The dilemma pits human folk intuition against actual probability theory, with surprising results. But the howler is that pigeons tended to get this right more easily than humans – at least in one study. (Another study found that it depended on the humans’ age.)
Mathematics
Mathematical Association of America gone Woke: Math is created by humans
Math is not, of course, created by humans but only recognized by humans—a critical distinction. 2 + 2 = 4, even if the Woke burn down research labs under the banner of “2 + 2 = 5!” The biggest losers will, of course, be those with the fewest private resources when public ones are destroyed.
How much computing power would we need to evolve computer via Darwinian evolution that can program itself ?
But read the fine print: We would need to run many trials of planets in parallel in order to simulate the real conditions in the universe. Yampolskiy concludes, ‘In fact, depending on some assumptions we make regarding multiverse, quantum aspects of biology, and probabilistic nature of Darwinian algorithm such compute may never be available.’”
Mathematicians debate the war on math
Carlo Rovelli stops short of saying that 2+2=5 but the article gives every sense that many would love to go there if only they could get some kind of a nudge. It is far to say that the war on Platonism is just the war on math, PhD version.
The weirdness of the number 42
Here’s Scientific American in a more entertaining mode. Remember when Deep Thought, the computer in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979) spit out the Answer to the great question of life? It was: 42 But 42 does have some interesting features.
At New Scientist: Fuzzy law threatens mathematics
New Scientist — as a culture — would probably always been happier joining the war on math, and this sounds like a way of testing the waters. But we shall see.
New podcast offers blatant heresy: Two plus two make four
James Lindsay, one of Peter Boghossian’s fellow hoaxers of the Woke folk, discusses the war on math in this podcast.
God and mathematics – Why does mathematics work?
From God and Math: Think about it… Mathematical entities like numbers, sets, and equations are non-physical and abstract. They can’t cause anything. Yet, for some reason, the physical universe operates…mathematically.
Arithmetic as racism: A teacher’s reflections on the progressive war on math
Mahlberg: English philosopher G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) saw the early signs of the West’s abandonment of objective truth, and in a cheeky tone, he warned: We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening a mob with the news that grass is green…
Penguin math is very precise
It seems more likely that the math underlying the universe plays a role in this than that somehow, hundreds of destroyed penguin species later, a single group of penguins randomly hit on the right answer.
Nancy Pearcey: A dispatch from the Woke war on math
Nancy Pearcey: Critical theorists argue that mathematics is just another arbitrary human creation that has been used to privilege certain groups while excluding others.
And then they came for 2 + 2 = 4 …
One thing the self-described progressive Woke perspective will certainly do is trap disadvantaged students in poverty. They will be forever consumers, not creators, of technology and the power and prosperity are largely on the creation side.
Why God appears to be a mathematician
No wonder New Atheism petered out. It wasn’t just all the stupid profanity. Ultimately, maybe they couldn’t argue with the math.
Robert J. Marks on why there cannot be an infinite number of universes
The Big Bang Theory sitcom’s Sheldon Cooper insists that in no universe would he dance with Penny. That mighrt be true, says Marks but there still isn’t an infinite number of universes: But, some claim, there is an infinite number of universes in the multiverse. That is ludicrous because there are no infinities in the Read More…
At Forbes: The Universe is not purely mathematical
Maybe a universe that was completely explainable and provable couldn’t exist.