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Then you might want to read Douglas Hofstadter's famous "Gödel, Escher, Bach" which draws analogies between mathematics and music and in one of its playful dial
by gjm11 2y ago
Then you might want to read Douglas Hofstadter's famous "Gödel, Escher, Bach" which draws analogies between mathematics and music and in one of its playful dialogues does in fact feature things called "Piano Postulates".
(The conceit is that one of the characters in the dialogue interprets mathematical notation as music, and claims to have an immediate sense of whether any given melody is "beautiful" that in every case seems to correspond to the truth or falsehood of the proposition expressed -- but denies all awareness of any connection between these melodies and anything mathematical. He mentions in particular five short but elegant pieces called the "Piano Postulates", which are of course Peano's axioms[1]. It eventually becomes clear, though it's not stated directly, that the character in question knows perfectly well what the notation really means and is trying to pull a hoax on his interlocutor, but his bluff gets called.)
[1] Though I'm only now realising that the notation they're using isn't actually expressive enough for it to be possible to write down the induction axiom in it.
- chamomeal 2y agoI was hoping GEB would pop up in this convo somewhere! I’ve read halfway through like three times. I wish I had a better math background so I could understand the incompleteness theorem. Seems like it’s pretty central to his ideas, but I can’t quite wrap my head around it. Someday I’ll get all the way through!
- namaria 2y agoVeritassium's video about it helped me a lot with understanding this idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeQX2HjkcNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeQX2HjkcNo