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Can we state that math is something like religion? The search for The One Truth? I feel oddly connected with the author and his thoughts mirror mine almost completely, I was just not able to word them...
> Weirdly, thinking about Graham’s number has actually made me feel a little bit calmer about death, because it’s a reminder that I don’t actually want to live forever—I do want to die at some point, because remaining conscious for eternity is even scarier. Yes, death comes way, way too quickly, but the thought “I do want to die at some point” is a very novel concept to me and actually makes me more relaxed than usual about our mortality.
"Islam was out because that’s not for white people." For someone who espouses an expertise in mathematics his perspective on religion is quite reductive if not completely wrong in some cases. I guess in addition to math the author is fond of strawman arguments.
But in this case I think the article is pretty clearly more stream of consciousness, just what the author believed at the time, legitimate or not -- and even though it's reductive and just genuinely a pretty bad reason, it's also easy to see how his subconscious might be thinking along the lines of "islam? Nah can't do islam, I'm not brown". Our minds generate totally faulty lines of reasoning like that all the time.
(especially if he came into this with a predisposition towards Buddhism, which I wouldn't be surprised about, since Buddhism tends to be viewed as very "cool" to westerners but Islam not as much)
Edit: ok or it was a joke :p
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how I see it. Mathematics is not science, even though science has found practical uses for certain types of math. Pure math does not require observation of the real world for proof, only consistency with itself. As a system of symbols independent of the messy real world I see it closer to mysticism than hard science. I am not saying this as a bad thing, only something we need to be honest about.
Well, one can think of, say, natural numbers as a mystical "system of symbols" but I find them extremely close to the real world when I count change in my pocket.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how I see it. Mathematics is not science, even though science has found practical uses for certain types of math. Pure math does not require observation of the real world for proof, only consistency with itself. As a system of symbols independent of the messy real world I see it closer to mysticism than hard science. I am not saying this as a bad thing, only something we need to be honest about.
Well, one can think of, say, natural numbers as a mystical "system of symbols" but I find them extremely close to the real world when I count change in my pocket.
Some math may not have any application that we know of in the real world. Maybe there is one but nobody has yet realized what it is. Or maybe the real world will change in the future so that there is one. Or maybe there won't be one and that's OK.
Incidentally, I think understanding how to correctly apply math to a real world problem is a separate skill from understanding the math itself. And just because you're a good at one doesn't mean you're good at the other. It's relatively easy and common to make the error of understanding a situation in a very shallow or inaccurate manner, then applying math which itself is completely valid, then coming to a wrong conclusion that you're very confident of because of how solid the math is. In "P, and P implies Q, therefore Q", it's easy to get so excited about the beauty and wonder of P implies Q that you spend too little time understanding whether P is actually the case. If you've got a hammer, and you're in love with that hammer, you can become blind to whether something actually is a nail.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, one can think of, say, natural numbers as a mystical "system of symbols" but I find them extremely close to the real world when I count change in my pocket.
But that's what they they were designed for. The first "numbers" were arguably clay tokens meant to represent goods in storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_numeral_sys... Numbers were and are primarily used for accounting purposes. If they didn't accurately represent the change in your pocket then the system would be improved until it did. There's nothing magical about it.
Some people need these transcendent experiences or else their lives feel empty. Nothing wrong with finding it through math or science instead of organized religion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that's what they they were designed for. The first "numbers" were arguably clay tokens meant to represent goods in storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_numeral_sys... Numbers were and are primarily used for accounting purposes. If they didn't accurately represent the change in your pocket then the system would be improved until it did. There's nothing magical about it.
Yet, there are people who see magic in numbers, as others tend to do in other mathematical constructs.
https://leosstemhacks.wordpress.com/2019/08/31/i-like-math-a-poem/