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The brain is doing math all the time. Just making your eyes converge at a focal point so you can read this involves math, and that's probably some of the most
by partycoder 9y ago
The brain is doing math all the time.
Just making your eyes converge at a focal point so you can read this involves math, and that's probably some of the most trivial stuff. The inverse kinematics involved in moving your limbs also do involve plenty of math, try to do it in a robot arm and see what I am talking about.
The problem is that our way of doing arithmetic has a lot of overhead. The algorithm we learn in school is not that good in terms of efficiency. However imagining an abacus (not a 10 bead one) and exploiting muscle memory seems to be probably faster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px_hvzYS3_Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px_hvzYS3_Y
- goatlover 9y agoDoes math exist independent of human (and perhaps alien) minds? What makes a the physical devices we call computers computational, other than the symbolic meaning we give their behavior?
- partycoder 9y agoSince all definitions of mathematics are controversial when subject to philosophical rigor, and the foundation of mathematics themselves are axioms (which by definition cannot be proven), and sometimes these axiomatizations are either incomplete and inconsistent with each other, I will just say it's an open question. What we do however know is that mathematical principles so far hold up well and have been of vital importance to understand nature.