Also, Kaufman (God bless that ultra talented bastard for his gift to us all) didn’t have to say it, Nietzsche himself said he was a psychologist.
“The Sun is sphere-like” is true. It is not merely a useful falsity. It is strictly speaking true.
It is a generalization. What truth value can “sphere-like” possibly have? I can also say it’s “lion-like” or “foot-like.”
You are saying nothing.
Find me an actual sphere, not a thing that makes you think of a sphere but isn’t a sphere, an actual sphere, and I will believe it is not just a made up thing someone made up, for convenience and ease of mathematics.
Here you actually hit the nail on the head. That logic, and math, are so useful is the reason we don’t stress that it’s all lies. They really are quite useful. Even astonishing.
Even if it were true that the Sun is not sphere-like (but say cube-like) that still wouldn’t be a proof that we cannot use a mathematical statement to accurately describe the sun.
As I said earlier:
I don’t have to. I didn’t make a claim that the Sun is a sphere. (Indeed, I explicitly stated that the Sun is NOT strictly a sphere.)
To say that a three-dimensional object is sphere-like is to say that the difference between the volume of that object and the volume of the smallest possible sphere that can envelope that object is within certain range e.g. between (0) (km^3) and (1,000) (km^3).
Correct, it is not actually true. It is an approximation. An approximation to a made up thing, not an actual existing thing.
Right, you said it is a sphere, but not a sphere. Very Zen.
That’s the point. It’s not some other made up mathematical shape instead of a sphere. It is a thing so weird, it would, I mean you say you may be able to describe it mathematically anyway, but that’s just not true. At some point down the line, you will have to ignore some actual manifestation of the Sun and make a generalization for it to work. Otherwise you are not doing math, you are making a painting or something. And even with a painting, you would fail to reproduce it.
But spheres and cubes are pretty useful.
Ptolemy and his students spent thousands of years assuming that all orbits are in principle circular. We now know that not to be true, but on the basis of that assumption, that generalization, they carried out feats that are actually pretty fucking incredible, like navigating the entire scope of the seas and oceans of the world.
No, I said that it is sphere-like, not that it is a sphere. “Sphere” and “sphere-like” mean two different things.
“Approximately true” means “not exactly true but close to being true”.
“The Sun is a sphere” is approximately true.
“The Sun is sphere-like” is exactly true. (In other words, it is NOT an approximation.)
But it is. That is my point. “The Sun is sphere-like” is saying that the Sun is a sphere-like mathematical shape.
And it is EXACTLY true. It perfectly corresponds to reality.
I provided an example of how you can do it. You ignored it. You’ll have to explain what’s wrong with it.
They are not even falsities let alone lies.
(Lies are intentional falsities.)
There’s a thread I recently started on this topic. It’s called Abstraction is falsification?. It’s dedicated to people like you. You may want to check it out.
Sphere-like means it is like a sphere, which is what spherical means. And as we have both agreed, it is not.
I didn’t say it is “approximately true.” It is not. It is not even a little bit true. I said it is an “approximation.” Not an approximation to truth, but to a made up idea, of a sphere.
No, it is saying that it makes you think of the mathematical shape “sphere.”
What is exactly true here, is that it does make you think of that made up shape.
This is what you originally said, you didn’t suggest any mathematical approach. But then I read on and I guess you mean:
That is not a mathematical description of the shape of the Sun. That is a set of conditions for the margin by which you are willing, for the sake of the (astonishing) effectiveness of mathematics, to ignore the actual manifestations of an object in order to call it a sphere.
I’m not really interested, but thank you for the invitation.
There are 3 marbles on my desk. I take one off of the desk. There are two left.
3 - 1 = 2
Works every time. A perfect description of the reality.
Anderson is right.
MagsJ is right
James was right
Nietzsche was wrong
Again everyone is just arguing over the words.
I don’t want to get into a defense of James on this thread but I want to ask if you would have done the same to Mr Trump concerning his “Fake News” claims.
The first things I read when I got back to reading this forum were the last things James wrote. And tracing back that exchange with prismatic I found it to be almost exactly the same. James had pegged Prismatic as a Muslim racist ranting on and on only because of what the media was saying and James had a low tolerance for any kind of racism without rationale to back it up (as does Mr Trump). James defended any whole class of people - Christians, Jews, Musslims, Blacks, Women, Whites, whatever based on whether the instigator had a good rationale (which I don’t think they ever did). James was certainly NOT easily triggered but when he found the attack had no justification, as I said, he could get pretty nasty (again much like Mr Trump).
I don’t know anything about your DM exchanges with James but then I don’t know how my attempt at light humor with you got off track either. I find many of your posts difficult to follow and have to wildly guess at what you might have meant.
That every single thing in the universe is Maths, cannot be a coincidence, but to me signifies a specific way that nature is operating in, in its creation of all things.
So what exactly is Maths, in nature? as we know what it is for us… a quantifier and calculator, but does the universe need to quantify and calculate, or simply just create?
Also the issues of infinity and calculus are being left out of this. Nature deals with infinite and infinitesimal things. Maths took awhile to catch up being able to describe things using infinitesimal quantifiers. Any one object, to be entirely 100% described in detail simply takes too many words - an infinity of words. But that doesn’t mean the math isn’t there. It only means that people have limits in ability to communicate.
Okay, so neither “spherical” nor “sphere-like” is good enough for you.
That’s depsite the fact that in this post of mine I explicitly stated that what I mean by sphere-like is “if not a sphere than at least close to being a sphere”.
Basically, a sphere-like shape is a shape that is either a sphere or close to being a sphere. It’s not the same concept as that of a sphere.
Observer provided WordNik definitions:
Notice the second definition.
Finally, I provided a much more precise definition here in this post:
Yes, you didn’t use those words but that’s what your words mean.
I am NOT calling it a sphere. You are insisting I am doing something I am not doing. The word “sphere” and the word “sphere-like” mean two different things. They are NOT synonymous.
I already said it but I will say it one more time:
The statement “The Sun is a sphere” is NOT EXACTLY true, merely APPROXIMATELY true.
The statement “The Sun is sphere-like” is EXACTLY true.
Both are mathematical statements.
Your claim was that we cannot use mathematical statements to describe the world exactly. I gave you one. You keep ignoring it by interpreting it to mean the same as “The Sun is a sphere”. It does not.
That’s why it was just an initial verbal warning, but he didn’t get to read it… for whatever reason that was. The guy didn’t need to snap as much as he did. Why? might be a pertinent question… which I often wondered.
I actually joked with my political buddies yesterday, saying that I would email Trump to tell him, to not act or say, anything untoward.
Oh? lol… I’ve tried to express my thoughts as clearly as I can, but I know that I can often tend to shroud them in whatever-it-is-I-am-shrouding-them-in… I can’t help it. 
I don’t know why, but my mind seems to always be one step ahead of me, but it may be like that for everyone? I don’t know.
I see a lot of that. I think it takes special effort to avoid that (thinking of Silhouette’s discussion).
Even in this thread, the use of words seems to be getting skipped in a presumptuous manner - leading to the last page or more of argument (spherical - sphere - sphere-like). It seems obvious to me what is meant and it has been discussed now but I’m thinking the argument isn’t going to end there (Anderson sounds more like James every day).
That is an example of me not really understanding what you meant - “untoward”?
What is there not to understand? On to ward = not. to an object that u need to ward against.
I am actually touched that you remember me.