spekcular

10 ms·

31.
by spekcular 4y ago
The experiment is part of a larger research program to study delayed gratification. It was never intended to help parents raise their children. Asking for immediate applications is an odd standard for basic science research. (Unless you rej
32.
by spekcular 4y ago
The marshmallow effect replicated (IIRC), and is probably correct, unlike the power posing stuff. That behavior in a single trial in childhood moderately predicts success in adulthood seems like an interesting fact about humans.
33.
The Problem with MOND(arxiv.org)
1 points by spekcular 4y ago|0 comments
34.
by spekcular 4y ago
What's accepted by mathematicians as the foundation of mathematics is an objective fact about the mathematical community. You can look up the answer to the question "What is the standard, commonly accepted foundation for mathemati
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by spekcular 4y ago
I don't think the principles that HoTT wants to take as axiomatic are actually fundamental or ontologically basic enough to be made axiomatic. Is that so shocking?
36.
by spekcular 4y ago
We've been over this. To say "It's an objective fact that the professional mathematical community has decided that ZFC is the standard foundations" is not inconsistent with your claim that "there a portions of mathe
37.
by spekcular 4y ago
With respect, I find your point of view "oddly narrow-minded," and not representative of what most mathematicians think about these issues. Taking these points in order: 1) I haven't written anything about constructive logic
38.
by spekcular 4y ago
The disagreement is about whether there are reasons aside from facilitating formalization to care about HoTT. (Because if not, it seems like we should all be jumping on the Lean bandwagon instead.)
39.
by spekcular 4y ago
It's an objective fact that the professional mathematical community has decided that ZFC is the standard foundations. The point of my post was not to explain my experience with textbooks, it was to note that you can check virtually any
40.
by spekcular 4y ago
I understand your last sentence to agree with the statement that everything could be formalized in ZFC given sufficient effort. (I do not really care by what means we know this can be done.) If so, then I'm not sure why you disagree wi
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by spekcular 4y ago
Come on now. I just told in what sense ZFC has not been replaced, and you mentioned something different. No one ever claimed people actually wrote down their proofs in ZFC - again, that was never the purpose. > Are there any which don’t
42.
by spekcular 4y ago
Tackling the second part first: Yes, mathematicians use all sorts of reasoning in pursuit of mathematical truth. Sometimes this reasoning is mildly sloppy, or abuses notation. So what? We all know in principle that this reasoning can be wri
43.
by spekcular 4y ago
What does it mean for "a thing to be the actual thing"? I don't think any formalization you can write down will "actually" be the number 7 (though I'm happy to consider any attempt to do this with an open mind)
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by spekcular 4y ago
> I came to a different conclusion: they very much meant to ground mathematics in ZFC formalisms — and went to the effort of projects like Principia trying to achieve that. ZFC was a failure in this regard, almost immediately replaced by
45.
by spekcular 4y ago
I think this is a common misconception. In set theory, one does not say that some set is the same as (ontologically) the number 7. After all, we understood what the number 7 is far before we had the concept of an abstract set in our mathe
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by spekcular 4y ago
I suppose to some extent this is a matter of taste. I'll just say that, in my experience, people are typically very comfortable with, e.g., logical connectives and the primitive notion of a set of objects from grade school mathematics
47.
by spekcular 4y ago
Yes, it's not so clear to me either. But I'm willing to grant this point for the sake of the argument.
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by spekcular 4y ago
The point of the ZFC axioms was never to write down actual formalizations of complicated proofs. It was to provide a small, parsimonious foundation for all of mathematics with a minimal number of "obvious" commitments, to give us
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by spekcular 4y ago
I realize it's Christmas Eve, but this post tempts my inner curmudgeon. I do not understand why homotopy type theory posts are so popular on this website. My view is that all the "philosophical" arguments in favor of it (vs.
50.
by spekcular 4y ago
People have posted books on arxiv for at least a decade. Their rules state: "Submissions to arXiv should be topical and refereeable scientific contributions that follow accepted standards of scholarly communication."
51.
by spekcular 4y ago
Hi Dang, There's no personal attack here. I'm sorry if that comment comes across as curt, but the post I responded is (in my opinion) grossly misleading and deserves pushback. For example, consider the statement: "If the proo
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by spekcular 4y ago
It's not bizarre at all. The math community has unfortunately been down this road many times before. When an 80-year-old announces a 7 page proof of a famous problem, the smart money is on the proof being wrong. As the comments elsewhe
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by spekcular 4y ago
You're not missing anything.
54.
by spekcular 4y ago
I don't think asymptotic estimates of that form suffice to treat this problem. (Where else in combinatorics has an argument of this form succeeded? What intuitive reason is there to expect it to succeed here?) Specifically I think sect
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by spekcular 4y ago
See above clarification about the bad writing.
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by spekcular 4y ago
Yes. How does it bear on what I wrote?
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by spekcular 4y ago
Yeah, my guess is that both are senile if they're putting this on the arxiv. Second-order evidence: Old mathematicians (~80). Famous problem. Weird, imprecise writing style. No mention of the proof by mainstream mathematical news sourc
58.
by spekcular 4y ago
Your post feels like a dispatch from bizarro-world. There is a good amount of second-order evidence that the proof is wrong. Further, I skimmed the introduction, and it seems the indicated approach cannot possibly work. My guess is that bot
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Is dark matter’s “nightmare scenario” true?(bigthink.com)
123 points by spekcular 4y ago|177 comments
60.
by spekcular 4y ago
Thanks! I'd be interested in what you have to say, if you get a chance to read in detail.

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