151–160 of 248 posts
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Don't you think this discussion is tangental to the topic?
I think that's hyperbolic. It seems like a natural digression. I think you're just being negative. Put another way, this discussion certainly has more than an infinitesimal relation to the original link.
Pythagoras was specifically known for accumulating the wisdom of diverse cultures—supposedly he met Thales, was initiated as Egyptian priest in Hermopolis, spent time in Babylon after being captured, and was initiated into every mystery cult he could. And as a boy on his home island of Samos, he would have been exposed to the building of the largest stone temple in Ancient Greece (to Hera) and the incredible engineer…
Seems to me this connection is having a resurgence now as people attempt to project the capabilities of computers beyond human capabilities, where the implications are necessarily bordering on spiritual.
Examples include transhumanism, Yudkowsky-style absurdly extrapolated rationalism (Basilisk etc), the simulation hypothesis, AGI salvation hopes...
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Why would you need numbers for right angles? You need a straight line and a string. But I agree with the second paragraph: there's a huge difference between a procedure that is handed down as part of "this is how we estimate a building project" and a theorem that is declared universal truth and base for all kinds of other theorems. Even if they are exactly the same thing.
How useful are universal truths compared to getting shit done? I only see theorems as useful for complex societies. The son of a gem dealer would have the time to work out universal truths. The reputation of everyone doing it without numbers would reveal the pattern of the universal truth. Finally this looks like it was all done using cuneiform. Which brings up questions of notation and the language to describe a squ…
Observing that something always holds and even having a formula for it is not the same thing as having a proof, and the proof is what makes it mathematics and geometry and not "just" engineering. The babylonians had a rule of thumb -- the greeks discovered the theorem -- and more than that, they seem to have invented the mathematical/geometrical proof as a concept, along with formal logic.
Without that mental framework, it's hard to say that the babylonians proved anything or had any theorems at all, only collections of rules of thumb. It's quite likely that lots of babylonians sort of independently and intuitively understood _why_ it must be true, but they don't seem to have ever written it down.
Not that there's anything wrong with having rules of thumb -- it's a huge achievement to even notice and collect and teach those things, all the stuff around you is built relying on them.
I encourage everyone to watch this series of videos.
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> I don't see why that was necessary. You can get pretty far with eyeballing it and custom cutting to fit. i'm not saying at all that I know the answer, but eyeballing and cutting is good for a patio, but on a ziggurat or pyramid scale it seems you don't do so much eyeballing or cutting, and more planning how much material and how many slaves you're going to need for how long, and where to put the doors so the passag…
I've seen many Mayan structures in Mexico, and they all look like they were eyeballed.
Pythagoras was specifically known for accumulating the wisdom of diverse cultures—supposedly he met Thales, was initiated as Egyptian priest in Hermopolis, spent time in Babylon after being captured, and was initiated into every mystery cult he could. And as a boy on his home island of Samos, he would have been exposed to the building of the largest stone temple in Ancient Greece (to Hera) and the incredible engineer…
> The relationship between math and spirituality was very strong back then! On Seymour Cray: Another favorite pastime was digging a tunnel under his home; he attributed the secret of his success to "visits by elves" while he worked in the tunnel: "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray
https://maps.org/2004/08/08/nobel-prize-genius-crick-was-hig...
> FRANCIS CRICK, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago.
> The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co- researcher James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to the nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had discovered the secret of life.
> Crick, who died ten days ago, aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle’s warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.
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Why would you need numbers for right angles? You need a straight line and a string. But I agree with the second paragraph: there's a huge difference between a procedure that is handed down as part of "this is how we estimate a building project" and a theorem that is declared universal truth and base for all kinds of other theorems. Even if they are exactly the same thing.
How useful are universal truths compared to getting shit done? I only see theorems as useful for complex societies. The son of a gem dealer would have the time to work out universal truths. The reputation of everyone doing it without numbers would reveal the pattern of the universal truth. Finally this looks like it was all done using cuneiform. Which brings up questions of notation and the language to describe a squ…
As I understand Greeks invented proofs because "universal thruths" they exported from Babylon and Egypt sometimes explicitly contradicted each other.
I believe such contradictions may be a great nuisance when you try to get shit done.
Egypt and Babylon were sufficiently "complex" societies for proofs, but their tradition treated mathematics as a bunch of useful facts about numbers and shapes. New generation just memorized them. We should think it worked for them in most cases, and when it didn't work it was not so often for them to start thinking a lot of reforming mathematics. Plus they were indoctrinated by the math they learned (authority of a teacher is above of anything else, i suppose) and to reform math was not a natural idea for them.
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I don’t know of any ancient sources claiming that Pythagoras killed Hippasus. Seems unlikely to me! In any case, Hippasus was a fascinating figure: “Aristoxenus (Fr. 90 Wehrli = DK I 109. 31 ff.) reports that Hippasus prepared four bronze disks of equal diameters, whose thicknesses were in the given ratios, and it is true that, if free hanging disks of equal diameter are struck, the sound produced by, e.g., a disk ha…
I'm pretty confused. How do you think an average 8 year old would feel?
Diogenes said that Pythagoras hated beans: “One should abstain from fava beans, since they are full of wind and take part in the soul, and if one abstains from them one’s stomach will be less noisy and one’s dreams will be less oppressive and calmer.”
Diogenes said that Pythagoras hated beans: “One should abstain from fava beans, since they are full of wind and take part in the soul, and if one abstains from them one’s stomach will be less noisy and one’s dreams will be less oppressive and calmer.”