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Mathematicians are locked in bitter struggle between the Zeroastrians who believe additive identity blesses 0 as truly the most foundational and therefore inter
by jl6 3y ago
Mathematicians are locked in bitter struggle between the Zeroastrians who believe additive identity blesses 0 as truly the most foundational and therefore interesting integer, while the Unitarians favor multiplicative identity and thus champion 1. Uncountable souls have been lost to the conflict between these two groups.
- joenot443 3y agoUgh, must we relate every thread about integer fascination back to Zerry/Unny zealotry? It’s been going on for centuries now, nobody’s changing their opinion at this point.
- narinxas 3y agobecause numbers have a natural meaning. roughly speaking each integer has as many meanings as its value. so 0 and 1 are just the very beginning. zero's natural meaning is special, it's the void. sometimes the 'variable' stands in as having this meaning, sometimes the variable is zero. one is the easiest simplest to grasp. its meaning is "I", ego. two is duality in the broadest imaginable sense. wars are being fought right now over the precise meaning of 3
- ajhurliman 3y agoThis feels closer to a tarot reading than mathematics, and I’m here for it
- _0ffh 3y agoThe Tao Produced One; The One Produced Two; The Two Produced Three And The Three Produced All Things.
- Shorel 3y agoSounds very close to the firstness, secondness and thirdness categories from Charles Sanders Peirce. (Which I think are nothing but nonsense from a madman =)
- User23 3y agoHe was an awfully pragmatic madman. He also discovered the universal and existential quantifiers independently of Frege, albeit a few years later. No offense intended, but to the extent his work feels mad to you, it might be a “you problem.” That said, he never did reduce firstness, secondness, and thirdness to unity to his own satisfaction either. His work is truly tantalizing. Oh and abduction has had some conceptual influence too. Sad that the Arisbe fansite got deleted.
- Shorel 3y agoI agree this must be a "me" problem. I just have never found these three "universal" categories useful for anything whatsoever except for a semiotics class in university where he was one of the study subjects. Umberto Eco on the other hand... every single thing he wrote was immediately interesting and useful. Or funny. His Lolita's parody, Granita, was Pratchett and Adams levels of funny. He was awesome.
- narinxas 3y agowe can be more precise now: the three produced the equation, which pretended that all things were (could be) equalized into equivalence. they called this algebra and parised some monotheistic god; they called this magic and GOTO one.
- smegsicle 3y agothats funny i always heard it was an origin with two other orthogonal roles unless youre a dirty filioquist
- mjrpes 3y agoPerhaps 0 and 1 are the same. If there only exists the entity called 1, lacking all properties or relations to other entities, what is left? A void called 1, no different than 0. The true mystery is: how did plurality arise?
- eru 3y ago> Perhaps 0 and 1 are the same. Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_with_one_element https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_with_one_element
- User23 3y agoConsider for a moment that Aristotle, and thus most likely all the ancients, made a distinction between nothing and void.
- chaboud 3y agoI, for one, think zero good will come of it… Two soon?
- eru 3y ago> It’s been going on for centuries now, nobody’s changing their opinion at this point. Sure, but one side can still out-breed the other.
- hurryer 3y agoIn modern math all numbers are built on set theory which has the empty set as it's foundation. Empty set is more like 0 than 1. Check mate Unitarians.
- layer8 3y agoThe empty set is 1 set. Can’t have 0 without 1.
- fuzztester 3y agoThe empty set is the set with nothing, i e. no thing. So it doesn't need 1. ;)
- coldtea 3y agoYou start from 1 empty set though. If you could start from 0 empty sets, you'd have a point.
- fuzztester 3y ago>You start from 1 empty set though. Sez who, zigactly? If you are coldtea, I am coldertea. As in, I love my tea colder than you do yours. And starts who? Not me. Don't kid around, dude. I dik around. >If you could start from 0 empty sets, you'd have a point. What if the set of empty sets has no element? :)
- coldtea 3y agoWas the first comment under the influence of drugs? In any case, for the second comment: even if the set of empty sets has no elements, it's still ONE set.
- fuzztester 3y ago>Was the first comment under the influence of drugs? No, it was not. Regarding this whole subthread in which I participated, I did it for some mutual logic-chopping fun. But if you thought there was a chance it was, you shouldn't have replied to the second comment, because I would have been equally under the influence of the drugs for the second, if I had been so for the first comment. (Don't reply to a druggie.) After all, they were both done in one atomic comment transaction.
- User3456335 3y ago0 and 1 are interesting as integers in the same way that a blank canvas is interesting as a painting. Very foundational, very useful but also very plain.
- mnd999 3y agoPretty interesting if you work in an industry where you use them to represent every other number.
- mikea1 3y agoIn my limited math experience, I really found an appreciation of the number one. My favorite part of high school algebra was realizing that "solving for x" was often just a repeated exercise of multiplying each side of the equation by a "clever form of one."
- User3456335 3y agoSolving for x often entails multiplying both sides by the same number, not necessarily one. Perhaps you're referring to simplifying fractions where you do often multiply by a clever form of one?
- mikea1 3y agoAh, yes, you are absolutely correct. The _clever form of one_ trick did not apply as often as I recalled!
- narinxas 3y agonot in binary notation they're not
- enriquto 3y agoWe Pragmaticists (some would say "abject pragmaticists") advocate for a compromise solution between Zeroastrians and Unitarians by taking h=½ as the fundamental constant. It satisfies several interesting identities involving other constants, like i^i=e^(-hπ), ∫e^(x^(1/h))dx=π^h, ∑n^(-1/h)=hπ^(1/h)/3, the celebrated inequality (a+b)h≥(ab)^h or the curious fact that 1/h is the smallest prime number.
- sorokod 3y agoℵ0 uncountable?
- anschwa 3y agoOne of my professors would often refer to this struggle as taking place between the Nihilists and Unitarians.
- fuzztester 3y agoYou missed the Dualitarians, the Trialitarians, and so on through to the Infinitarians ... whoops, forgot Cantor! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Cantor
- drsopp 3y agoMy favorite is 2: Shared joy is a double joy, and shared sorrow is half sorrow.
- awwaiid 3y agoMy spouse often claims that two is the best prime because she knows it annoys me. Or perhaps she is truly insane. Clearly 2 is the WORST prime, amirite?
- eru 3y agoWell, it's definitely the primest prime.
- SamBam 3y agoI've always felt 2 was the most important as well, if only because for there to be something (1) there has to be nothing (0), and thus the existence of anything defines 2 states, being and non-being. Without the pair (0, 1) there is no distinguishing anything in the universe.
- fallingknife 3y agoMust be an integer number of souls, though, so even in a conflict of infinite time, it won't be uncountable.
- tasuki 3y agoSurely addition is more foundational than multiplication? Multiplication is just repeated addition.
- ak_111 3y agoIs this a reference for some fiction? Or you just made it up?