Yes, I believe that proof is just a well-formed finite string, but I take that a little bit futher because one can always ask that “what a well formed finite string is?”. Basically, I tell that person to use his honest intuition to check which things are “well-formed finite strings”.
Randolf
Karma: −1
Someone doing that still puts faith on the computer, and the person who made the computer program to check the rules. Essentially, he has strong feeling that A holds because the computer program said so. He still has to rely on his “intuition” or “belief” that the computer program gives true statements.
Personally I believe that mathematics is little else but text with rules. One of these rules is that when a certain rule is satisfied, we are allowed to write that something is true. But when do we know that a rule is satisfied? What does that even mean? Well, I believe that in the end we have to trust our intuition. That is, when we have a strong enough, honest feeling that something satisfies our rule of “being true”, we say that it is true. This definition makes mathematical truths very vaque and even subjective, which is unfortunate, but so far no other philosophy has satisfied me.
Yes, indeed. The ratio open/closed may be higher in scifi books than in fantasy books, but there are still many open fantasy books and closed scifi books. In the end it only depends on the invidual book. This is why I don’t think it’s really safe to label fantasy as a closed genre.
What I’m pointing out is that all of these drug ideas are bound to be something that evolution has at some point tried out, and thrown away. And they are really unsophisticated ideas compared with those the brain has actually adopted.
Well there could be many reasons why evolution has” thrown them out”. Maybe they are harmful in the long term, maybe their use consumes precious energy, or maybe they just aren’t “good enough” for evolution to have kept them. That is, maybe they just don’t give any signifigant evolutionary advantage.
Evolution doesn’t create perfect beings, it creates beings which are good enough to survive.
Eagles are lonely hunters who don’t spend much time with other birds, are quite rare in numbers and only live in the wilderness. Robins however, are often seen near other birds, basically live everywhere and are also large in numbers. So mayhaps people choose Robin as the better disease spreader simply because Robin probably is the better disease spreader.
There are very many factors that may affect this kind of a test.. What do you think about the following?
If you were told that planktons had caught a disease, how likely would you think it would spread among other sea species? Now suppose fish had caught the disease?
Now, plankton definitely isn’t the most obvious sea species, while fish is. Yet I dare suspect that people would select plankton as the better disease spreader simply because they are everywhere. I’m not certain though.
So, mayhaps, because people know how a disease spreads best among large populations, they tend to select a species which is large in numbers, or which they think to be large in numbers. Maybe people select the typical member of the group as the better disease spreader (when asked to choose between two), simply because such typical member is also likely one that people see often and hence they also believe it is great in numbers.
In essence, my point is: Maybe, when people are asked which one of two species of a given group are better disease spreaders, they select the one which is typical in the group of potential disease spreaders of species, and leave the one which is more atypical out.
I think that the saying “What can be destroyed by truth, should be” is a little bit too black and white to work well in all aspects of life. For example, a clumsy and fat person who thinks he is actually rather agile, might be a lot happier with this false belief than if he were aware of the truth*. Of course it could be said that if he knew the truth, he would start to exercise and eventually become healthier, but that’s not necessarily the case. Another example would be, that if a not-so-good-looking person thinks he looks good, he might be encouraged by that false belief to ask someone he likes for a date.
*Here when I talk about truth, I mean that how things are in the physical reality. ( whatever that may mean. )
I don’t think you can call such a world good or perfect, but I don’t think it’s all bad either. I quess you could call it neutral.
I mean, I don’t see that world as a big failure, if a failure at all. No civilization will be there forever*, but the one I mentioned had at least achieved something at it’s time: it had once been glorious. While it left it’s statues, it still managed to keep the world habitable for life and other species. (note how I mentioned trees and plants growing on the ruins). To put it simple, it was a beatiful civilization that left a beatiful world.. It isn’t fair to call it a failure only because it wasn’t eternal.
*Who am I to say that?
I don’t know, or maybe I don’t understand your point. I would find a quiet and silent, post-human world very beatiful in a way. A world where the only reminders of the great, yet long gone civilisation would be ancient ruins.. Super structures which once were the statues of human prosperity and glory, now standing along with nothing but trees and plants, forever forgotten. Simply sleeping in a never ending serenity and silence...
Don’t you too, find such a future very beatiful in an eerie way? Even if there is no sentient being to perceive it at that time, the fact that such a future may exist one day, and that it can now be perceived through art and imagination, is where it’s beauty truly lies.
Maybe he is able to construct some sort of an abstract hula-hoop in his mind, which he believes to have those properties, but of course he isn’t able to do it in the physical reality. Strong intuition suggests that it isn’t possible.
However, we should not forgot that mathematical models of physical reality and mathematics itself are separate things. We can use mathematics to understand nature, but nature cares very little about anyones mathematical truths. Well, I think it’s safe to say so anyway.