3 ms·
I found this article a bit odd; in my mind, some parts seemed to contradict others in strange paradoxical ways. For example, from your quoted section: > Mathe
by lucideer 8y ago
I found this article a bit odd; in my mind, some parts seemed to contradict others in strange paradoxical ways.
For example, from your quoted section:
> Mathematics is not there to be discovered, it is part of the patterns of reasoning in all of our brains.
Isn't that the very definition of elegance? He later says, talking about A.J. Ayer's definition of "non-sense":
> Wigner freely admits that his idea about maths comes from a feeling that can’t be verified by known scientific methods
Elegance, while there is often a wide collective understanding of what it means in mathematics, is essentially a subjective, aesthetic property; an intuitive one. Is this not exactly what:
(a) Wigner means in that quote,
(b) A.J. Ayer means in his definition, AND
(c) the author refers to as "patterns of reasoning in all of our brains"?
- goldenkey 8y agoWe like compression. That's our main requirement. We may not like hard coded constants in our physical theories but thats only because we'd prefer a single constant that uncompresses to all six. Or a single law about laws that uncompresses to the entire theory. Constructor theory [1] We also like symmetry but symmetry is just a way to identify attack surfaces for compression. [1] https://www.edge.org/conversation/david_deutsch-constructor-theory https://www.edge.org/conversation/david_deutsch-constructor-...