This is "The Lounge", rudeness is accepted and expected. I understand that it's all good hearted and meant for improvement, self and other, and I hope you do too. — Metaphysician Undercover
I am happy to hear that. If we have no other common ground, then I'm glad we at least have this.
Sound criticism can never be turned into gibberish. It seems you haven't studied philosophy and therefore have no understanding "of the actual contexts they apply to". I have, and do understand the context. Sorry jaded, but it is you whose talk is gibberish in this context. — Metaphysician Undercover
I may not (re-)respond to every one of your arguments, so I'm glad you started with this one. It's a perfect micrcosm of your position.
I actually have studied philosophy. And science. And maths. And I learned several things about these arguments from studying philosophy, but - and this may astound you - I actually learned much more about the history of maths and science from my studies in maths and science.
The whole point is that you think your arguments are not jibberish because you don't understand what you are talking about. You have learned *just* enough to reach the peak of Mt Stupid on the Dunning-Kruger graph, and it absolutely shows.
To repeat myself somwhat, the way in which you have turned sound criticism into jibberish is by applying it to a context where it doesn't make sense, and then pretending that you're the cleverest person in the room because you
also don't understand any of the evidence that what you're saying is insanely stupid, and you don't want to.
Arguing with you is like arguing with someone who doesn't believe that the sky is blue. At a certain point, you can really boil the argument down to the "blue-sky" person asking the other to just go outside and LOOK. I asked you to provide a
single example of one of these problems you claim are rife within mathematics, and you refused.
Maybe this was motivated by your indomitable and unsubstantiated confidence, but maybe you refused to do so because you actually know you can't.
So I guess I should speak to the contortion you pulled out to defend against that. My earlier quote had the preceding sentence "I think it is both safe and responsible to assume that one of the fundamental barriers to our full understanding of the universe is that mathematics itself may not yet be sophisticated enough. Whatever the gaps are, they are not what you described - if we could label them, we could have fixed them by now.", so I was clearly referring to actual gaps in the capabilities of mathematics. The scope of that conversation changed when you replied with "The problem is that no one wants to fix them.", and cited a historically inaccurate reference to irrational numbers, a misinterpretation of their nature as a problem with maths instead of mathematicians, and a ridiculous statement about circles that seems to be an attempt to apply one of Plato's arguments for the World of Forms as though it makes any sense here. You finish with "But you cannot say that these problems haven't been labeled."
Your reply was broad and unhinged and its scope referred to more than just problems with mathematics itself as I was speaking about. So I accepted the expanded scope, or rather, sought to levy my challenge to not only include the problems I was talking about but also include any kind of the problems
you were talking about. When I said "If you feel the need to reply again, then I challenge you to point out one such problem that has been labelled, and is not something that modern mathematicians want solved (or have already solved).", it's pretty clear that the word "such" referred to what you wrote, and was not a reply to what I wrote myself.
Moreover, despite your dishonest framing that I'm spontaneously "changing [my] tune to say that the ones which are labeled, "mathematicians want solved".", I'm directly addressing your statement that "The problem is that no one wants to fix them.", which - pro tip - you can tell I was doing because my challenge was a direct response to the paragraph where you said that.
Hopefully we can now agree on the words we both said, the order which they were said, and the meanings of those words (here, anyway).
So if you like, I'm happy to roll the premise back to that of my original statement - fundamental gaps in mathematics that prevent it from describing reality - or we can even kick it back down to easy mode for you and talk about problems that only apply to mathematics itself. And I challenge you to find any such problem (that is unsolved) where there is any evidence whatsoever to suggest that the global community of maths and science - in the year 2023 - does not want it solved. You claim that the field is rife with these problems. How hard can it be to find just one?
Just to be extra clear, I mean 2023
CE, not BCE.
If you do undertake this challenge, then I must warn you that it will almost certainly involve you (*gasp*) actually learning something. In which case, I am sorry for your loss, or whatever makes you so averse to that.
Ugh, speaking of which, if you do honestly try to meet my challenge (I expect you won't), then I do ask that you stop embarrassing yourself with that foolishness about irrational numbers (which were never a problem for maths, only for mathematicians) or Newton's law prohibiting infinte acceleration (F=ma, you absolute and utter muppet - I already showed you those, four characters, which is all that
anyone needs to see to understand that. Except the genuinely mathematically illiterate, I guess. Case in point.).
Ideally, if you could find some kind of claim that I can't completely refute with more than a short sentence or a single equation, that would give me some hope for you. And no, my refutations still count as refutations even in the face of your standard strategy of making some idiotic claim and then putting your fingers in your ears and yell "LALALA, YOU CAN'T PROVE ME WRONG IF I'M NOT LISTENING."
But it's okay with me if that's a dealbreaker for you. Come to think of it, I'll probably be happier if I don't have to read any more of you talking about the "unsolved problem" of irrational numbers existing, which is not actually a problem - because the only real problem was in mathematicians not accepting their existence. And at the same time, you pretend that the acceptance of their existence is part of the problem. And if you had half a clue, you could
easily pivot that to an ACTUAL problem that we have, like us having no real conception of the square root of -1, and all we have is the knowledge that it is absolutely necessary for accurate mathematical modelling of reality (for lack of a better word). But I guess that's the whole theme here - you are avoiding any interesting ideas for the sake of arguing about whether the sky is blue.
...
Anyway, I'm slightly compelled to try and quickly cover the rest of the stupid things you said.
Likening my work to GPT-4, or LLMs in general, that's the highest compliment you could give — Metaphysician Undercover
Haha, of
course you think that. I've done a bit of work in the AI/ML field and it's common knowledge there that LLMs mimic human writing well but, by their very nature, understand nothing they say. This becomes apparent in anything they write beyond a simple recitation of facts they were shown - they combine concepts in a way that is driven by imitating human speech/writing, and not by conceptual logic, so virtually every single time they say anything remotely complex, they end up saying things that anyone who actually understands them can see are obviously wrong. Just like the things you say!
Anyway, it serves me right for trying to insult your dedication to not understanding anything in a way that assumes you understand something. But I'm glad that you're proud to be someone who basically got a C- on the Turing Test.
The problem was never solved... — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, it was. I've explained it several times. The failure to understand is yours alone. You could probably understand it if you weren't trying so hard not to.
I see you have yet to produce a good response to this issue... — Metaphysician Undercover
Pretty sure I have. You could probably understand it if you weren't trying so hard not to.
I haven't seen any refutation from you yet... — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, you have. You could probably understand them if you weren't trying so hard not to. Your refusal to open your eyes does not mean the light does not exist.
Are you aware of the history of the term "sophistic"? Why are you intent on portraying sophistry as "advanced", "accurate". — Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, I am aware. And that is not what I'm doing, as you can tell from the other words that I wrote after the ones you quoted.
Both definitions are ascribed to the word today, regardless of the etymology of the word (which, tbh, I think you only guessed correctly because a broken clock is still right twice a day). I was simply trying to be fair to you in identifying one thing you misunderstood not because of your passion for misunderstanding things, but because of the multiple definitions of a word I used.
What the hell is a "truth-adjacent thing?" — Metaphysician Undercover
Something that was true when it was written, was true when you read it, was kind of true when you remembered it, and less so but still kind of true when you applied it, and then you made a conclusion that completely misinterpreted it. You know, like pretty much every argument you make.
Like taking a valid criticism of horse-drawn carriages (e.g. horse dung) and applying it to cars - you've taken a true thing, but removed it from a context where it is true, and by putting it into an invalid context, it is now untrue, even if the original idea was kind of true. I think "truth-adjacent" is a pretty descriptive label to give that (if a tiny bit too charitable, perhaps).
Either it's true or it's false, or would you prefer that we sink ourselves into a world of probabilities, with nothing to ground what is actually the case? — Metaphysician Undercover
My poor metaphysician. True and False are useful concepts, and we can't help but use them, but they are indeed illusions. So yes, I think we should try to "sink ourselves into a world of probabilities, with nothing to ground what is actually the case", because that is the world we live in. That's not what I am actively doing here, but nonetheless, here's some advice that is exceedingly relevant to your misshapen worldview:
"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me."
Yes, math has changed "a bit". Unfortunately the fundamentals of circles and angles remain the same, and the glaring contradiction of discrete units within a continuity, just does not want to go away. — Metaphysician Undercover
This just makes it even sadder that you acknowledge that the foundations of mathematics are thousands of years old, and you still can't be bothered to actually learn anything about them. At this point, you're just throwing together relevant words and hoping your throw hits some rhetorical bullseye.
So yeah, do tell: explain "the glaring contradiction of discrete units within a continuity". What is the nature of this problem and what are its implications? Oh my goodness, what affront to mathematics are we engaging in every time we cut a pie into slices?
Instead of grounding the mathematical principles (axioms) in what is actually the case, truth, as philosophers do with "self-evident" truths, you'd prefer to waste time looking at an infinite number of "possible mathematical systems". — Metaphysician Undercover
Ah, yes, you have clearly studied and understood philosophy better than me. How could I forget the proud tradition of philosophers never bothering to think about what might be, what could be, how might one live, what hidden systems might govern this world that we can identify by imagining what systems govern all possible worlds? A good philosopher - a REAL philosopher - only concerns themself with "self-evident" truths.
Some of the things that make you such a skilled troll would make you an absolutely atrocious philosopher. Just the worst ever. Unless you're one of those people who counts Ayn Rand as a philosopher. Then you'd probably be only the second worst.
Good luck with that endeavour, you can find me in The Lounge sipping some whisky, and from time to time some whiskey. — Metaphysician Undercover
You know, that actually explains a lot about a lot of the things you say.
You are jumping to conclusion. You approach with prejudice, a preconceive bias, that these problems have been "solved". — Metaphysician Undercover
Note that the specific problems I'm talking about are "problems that are now solved". Zero of these conclusions have been jumped to - they have all been methodically reasoned and calculated to - some of them over the course of many centuries. But yeah, it's possible that you are accidentally stumbling onto a slightly meaningful bias I have in assuming that problems that have been solved are problems that have been solved. But as the saying goes, "a fool may occasionally stumble onto a truth now and then by chance alone, but he will generally pick himself up and continue on", and true enough, this is what you have done. Where you stumbled onwards to is the clearly much more problematic position where you assume (quite explicity!) that every single problem that has ever arisen in the field of mathematics is completely unsolved, and every advancement or revolution in the field has been a communal act of self-delusion.
I'm upgrading my judgement of you from "almost anti-intellectual" to "deliberately anti-intellectual".
Both cars and carriages have wheels and bearings, so they share the same fundamental problems of friction and inefficiency. Also, cars pollute at least as much as horses do, so the mention of "horse dung" is just a sophistic trick. You might argue that the car is "better" because the very specific issue of "horse dung" is avoided, but the more general problem of "pollution" remains, as the specific "horse dung" is replaced with other forms of the same problem "pollution". — Metaphysician Undercover
Hahaha, oh, I see! Horse dung is literally the exact same thing as carbon dioxide emissions, and I'm being sophistic and dishonest in claiming that not all criticisms of horse-drawn carriages apply equally to cars and vice versa. Whereas you are noting insightful truths when you say that the category of "solved mathematical problems" has zero overlap with the completely separate category of "solved mathematical problems", or when you claim that the word "sophisticated" means exactly the same thing as "sophistic", and nothing more, regardless of what those knaves who write our dictionaries will tell you.
As I have said: The things that make you such a skilled troll would make you an absolutely atrocious philosopher.
You pretend that distinctions with zero difference matter, and pretend that distinctions with a world of difference don't matter. You show no respect towards logic, and direct all of your attention towards rhetoric. I trust that you have studied enough philosophy to know the gravity of the insult when I say:
you, sir, are nothing but a sophist.
Actually, you're worse. They, at least, sought to contort and abuse truth itself for the sake of making a living out of it. But you do it for free. Apparently just for the passion of saying nothing as loudly as possible, to stifle any possible transfer or generation of knowledge, to chase the
feeling of being right about everything, caring nothing at all that the price of that is for you to
actually be right about virtually nothing.
You care nothing for the subject nor substance of your arguments, you care
only for the argument itself. You seem to have read a lot of things and you consciously decide - day after day - to employ that knowledge for only the most pointless goals you can find. I think you have a lot of intellectual potential and I am somewhat disgusted that you choose to waste it all on aimless vanity.