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New Comic Book About Logic, Math, and Madness
areYouAHypnotist writes to tell us the New York Times has the scoop on a new comic book about the quest for logical certainty in mathematics. "The story spans the decades from the late 19th century to World War II, a period when the nature of mathematical truth was being furiously debated. The stellar cast, headed up by Bertrand Russell, includes the greatest philosophers, logicians and mathematicians of the era, along with sundry wives and mistresses, plus a couple of homicidal maniacs, an apocryphal barber, and Adolf Hitler."
Reading all those words...turning all those pages. I don't suppose they're going to do a cartoon version? 90..no, make that 60 minutes long, with explosions. Plenty of explosions.
nigosexualists?
Without the humor.
I can't wait until "Math: The Musical!" is making the rounds off Broadway.
If sex, violence, and drugs didn't bring the kids flocking back to comic books, I'm POSITIVE this will do it.
The stellar cast, headed up by Bertrand Russell, includes the greatest philosophers, logicians and mathematicians of the era, along with sundry wives and mistresses, plus a couple of homicidal maniacs, an apocryphal barber and Adolf Hitler."
God, this is going to wind up being a badassed comic!
For those looking for a more fun and lighthearted but still very nerdy comic, Check out the brilliant webcomic "Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage" at http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/ One of the my most favorite things I've found on the internets :)
Does it have a panel where Captain America punches out Hilter?
I mean, it could be done as a math problem...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
From the article:
So there's that, and from what I could tell there is no mention of Gödel's incompleteness theorems, either. Meh.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
This idea is far from original.
Just look at the 1970s-era A Fortran Coloring Book or the modern A Manga Guide to Calculus for two of many similar titles.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You are one dimension short of being a cartoon yourself.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Math (all useful mathematical theories, and therefore all science based on them) is one of 2 things, but not both :
-> logically inconsistent
-> not logically consistent*
* this is not the same as the first thing. The difference is that it might very well be logically consistent, but you can't prove it one way or the other. This means that while God might know it to be logically consistent, you can't say it *is* logically consistent since there is no procedure to verify this. Not even in infinite time. So nobody will ever know for sure, no matter how far in the future.
** Whether this means that any faith in math is exactly that, irrational faith (as you're believing in an unproveable thing), or that it's somehow "better" is a religious discussion. Above this you'll find just the facts.
In all seriousness this is going to look like my 1st or 2nd grade math book. That was a hard cover comic book!
Some of these topics -- math, certainty, Russell -- appear in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (the scene where Lawrence Waterhouse, Rudolph von Hacklheber and Alan Turing go on a biking trip to the Pine Barrens, drink schnapps, and talk math).
-kgj
That follows only if you think that the logicist system for the foundation of mathematics proposed in the Principia is something "similar" to Fortran and the calculus.
Are you adequate?
It seems like there's a disproportionate number of people with bipolar disorder in the ranks of the artistically creative and a disproportionate number of scientific/mathematical geniuses with schizophrenia or schizophrenia-like symptoms.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
This page (Dutch) has a link to the PDF (bottom of the article) of the Dutch translation of the first chapter. (I would have linked to an English translation, but I am not aware of any preview releases.)
I read the first chapter, and found it pretty cool, but also awkward to read it in Dutch, since the characters (in ch. 1) are all Britons or Americans.
Anyway, if you're interested, have a look at it.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
It's my understanding Superman can hold a black hole in his hand while simultaneously writing the formula to prove anything on a blackboard with his other hand.
The Hulk, however, could only hold a black hole in his hand.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
All (correct) mathematical proofs are true, if the axioms are true. However, there's an infinite set of axioms and the only reason you have to believe any of them correspond to the system you are trying to predict is through observation. If you don't have any observations, if you're trying to make a priori knowledge, then your prediction power is thus infintesimal. Or in English, you don't know shit. As for pure mathematics, imagine it a little bit like infinite quantum universes in sci-fi. For every mathmatical result there are other sets of axioms leading to all other possible results. Without excluding axioms you can not exclude any results, so you're only going in circles defining your own results. In English, anything's possible.
Of course in practice you would have to create insane and arbtrary axioms to do this. But "logical" axioms like the set of real numbers or three dimensional space only appear so because of observation and how it reflects the real world. A priori you have no basis to say why one set of axioms should better reflect reality than the other. So I would say the answer is simply false, you can not have meaningful mathematics without context. However, once you do have meaningful axioms through observation you can get many results through mathematics that are non-obvious through observation. Honestly though, you're more heading into philsophy than mathematics once you go that deep.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
and proud of it but I still have to say that that looks fucking rubbish.
MightyMartian did my ass last night, bitch!
...includes the greatest philosophers, logicians and mathematicians of the era, along with sundry wives and mistresses...
Maybe I'm seeing omission where there is none, but I find it unlikely that there were no contributions to this subject from female philosophers, logicians and mathematicians. Please tell me they've not been left out of the story in the comic.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
I've always wanted to see Bertrand Russell in tights.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
I meant the use of "non-standard"/"non-textbook" approaches to teaching things.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yay! Hitler FTW! Oh, wait.....
It'll make those long winter nights coming up really whistle past!
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Mathematics is not recognized in the natural universe. What mathematics is is a tool used by humans to manage the important human-given properties of the natural world we care about
Treating mathematics as something that the natural world created is like saying that the natural world created the game of chess.
"How could "God" know something to be true if there was no way to know it?"
Same way that the GP knows god exists - wishfull thinking. Wishfull thinking allows you to create whatever universe takes your fancy. A univesre created from wishfull thinking does not have to be consistent, it can be anything you want.
I'm not sure why so many people use wishfull thinking to create a universe were every detail of life is watched and controlled by a celestial dungeon daddy. However it does fit nicely with using a human sacrafice on a cross as a scapegoat for your sins because both allow you to ignore what critical thinkers call "personal responsibility".
"Personal responsibility" can make you feel bad, so for example if you're feeling bad about screwing your sister-in-law it's probably due to "personal responsibility" (or you got caught). However if you are a wishfull thinker you don't have to stop to feel good, you just have to admit your sins to god (who already knows anyway) and the bad feelings will go away. Oh wait....my sister-in-law is gourgeous......that can't be right,...I think I just demonstrated that religion is usefull, Nooooooooo!!!!
*you - not you personally.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
...but yeah, we use it because it works.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
At first, I thought the article is about this comic book:
The answer is obvious, and has been obvious to me since I was a teenager (in the 1960's):
If he has not shaved himself, he shaves himself. Else he does not. (cos he does not need to if shaved)
Disclosure: my mother was a Fortran programmer. The original philosophers saw the world as static. I, as someone who had grown up with computers (EDSAC II, IBM 709, UNIVAC) knew that logical systems were (or at least, could be) dynamic.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Which is great, and I don't doubt they're very smart women, worthy of recognition in informatics (and especially Ada is never denied that) ...
But none of them has any bearing on the issue of the connection between mathematics and truth.
I read this book about 5 months ago. It's pretty good and a fun reading even while juggling with difficult to comprehend at first(or more) try stuff.
It also has a very educative appendix explaining various notions and portraying in short the real life characters in the book and
marking out the parts the authors had to make up. I recommend it both to those being familiar with logic and maths and those not having a clue what on earth the book is talking about.
Content aside, the work done on the edition i have is pretty good. Glossy yet thick pages and an ok cover(not hardcover though).
Which is not what I was responding to, but never mind. Mathematics has nothing to do with truth or otherwise: it is simply the logical consequences that arise from given axioms. It so happens that if you pick the right axioms then there are many correspondences with the real world, but truth? Nowt to do with it.
[FUCK BETA]
I was raised as a Catholic, and am now an atheist by reasoned conviction.
What you say about the Catholic religion is factually incorrect. If you commit a sin and are not truly repentant then your confession is yet another sin and your initial sinning is not considered forgiven, in other words you are only adding to the burden by which you will be judged at the end of times.
it is also untrue that if you actually repent you are given carte blanche to sin again, since sinning again would demonstrate that you are not opening your heart to God and Jesus your saviour (first commandment: fail).
As for the matter of god watching and knowing, the Catholic church maintains that God itself decided to give humans free will. It may know what you are going to do, but that does not mean it wasn't your decision.
All is of course bunk, but if you are going to debunk it you need to know what you are actually talking about first.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There are thousands of artists, many of them very notable, that have no problems whatsoever.
Ditto for mathematicians and scientists.
So unless you show concrete eveidence regarding this (good luck) I think you are oversimplifying for nefarious purposes only known to your own good self.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What is so important about them.
Being brilliant does not mean you are unique or revolutionary.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If there ever was a place where the word "himself" could be used with impunity is in the above sentence.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
the connection between mathematics and truth
Which is not what I was responding to, but never mind. Mathematics has nothing to do with truth or otherwise: it is simply the logical consequences that arise from given axioms. It so happens that if you pick the right axioms then there are many correspondences with the real world, but truth? Nowt to do with it.
Yes, but the point is that any inconsistency can be translated into 1=2. So if math were to be inconsistent there would be ZERO consequences of said inconsistent axioms.
Suppose the peano axioms were inconsistent, then there is no reason why a car travelling at a constant speed 10km/h would travel 20 km in 2 hours. It might as well be 100, or 2, or 5 cm. All would be correct answers. In other words, inconsistent mathematical theories get us nowhere.
So obviously math and truth are related concepts. And there are demands on mathematics (such as consistency) that are required for theories based on maths to have ANY truth in them, or frankly to have anything at all in them. As such when one talks about truth in math, one is generally talking about those requirements