I thought it was a fairly harmless thing to say. You’re acting as if math studied for the enjoyment of math is somehow inferior to math studied for some goal or purpose and have therefore construed my comment as offensive. Chess is a toy, but is being good at chess a bad thing? Is describing chess as a toy a bad thing? Where is the offensiveness?
Who is doing that?
Whoever is pretending infinity applies outside of math.
You’ve been bitterly complaining about set theory for pages now. I’m asking you why.
The only thing I can remember bitterly complaining about was the stubbornness surrounding the definition of infinity. The only thing I remember claiming about set theory is that I couldn’t find anything about it within 1200 pages of my calculus book, and that was only in response to your assertion that set theory underpins calculus. Then we transitioned to higher math where I said “math for the sake of math” then you got all pissed off because I dis’d math and here we are.
And if math is only a fiction, how is it that all of modern science is based on it? You seem unable to engage with this important question.
It’s not fiction, but a tool that can be misapplied. It also can model fictitious things. Math can do more than what we would describe as “real” and just because math makes a claim, doesn’t mean it will match reality. But neither can we say math is worthless because it often matches reality. It’s tool to be used intelligently with proper assumptions. Garbage in = garbage out.
If you need a place to store your thoughts, you could try a private blog or a pad of paper. This is a public discussion forum where you’ve made many claims that are open to objection,
The reason they are public is because I want peer review, but not dogmatic digging-in in stubborn refusal to concede a point. This should be a collaboration and not a competition.
not least because many of your statements contradict each other and/or established science and math.
I know my ideas on infinity conflict with ideas of many mathematicians, but I’m not aware of other contradictions and it would be helpful if you’d point them out.
I posted an article from livescience today, written by Don Lincoln, Senior Scientist, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; Adjunct Professor of Physics, University of Notre Dame, that said:
Astronomers and physicists have long held that the idea of a singularity simply must be wrong. If an object with mass has no size, then it has infinite density. And, as much as researchers throw around the word “infinity,” infinities of that kind don’t exist in nature. Instead, when you encounter an infinity in a real, physical, science situation, what it really means is that you’ve pushed your mathematics beyond the realm where they apply. You need new math. livescience.com/64332-black … avity.html
As far as I can tell, I’m in sync with all but mainstream mathematicians.
You’ve gone on for weeks objecting to modern math; and when challenged directly, you claim you don’t actually mean anything you say
Where did I say I didn’t mean what I say? I guess if I said it, I obviously didn’t mean it
but are only using this forum as a scratchpad for your confused ideas and random quote-mining. Early on all you were capable of was throwing insults at me.
You’re insulting me by characterizing my ideas as confused and then insulting me again for formerly insulting you. I should be insulting you now in retaliation, but have recognized that you’re casting yourself in a bad light with your attacks on me. Honestly, I don’t want to see you go, but I just want this silliness to end. I’d prefer to have the perspective of a mathematician available.
At least you’ve stopped that.
Live and learn. There are other things going on in my life too that makes having patience for certain things more difficult.
But why don’t you try to learn something about the subject instead of just Googling around for quotes that are no longer even on topic?
What is not on topic? I’m not rummaging around the net for random quotes. The quotes from David Hilbert came in response to William Lane Craig who quoted him in a debate, so I found the document and posted it. Other quotes came either from links you sent me or from Wildberger. The livescience quote came from google news yesterday. I’m not looking for authorities to appeal to, but will take them if they fall in my lap. And as they fall in my lap, I wanted a thread to post them into so they would be all in one place and open to discussion.
And why is it that you have the time to Google irrelevant quotes but don’t have the time to click on the Wiki link that gives specific examples of the need for precise reasoning about changing the order of multiple integrals, which you explicitly asked me for?
Because I’m not interested in that topic, it’s expensive in terms of neural energy, your claim is counterintuitive, and I’m not confident, even if your object were valid, that it would lead anywhere. It’s a confluence of powerful forces sapping my motivation. I asked you to explain it to me and you declined. Maybe you aren’t confident it would accomplish anything either, which isn’t doing much for my motivation to learn about it.
So why would it matter if we integrate in the x before the y, and how do we know which is the right answer for the average temperature, and what does this have to do with practical applications of infinity? The plates aren’t infinite… the temperature isn’t infinite… and there aren’t even infinite slices in the plates because there is a smallest size in the universe, so where does infinity fit in?
Your presentation in this thread makes you out to be an unserious person, arguing in a disingenuous manner.
I’ve resigned myself to having to start a new thread eventually to consolidate what’s in this thread, so perhaps I’ll do better with the next iteration.
Don’t you want to try to learn anything?
I’d like to learn the answer to those questions, but not enough to struggle through that wiki article.
Ah fuck it. I’m outta here. All the best.
Perhaps you’ll reconsider. I’d prefer if you’d stay, but I can’t say you’re right if I don’t think you are and I don’t see why you’d want me to.