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Pythagorean Theorem proof in a 2100 year old Chinese book

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Re: Pythagorean Theorem proof in a 2100 year old Chinese book

#61

Post by good_vibes »

Couldn't have said it better myself. I think about this stuff a lot, how much ancient and modern overlap, how much Eastern and western overlap, yet how people still want to divide everything.

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." - Albert Einstein

"The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and the intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world… Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work.

Western rational thought is not an innate human characteristic, it is learned and it is the great achievement of Western civilization. In the villages of India, they never learned it. They learned something else, which is in some ways just as valuable but in other ways is not. That’s the power of intuition and experiential wisdom." - Steve Jobs

Carl Sagan was really keen on seeing 'the bigger picture' too, can't find the particular quote I was looking for. Maybe later.

Re: Pythagorean Theorem proof in a 2100 year old Chinese book

#62

Post by quakeguy »

gnipgnip wrote: post #59
quakeguy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on the brainwashing claims a bit more, i'd be excited to hear them. Not meant in a negative way, just curios. I was always under the impression Ghandhi is seen in positive light, even in China.

Don't you think that's a bit strange ? The dude was helping the massacre the Bantus in Africa and suddenly becomes a "messiah" in a few years after returning to India ? I mean that is a miracle [1]. I wish historical figures were reassessed every few years in light of contemporary ethics, but this never happens with those the establishment wants you to see in positive light. His antics are well-documented (with lots…

Oh, well, i need to adjust my view then. Thanks for your reply, very insightful indeed!

Re: Pythagorean Theorem proof in a 2100 year old Chinese book

#63

Post by jacobolus »

kobeya wrote: post #25
jacobolus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s evidence that the “Pythagorean Theorem” was known in Mesopotamia a millennium before Pythagoras. It was likely widely known in the ancient world. The Greeks wrote their mathematical ideas in a different way than other cultures, so the answers to these questions aren’t completely clear-cut.

But was the theorem proved?

It’s really hard to say. Cuneiform on clay tablets was mostly records of finished computations, with the scratch work done with some kind of physical manipulation of tokens or mentally, and most of the instruction and culture transmitted orally.

The Sumerian/Babylonian style of written records did not match, say, Euclid’s Elements. (They didn’t write books full of precise definitions and proofs. They didn’t leave behind textbooks, only problem sets and worked examples.) But note that neither did the style of the Pythagoreans necessarily, and the notion that Pythagoras or his disciples made a proof comes from written records from hundreds of years later.

Re: Pythagorean Theorem proof in a 2100 year old Chinese book

#64

Post by pash »

gravypod wrote: post #60
Houshalter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I see the illustration, but I don't understand how that's a "proof." That's an illustration of the proof. Here is a more modern, animated example: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Pythagor... The Chinese proof looks more like this one though: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ylzhg.gif There is also explanation in the annotations.

It's mind blowing when I see a new image like that and it completely changes how I understand the topic. I wish I could find more of those.

Search for the phrase "proofs without words" [0, 1]. There's long been a column in Mathematics Magazine by that name featuring proofs in this style, and there is a book of the same title published by the Mathematical Association of America (which I think collects proofs from the magazine column). Lots of examples from other sources will also show up in a web search.

0. https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=proofs%20without...

1. Image results: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=proofs+without+words&n...

Re: Pythagorean Theorem proof in a 2100 year old Chinese book

#65

Post by bmh100 »

good_vibes wrote: post #61

Couldn't have said it better myself. I think about this stuff a lot, how much ancient and modern overlap, how much Eastern and western overlap, yet how people still want to divide everything. "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." - Albert Einstein "The people in the Indian countryside don’t use t…

These divisions are very important. As long as mystical beliefs towards Eastern thought are used to cause real harm through herbal remedies and supplements, the public must be taught to give it less importance. Among critical thinkers, it is valuable to look for similarities in scientific histories.

Re: Pythagorean Theorem proof in a 2100 year old Chinese book

#66

Post by contingencies »

jernfrost wrote: post #48
chrishowlin wrote: post #7

I worry that China is outcompeting us.

Who gives a shit? It is almost always Americans making such statements, obsessed as they are about being number one. If Chine gets richer and more technologically advance that would be good for them and good for us westerners. It is not a zero sum game. Although to be realistic I don't think China will ever outcompete the US. Not because I don't want them to, but simply because so many fundamentals count in Americas…

I agree with the non zero-sum point, however...

China is facing a demographic catastrophe.

Strongly disagree. The view on the ground in China is great. Almost everyone has their material needs exceeded, many sectors of infrastructure are second to none, education and internationalization of tastes is increasing, and the society is generally very safe. E-vehicles and e-commerce are everywhere. Rent a bicycle for nothing. Visit the tropics, Himalayas, desert or snow with a cheap domestic flight. Cuisine is arguably the most extensive in the world. Mobile payments are ubiquitous. Internet is cheap to free and literally you can get a signal anywhere. Yes, of course like anywhere it's not perfect, but it's really a far cry from America's stagnant and elitist education system, crumbling or monopolistically privatized infrastructure (eg. transport, medicine), and widespread opiate, gun and race problems.

(FYI: minimum wage in most Chinese cities for an unskilled foreigner with any kind of get up and go is 200CNY/hr (~USD$28/hr) these days... a great many western workers are on less than half of that, and would do very well to migrate.)

so many fundamentals count in Americas favor

I would like to hear what these are supposed to be. Having elite universities doesn't count if you rent them out to all comers, default English doesn't count if more people speak it overseas, VC doesn't count if it's easier to get elsewhere, and land isn't needed if your population is already happy to urbanize with extreme density. China owns the world's supply chain and manufacturing, has a highly efficient centralized form of government that can get huge or long term projects done without recourse to political terms, and leads the world in output and deployment scale of renewable energy systems (hydro, solar), modern transport infrastructure, robotics, internet, mobile payment and e-vehicles. Those are some pretty big fundamentals, too. From my perspective all the US really has are systemic global financial and communications surveillance capabilities and a big fat army. Their diplomatic trajectory is nothing to write home about, either.

Re: Pythagorean Theorem proof in a 2100 year old Chinese book

#67

Post by fuck_google »

good_vibes wrote: post #61

Couldn't have said it better myself. I think about this stuff a lot, how much ancient and modern overlap, how much Eastern and western overlap, yet how people still want to divide everything. "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." - Albert Einstein "The people in the Indian countryside don’t use t…

I wish people wouldn't consider Steve Jobs as an authority. He was a great salesman, but his "reality distortion field" could as well be called "creative lying". He was so good at bending the truth that he even managed to convince himself that "alternative medicine" would offer effective cancer treatment, which got him killed.

Re: Pythagorean Theorem proof in a 2100 year old Chinese book

#68

Post by fuck_google »

kobeya wrote: post #25
jacobolus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s evidence that the “Pythagorean Theorem” was known in Mesopotamia a millennium before Pythagoras. It was likely widely known in the ancient world. The Greeks wrote their mathematical ideas in a different way than other cultures, so the answers to these questions aren’t completely clear-cut.

But was the theorem proved?

The proof is so trivial that it is pretty much given once you discover the theorem.

Re: Pythagorean Theorem proof in a 2100 year old Chinese book

#69

Post by PhasmaFelis »

skinstudio wrote: post #36
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the PRC's claim on Taiwan boil down to a combination of right-of-conquest ("Taiwan belonged to the Republic of China, we beat up the Republic of China, therefore Taiwan is ours") and Just Because? ("The PRC is the only legitimate Chinese government because the PRC says so") I'm very skeptical of purely historical claims of sovereignty. If the people of Taiwan legitimately vote to join the PRC, that's their ri…

It must be clarified that mainland of China is also part of ROC according to ROC government[1]. In fact, the mainland and taiwan are in war, just like the Union and Confederacy in American civil war, even if there is not military conflicts right now. More interestingly, ROC actually claims larger territory than PRC (for example, part of Mongolia). It is ROC's constitution, not PRC's government, demands taiwan is part…

China lodged a formal complaint and warned of the "destr[uction of] Sino-US ties" because the US president admitted that the Taiwanese president spoke to him. If there's a reasonable party in all this, it is definitely not China. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/03/china-donald-t...

Re: Pythagorean Theorem proof in a 2100 year old Chinese book

#70

Post by PhasmaFelis »

contingencies wrote: post #66
jernfrost wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who gives a shit? It is almost always Americans making such statements, obsessed as they are about being number one. If Chine gets richer and more technologically advance that would be good for them and good for us westerners. It is not a zero sum game. Although to be realistic I don't think China will ever outcompete the US. Not because I don't want them to, but simply because so many fundamentals count in Americas…

I agree with the non zero-sum point, however... China is facing a demographic catastrophe. Strongly disagree. The view on the ground in China is great. Almost everyone has their material needs exceeded, many sectors of infrastructure are second to none, education and internationalization of tastes is increasing, and the society is generally very safe. E-vehicles and e-commerce are everywhere. Rent a bicycle for nothi…

> (FYI: minimum wage in most Chinese cities for an unskilled foreigner with any kind of get up and go is 200CNY/hr (~USD$28/hr) these days... a great many western workers are on less than half of that, and would do very well to migrate.)

Quoting wages is meaningless if you don't also mention cost of living.

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