2 ms·
Before I trigger panic attacks, I do have to note that humans abstract away reality until we can handle it, whether it's in engineering, manufacturing, physics,
by boricj 6y ago
Before I trigger panic attacks, I do have to note that humans abstract away reality until we can handle it, whether it's in engineering, manufacturing, physics, food supply chains, sociology or anything else. This is effectively how our society operates: mostly that problems we don't deal with directly are taken care of by somebody else in good faith. That is not to say we can't mitigate reality if we're willing to put in the price, but except in mathematics we are never building on first principles.
- rando57 6y ago> but except in mathematics we are never building on first principles In practice, mathematicians also assume "that problems we don't deal with directly are taken care of by somebody else in good faith". We use theorems that others proved, and we trust that the authors and the reviewers did their job, without inspecting the proofs ourselves. Sometimes mistakes slip through, but they are usually caught fairly quickly, and can be fixed locally. In other words, we are less strict than we like to think we are, but we get away with it perfectly well.