Rather than trying to immediately jump to what things are, I strongly recommend trying to understand why people believe what they do about it. I can claim that 2 is {{}{{}}} or {{}{}} or SS0, but this doesn’t help much more than just calling it 2 - it’s just substituting a symbol for another symbol. What’s needed is to understand the function of 2 in peoples’ thoughts.
Yeah, the statement about cities could be formulated much more mathematically. But ultimately, it’s going to have to refer to empirical facts about the universe in order to be evaluated.
Rather than trying to immediately jump to what things are, I strongly recommend trying to understand why people believe what they do about it. I can claim that 2 is {{}{{}}} or {{}{}} or SS0, but this doesn’t help much more than just calling it 2 - it’s just substituting a symbol for another symbol. What’s needed is to understand the function of 2 in peoples’ thoughts.
Yeah, the statement about cities could be formulated much more mathematically. But ultimately, it’s going to have to refer to empirical facts about the universe in order to be evaluated.