What is math? Math is the study of light...

[Gannon]

I think I understand what math is.. (I'm not totally certain but I feel strongly in this direction) I feel I "understand math" in a strange way... because MATH is a subset language, of our alphabetic language and visual geometry. (i.e. what you see/sense/detect).

All of mathematics is nothing more then a conversion of light data to symbolic script (i.e. you see a sphere x the real world and need some kind of ABSTRACT REPRESENTATIONAL SYSTEM) to describe it... (i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc) therefore math is an abstract descriptive language we need to categorize and describe the world itself, light and math are intimately linked in big ways, I feel that mathematics is a subset of light, and the geometric patterns of shapes and colors it creates (both visible, and invisible/undetectable to oursenses)

Since scientific tools are basically our "eyes", they actually see the different forms of energy, which no doubt must all be the same thing (law of conservation of mass/energy).

So mathematics is just describing energy and it's various forms, so therefore mathematical systems and their own symbolic alphabets is quite limited to the minds who invented the different languages of math.

Real mathematics is shapes, colors and geometry.... thats how I feel.. what about you?

Locked at OP's request.

esquared
Anandtech Senior Moderator

 

[BadRobot]

you don't need eyes or light to do math.

 

[SsupernovaE]

I know a blind mathematician. She's been blind all of her life.

 

[CycloWizard]

It is true that we model the real world using math. However, it's incorrect to say that objects exist because of light. If I hold a ball in my hand and there are absolutely zero photons in the room, the ball still exists, has mass, diameter, and other observable properties. Thus, light does not create the ball - the ball exists independently of the light. You could argue that the ball was, at some point, light and that the energy of those photons has simply been transformed into matter, but that's a horse of a different color.

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: BadRobot
you don't need eyes or light to do math.

Actually yes you do..

Ears are eyes that see sound
Touch are eyes that see surfaces.

Sorry but all of our senses are forms of "eyes" that take in data, which are forms of energy...

You missed the analogy and the metaphor.

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: SsupernovaE
I know a blind mathematician. She's been blind all of her life.

Again, she has touch-sight, and ear-sight so yes she has 'eyes' (to see the data/energy patterns).. think again.

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard
It is true that we model the real world using math. However, it's incorrect to say that objects exist because of light. If I hold a ball in my hand and there are absolutely zero photons in the room, the ball still exists, has mass, diameter, and other observable properties. Thus, light does not create the ball - the ball exists independently of the light. You could argue that the ball was, at some point, light and that the energy of those photons has simply been transformed into matter, but that's a horse of a different color.

You missed the metaphor...

Eyes = see electromagnetic radiaton
Touch = heat/surfaces/motion
Ears = soundwaves

If we took you and cut off ALL of your senses, do you think you could do math?

No touch
no sight,
no hearing.
and no other way to gather information about the environment.

By the way you missed my reference to scientific tools, which "see" for us, the get closer to the things that are harder for our senses to detect, our tools are basically sensor prosethetics.

 

[gururu2]

math is the equivalent of a walking stick. its a poor substitute for any realistic determination of reality.

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: gururu2
math is the equivalent of a walking stick. its a poor substitute for any realistic determination of reality.

Tell that to the scientists... and the people who designed your computer and the internet... all based on math bud.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: Gannon

Originally posted by: gururu2
math is the equivalent of a walking stick. its a poor substitute for any realistic determination of reality.

Tell that to the scientists... and the people who designed your computer and the internet... all based on math bud.

Yeah, but you are not alluding to such practical applications. As a language for describing reality math fails on so many fronts. It's merely a symbolic means of describing certain limited aspects of reality that we have been able to boil down to formulae. Math probably sits well up the stack from the unified theory of everything, which you appear to be searching for .

 

[NanoStuff]

Originally posted by: Gannon

Originally posted by: BadRobot
you don't need eyes or light to do math.

Actually yes you do..

Ears are eyes that see sound
Touch are eyes that see surfaces.

Sorry but all of our senses are forms of "eyes" that take in data, which are forms of energy...

You missed the analogy and the metaphor.

You missed introduction to logic 101. Ears are not eyes that see sound, eyes are ears that hear light. No, not really, but maybe you can now see how arbitrarily stupid that is.

 

[Crusty]

The biggest problem I see in all of your ideas is that you take a word and fudge the meaning of it to fit into your flawed logic. Ears are not eyes, and eyes are not ears. Stop pretending words mean something that they don't.

You make a lot of statements, but you do not prove any of them to be true. Then you take those flawed statements and use them to deduce other flawed ideas.

Please stop.

 

[NanoStuff]

I wonder if this guy and this guy are the same.

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: Gannon

Originally posted by: BadRobot
you don't need eyes or light to do math.

Actually yes you do..

Ears are eyes that see sound
Touch are eyes that see surfaces.

Sorry but all of our senses are forms of "eyes" that take in data, which are forms of energy...

You missed the analogy and the metaphor.

You missed introduction to logic 101. Ears are not eyes that see sound, eyes are ears that hear light. No, not really, but maybe you can now see how arbitrarily stupid that is.

Actually you missed out on language class... You're just confused because words have more then one meaning, hence I didn't miss out on logic 101.

Actually lets look at the definition of see:

1. examine: observe, check out, and look over carefully or inspect
2. understand:
3. observe as if with an eye

Entry: Detect

1. discover or determine the existence, presence, or fact of;

Do ears detect sound?

Yes... so ears see (perceive) sound.. sorry you lose.

Here's the thesaurus definition:

Main Entry: hear
Part of Speech: verb 1
Definition: detect
Synonyms: apprehend, attend, auscultate, become aware, catch, descry, devour, eavesdrop, get*, give attention, give ears*, hark, hearken, heed, listen, make out*, overhear, perceive, pick up*, read, strain, take in*

Main Entry: perceive
Part of Speech: verb 1
Definition: notice
Synonyms: apperceive, apprehend, behold, descry, dig, discern, discover, distinguish, divine, espy, eyeball, feel, flash on, grasp, identify, lamp, look, make out, mark, mind, note, observe, realize, recognize, regard, remark, see, seize, sense, spot, spy, take

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: Crusty
The biggest problem I see in all of your ideas is that you take a word and fudge the meaning of it to fit into your flawed logic. Ears are not eyes, and eyes are not ears. Stop pretending words mean something that they don't.

You make a lot of statements, but you do not prove any of them to be true. Then you take those flawed statements and use them to deduce other flawed ideas.

Please stop.

I do not take a word and fudge it's meaning, words have many meanings, it's not my fault your vocabulary isn't big enough... go to

www.thesuarus.com if you're having problems with reading that should have been solved

Then their is the enlightenment fallacy, if you know that energy is the only thing that transmits data, what is your problem exactly?? It's self-fucking evident. What exactly would you accept as proof? When you name an object like a phone, do you understand every function to know that it's a phone? NO. The level of "proof" required for such statements is low because it's self-evident. You don't need to count and know every atom and atomic molecule, and function of a phone, to know that it's a phone.

 

[BadRobot]

So what is self-evident in this discussion?

 

[lousydood]

Originally posted by: BadRobot
So what is self-evident in this discussion?

That metaphysics is dumb.

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: lousydood

Originally posted by: BadRobot
So what is self-evident in this discussion?

That metaphysics is dumb.

You don't even know what metaphysics is...

Metaphor:

Metaphor (from the Greek: metapherin) is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. In the simplest case, this takes the form: "The [first subject] is a [second subject]." More generally, a metaphor is a rhetorical trope that describes a first subject as being or equal to a second subject in some way. Thus, the first subject can be economically described because implicit and explicit attributes from the second subject are used to enhance the description of the first. This device is known for usage in literature, especially in poetry, where with few words, emotions and associations from one context are associated with objects and entities in a different context.

Within the non rhetorical theory a metaphor is generally considered to be a concluded equation of terms that is more forceful and active than an analogy, although the two types of tropes are highly similar and often confused. One distinguishing characteristic is that the assertiveness of a metaphor calls into question the underlying category structure, whereas in a rhetorical analogy the comparative differences between the categories remain salient and acknowledged. Similarly, metaphors can be distinguished from other closely related rhetorical concepts such as metonymy, synecdoche, simile, allegory and parable.


Therefore, we are doing mathematical comparisons on abstract-data shapes that have literal partial equality.

For instance, of we said BOX(12345)
was similar to circle (12366)

The parts that they would have in common (using "metaphor" == partial equality comparison) would be the pattern 123.

It's a highly advanced topic, so I'm not surprised most people don't understand because they don't understand the root definitions and meanings of the language they use, and even think in.

 

[lousydood]

It's a highly advanced topic, so I'm not surprised most people don't understand because they don't understand the root definitions and meanings of the language they use, and even think in.

Too true! You provide a shining example.

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: lousydood

It's a highly advanced topic, so I'm not surprised most people don't understand because they don't understand the root definitions and meanings of the language they use, and even think in.

Too true! You provide a shining example.

LOL but you can't show me how the logic or definitions are wrong, so the onus is on you to backup your claim. I have rebutted every claim in this thread.

 

[BadRobot]

Personally I was trying to get you to make your point more clearly. So your point is that numbers and language are just symbols that we attach meaning to or was it something else?

You attempted to prove everyone else wrong, in doing so, your original point got lost somewhere...

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: BadRobot
Personally I was trying to get you to make your point more clearly. So your point is that numbers and language are just symbols that we attach meaning to or was it something else?

You attempted to prove everyone else wrong, in doing so, your original point got lost somewhere...

Yeah it did I agree...

My point is that, we get all of our data from the world first, we first see, and hear, and touch and feel before we even begin to learn math at school, we can navigate the world without learning a lick of what we call "mathematics" (really a language to describe geometry in the abstract).

And from what I know from physics (and what physics people have told me) light / energy is the only way data is transmitted.

So this would means that energy itself is a form of data, if we are getting all of our data from electromagnetic waves and other related forms of energy.

And what we call "math" is really our need to describe the shapes we see, now that sentence "the shapes we see", really means -- our need to create systematic descriptions of the energy we're taking in and measuring from the environment.

Now shape is a big concept, it's what I call "junction" word, because everything converges on this idea and concept of the word shape.

For instance:
a shape of a frequency of sound
a shape of a frequency of light
a shape of a frequency (oscilation/etc) of energy

It seems to me that energy has at least partially equal or equivalent properties to literal abstract data. If this is the case, then mathematics is nothing more then a form of 'energy-data' itself, since if we're converting energy from the first layer (environmental) to the second (mental).

Therefore what we call mathematics, is really the study of energy-'data' the idea that energy and data are exactly equivalent at least in a partial way is pretty profound.

Is that clear? I hope I didn't make any mistake anywhere.

Here's the best definition of data I could find:

1. A formal representation of raw material from which information is constructed via processing or interpretation.

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: Gannon
thats how I feel.. what about you?

I feel you need to lay off the hash pipe.

 

[Gannon]

Originally posted by: Born2bwire

Originally posted by: Gannon
thats how I feel.. what about you?

I feel you need to lay off the hash pipe.

That wasn't highly technical

 

[BadRobot]

Don't take this the wrong way but I think you are mixing social studies, communication studies, and physics too much...