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To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

quantamagazine.org

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Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#221

Post by Chris2048 »

flatline wrote: post #81
nabla9 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real philosophy can't be limited to some set of tools or into some set of books and approaches that fits into curriculum. Philosophy is completely open ended pursuit. I firmly believe that philosophy without mathematically oriented thinking at the core is limiting. Teaching and studying of formal logic has been traditionally part of philosophy. In practice there is no real border between philosophy and formal science…

I think this is an excellent description of where philosophy has gone wrong for me personally. I took a class in high school and found the study of what amounts to history to be rather tedious and fruitless. A close friend was a philosophy major in college and understood lots of abstractions that came from the field, but it would seem that none of them were applicable to everyday life. They were not useful or practic…

There is an analytical strain, of what I consider a better class of philosophy - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism , just it tends to be in a minority among university courses. I had to seek it out.

A lot of 'continental' philosophy seems to be a mix of historical analysis, and cult-of-personality/lit-crit...

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#222

Post by apocalypstyx »

danbruc wrote: post #197
apocalypstyx wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along with a increased chance of being a creationist and/or jihadist. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_Hypothesis http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2007/11/11/the-salem-hypothesis-... http://www.theness.com/index.php/creationists-mechanical-eng...

This has a 99% probability of being absolute nonsense. Looks more like 30 years of anecdotal evidence and hearsay. Try find a credible source with actual numbers.

I'd love to know where that 99% comes from. (Or maybe I wouldn't.)

I'd say there's far more than anecdotal evidence, but not, obviously, not enough to draw necessarily firm conclusions. So I would say there's enough question to sustain further scientific inquiry. That, interestingly enough, puts us in a position at odds with one of a common traits noted among engineers, in psychological terms: 'need for closure'; which would put the 'engineering mindset' in conflict with the 'scientific mindset', due to the open-ended nature of the science. (Of course, this is only my own speculation.) Which is why we get things like this: http://cosmicfingerprints.com/ee/

Harder numbers:

http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/Engineers%20of%20Jih...

(expanded book form) http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10656.html

(less numbers, but foundational)

http://www.sicotests.com/psyarticle.asp?id=212

http://www.sicotests.com/psyarticle.asp?id=235

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#223

Post by FabHK »

Balgair wrote: post #218
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sci-hub should be your friend.

In addition, you can just email the authors too. Most, if not all, are very happy to send you a copy and help explain things too. Most scientists do want to talk about their work!

Elsevier used to demand you sign over all copyright, which would make that illegal (think about it...!!) They've also sent takedown notices to academics that posted their own articles on their own website. Oh, and by the way, Elsevier also sued Sci-hub and LibGen...

The Wikipedia article has a long section of criticism of Elsevier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier#Criticism_and_controv...

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#224

Post by Chris2048 »

ThomPete wrote: post #50
jcoffland wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I find math much more interesting. Philosophy is vague. It's all guesses and interpretation, with the exception perhaps of pure logic. I like the purity of math. It's all a matter of preference.

The concepts you deal with in philosophy are vague, the challenge is to provide very precise analysis of these vague (fuzzy?) concepts. But yeah I don't think one is better than the other. Each provide value. I would actually claim that to live your best life, be an engineer. They seem to me at least to be living in that sweet-spot between the abstract, creative and the concrete.

> the challenge is to provide very precise analysis of these vague (fuzzy?) concepts

Does common philosophical discourse generally attempt this though?

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#225

Post by Chris2048 »

jplasmeier wrote: post #33
gthtjtkt wrote: post #8

Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal, and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. When I finally "discovered" philosophy in college, I was angry that we hadn't been exposed to it at all in middle or high school. Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. that…

I agree, but there is a lot of value in approaching Philosophy from a mathematical context (both as a student and as a philosopher- c.f. Russel, Wittgenstein, et al had backgrounds in mathematics and left a huge mark on the subject). I was a math major for much of my undergraduate career, but by my junior year I realized that I was actually only interested in the philosophy behind it. In fact, I had little interest i…

> simultaneously ruined my perception of the nobility of math and spurred my interest in philosophy

Can you explain this? Math isn't perfect, so might as well abandon all formality? This feels like "Science doesn't have all the answers, so maybe I can find them in the bible?"

I'm not sure how constructivism hinders mathematics, or Godels in the long run.

The mind-body problem is unsolvable because it rests upon vague or false assumptions; It is philosophical nonsense : "communicating badly and then acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness." https://xkcd.com/169/

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#226

Post by losteverything »

Surprised no mention of music.

Math and music gives me all those.

My Math inclination brings tears To binary situations and lasts (as in the last time I'll ....)

Truth is a set.

Justice is relativity (,=)

Play is math humor with the pun as king.

And love is random uncontrolable feeling.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#227

Post by sametmax »

sixdisk wrote: post #215
sametmax wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, it's rarely one way. But I've been a young nerd with nerd friends, then working with nerds. By some twisted fate, life forced me to improve my people skill a lot. It was painful, I didn't ask for it, but now I'm glad it happened. Now I still have a big nerd entourage, because I like to be surrounded by people smarter than me. But I can't help but notice all the things they do that drive others away. Thing…

These traits you describe, you say they are a side effect of good reasoning skills. I agree that people who think more methodically are more susceptible to these traits, however, I think they are actually characteristic of a certain immaturity in one's reasoning abilities. To ask : "Why would anyone not do what's best if they know it is?", and to have no clue of an answer, would imply a lack of reasoning ability, rat…

> IQ becomes a justification for being detached and uncaring.

I see your point.

But I think some things are like a color you never saw and can't understand until you see it for the first time. In a sense, it's lack of maturity because it's a lack of experience.

You can wait for the experience to reach them, or you can offer them to practice it. The second way is quicker and more reliable.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#228

Post by Chris2048 »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #8

Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal, and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. When I finally "discovered" philosophy in college, I was angry that we hadn't been exposed to it at all in middle or high school. Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. that…

> Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc.

Is this sarcasm?

If not, can you outline "the supposed benefits of doing math" versus the benefits of studying philosophy, that are "far more applicable to most people's everyday lives"?

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#229

Post by cableshaft »

110011 wrote: post #63

As a counterpoint to the overly exuberant article let me chime in as a graduating theoretical computer scientist. Math is hard and despite its beauty and allure academic life doesn't take place in a vacuum- ergo there's a lot of politics and pettiness from your peers. You should expect to invest years of your life into making progress on some hard problem with little encouragement in the meantime, this takes a tremen…

Wow, I always shied away from academics for similar reasons you mentioned, but I just realized that my main hobby, game development, parallels what you say a lot (and creative hobbies in general, including writing).

"You should expect to invest years of your life into making progress on some meaningful game with little encouragement in the meantime...sometimes even after you release a game that took a lot out of you, it may take many years before people appreciate, let alone play, your game, and the vast majority of games aren't going to be played." "To compensate for this you basically play the popularity game and give as many interviews and talk up your game when you meet people, so there's a lot of salesmanship involved there as well."

"The career path is so twisted you have to either be insanely good or just hate yourself enough to sacrifice your best years working essentially in the metaphorical darkness well outside the spotlight and most likely alone and poorly paid." <- My experience working in the game industry, except I wasn't completely alone, I did have coworkers. However I did feel like I never had time for a relationship.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#230

Post by ianai »

sametmax wrote: post #193
ianai wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in today's culture

While it's true the current culture is particularly hostile to math incline people, I must also say that, by nature, people good at solving problem with perfect solutions are not good at integrating in an imperfect society. They bear part of the responsibility.

An individual is but one individual. Societies ills should not be dismissed nor diminished because of an individual or even group. Society affects everyone in vastly larger ways.

I'm thinking of it as similar to a companies products. A company will refund you if you bring them evidence that they sold you a defective product or service (in a good state of the world). That individual bad product hurts their bottom line, but typically in a small enough way to be mostly ignorable. Now when the company has to issue a multimillion dollar recall some internal process or procedure to the company needs to change. The general operating parameters of the company affect its overall "health" much more than a one off "bad product". In this analogy, societies are the company and it's individuals are the products.

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