Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[oda.krell]

Church Turing

Glad I am not an altar boy in Church Turing.

Wow, so many happy today.

Nice one. That's what I get for not writing the dash.



Doesn't matter though. I'm sure it's well within the power of a TM to feel doubt about the confines of the TM.

[1715111586]

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[1715111586]

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[1715111586]

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[Dotto]

Dear JorgeStolfi, you are wrong on so many levels!!  

The laws of mathematics are stronger than the laws of men, I wonder when are you going to realise how wrong you were this days, you have it in front of your very eyes all time! Rechrist!!

Math was made by man

Even if maths were made by man, which is pretty debatible, it doen´t change that the laws of mathematics are stronger than the laws of men.

[aminorex]

You are just right, there is no proof. The article contains lots of other inaccuracies also.

But its F1 score is still best!  Then you will realize the truth: That it is not the theorem which requires proof; it is only yourself.

[phosphorush]

Dear JorgeStolfi, you are wrong on so many levels!!  

The laws of mathematics are stronger than the laws of men, I wonder when are you going to realise how wrong you were this days, you have it in front of your very eyes all time! Rechrist!!

Math was made by man

No, it was discovered by man, not made.
The mathematics of 1 + 1 equals 2 already existed billion years ago.

Discovered math where? Where did it exist?

The laws of mathematics are stronger than the laws of men...

Math was made by man

Excepting, of course, the natural numbers.

Hun? Math is an abstract tool that helps us making models of the world among other things. How are the natural numbers any different?

A lot of mathematicians seems to be platonists, like if mathematical concepts had an independent reality outside of man... but that's just naive dogmatism.

'Kronecker might be the most famous of the Pre-Intuitionists for his singular and oft quoted phrase, "God made the natural numbers; all else is the work of man."'

I often forget that y'all are not in my mind.  (Or rather, that y'all are not aware that y'all are in my mind.)  Sorry.

Yep it is indeed similar do the belief in god.

I'm not a mathematical intuitionist, but formalist. Anyway, maybe this is not the right place to talk about philosophy of mathematics

[aminorex]

Discovered math where? Where did it exist?

In Hilbert space, of course.  (Well, technically, Banach space.)

[Cassius]

I often forget that y'all are not in my mind.  (Or rather, that y'all are not aware that y'all are in my mind.)  Sorry.

Existential crisis incoming.

[ErisDiscordia]

[snip]
but the government has NOT been designed purposefully to engage in thievery nor as a ponzi scheme nor are the various governmental systems something that can be merely abandoned and start anew, believe it or NOT.  Even though some people use the government and its various related institutions for variou kinds of selfish and thievery purposes, it was NOT designed for such
[snip]

Well, we have a major disagreement here.

The gov exhibits behavior suggesting that its goals are precisely the ones you've mentioned. Now it might not have been a conscious choice by any individual or group of individuals to make it so (which helps explain the persistent myth of the "government as servant"), but there we have it. You say it's selfish and thieving people using the gov for their own purposes. I say the very structure of gov provides incentive for such behavior and prohibits honest and non-corrupt behavior.

And government as a monopolistic, hierarchical structure with the legal monopoly of initiating force will be abandoned one day, believe it or NOT

But first stable, proven, decentralized alternatives with a track record of superior efficiency need to emerge.

[phosphorush]

Discovered math where? Where did it exist?

In Hilbert space, of course.  (Well, technically, Banach space.)

Those are concepts too :s

[Bronstad]

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason,
how infinite in faculties, in form and moving,
how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension,
how like a god!

[freebit13]

Well, we have a major disagreement here.

The gov exhibits behavior suggesting that its goals are precisely the ones you've mentioned. Now it might not have been a conscious choice by any individual or group of individuals to make it so (which helps explain the persistent myth of the "government as servant"), but there we have it. You say it's selfish and thieving people using the gov for their own purposes. I say the very structure of gov provides incentive for such behavior and prohibits honest and non-corrupt behavior.

And government as a monopolistic, hierarchical structure with the legal monopoly of initiating force will be abandoned one day, believe it or NOT

But first stable, proven, decentralized alternatives with a track record of superior efficiency need to emerge.

Hear, hear!

[phosphorush]

Saying that math concepts are in reality independent of a mind is like saying that the concept of a chair is the object to which it refers with the word "chair".

I can think of the concept squared circle, does it have any reality outside of my mind? It seems to be an impossibility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)

[Dotto]

Philosophical squared circles? It seems Jorge has trolled us all. Good work, sir!  

[Parazyd]

Back to $650 on Bitstamp. Feels okay.

Let's hope we start rushing upwards these days.

[Timmmaahh]

250 btc wall at stamps..

[oda.krell]

Saying that math concepts are in reality independent of a mind is like saying that the concept of a chair is the object to which it refers with the word "chair".

I can think of the concept squared circle, does it have any reality outside of my mind? It seems to be an impossibility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)

Or, they might exist independently and at the same time it would be meaningless for us to speculate what their "existence independent of our perception" could be. That said, Kant pretty clearly was a proto-intuitionist when it came to pure math.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[oda.krell]

Philosophical squared circles? It seems Jorge has trolled us all. Good work, sir!  

No. He pointed out a sloppy phrasing in a well-meant article, and then proceeded to blow its effects out of proportion.

Okay, you're right. He trolled us

[JorgeStolfi]

There is none. But you know that much.

There are a select few assumptions that seem to be so well grounded in reality that it is a waste of one's productivity to constantly doubt them. If the day comes that they'd break, we'll be as well prepared as we are now to tackle the fallout from the event.

Thanks! 

I agree that the chance of those assumptions being broken is not worth worrying about; it would be like worring that three nuclear reactors may melt down and explode at the same time. 

However I would dispute the assertion that the two assumptions that I listed are "well grounded in reality" -- in the same sense that, say, physical laws like gravitation, conservation of energy etc.  are.

Basically the only "proof" of those two assumptions is that many bright people have spent lots of time trying to find fast ways to solve those problems, over the last 40 years, and failed. But that is not a statistically significant result, because the space of all algorithms, even of modest size, is extremely large; so even all that work has explored only an infinitesimal fraction of it.

For the physical laws, in contrast, one can argue that all our collected experience and measurements are statistically significant  "proof" that they work, at least in the realms that we have experienced.  Doubting them (in those realms) is certainly a waste of time.

Moreover, the techniques that we scientists use to find fast algorithms are such that we can only find "obvious" ones, in a sense. So there may exist a relatively short algorithm that quickly solves the bitcoin mining problem, say; but, even if we find it somehow, and check that it works in quintillion of cases, we may be unable to understand how it does it.  (You are aware of the Collatz problem I suppose.)

(You are not referring to the P != NP conjecture I suppose?  It is just as uncertain, but it has absolutely no relevance to those two assumptions in the bitcoin protocol.)

(By the way, until the 1980s many people were quite certain that the linear programming problem could not be solved in polynomial time, because many bright people etc. etc..  Some even had started to build a theory of "LP-complete problems".  Then a Russian mathematician found a polynomial algorithm, by thinking out of the box.)

[bangersdad]

in Proclus's writings on the first book of Euclids Elements he finds mathematics referred to the "intangible and incorruptible" as well as the "sensible" He viewed mathematics more reliable than any other branch of natural philosophy that was based on perception.

[phosphorush]

No, it was discovered by man, not made.
The mathematics of 1 + 1 equals 2 already existed billion years ago.

Discovered math where? Where did it exist?

It existed right after the big bang or creation by god, pick your flavour.

Math is the only language possible extra terrestrials could understand.
With math you would be able to communicate with "them" since the rules apply to our entire universe.
This proves math was not made by man, but discovered.

Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_extraterrestrial_intelligence

So big bang, space, time/motion and math? Then atoms could form, then matter. Yeah make sense... lol

Another intelligent species would also have minds, probably also abstraction, so by interpreting our models they would be able to understand what we mean with them.  But what impossibilitates aliens from having a system different from ours that also represents reality? Maybe their system could be even better than our own...