The Number 1 and the Prime Numbers.

Okay - I think i can see where you are going with this -

I see these things a little differently. I know that people think in different ways - I am referred to an an “analytical reductionist”.

An analytical reductionist is someone who reduces issues down to their basic concepts. We discern the “conceptual” or the “divine” - the abstract concept involved - the angels, demons, devils, and gods. And we tend to be able to easily understand the simple logic of what we each say as being exactly true or false or just too vague to be certain about. We tend to all agree very much on anything we have much education about. We learn from each other very quickly. And when I read about what people like Plato, Aristotle, and even Jesus have said - it all seems almost too obvious to mention.

Similar things happen with other kinds of minds - they see the “sense” all of the others of “like minds” are trying to explain. They see it instantly - whether it actually makes any real sense or not. That is why observers are chosen by their mind-type. - so they can relay what the intention really was to those concerned with whatever they said (dogs can’t see color) - much like a language interpreter but more like a thought interpreter.

So when you ask of the difference between the number 1 and word or concept of one - I have to scratch around to try to discern any difference. To me it turns out to be merely superficial semantics. And now that you have raised this issue of social beginnings I have to believe that with Plato, Hebrews, and the like - it was the same.

I doubt that their society started as one kind of mind that grew through time to become another kind. It seems much more likely to me that in the mix of minds they had when they started, a type of Darwinian interaction caused dominance of a variety of types of cultural norms and ideas. And through time, different aspects of those norms got more or less attention by others who could identify with them. Often they form identifiable groups.

And those groups, like the soap bubbles foaming up from the stream of life’s splashing issues, interact and role around each other rising, growing, and at times bursting while they form the world of mankind.

And in this vein of number vs concept and original prime vs new age - to us analytical reductionists - it is all just - “a rose by any other name” ( - but get your bloody words straight).

1x1=1

Get over it!

WHo gives a fuck anyway. What is the use of Prime Numbers such that this question is important?

When applied to industry… i.e. what you can and cannot do with certain numbers, when trying to problem solve or create.

Everyone must reduce analytically in his life, but everyone must also observe in his life. This is also how science came into being. According to the theory/practice duality, the purely theoretical (related to philosophy) and the experiment have come into being. If science would not be corrupt through and through in the meantime - like e.g. also politics - then it would still appreciate this duality.

So, as I already indicated above, I am also an analytical reductionist and an observer. What I have written about language development in children is based more on observation than on analytic reduction, but from this one can not conclude that I prefer observation to analysis or even analytic reduction.

Do you have children?

If you observe young children intensively while they are learning the language (including the numbers, which are not separated from the words in the beginning), you will quickly realize that this development and acquisition is anything but superficial (I even believe that this learning is the greatest ever in a human life). Children have the same great “aha” experience when they can separate the numbers from the words. It corresponds to the difference of word and concept, of more concreteness and more abstractness, of more practice and more theory.

I did not say that they “become another kind”, I said that they give themselves a culture, that is something that has to do with them and their environment, and that from now on they will shape more differently than before.

A child does not “become another kind” by suddenly being able to separate numbers from words, but this child can suddenly do more, has learned, comes closer to the environment, wants to shape (with) it too.

Yes, and that does not contradict what I said.

What do you think about the following statement of Niklas Luhmann: “Evolution is the transformation of improbability of origin into probability of preservation”?

Yes, that is the point. Get your words straight!

I immediately observed that about you.

You seem the type to have written papers or books, have you?

I’ll have to ask around on that (I assume you don’t mean my wife and her entourage).

Now I am suspecting you have been referring to a different distinction between 1 and “one” than what I was thinking. Perhaps if you could describe more exactly that distinction.

There seems to be a great deal of confusion in the population concerning the separation of “Map vs Terrain”. I certainly agree that is a very important distinction to acquire - although I am not sure that everyone began with any confusion about that - communication confusions have been seeded, nurtured, allowed to blossom.

We could have a philosophical discussion about that.

A well stated focus of one aspect of evolution.

Luhmman struck me as one of those myopic global elitists - in his case way over focused and saturated with the extreme details of communication within a society without ever giving regard to the rest of what a society is (of course the big tech Internet world fawns over him). It is like someone describing a human in extreme detail as a complex nervous system - never giving credit to the heart, meat, digestion, and bone (never mind the actual impetus of the life it is). To me he just seemed like another myopic globalist too consumed with glee about one way to get there without regard as to why or whether anyone should - far too much “how”, not whole in “what”, and not nearly enough “why” - intensively focused on shoveling more bodies into the firebox to get the train to the top of the mountain giving no mind to the cliff just on the other side (I keep feeling like these are spoiled children in need of growing up - but perhaps another topic).

Thank you.

Yes, I have.

Stepchildren or all other children - it doesn’t matter, it’s „only“ a matter of observing them intensively and drawing the right conclusions from the observation. I have always observed a lot and intensively, also and especially children, most of all and most intensively my own children.

Who said that „everyone began with any confusion about that“?

Yes, with pleasure

Maybe we should discuss that in another thread. Luhmann was first a lawyer, then a sociologist (with a strong urge towards theory/philosophy). I mentioned him in the context of evolution/history, not in the context of child development, although one can also make connections between these two, but that was not my intention.

Now perhaps we should get back to the topic of this thread, although I would actually prefer to continue talking about the topic we are talking about now.

There are no true and false definitions, only more and less useful definitions in relation to a goal. Definitions are tools invented by people for certain prupose. And if the existing definition proves to be less useful than another one, it’s only logical to change it.

They obviously changed it, so the only question is why and whether they are justified in doing so.

I can’t answer that question because like obsrvr524 I do not understand the purpose of prime numbers.

Nonetheless, this . . .

. . . seems to be an answer.

What’s your objection?

Greetings.

If you define a horse as a being that usually lives on the moon (because you may have seen such a being on the moon), then that definition is false (a false definition!), until people agree that it needs to be changed.

The reasons, which Wikipedia is giving here, are based exclusively on meanwhile created facts in the area of applied mathematics, but have nothing to do with the matter itself (prime numbers). If I change something in an area, then this may be “unfavorable” for this area (e.g. for money reasons, because money is needed for the research), but changes nothing at the problem in itself, and this problem in itself is a purely mathematical one, thus without consideration on whether another mathematical area gets problems through it.

Just ask yourself why a number according to the definition (!) should be a prime number or not a prime number. The old definition for the prime numbers had existed for more than 2000 years.

Hello there (:

You can define the word “horse” to mean anything you want. For example, you can define it to mean the same thing that the word “shoe” normally means. Of course, such a choice, like every other choice, might turn out to be a bad choice in the sense that it might lead to less preferrable consequences (for example, people might have more difficulty understanding what you’re trying to say and you might end up equivocating because your brain has yet to forget the old meaning and get accustomed to the new one.) But it cannot be true or false in the way that beliefs can. This is because it’s not a belief but an act of attaching a concept to a word. You took some word and said “Okay, this is the concept that will be attached to this word from now on.” Everyone is free to do that but noone is free from the consequences. It’s an act, and like all other acts, it is neither true nor false but rather either good or bad.

And a concept can easily become superfluous, no longer necessary, perhaps because a different, more suitable, one has been discovered. When such a thing happens, one is presented with a choice to preserve the old word-concept association and come up with a new word for the new concept or ditch the old concept, erase the old word-concept association and associate the new concept with the old word. The advantage of the latter approach is that it keeps one’s language simple (low word count, low concept count, familiar words) and that it requires less effort. The disadvantage is the increased possibility of being misunderstood and the increased possibility of making logical errors such as equivocation.

I’ve also noticed a tendency to use the word “definition” to refer to explanations of what a portion of reality represented by some word consists of rather than what the word means. That leads to all sorts of problems in communication.

I’d have to know what the purpose of prime numbers is, though. Why is it bad to define the word “prime number” as “a number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers”?

If there were always only any, “free-floating” definitions, then it would be as if there were also only any, “free-floating” meanings. If neither concepts needed a definition nor words a meaning, then we could not create any theories, do any philosophy, not even talk to each other, because we would then be exposed to something like the “Babylonian confusion of languages”. Everybody thinks and says what everybody wants - well and good, but this must also have limits, because one must at least still know the meanings.

Why is it not okay to define a prime number as it was defined earlier: “a prime number is divisible only by itself and 1”, thus without the new addition of “greater than 1”?

I believe that there are extra-mathematical reasons behind it and the “mathematical reasons” are only pretended reasons (sham reasons). There are interests!

I was glad to have seen it (although it tempts me even further into spending way too much time responding on this board - taking away time from my wife, work, and wealth commitment - and drawing me into the world of philosophy - strictly forbidden by my wife ).

Well don’t hold back mate (unless it would reveal something about you best not revealed - as it would in my case - nothing illegal but a lot of fuss, complication, and confusion).

If you are merely talking about observing children up close - since university and not counting the childlike adults I too often encounter - then - no I haven’t.

I was just wondering if that was the kind of thing you have been referring to.

It would involve “what it is that defines and distinguishes a thing or group or society or government or…” and related to the Ship of Theseus (an issue my wife simply cannot grasp - or cares to).

Not so fast, mate.

It is easy to think that merely changing a public definition helps simplify matters, so why not. But society is far more complicated than that - and in some seriously bad ways - to elucidate -

• In the new USA they are even trying to redefine a “domestic terrorist” and “hate speech” as anyone who doesn’t agree with the socialist party narrative.
• They have redefined “socialist” as “democrat” - its opposite.
• They tried for years to redefine “equality” as “equity” but recently gave up on that.
• They have redefined “racist” and “white privilege” as “being white” or “relating to anything from white Europe” - obviously a racist definition.
• They have redefined “social justice” as “communist equity”.
• They have redefined “Communist Agenda” as “Black Lives Matter”.
• They have redefined “Antifa” as “Fascism in the name of Socialist Authoritarianism”.
• They have redefined “science” as “socialist preferred agenda”.
• They redefined “socialism” as “having compassion for the under privileged” - usually its opposite.
• They seem to have redefined “Darwin’s Selection Principle” as “any natural changes” (and anti-God communist agenda).
• They redefined “COVID death” as “dying with any minute trace of COVID-19 detected on the body”.
• They redefined “essential worker” as “the privileged class and anyone they favor”.
• Long ago they redefined “God” to mean “a conscious all powerful creator, overseer, and manipulator of events”.
• They redefined “build back better” as “utterly destroy the USA and its constitution in favor of global domination and authoritarianism”.
• They redefine older movie narratives keeping the same title - “rewriting history”.
• and I am sure many more - all with deception at heart.

Notice that it the socialists/communists (sometimes including religions) doing all of this altering of words to manipulate the population toward their agenda.

But even getting out of the political manipulating arena there are more redefinings that are based in deception -

• They have redefined “reality” to mean “subjective belief”.
• They have redefined “philosophy” to mean “promoting doubt”.
• They redefined “particle” in science to mean “any quanta of energy that we can measure” - to justify “Quantum Theory”.
• They redefined “bending” to mean “appears to bend from a distance” - to justify Relativity Theory.
• They redefined “time travel” to mean “anything returning to a former state” - to justify funding.
• They redefined “a calculated possibility” as “an existent alternate reality” - to justify Multi-universe Theory.
• They redefined “the limit of a sum” as “the sum” - (1 = 0.999…).
• They redefined “logical” to mean “what a person might normally think”.
• All of those pointed out by James - I’m sure there are many more (I am not a science or maths geek).
• And it seems that they have redefined “prime number” so as to justify using favored formula from prominent people.

My point is that all of these redefinings going on in high and far away places are intentional deception to accomplish a justification for an already chosen agenda - having nothing to do with any effort to be more logically correct or simplifying the language - often quite the opposite.

So as to that “why not” - there is a very good reason why not - to reduce social manipulation and deception - especially in science and politics.

Exactly.

Redefining words directly implies maleficence that undermines the confidence much needed in society and contributes to global authoritarianism (because no one can do anything on their own any more).

I agree.

Perhaps you should listen to your own advice (:

I believe you wrongly assumed I said something I did not really say.

I can agree that there is a significant number of people who are using the word “philosophy” to refer to something that isn’t philosophy and/or that there is a significant number of people who believe that bad philosophy is actually good philosophy. I can also accept that such is a consequence of political manipulation. But I cannot accept that there’s a significant number of people who define the word “philosophy” to mean “promoting doubt”. That does not seem to be the case right now though it may be at some point in the future.

The word “definition” has a specific meaning. It stands for “what the word means” and not “what the word is used to represent in practice”. If I use the word “liar” to describe someone who is not a liar, that may not be because I changed the definition of the word “liar”, but perhaps because I am blind to the fact that the person in question is not actually a liar. I hope we agree on this. (A lot of people confuse the two.)

I can’t answer that question because I don’t know. My position is neutral. But since yours appears not to be – you think that the word should be define the other way – I thought it would be nice of you to present your case.

He just did, didn’t he?

Are you referring to the following?

If so, then he didn’t so.

He’s supposed to explain why he thinks the term “prime number” should be defined to mean “a prime number is a natural number that is divisible exclusively by itself and 1”. He didn’t do that in the above quote.

He said it should be that because that was the original intent and definition (for 2000 years) and the changes have been illicit special interest concerns - not to be allowed to reign free over vocabulary.

And who is it that Magjs thinks you are a sock-puppet of?

That doesn’t answer the question:

Why should the term “prime number” be defined to mean “a natural number that is divisible exclusively by itself and 1”?

If a definition is original or merely older it does not follow that it is a better one. (According to some sources, such as Wikipedia, the definition he favors is an older but not an original one. Perhaps he thinks those sources are wrong though that does not seem to be particularly relevant.)

Thank you.

You have got your words straight. =D>

I have no idea.

If someone here is pretending to also be you - they are doing a bloody good job of hiding it.