4 ms·

The older I get the more I feel like pursuing these trains of thought will lead to mental instability and sadness. We model the world and the world follows the

The older I get the more I feel like pursuing these trains of thought will lead to mental instability and sadness. We model the world and the world follows the model and the exceptions add to our refinement of the model and that’s what makes it true. Perception and reality are yin and yang and that is about as deep as my philosophy needs to go here

rambojohnson 3y ago
I understand where you're coming from, and pragmatic perspectives certainly have their place. However, philosophy, including intuitionism, can offer us new ways to comprehend the world. It's not about destabilizing our understanding, but rather enriching it. Although it can be challenging, this exploration can also bring greater depth to our perception and reality, much like the yin and yang you mentioned. Even if we don't adopt a new philosophy wholeheartedly, engaging with it can open us up to valuable insights.
- glcheetham 3y ago
  Sounds like GPT wrote this comment
  - rambojohnson 3y ago
    and AI thinks the Constitution was written by AI: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/why-ai-detectors-think-the-us-constitution-was-written-by-ai/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/why-a...
  - staplers 3y ago
    An illustration of AI disrupting society in indirect ways. If this comment were in fact written by human hands, your perception of it is lessened by the mere possibility it wasn't.
chongli 3y ago
There’s a whole lot more stuff in math than models of the world. Arguably, the vast majority of math has as much to do with the world as chess.
theamk 3y ago
I started being much happier about philosophy in general once I realized a very important truth: "unlike hard sciences, philosophy only affects philosophers" For example the toplevel article says things like "independent existence in an objective reality".. this sounds important, right? Perhaps depending on the truth of the intuitionism, we might discover some facts about real world? Nope. The whole "is intuitionism true" question only affects the person thinking about it. The whole books are written that basically quibble about dictionary definitions of "fundamental principles", "objective reality", "mental activity" and other complex words. (This is especially visible in discussion of "consciousness": there are tons of texts about it, and yet none of them matter in any practical way. The practical applications -- generative text models, NLP, neuroscience, etc.. -- just ignore all the philosophic cruft)
- nextaccountic 3y ago
  Intuitionism has had a great impact on computer science and the design of many programming languages. It's now widely known that an intuitionistic proof has computational content (through the curry-howard correspondence) Those things have a real world impact
  - theamk 3y ago
    I have no doubt it had an impact on Curry personally, but it does not it has direct impact to on the the computer science. The Curry–Howard correspondence is formulated entirely in mathematical terms, and no philosophy is required to understand and use it. For example, Robert Goddard, who invented first liquid-fueled rocket, became interested in space when he read Wells' "The War of the Worlds". So did Wells' work had an impact on rocket science? Certainly. Does it mean you should read "The War of the Worlds" if you want to build rockets? Probably not.
    - nextaccountic 3y ago
      The philosophy has an impact in the mental model and the learnability of the mathematical theories. Technically you could learn and use the mathematics without knowing the philosophy behind it but in practice almost nobody does that. It's like knowing design patterns in OO: it's ultimately all software right? But software exists first in the mind of the programmer, and what's written in the IDE is just a shadow of what the programmer imagined. This makes one appreciate the point that there are things in software that exists entirely inside our heads

rambojohnson 3y ago

I understand where you're coming from, and pragmatic perspectives certainly have their place. However, philosophy, including intuitionism, can offer us new ways to comprehend the world. It's not about destabilizing our understanding, but rather enriching it. Although it can be challenging, this exploration can also bring greater depth to our perception and reality, much like the yin and yang you mentioned. Even if we don't adopt a new philosophy wholeheartedly, engaging with it can open us up to valuable insights.

glcheetham 3y ago
Sounds like GPT wrote this comment
- rambojohnson 3y ago
  and AI thinks the Constitution was written by AI: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/why-ai-detectors-think-the-us-constitution-was-written-by-ai/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/why-a...
- staplers 3y ago
  An illustration of AI disrupting society in indirect ways. If this comment were in fact written by human hands, your perception of it is lessened by the mere possibility it wasn't.

chongli 3y ago

There’s a whole lot more stuff in math than models of the world. Arguably, the vast majority of math has as much to do with the world as chess.

theamk 3y ago

I started being much happier about philosophy in general once I realized a very important truth: "unlike hard sciences, philosophy only affects philosophers" For example the toplevel article says things like "independent existence in an objective reality".. this sounds important, right? Perhaps depending on the truth of the intuitionism, we might discover some facts about real world? Nope. The whole "is intuitionism true" question only affects the person thinking about it. The whole books are written that basically quibble about dictionary definitions of "fundamental principles", "objective reality", "mental activity" and other complex words. (This is especially visible in discussion of "consciousness": there are tons of texts about it, and yet none of them matter in any practical way. The practical applications -- generative text models, NLP, neuroscience, etc.. -- just ignore all the philosophic cruft)

nextaccountic 3y ago
Intuitionism has had a great impact on computer science and the design of many programming languages. It's now widely known that an intuitionistic proof has computational content (through the curry-howard correspondence) Those things have a real world impact
- theamk 3y ago
  I have no doubt it had an impact on Curry personally, but it does not it has direct impact to on the the computer science. The Curry–Howard correspondence is formulated entirely in mathematical terms, and no philosophy is required to understand and use it. For example, Robert Goddard, who invented first liquid-fueled rocket, became interested in space when he read Wells' "The War of the Worlds". So did Wells' work had an impact on rocket science? Certainly. Does it mean you should read "The War of the Worlds" if you want to build rockets? Probably not.
  - nextaccountic 3y ago
    The philosophy has an impact in the mental model and the learnability of the mathematical theories. Technically you could learn and use the mathematics without knowing the philosophy behind it but in practice almost nobody does that. It's like knowing design patterns in OO: it's ultimately all software right? But software exists first in the mind of the programmer, and what's written in the IDE is just a shadow of what the programmer imagined. This makes one appreciate the point that there are things in software that exists entirely inside our heads