Pythagorean Theorem proof in a 2100 year old Chinese book • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by gus_massa » Sun, Mar 26, 2017, 3:24 PM UTC

y2kenny wrote: post #130

gus_massa wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you make an annotated version? Nothing fancy, if you add the translation with paintbrush and host it in imgur, I'll be completely happy.

It's traditional chinese but it's a challenge. This is my best guess: http://imgur.com/a/rnXPW Looks like they were using colour as variable/labels.

Thanks! I replied in my other comment, because I made a previous explanation attempt but after looking at your translation I think that it was wrong and I wanted to highlight the differences.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13953495

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

#152

Post by y2kenny » Mon, Mar 27, 2017, 2:53 AM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #150

y2kenny wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made this for another comment. Here you go: http://imgur.com/a/rnXPW

Thanks! Copy of your previous comments in other thread for context: > Also while those are Han, the language is sophisticated to regular Chinese readers. I can't even make sense of the words (individually yes) as a native Chinese speaker. > It's traditional chinese but it's a challenge. This is my best guess: > Looks like they were using colour as variable/labels. -- Most of my previous guess is wrong :( . In the sec…

I couldn't translate the middle left vertical sentence on the first diagram because it's a bit too faded. (It said something about the corner...) There's also references about 'this layer/level' all over the place that make me think there may be some paper folding involve but it could simply mean 'this layer is solid yellow' and so on.

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

#153

Post by tripzilch » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 3:05 PM UTC

jernfrost wrote: post #127

sn41 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe true. The emphasis was on calculations. For example, there was a heliocentric model in India [1], which was too complicated to come from a "simple" mechanical model, but was quite accurate. But I think we should not be too eager to jump on to "science is only from laws" bandwagon. Courses on the philosophy of science take this dogma to absurd extremes, ignoring how current science is often done. There is enough…

Even simulations are based on formulating rules or laws in which the different parts operate within. I think you are bringing up an awful lot of straw-men to counter my point. I never suggested one should be narrow minded about it, simply that by merely having observations, we don't really have science. IMHO science relies on having theories which we can formulate rules or laws from which makes it possible to make pr…

> native Americans didn't invent quantum mechanics

Maya's totally knew about quantum, how else could they have had novelty theory and predicted the 2012 timewave zero collapse? It's not like they had access to the I-Ching[0] to be able to model it like Terrence McKenna did.

... on that note, a bit more serious; this is as good an opportunity to randomly ask as any; can anyone explain to me (as far as pseudo-science goes, going along with all of the assumptions) what the basic reasoning is in Timewave Zero, how they got from the King Wen sequence (which is a certain permutation of the 64 I-Ching hexagrams, but afaik they just use it as a particular 64-element permutation compared to the original order, without taking into further account the symbology of the invididual hexagrams), and turned it into that fractal line graph they call the Timewave? There is an article on deoxy.org that appears to go into technical detail but when I read it and tried to reproduce, it doesn't really say how that step is done. OTOH apparently there's software (screenshots) that plot this graph, so there must be some kind of deterministic algorithm, but I haven't been able to find any docs about it.

[0] ... OR DID THEY??