Shamar @Shamar@social.cleverlibre.org

@zensaiyuki

Actually you don't need to think about alternative universes to meet non euclidean geometry: the Pythagorean theorem doesn't work over the Earth surface.

And you don't need to involve aliens: you can just think about dolphins, blind worms, flies or ants: different perception systems would lead to entirely different abstractions.

For sure writing can't capture tacit knowledge, but the programmed computers cannot either!

I wrote about this before https://medium.com/@giacomo_59737/the-delusions-of-neural-networks-f7085d47edb6 and https://medium.com/@giacomo_59737/yet-another-definition-of-intelligence-9bbaaa73086d

So if you want a dumb computer to do what you want, you can't use a language that leverage tacit knowledge that it lacks.

@natecull @icedquinn

@zensaiyuki

I don't see a single straight line in the images you shared. Even when they look straight (as with some cristals), they are not. And the truthness of Pythagorean theorem breaks on non euclidean spaces and below the Plank constant.

You see straight lines, triangles and so on just because you are abstracting on your perceptions. Which is fine, fun and useful, but abstractions are just in your mind. Since we are both humans, I can see them too. But I'm simply aware they are just constructs of our minds.
Different senses (perceprions) and brains and thus different evolutions would lead to completely different maths.

___

As for the constraints that language pose on programming, yes I could agree that a different expression system would lead to different programs.

I play piano.

I guess that if I designed a programming system with a piano keyboard as the only possible input system, the programs I could invent would be very different from the ones I code in the several programming language I know.

BUT, the choice of language and writing to express programming was not driven by the available input devices, but by the available humans for whom such devices were built.

It's correlation, not causation.

Writing, so far, is the most ptecise and efficient way humans invented to comunicate asyncronously, as we do with the users when we write software that they run (or even just interact with).

@natecull @icedquinn

@zensaiyuki

1. How old is painting? The point is that asyncronous comunication that these tools enabled shaped us as a species.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painting#/media/File%3ALubang_Jeriji_Sal%C3%A9h_cave_painting_of_Bull.jpg

Yet you are correct that universal literacy is a recent thing. But despite being a slow process, evolution preserve only those traits that become universal.

2. The truthness of #Pithagoran Theorem is an interesting objection, but I'd argue that it supports my point: have you ever seen a triangle in nature? have you ever seen a square or a circle? They do NOT exists.

#Math IS discovered, actually.

But it's always a discovery of humans' minds' traits and behaviors. We see math outside us but it's just a projection of our minds on our perceptions. It's like looking through invisible glasses that shape what we see. By discovering math, we just discover features of these glasses.

And math is so much about humans that a theorem is not proved until all humans can understand it.

@natecull
@icedquinn

What a wonderful convesation!

A couple of objections @zensaiyuki:

1) reading and writing are not "unnatural", they are "natural to the humans" or at least "as natural as humans".

So I'd argue that the asyncronous comunication that writing (and painting before) enabled was fundamental to human evolution so much that we could consider humans as being shaped from it.

So I'm not surprised that programming and written languages are so tightly coupled: writing is the most precise and effective async comunication system we have, designed over several thousands years.

2) #Mathematics is not "a natural feature of the landscape" but a byproduct of human brain's evolution: different species would have different #Math and #Logic and see it as "the language of the Universe", "a natural feature of the landscape" and so on.

http://www.tesio.it/2018/10/11/math-science-and-technology.html

@natecull

Brand new #SmartPhone models from my daughters' #hacklab. They built the safest system money can't buy, the only one a child should be allowed to use.

And note the App selection for their operating system: they didn't ask for any suggestions!

@zensaiyuki

My wife is a physician in Italy.

She is part of several research projects as part of her routine.
She collects data, analyses them with colleagues and so on.
She doesn't publish papers, actually. That's what other people do using her result together with those of other physicians.

But this IS doing #Science.
It's not all she does.
But it's part of what she does.

Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.
Nec vero solum seipsum praestare oportet oportuna facientem: sed et assidentes, et exteriora.

😉

@esvrld

Rarely I've seen such amount of #bullshit about #history.

We have a long common history that dates back at least to the Roman empire. It's a convoluted history, full of wars and deaths, cultural exchanges and deep genetic mixing between all of the peoples that came and lived here during a few thousands years.

Europe has not been a single nation for long, this is true. But we have a common culture. A culture that learnt to welcome our differences.

A culture that, actually, has been corrupted by the Marshall Plan, but somehow resists in most people here.

Come and see!

You are welcome too! 😉

@morven come funziona? Io ho apportato commenti e modifiche... divento un socio fondatore?