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There's one thing I cannot wrap my head around. Math is purely abstract science yet it describes the world around us to the utmost precision. Does that mean th

There's one thing I cannot wrap my head around. Math is purely abstract science yet it describes the world around us to the utmost precision. Does that mean that this world is simply ... a math model which means everything around us is ... not real? I've long stopped believing in free will because everything points at it being an illusion of our brain because we're a product of this world and we had no chance of influencing the conditions which brought us to life, and even after our minds and consciousnesses form it's hard to believe they are fully autonomous and not simply a function of the processess in our brains we're simply not aware of. If you think about all of it, it becomes utterly depressing as you begin to realize you're a biological robot, a byproduct of the universe evolution which couldn't care less about our species and this little tiny blue planet.

tirant 7y ago
Mathematics has not been static throughout history. It has evolved at the same pace our science and discoveries have evolved, and as such it has incorporated all necessary elements to help describe new phenomena. To the point that now is able to describe never observed phenomena. So no, our world is not unreal because it can be described with maths. Maths have evolved to describe it. Same as human language has evolved to support our close environment and our human interactions.
kd5bjo 7y ago
> Math is purely abstract science yet it describes the world around us to the utmost precision. Does that mean that this world is simply ... a math model which means everything around us is ... not real? You can only reach this conclusion if you categorize math as "not real". If everything we interact with is a perfect mathematical object, I prefer to take that as evidence that all mathematical objects may be real, however abstract they seem.
novalis78 7y ago
What’s depressing about being a nanotchmological robot attempting to conquer the solar system and spread his technology and nanotechnology? It sounds rather exciting and fascinating. Perhaps if the depression is too severe you need to check out your programming ;-)
otabdeveloper4 7y ago
> Math ... describes the world around us to the utmost precision. It does no such thing. The models we create using mathematical language do. Math is a precise language that can be used to describe the world around us precisely. It can also be used to describe utter nonsense or utter fantasy precisely.
- Tainnor 7y ago
  Yep, the counterpoint to the unreasonable effectiveness of maths in the natural sciences is accompanied by the unreasonable ineffectiveness of maths in the social sciences, humanities, etc. Although at least to some extent statistics is the one branch of mathematics that does seem to be applicable (but the way this influences results, as opposed to methods, seems to be mathematically not that interesting). There have been a lot of efforts of modelling social phenomena, the arts, etc. mathematically and while there are some interesting partial results (e.g. that languages can to some reasonable extent be analysed by parse trees or some aspects of music), most "grander" theories I have seen do not really stand up to much scrutiny. I'm not an expert, but I could assume that part of this is due to a lot of nonlinearity in the phenomena studies, which means that many classical methods don't work well; maybe chaos theory etc. could shed more light on these things, but I don't know enough about it.
  - naasking 7y ago
    > Yep, the counterpoint to the unreasonable effectiveness of maths in the natural sciences is accompanied by the unreasonable ineffectiveness of maths in the social sciences, humanities, etc. Except it's not ineffective at all in these subjects. Social science experiments have so many variables that the small experiments that can be conducted given the financial resources are insufficient to infer a good model. This is not a math problem, it's a money problem.
    - Tainnor 7y ago
      If it's ineffective in practice, I consider it to be ineffective. But even if you could design an experiment perfectly and come up with some strong statistical evidence and then had other means to tease out what is actually causal and what is only correlational, you'd only know what influences what and not necessarily why. But yes, I did say that statistics/probability is some rare exception. You can study group theory and understand the way physical forces work better, or hilbert spaces to understand quantum mechanics, but I haven't yet heard of anyone who has studied topology or galois theory and found that incredibly useful for understanding social phenomena better.
r721 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...
tasuki 7y ago
> If you think about all of it, it becomes utterly depressing as you begin to realize you're a biological robot, a byproduct of the universe evolution which couldn't care less about our species and this little tiny blue planet. It can also be liberating and uplifting. You're a part of the universe - you are the universe expressing itself. The result of uncountable generations of brutal evolution, you're quite a miracle!
deltron3030 7y ago
>I've long stopped believing in free will because everything points at it being an illusion of our brain because we're a product of this world and we had no chance of influencing the conditions which brought us to life Free will doesn't depend on the universe being deterministic or not. Things that haven't happened yet are likely going to happen in a certain way based on the trajectory, but it doesn't mean that you can't change your own path in a meaningful way, you're free to take a harder path vs. an easier or more obvious one.
- polytely 7y ago
  >but it doesn't mean that you can't change your own path in a meaningful way, you're free to take a harder path vs. an easier or more obvious one. This is of course debatable, there is some evidence to suggest that the feeling that you took a certain path is illusionary. Your brain made the decision, then you became cognizant of the options and you felt yourself making the decision[0], but if you could rewind the universe, you would always choose the same path based on your 'brain-state' at that time. At least that is what I understand of the most extreme "free-will doesn't exist" position. Just got lost in the SEP rabbithole [1], still not sure where I land on this issue. [0] : like how you feel thoughts 'bubble up' during meditation, you didn't actively 'think' those, they appeared to you. EDIT: atleast that is what it feels like [1]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#DoWeHaveFreeWill https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#DoWeHaveFreeWil...
  - deltron3030 7y ago
    That things would repeat after a rewind, given the same "universal state" just contradicts free will from the perspective of looking backwards (to the then present), not in the current present or looking into the uncertain future.
perakojotgenije 7y ago
That's exactly the idea behind Max Tegmark's theory which he described in his book: Our Mathematical Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mathematical_Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mathematical_Universe
tim333 7y ago
Math models are real things, hence reality also.

tirant 7y ago

Mathematics has not been static throughout history. It has evolved at the same pace our science and discoveries have evolved, and as such it has incorporated all necessary elements to help describe new phenomena. To the point that now is able to describe never observed phenomena. So no, our world is not unreal because it can be described with maths. Maths have evolved to describe it. Same as human language has evolved to support our close environment and our human interactions.

kd5bjo 7y ago

> Math is purely abstract science yet it describes the world around us to the utmost precision. Does that mean that this world is simply ... a math model which means everything around us is ... not real? You can only reach this conclusion if you categorize math as "not real". If everything we interact with is a perfect mathematical object, I prefer to take that as evidence that all mathematical objects may be real, however abstract they seem.

novalis78 7y ago

What’s depressing about being a nanotchmological robot attempting to conquer the solar system and spread his technology and nanotechnology? It sounds rather exciting and fascinating. Perhaps if the depression is too severe you need to check out your programming ;-)

otabdeveloper4 7y ago

> Math ... describes the world around us to the utmost precision. It does no such thing. The models we create using mathematical language do. Math is a precise language that can be used to describe the world around us precisely. It can also be used to describe utter nonsense or utter fantasy precisely.

Tainnor 7y ago
Yep, the counterpoint to the unreasonable effectiveness of maths in the natural sciences is accompanied by the unreasonable ineffectiveness of maths in the social sciences, humanities, etc. Although at least to some extent statistics is the one branch of mathematics that does seem to be applicable (but the way this influences results, as opposed to methods, seems to be mathematically not that interesting). There have been a lot of efforts of modelling social phenomena, the arts, etc. mathematically and while there are some interesting partial results (e.g. that languages can to some reasonable extent be analysed by parse trees or some aspects of music), most "grander" theories I have seen do not really stand up to much scrutiny. I'm not an expert, but I could assume that part of this is due to a lot of nonlinearity in the phenomena studies, which means that many classical methods don't work well; maybe chaos theory etc. could shed more light on these things, but I don't know enough about it.
- naasking 7y ago
  > Yep, the counterpoint to the unreasonable effectiveness of maths in the natural sciences is accompanied by the unreasonable ineffectiveness of maths in the social sciences, humanities, etc. Except it's not ineffective at all in these subjects. Social science experiments have so many variables that the small experiments that can be conducted given the financial resources are insufficient to infer a good model. This is not a math problem, it's a money problem.
  - Tainnor 7y ago
    If it's ineffective in practice, I consider it to be ineffective. But even if you could design an experiment perfectly and come up with some strong statistical evidence and then had other means to tease out what is actually causal and what is only correlational, you'd only know what influences what and not necessarily why. But yes, I did say that statistics/probability is some rare exception. You can study group theory and understand the way physical forces work better, or hilbert spaces to understand quantum mechanics, but I haven't yet heard of anyone who has studied topology or galois theory and found that incredibly useful for understanding social phenomena better.

r721 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...

tasuki 7y ago

> If you think about all of it, it becomes utterly depressing as you begin to realize you're a biological robot, a byproduct of the universe evolution which couldn't care less about our species and this little tiny blue planet. It can also be liberating and uplifting. You're a part of the universe - you are the universe expressing itself. The result of uncountable generations of brutal evolution, you're quite a miracle!

deltron3030 7y ago

>I've long stopped believing in free will because everything points at it being an illusion of our brain because we're a product of this world and we had no chance of influencing the conditions which brought us to life Free will doesn't depend on the universe being deterministic or not. Things that haven't happened yet are likely going to happen in a certain way based on the trajectory, but it doesn't mean that you can't change your own path in a meaningful way, you're free to take a harder path vs. an easier or more obvious one.

polytely 7y ago
>but it doesn't mean that you can't change your own path in a meaningful way, you're free to take a harder path vs. an easier or more obvious one. This is of course debatable, there is some evidence to suggest that the feeling that you took a certain path is illusionary. Your brain made the decision, then you became cognizant of the options and you felt yourself making the decision[0], but if you could rewind the universe, you would always choose the same path based on your 'brain-state' at that time. At least that is what I understand of the most extreme "free-will doesn't exist" position. Just got lost in the SEP rabbithole [1], still not sure where I land on this issue. [0] : like how you feel thoughts 'bubble up' during meditation, you didn't actively 'think' those, they appeared to you. EDIT: atleast that is what it feels like [1]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#DoWeHaveFreeWill https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#DoWeHaveFreeWil...
- deltron3030 7y ago
  That things would repeat after a rewind, given the same "universal state" just contradicts free will from the perspective of looking backwards (to the then present), not in the current present or looking into the uncertain future.

perakojotgenije 7y ago

That's exactly the idea behind Max Tegmark's theory which he described in his book: Our Mathematical Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mathematical_Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mathematical_Universe

tim333 7y ago

Math models are real things, hence reality also.