h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Not so. Take away a number and you might want to use or construct a new mathematical system. It wouldn't affect the world in the slightest. There are already plenty of number systems, and the world hasn't ended yet. For example, computers work on the binary number system of 1 and 0, representing on/off in the switches. That's all a computer needs to know, and a lot of numbers have been taken away.

There is a serious ambiguity in your speculation: in 94468871, for example, are there 8 numbers, or 6 numbers, or just the one long number?

The binary system too can represent any, let's call it an amount to save confusion, any amount at all. Though it only has two digits. For instance 1101 is eleven, (one plus two plus nil plus eight). Another name for the binary system is Base Two. Our everyday system is base Ten, (ten fingers), whereas the ancient Sumerians used base twenty (ten fingers and ten toes). Their year consisted of twenty months.

Sociological point: Is the American interest in the end of the world in various forms, (I'm thinking of Fundamentalists), an unconscious expression of the end of American power?

Jab

Gosh, I hope not Jab! I have to live here (in America) for a good while yet, God willing. Those fundies better be wrong.

I had a great uncle who liked to argue that math is great, because it is fixed and eternal. I'm pretty sure he never had to deal with the so-called "New Math." People do keep coming along and seeing new spins on old concepts, though.

I see some ambiguity in your analysis too, Jabberwock. If the binary computer language can represent all numbers with just the 0 and the 1, then suppose we take away that 0 or the 1. The world as we know it would then have to find something else until they could find the missing digit. (No, I'm noit planning to steal it .)And all those other numbers that could be represented in the binary computer system? If we took one away, how do we know the universe wouldn't collapse?

But, your points are well taken. (Drat!)

The universe keeps ending, but no one notices.

Last Tuesday, for instance. Someone found a spare just in the nick of time, and placed it exactly where the old universe used to be, and everyone was put to sleep for a millisecond, and the transition was seamless. But someday, the spare will come a few seconds too late, and we'll all be floating in empty space.

The Mayan calendar will end in 2012 (sometime in early December, maybe to spite Santa, though the Mayans did not know he existed...). I plan to host an end of the world party on that day, unless I'm hibernating.

You probably *will* be hibernating, FPR, but don't let it disturb your sleep.

If you're a scientist, you believe there's a universe out there that is independent of you. If you're a solipsist, *you* are the universe, and everyone else is a figment of your imagination. There are many opportunities for cognitive dissonance to disrupt the solipsist's convictions, so few of them exist, except in mental hospitals or as heads of police states.

one day we will start operating with 1 and 0 and -1, then we'll really be on our way

Be sure to clean your scalpels and disinfect the operating room first, Pierce.

Igor will help.

But isn't maths, really man-made, and therefore a figment of t'imagination? That's what I used to think during maths at school, anyway. Just prove to me that maths really exists. Fingers, yes, numbers, don't believe it!

There are two competing views on this, Lu.

1. The old-fashioned view, now largely discredited (SO FAR!)is that maths was learned by observation of nature. But nobody's ever seen a circle, although one can imagine one. It's a posteriori(look it up)- needs observational confirmation for its truth.

3. Maths is the perfect, self-certifying(THE ONLY AREA WHICH PRODUCES CERTAINTY e.g. 2= 2 = 4) system, produced first from observation, then developed into a system which needs reason, and no observation at all. but which strangely seems to fit the world.It's a priori (look it up!)
Just based now on reason, not observation. This seems to be true, but it's a puzzle that it fits the world.

Jab

Mmmmm... dunno. Not till I've looked up those words? Here's an interesting one. How do I know, that what I call red, is what you call red? What you see and call red, might be what I see and call blue!
It's that subjective versus objective (sort of) thing again? What about when you read a book, and get one meaning, and then read it again years later, and get meanings you hadn't recognized before?

How are you?

Hi Vi,

Not quite....you were right at first, (expressing your philosophical puzzlement), then if I said red and you said blue about the same thing the problem would be more obvious than it is...

Empirical (evidential) fact - the older you get the yellower green gets so that people can call green yellow in certain circumstances as they age. The colour does actually appear to be different to different ages.

The real unknowable is how do I know that what I call red is the same intrinsic colour as what you call red? I think that's what you meant.

Fine thanks

Jab

[a priori and a posteriori are difficult to explain but can be easily Googled.]



btw, you were a bit sharp as a kid! - what you were pondering was version 2 of the nature of maths (as above), and its knowledge-status.

Post 29 should be 1 and 2, not 1 and 3!

Posts 29 and 31 are very interesting, Jab.

No matter how often I do my empirical counting of my fingers (assuming the thumb is a finger, for the sake of argument), I always get ten.

As for green turning to yellow with advancing age in the observer, there was an octogenarian woman who remarked to my sister that the leaves were not as green as usual that year. My sister, being a teenager at the time, noticed no difference in the color of the leaves.

My brother, who is slightly colorblind, can confuse pastel shades of red and green, but is okay with traffic lights.

There is an island in the Pacific where the whole human gene pool precludes color perception. Researchers have found that the islanders see nuanced shades of grey, white, and black.

At the other end of the color perception scale, there is a rare condition (always found in women) in which the eyes have *two* sets of red cones (or maybe they're rods. Whatever they are). The women who have them can see minute differences between different hues of red that everyone else would perceive as identical.

The math concept that changed my life was that of probability. It fits in perfectly with investing, because you begin to understand how improbable it is that a money manager (for a mutual fund, for instance) can deliver more than 6 straight annual top-quartile showings (relative to the manager's peer group, that is).

I used to be a terrible worrier, but now I can calm at least of my fears by reckoning the probability that whatever I am worried about will be immediately damaging and severe.

Algebra is a pathological symptom of mathematicians' envy for words..Freud called it "letter-envy". and described it as a neurosis!
Whereas Jung thought both letters and numbers archetypes of the universal unconscious.-but what's with the brackets? I can see fractals as proof of mathematics, but didn't fingers create maths? Do we look for patterns where patterns don't exist? In't it a security blanket, like Jolly Old God?
I'm sure I'm talking utter b*ll*cks. Did evolution bring about numbers and patterns? I mean did things get regulated according to conditions? 'Tis a mystery to me!
How do they tell if someone is colour blind, or just has a different idea of words?
Expect all of the above is an anagram of carp. Please excuse my rubbish and the cheek I have to talk of things I don't understand!
Vi

I love your post, Vi.

Yes, we do sometimes look for patterns where they don't exist (that is to say, where pure random chance brought them into being). Just look at crop circles, or listen to Anthony Hopkins playing the crazy mathematician in the film "Proof" (or even Russell Crowe playing the crazy mathematician in "A Beautiful Mind"). I wonder if there's a pattern here that has to do with mathematicians being crazy .

When you look through large amounts of data in search of patterns, you are data mining. In medical research, quite often it's the only tool that will come through for you. It has its downside, too, though.

Two hundred years from now, people will probably regard much of what we consider true to be erroneous.

Paul' thanks for enjoying my post!
Sometimes I'll hear a
word I haven't come across before, and then I'll suddenly hear it all
over the place. I don't think this is "synchronicity" or coincidence, I think my subconscious is looking out for it. This stuff's getting on towards.... "THE SECRET", which I do and don't believe.
Long time ago I did a thesis on dreams, got very obsessed and came to some really strange conclusions, which I failed to tell people,as they'd have considered me wacky.
About 10 years ago I caught a bit of a T.V. program. Some professor, somewhere was coming to these same,strange conclusions, that I had years before.
Got to go now, boys are demolishing my house. Basically the idea is that the subconscious controls far, far, far, more than we could possibly imagine. It all sounds very trendy now,but I had these ideas
35 years ago.
Get back to you soon, Vi

Fascinating, folks - from fascinating folks!

That stuff from Freud and Jung is pure b*ll*cks I'm afraid. The analyst's big mistake of explaining everything by means of personal pathology/personal history, when the origin of an idea does not affect whether it's true or not.

This is quite different from the sympathetic treatment of people with problems and helping them feel less anxious, at which psychotherapy is quite good. But even here - cure? Don't ask. But that's a different discussion anyway.

Algebra is a wonderful tool invented by the arabs - like most of maths. But the origin is not important. Don't get hung up on meanings - look for what works (to paraphrase Wittgenstein).

The world lost so much when the Arab civilisations went fundamentalist.

THE SECRET - doesn't sound promising to me. Sounds like it could easily be mumbo-jumbo.

Paul - thanks for the discussion of colour-blindness. Fascinating.

Jab

Hi Jab,That bit about Freud und Jung was just me confabulating. Yes, I think they were both a complete pair of berks too. Jung was even more of an imbecile than Siggi.
And , yes, I sort of agree that "The Secret" is hogwash too, but I do think there's a grain of truth to it. All much less simple than it appears or they make out.
Ummm...Here's an odd story, and I can promise you it's true.
One Saturday morning, I woke up & had a thought I'd never had before. "Wouldn't it be nice, if the world was such, that you could go into a cafe, and they just gave you free coffee." I was thinking in terms of life being like a book. It was just a whim, it had never happened to me before.
That day, I went into three cafes, and, I got given my coffee for free, three times. I'd never been into any of these cafes before! and I wasn't trying to make it happen.
I s'pose my point is, that by having that thought, I made it possible in my mind for it to happen. I've had other similar experiences, and it's always with a whim, never something you really desperately want. I gave myself permission to think that odd thought. I'd never considered it before.What d'you make of it?

Hi Vi,

About your coffee...a sceptic might say our memories are very unreliable (which is true - viz. accident witnesses). Your report depends on memory. And on the subjectivity of experience.

But: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.(Hamlet, natch).

[N.B. Even this is open to interpretation: in YOUR philosophy?, In your PHILOSOPHY? Philosophy = science in those days? etc. Need to be careful with cheap quotes...]

Structure of time?
Structure of experienced time?
Structure of experience? - Time as experienced...(as in colour)

One thing I can say - I'm not personally a rationalist like that sceptic. Had enough experiences meself...

As usual, more questions than answers....sorry, but it helps to make us think.

Jab

my psychiatrist says I'M getting betterbut I don't believe him, co's he's seeing a psychiatrist now
and I can't get in a looney bin, they only take people they can cure