2 ms·

I chased 2-3 linked articles deep am still wondering what is meant by reasonable here. Or "reasonably effective." Is that just an example of the ineffective re

I chased 2-3 linked articles deep am still wondering what is meant by reasonable here. Or "reasonably effective." Is that just an example of the ineffective reasonability of essays? My best guess at this point is that reasonable is what a person expects. And if that's so, it's subjective. And math abstracts realities into imperfect but objective simulacra. So I think the claim is that math is made of abstract rules. A tautology? A deepity? I must be missing something. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity

skohan 5y ago
It's a play on the "unreasonable effectiveness of math" essay right? I took it to mean the "unreasonable" ingredient which makes math so effective is context independence - since that's something which is not so easily attainable in other fields.
pvg 5y ago
It's the E.P. Wigner thing in the first link, it's a famous essay and a bit of an HN evergreen, along with a related Hamming piece: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=unreasonable%20effectiveness%20of%20mathematics%20comments%3E5&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... it's also a meme-ish title thing, sort of like 'considered harmful' https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=unreasonable%20effectiveness%20comments%3E5&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
bannedbybros 5y ago
pmichaud 5y ago
In the original essay, "reasonable" specifically meant "rational" in the sense of "able to be deduced from first principles." The point of the whole essay was that math was was spookily good at modelling reality, empirically speaking, but that fact is super weird considering we have no rational basis to expect that to be the case--ie. we have no first principles based in physical reality that we could use to deduce that math/twiddling with the relationship between symbols using rules we basically just made up should be able to model reality the way it does, and isn't that a strange mystery to contemplate. Most essays that use the phrase really just mean "surprisingly effective," which is a pet peeve of mine, but I think this essay gets a pass because it's trying to actually address that "strange mystery."

skohan 5y ago

It's a play on the "unreasonable effectiveness of math" essay right? I took it to mean the "unreasonable" ingredient which makes math so effective is context independence - since that's something which is not so easily attainable in other fields.

pvg 5y ago

It's the E.P. Wigner thing in the first link, it's a famous essay and a bit of an HN evergreen, along with a related Hamming piece: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=unreasonable%20effectiveness%20of%20mathematics%20comments%3E5&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... it's also a meme-ish title thing, sort of like 'considered harmful' https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=unreasonable%20effectiveness%20comments%3E5&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

bannedbybros 5y ago

pmichaud 5y ago

In the original essay, "reasonable" specifically meant "rational" in the sense of "able to be deduced from first principles." The point of the whole essay was that math was was spookily good at modelling reality, empirically speaking, but that fact is super weird considering we have no rational basis to expect that to be the case--ie. we have no first principles based in physical reality that we could use to deduce that math/twiddling with the relationship between symbols using rules we basically just made up should be able to model reality the way it does, and isn't that a strange mystery to contemplate. Most essays that use the phrase really just mean "surprisingly effective," which is a pet peeve of mine, but I think this essay gets a pass because it's trying to actually address that "strange mystery."