4 ms·

There’s so much more math though. More than will ever be seen or used in structures, thought about, etc even in principle. E.g. if string theory isn’t real the

• rramadass 3y ago
  >There’s so much more math though. True, that is why I used the words "Discover/Invent". Also i used physical structures as an example since they are the most visible and unarguable evidence of "Real" Mathematics from the earliest times. You can invent abstractions to model concrete things(eg. all that is needed to model a skyscraper) or to model still further abstractions in a chain (eg. vector spaces for multidimensional/functional/etc. spaces). We only realize that it is "Real" when it is "Applied" in the concrete World (eg. number theory in cryptography).
  • meroes 3y ago
    I’m not disagreeing just thinking your line of argument must say more about where all this perpetually undiscovered math is confined in the universe. It sounds like you’re forced to believe math is abstract in nature then, but doesn’t that conflict with your earlier points.
    • rramadass 3y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37662094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37662094 >where all this perpetually undiscovered math is confined in the universe It is in the very fabric/structure of the Universe itself Eg. Calculus buried in the motion of planets around the Sun and discovered by Newton.
• grumblingdev 3y ago
  Agree. Our math is convenient for us humans living in our universe. But how much of our math is just a poor approximation of our universe? Like Newton's gravity was. If our math only _approximates_ the world, if we discovered something that explains things better, it would all be irrelevant. There are a lot of hints that something big is missing in our maths as a means of explanation. Like the mathematical constants Pi and Euler repeating infinitely, quantum randomness...