Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Blazys
To: Chiantiglace,
We can define the word "correct" as meaning both: "In relative agreement with all observed results", and "In perfect agreement with all observed results".
Thus, in reality, we have "degrees of correctness", as well as "absolute correctness".
Newton's "laws of motion" are "correct" in that they result in "very good approximations" if we are dealing with velocities that are relatively low when compared to the speed of light. However, Eistein's equations are an improvement in that they are actually much better than Newton's when measurements involving very high velocities are required.
The result 1+2=3, on the other hand, can't be improved upon, so it would qualify as being "absolutely correct".
Music was developed independently by each and every culture and civilization that has ever existed. (That's why it has so many forms.) However, all music shares certain "logical properties" so that any particular kind of music "makes sense" to virtually everyone. Thus, music is often regarded as a "universal language". I suspect that it's the same with math.
To: Ughaibu,
It's just my opinion, but "created" amounts to "artificial", "fake", and "trivial".
However, constructs that are "artificial", "fake" and "trivial" can be at least "partially correct".
Don.
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I like this statement, but I am not sure if I agree with it fully, my apologies.
Forgive me if I am not a neuroscientist, but maybe my intuition has become good enough to think about this.
You are right that 1+2=3 is an absolute. That is part of my point. But 1,2, and 3 do not exist. We have no reason to use 1,2, and 3 anywhere in life. I can not pick up three's from the ground, I cannot consume a two, and I cannot see the distance of 1's. I can however pick up a rock, eat an apple and see a large tower 256 meters away.
1apple +2 apples = 3apples. But what if they don't. I no its trivial but what represents an apple? If it were up to a modern day computer there would only be one apple in the world, the apple that has been painstakingly described and programmed into the system. The computer has no way to register a different apple to be an apple because it is just slightly different, which for a computer is different enough to register as something completely different. Our minds allow us to see patterns and like things. So all the apples coming off one tree seem relatively the same (key word, relatively). But the word apple itself is just a relative term for a range of pieces coming from several species. I know its difficult, but it seems incorrect to define relative items in absolute terms. We need to see them as absolute so that our minds don't struggle with every tiny little detail in life. That is why math helps us so much, because it is an absolute in a relative world which gives us the best possible estimate we can muster.
I know it seems cynical to say that nothing is absolute, it kind of sounds like I'm saying nothing is real. That is just not true. As Michael Shermer notes in his provisional ethics, I think provisional math is a good way to look at life. Take what we know (or think we know) and use it to find out what we don't know, or what we really didn't know but thought we did. Our creation of math slowly helps us define our world in terms we can understand, process and pass on.
And I completely agree with things that are "trivial", "fake", "created" being partially true. Fake in itself is its own being very different from what it is mocking, we just happen to notice the similarities. Sometimes being fake is on purpose, sometimes it is not. We use the fake as something we can hold in our hands, like photographs of galaxies long ways off. They are, like numbers and math, representations for us to store and stockpile for later use.
