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Ahab's Leg Dilemma

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Re: Ahab's Leg Dilemma

#41

Post by n4r9 »

lupire wrote: post #37
n4r9 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid I'm not sure where you're differing from what I said! He invented graph theory to solve the riddle. It was later used to solve other problems as well. It's not clear to me that Euler knew of the myriad possible applications, but would be happy to be shown wrong.

"Inventing graph theory" is a tiny task. He just took a map and simplified the visual presentation. All the work of the theory comes after that one little problem. It wasn't a big journey like this thread starter is talking about. You can see it in the short paper, where most of the length is due to the lack of algebraic notation, and there's nothing there to generalize to answer other questions about graphs.

Just because the paper is short, doesn't mean that Euler didn't spend significant time and effort dreaming up the solution. If it was a tiny task, someone else would have done it already.

Re: Ahab's Leg Dilemma

#42

Post by u32480932048 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #26
u32480932048 wrote: post #24

At first, I thought Ahab's Leg Dilemma might ask something like if a person replaces parts of their body with whalebone, at what point, if any, does that person stop being the original person?

You may be thinking of Theseus' Ship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Yeah, that's what I was riffing off of, being too unoriginal to come up with my own ;)

Re: Ahab's Leg Dilemma

#43

Post by 5040 »

u32480932048 wrote: post #42
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be thinking of Theseus' Ship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Yeah, that's what I was riffing off of, being too unoriginal to come up with my own ;)

A related problem is the 'sorites paradox'.

>A typical formulation involves a heap of sand, from which grains are removed individually. With the assumption that removing a single grain does not cause a heap to become a non-heap, the paradox is to consider what happens when the process is repeated enough times that only one grain remains: is it still a heap? If not, when did it change from a heap to a non-heap?

Re: Ahab's Leg Dilemma

#44

Post by coldtea »

moate wrote: post #33
keiferski wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is kind of my point, though: don't read it if you're worried about "boring" digressions. You won't like it. Read it when you have enough time to slowly appreciate every chapter. You have to completely silence the part of your mind that wants action and progression of the storyline.

Counterpoint for anyone out there trying to decide if they should read it: Don't. Life is short, do things in a way you think makes sense, not because some dude on the internet said it Fuck the classics. No seriously, that's my stance: Who cares? I know people who spend time and energy culturing themselves and many of them are absolutely boring at parties. The world has no purpose or meaning except what you conjure u…

>Counterpoint for anyone out there trying to decide if they should read it: Don't. Life is short, do things in a way you think makes sense, not because some dude on the internet said it

Counterpoint to the counterpoint: do it. Don't live life as an automaton. Broaden your horizons. Venture outside your comfort zone and expand your culture outside quick entertainment.

Not convinced? Well, go binge watch the Nth streaming/cable series, watch the Nth MCU movie, and be content with what you're fed by cynical media moguls and assumed to like because that's your station in life as an average Joe. See if I care...

Re: Ahab's Leg Dilemma

#45

Post by renewiltord »

burkaman wrote: post #28
renewiltord wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If going North, with a wind blowing from West to East, wouldn't the windward side be on the port side, not the starboard side? I must be doing something obviously wrong early in the morning since the writer says it's going the other way.

That's a typo in conclusion 1, the wind is blowing east to west as it says just above. "the gale comes from the eastward"

Oh thank you! That makes sense, reading back.

Re: Ahab's Leg Dilemma

#47

Post by archagon »

keiferski wrote: post #35
moate wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint for anyone out there trying to decide if they should read it: Don't. Life is short, do things in a way you think makes sense, not because some dude on the internet said it Fuck the classics. No seriously, that's my stance: Who cares? I know people who spend time and energy culturing themselves and many of them are absolutely boring at parties. The world has no purpose or meaning except what you conjure u…

I mean, you don't need to take my opinion for it. I am just a dude on the Internet, although I do have a little blog about the arts, so I guess I'm marginally more qualified than just a random person? I'll let you decide. But a whole lot of very intelligent people that know a lot about literature have very good things to say about Moby Dick. To disregard their collective opinions in favor of reading whatever makes yo…

Not OP. I’ve personally never read Moby Dick — been meaning to at some point — but I don’t see any purpose in continuing to slog through a book that you find interminably boring. It’s just a cargo cult mentality of becoming “cultured”.

My world expanded quite a bit when I realized that not all the classics were worth anything to me, and that some works that people turn their noses up at are far more valuable culturally.

Re: Ahab's Leg Dilemma

#48

Post by jhbadger »

keiferski wrote: post #29
trelane wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Available on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2701

I haven't compared the two, but I think Standard Ebooks' edition is probably better formatted. https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/herman-melville/moby-dick

Yeah, that's kind of what Standard Ebook's whole deal is -- they have only a small fraction of the number of books Project Gutenberg has, but they spend a lot of time making the ones they have pretty -- often better than even commercial e-books.
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