these dead Greeks
Ahmed you are trying to synthesize Muhammad with Greek philosophy your doing the SAME THING as Israel did 2000 years ago… what happened to them?
Knock it off … what do you think you owe those dead Art degree morons ?
“ The philosopher David Hume”
Are you f-ing kidding me?!?!
You’re supposed to be this big anti Israel Muslim Muhammadist?
And you’re doing the same thing they did?
Hypocrite much?
“Hey Osama bin laden, who are you reading?!”
“Oh I’m reading David Hume!”
Whaaaaaaaattttt?!?!
“ causality does not and cannot exist.”
You’re scrambled eggs.., maybe confer with Joe Biden … you two headed for dementia licking ice cream cones on Rehoboth boardwalk…
To be clear I think ALL of these people you refer to, Hume Kant Plato Socrates or whoever the F…
ARE ALL MORONS and should be BANNED…
I have ZERO respect for any human beings that think these people were intelligent…
Fed says “gee, I think that we can raise interest rates to slow things down! … what? I know there’s 25 trillion of public debt but if we have to raise rates to 10% and that would create another 2.5 trillion annual flow of free money.. then that’s going to slow things down!”
Where does insanity like this come from?
It comes from Plato, Socrates, Hume, Kant, Aquinas, Minsky, etc.. any of these Art degree morons.,, that’s where it comes from …
Matt talks this way because he's a deist. Deists have a very poor conception of God. They have been referred to as sentimental atheists.
Broadly speaking, we can divide people into two groups, atheists and believers. We can further divide believers into deists and occasionalists.
Take the example of the Uvalde school shooter. They say he had a lisp and a stutter, and was constantly teased in school, which explains why he wanted to kill a bunch of kids.
This explains nothing, because they haven't explained why he had a lisp and a stutter.
Now, the atheists say that humans are highly evolved accidents, and this one did not evolve as well as the rest. The occasionalist says that God created him with the lisp and the stutter.
The deist, however, says that there was a defect in the DNA, which, if we go back far enough, goes back to Adam and Eve. But an omnipotent God creates in perfection. Here, the deist has an impotent God who tried but, you know, this creation stuff is really hard.
But hey, what do I know, I'm not deist. Why not ask a deist to explain. Have at it, Matt. Explain to me, in your philosophy, if you have one, the lisp and the stutter. Or why our bodies get cancer, etc.
Wheat is genetically defective in that it has a non-shattering rachis. Wheat, a cereal in the family of grasses, should normally have a brittle rachis that shatters to spread the seeds. This defect is good for humans and thus began the domestication of wheat.
The main differences between the wild forms and domesticated wheat are that domesticated forms have larger seeds with hulls and a non-shattering rachis. When wild wheat is ripe, the rachis—the stem that keeps the wheat shafts together—shatters so that the seeds can disperse themselves. Without hulls, they germinate rapidly. But that naturally useful brittleness doesn’t suit humans, who prefer to harvest wheat from the plant rather than off the surrounding earth.
From a spiritual perspective, that defect is by design and a sign of divine providence. That and cattle that are docile and don’t have horns. That combination which led to what anthropologists call the “wheat-beef people”, from which we are all descended.
What does science say? It's a good thing cosmic rays damaged that wheat, otherwise, the highly evolved monkeys would starve to death. Assuming they weren't gored by cattle first.
Genetically defective humans feeding on genetically defective cattle, fattened on genetically defective wheat.
You’re supposed to be this big anti Israel Muslim Muhammadist?
You assume a lot, Matt.
Why would I be anti-Israel. The Qur'an says that after the final punishment, God would gather the Jews from the ends of the world. That's the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel.
The ingathering of the Jews is also mentioned in the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament.
After that, Muslim tradition holds that they would be destroyed there. Christian evangelicals hold the same view, saying that Jesus returns and the Jews who don't convert all die.
In Isaiah 11:11, God promised to stretch out his hand to regather Israel from the four corners of the earth “a second time” (the first time being from the lands of the Babylonian exile).
We know from Hosea 3:4-5 that it would occur in the last days and Amos 9:15 tells us that they will never be uprooted again.
Deism:
belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not intervene in the universe. The term is used chiefly of an intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that accepted the existence of a creator on the basis of reason but rejected belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind.
Deists believe in a creating God but not a sustaining God. A clockwork universe if you will, where God, after creating the world, allows it to run of its accord.
re: the rise of Deism
The Great Lisbon earthquake of 1755
The earthquake struck on the morning of 1 November 1755, All Saints' Day. Contemporary reports state that the earthquake lasted from three and a half to six minutes, causing fissures 5 metres (16 ft) wide in the city center. Survivors rushed to the open space of the docks for safety and watched as the sea receded, revealing a plain of mud littered with lost cargo and shipwrecks. Approximately 40 minutes after the earthquake, a tsunami engulfed the harbor and downtown area, rushing up the Tagus river "so fast that several people riding on horseback ... were forced to gallop as fast as possible to the upper grounds for fear of being carried away." It was followed by two more waves. Candles lit in homes and churches all around the city for All Saints' Day were knocked over, starting a fire that developed into a firestorm which burned for hours in the city, asphyxiating people up to 30 metres (98 ft) from the blaze.
Earthquake, tsunami, then a fire. On All Saints' Day no less. Then the philosophical impact.
The earthquake and its aftermath strongly influenced the intelligentsia of the European Age of Enlightenment. The noted writer-philosopher Voltaire used the earthquake in Candide and in his Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne ("Poem on the Lisbon disaster"). Voltaire's Candide attacks the notion that all is for the best in this, "the best of all possible worlds", a world closely supervised by a benevolent deity. The Lisbon disaster provided a counterexample for Voltaire.
Kant also...
Immanuel Kant published three separate texts in 1756 on the Lisbon earthquake.
1755 Lisbon earthquake
If you're not a creationist, arguing against the theory of evolution, you're wasting my time.
Religious beliefs are not a distraction for me and I have the theory of evolution to thank for that.
Rhino horn.
To a layman, even at the macro level the the horn’s evolution makes no sense. Help us. The horn is made of keratin, the protein of hair, not of bone. This seems to imply that the horn must have formed from congealed hair. This would require (excuse the flip tone, but it has the virtue of being compact) a Hair Sticke’m Together mutation, assuming that one mutation would suffice. But why on the forehead and not all over, or on the left hind leg? So now we need a highly specific Hair Sicke’m Together Laterally Centered on Forehead mutation. Presumably we would then have a clump of clotted hair of no use whatever to the semi-rhino. Next, a Stuck Hair Grow Like Crazy mutation, since the thing would be of no value until long enough to poke lions. Then we need another mutation to give it a perfectly ovoid shape, not an obvious measure for survival, and then a Grow Faster In Middle mutation, to give the aborning horn a point. Pleasurably there is a Don’t Grow Too Much mutation to keep from growing and growing and turning the rhino into a nasal unicorn. —Fred Reed
From a different article:
To judge by my mail, I suspect that many people, thanks to popular television, think of mutations as major changes that just happen, such perhaps as the rhino’s horn appearing all at once . In fact mutations are changes in the nucleotide sequence of DNA that may produce a new protein. The mathematical likelihood of getting multiple mutations that just happen to engender a complex result is essentially zero. The mathematics is clear but not easily explained to a television audience, no matter how intelligent. —Fred Reed
If I were a biologist, I'd be following the science, and the politics behind the science. But my interest is limited to whether a creator is needed. The verdict remains no.
Creationists and proponents of intelligent design are the only participants in this debate. To lose the argument against evolution is to lose the requirement for god.
Mutations are not random. Relatively few natural processes exhibit true randomness, as defined mathematically.
Rapid evolutionary change in a sexual signal: genetic control of the mutation ‘flatwing’ that renders male field crickets (Teleogryllus oceanicus) mute
https://www.nature.com/articles/6801069
Did you know: birds are called dvija 'born twice' - first the egg, second the hatching. Garuda, Lord of the birds is also called Dvija-guru.
Teeth are also twice-born.
The word 'Dvija' is often used to denote a braahmaNa.It is translated to 'the twice-born'.
If we look at Vedic literature, the term dvija is used as a term for elements which are no where close to a brahmana. For instance, dvija is used to denote teeth.
In other examples, dvija is used to denote a bird !
So what does dvija really mean !
In Vedic Sanskrit, every word comes from the root sound. The root sound manifests a particular truth. Dvija comes from two root sounds -
Dve = two
Ja = jananam - which means 'that which is born'.
So, Dvija simply refers to anything which is born twice.
A tooth can be referred to as dvija because it is born twice. First, we have the milk tooth. It then gets replaced by the permanent tooth.
It's a good thing babies are born without teeth. Otherwise, they'd bite their tongues off.
Dwija Twice Born
Dvija (Sanskrit: द्विज) means "twice-born" in ancient Indian Sanskrit. The concept is premised on the belief that a person is first born physically and at a later date is born for a second time spiritually, usually when he undergoes the ritual of passage that initiates him into a school for Vedic studies.
From the Bible:
Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. —John 3:3 (KJV)
The science is settled. Watch about 4 minutes from the 12-minute mark.
Mathematical Challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
Though Tim Harford might not realize it, in the world of real biology, an “evolutionary approach” might actually have to produce something more like “a flawless copy” than smaller 9-character strings. For example, Doug Axe’s research has shown that functional protein folds are enormously specified, and rare in sequence space. He suggests that amino acid sequences that yield functional protein folds might be as rare as 1 in (10 raised to the power of 74) sequences.
In other words, Darwinian evolution isn’t going to be able to produce fundamentally new protein folds. In fact, it probably wouldn’t even be able to produce a single 9-character string of nucleotides in DNA, if that string would not be retained by selection until all 9 nucleotides were in place.
This is called the combinatorial inflation problem.
The more mutations you need to gain some selective advantage, the more the probabilities multiply and thus get smaller at an exponential rate.
Darwin understood such a problem could devastate his theory. In Origin of Species, he noted that “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Though Darwin didn’t know about mutations in DNA, modern biologists are fast approaching the realization that biochemical complexity pushes Darwinian theory well beyond the available probabilistic resources.
“Monkeys Typing Shakespeare” Simulation Illustrates Combinatorial Inflation Problem
Point me to where 'the math' says there is a requirement for a creator.
Gene expression doesn't occur in isolation, since it never evolved that way. When we examine the tree of life, we observe the sharing of genes, the building blocks of ancestry. Everything is related. Gene expression occurs within phenotypes. Phenotypes live within biomes.
So we conclude that humans are descendants of primates. We share genes with all living things. We are a part of nature. Our bodies are biomes. And we dismiss peculiar claims made in the Bible and other holy books.
What we have today is what made it through a series of filters. In theory, there are as many filters as there are molecules. The limiting factors are time and space. You might have noticed that the universe is very old and very large.
There are questions that can't be answered because they can't be computed in a reasonable amount of time. With regard to evolution, we don't have time machines or the time to observe the development of life on Earth. But the answers to evolution questions are trivial. They fall into the category of trivia. Taxonomists may want to know who descended from what, but biologists are more interested in playing god. To hell with the evolutionary approach, they want to intervene.
We've been monkeying around with genetics long before we knew anything about genes. That should tell you what kinds of intelligence are required to accomplish certain tasks.
jrbarch,
I speak from certainty, not from faith. You did not and will not ever hear me say "I believe", "we believe", etc. Faith is not part of my vocabulary.
Sufism is the science of certainty. I am a Sufi.
We like to tell ourselves stories, including just-so stories. Evolutionary psychology is full of just-so stories, based on reasoning rather than evidence. Just-so stories are not satisfactory to an empiricist. They may be satisfactory to the layman, or an enthusiast. I find that they are a step up from the absurdities foisted on us by organized religion.
For an atheist, the theory of evolution is a means of discarding culturally imposed stories regarding the creation of life, the relationship between humankind and nature, and other philosophical beliefs. For me, it has been a time saver.
If knowing is better than believing, then just-so stories won't cut the mustard. Of course the individual can always delude themselves so that their beliefs feel indistinguishable from their knowledge. Believing = knowing, opinions = facts, feelings = truth. But is that approach intellectually honest?
It doesn’t matter what you believe: if you want to believe your progenitor is dirt – go for it. If you want to believe your progenitor is G.O.D. – go for it. Whatever sails your boat.
If a work of fiction sails your boat, or meets your spiritual needs, it doesn't matter that it's fictional. Nor would evidence-based knowledge be a replacement, if it can't do for you, what a work of fiction does for you.
So in that case, for certain purposes, knowing is not better than believing. It's irrelevant.
I can tell you something very simple. Has there ever been a moment in your life when you felt completely content, completely at peace with yourself – felt a peace so deep inside of you, there was nothing more you wanted, other than to feel that peace.
Up until the age of twelve, when my name wasn't Peter.
In my experience this can be restored. Not by knowing - by discarding baggage.
Doing = doing. Riding a bicycle is about putting theory into practice. It wasn't books that piqued my curiosity about bicycles - it was seeing my cousins riding them. Can you imagine one of your cousins riding incongruously on a tricycle? This was no ordinary tricycle, it was one of the first "tricycles", the ones with the big wheel in front and two tiny ones in the rear.
As much as I practiced riding a bicycle, I had to use training wheels for a long time.
The odd thing about experiential knowledge, such as riding a bicycle, is that you're paying attention and making corrections, without having to think about it. So as I'm automatically maintaining balance, I can do other things. For example, revisiting this conversation.
Doing = doing and multitasking = multitasking.
I knew peace because I was innocent. I hadn't been exposed to the horrific aspects of life.
Children are perceptual. They perceive, thus they learn and come to know percepts. Much more so than concepts. Concepts are baggage. Adulthood usually brings with it, the dominance of the conceptual. We negotiate things we never had to negotiate as a child.
I like to tell myself a story about the Immaculate Conceptualization. The moment when everything was conceived. It's a play on the story of Mary. Maybe someday I'll develop it, put it on paper or into a video.
Virtue is a concept. Kindness is a virtue.
Volumes have been written about virtue, and of kindness in particular.
I suppose that is because those authors and poets felt the need to express their thoughts, in forms other than 'doing'. This is known as creativity.
There's a saying that those who can do, do. Those who can't, teach.
It's a sarcastic saying, but there is some practicality to it.
e.g. An act of kindness is a doing. This is when learning and teaching are perceptual for the parties involved. Talking about kindness in a classroom or forum is not the same. This is when learning and teaching are conceptual.
For children, everything to be learned and communicated is dominated by the perceptual, experiential approach. Adults don't apply that approach for practical reasons. When adults get lost in the conceptual for pointless reasons, that translates to baggage.
I know you love to duel PP – but what exactly are you fighting? The mind is full of shadows. Duelling is just duelling. The human heart needs to know what it perennially seeks.
I love to duel because I love dueling. I'm like the failed chefs who enjoy cooking so much that they don't care about the end product. They just enjoy the process of throwing spaghetti against a wall.
Do you remember Kaivey?
He would report on his activities on Twitter, his tweets, and the debates that ensued. I suspect this was contributing to his health problems. If I were engaged on Twitter, it would make me sick. I know enough to avoid that venue. For me, it is toxic.
Like Kaivey, I ride a bicycle. I do stuff that doesn't require thinking or the use of concepts. And I'm guilty of spending too much time on intellectual pursuits, and tearing down the intellectual pursuits of others. But that is a part of who I am. I don't feel obligated to do these things, I want to do them. I possess some aptitude for writing, so is it to be expected I would engage in activities that require the use of words and sentences?
About the only thing I feel obligated towards, is following current events. Most people don't, and I can see why. Obligations have always felt like baggage to me.
Now that Darwin has been debunked, they're quickly trying to sell his book to the rubes...
People can now part-own a first edition of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, valued at £275,000, with 5,550 shares on sale at £50 each
The antique book's true value is £275,000 but is being sold for part ownership for £50 which allows a member of the public to say the own a piece of Darwin's original copy
jrbarch,
You are a conceited old man who never asks questions, yet believes he has insight into the lives of other people. I take the time to offer a part of my experience and your response is always to parrot the creativity of others.
You are not here to learn, and you are not qualified to teach.
You're not here for the banter, and I'm not here to receive sermons.
If I could write this while riding a bicycle, I would. It would save time.
Kaivey might be dead for all I know. I had a lot more in common with him, than I do with you.
Consider this an exercise in genuine story-telling:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/first-person-war-hero-lost-battle-depression-1.6592783
Well of course they see you differently. Just as I am seen differently in real life, compared to my online persona.
How you present yourself online is more important than your real life presence - for people who have never met you in person. So what have you presented to me in words?
That your perception of the world is one of a small child, who has yet to experience or observe suffering. That is why I brought up the concept of a twelve year old months ago, in one of our earlier 'duels'. To that accusation you revealed something about yourself: your age.
Getting you to reveal anything about yourself is like getting a cat to swallow a pill.
Have I met people who are conceited in real life? Yes, and most of them were Jehova's Witnesses. In their defense, I'm told they are commanded by God to spread the word.
Age. There are people who were better human beings at the age of twelve, than they are now. And there are twelve year old bullies who managed to developed into caring individuals. And there are people who don't change. Age is irrelevant when we consider aspects such as character. Age is relevant when we examine things that are lost - or gained - irreversibly.
#The lower bound for suicide is age twelve. There have been younger children who have killed themselves, but psychologists are skeptical whether they were fully cognizant of what they were doing.
#People that suicide do not want to die.
If you have no experience of someone who took their own life, do the decent thing and keep your blanket statements to yourself. There are people who wish to die because they are suffering, are nearing the end of life and wish to maintain their dignity, or are trapped in mental purgatories of their own making. And there are some sensitive souls who decide to take their own lives at the age of twelve. You can google it if you wish to read their stories. I can think of no better comment on the state of our so-called societies, than children killing themselves.
Another opportunity for jrbarch to demonstrate his superior wisdom:
Why The US Military is Failing Recruitment Goals | Live From The Lair - Terrence Popp
https://youtu.be/HsnVukNuMdI
I was a small child until the age of 12. Nothing to be offended about.
Dementia can return a person to childhood. Admittedly that's not something to look forward to.
Being forever young... now that's a popular dream.
In practice, few adults retain their curiosity. Alexander Graham Bell was one of those rare exceptions.
Maturity also tends to solidify gender differences. Hence the saying:
“A woman's guess is much more accurate than a man's certainty.” ― Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills
Have you read Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie?
Have you read Mark Twain?
“I reckon there ain’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it’s got to be done,” Tom told his gullible friend. By creating the mirage of scarcity, Tom was able to convince his friends the task of painting a fence was desirable.
“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain,” Twain writes at the chapter’s conclusion.
Finally, what is your impression of Terrence Popp?
I neglected to mention that he is an activist of sorts, working to prevent male suicide.
“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain,” Twain writes at the chapter’s conclusion.
Rumi weighs in to the converstation...
For instance, take a loaf of bread, put it under
your arm, and deny it to others, saying, “I will
not give this to anyone. Give it? Why, I won’t even
show it.” Even if that loaf had been cast away and
the dogs would not eat it because bread is so plen-
tiful and cheap—yet the moment you begin to
refuse it, everybody is after it and sets their hearts
on it, pleading and protesting, “We want to see
that bread which you refuse and keep hidden.”
Especially if you keep it hidden for a year, insist-
ing emphatically that you will neither give it away
nor show it, their eagerness for the loaf passes all
bounds, since, “People are passionate for whatev-
er they are denied.” —Discourses of Rumi
Deny them bliss and they'll devote a lifetime seeking it?
The typical response is illustrated by the fable The Fox And The Grapes.
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