"if mathematical ideas exist in some way independent of humans or minds, then human minds engaged in doing mathematics must somehow be able to connect with this non-physical state"
?!
Human minds are indeed able do that. The "state" is called reality (which is more than the static observable physical realm), and the "connection" is called thinking.
"2. What goes in must either be used or go out. If I eat 6 pounds of food a week, and manage to consume 3 pounds of that as energy, eliminating 3 pounds as indegestible waste (you know what I mean), I neither gain or lose."
Excuse me? What about the (at least macroscopic) difference between energy and matter? You don't lose 3 pounds "in energy", you eat 6 pounds and eliminate 6 pounds of chemically less energetic waste. Same matter, less energy. Clear?
Slashdot Mirror
"if mathematical ideas exist in some way independent of humans or minds, then human minds engaged in doing mathematics must somehow be able to connect with this non-physical state"
?!
Human minds are indeed able do that. The "state" is called reality (which is more than the static observable physical realm), and the "connection" is called thinking.
No big mystery, sorry.