What's more true: 2+2=4 or II+II=IV?

@maxdancona,

Your Einstein quote is fake. I find no record that Einstein actually said that. Quite the contrary, his descriptions of his work to any scientific audience were mathematical. And what he said to non-scientists were summaries.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Galileo is not a good example of the point you are trying to make. Galileo was highly educated and spent his life in academia. He studied at the University of Pisa where in 1589 he was appointed as the chair of mathematics.

Galileo was part of institutional science and what you are calling "academia". He was a student who worked hard with other students to master his craft. After he had mastered mathematics, he then gained acclaim and recognition in the academic and scientific worlds.

Almost every great name in science in Galileo was highly educated and part of institutional science; Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Bohr. Marie Curie is perhaps an exception... but even went through the education process. She studied math, worked with professors, did lab work and got feedback from peers.

You have to reach a level of real expertise, and in science this includes mathematics, before you can make any advance in science.

It doesn't matter. You think too much in terms of social institutions and not enough in terms of the mechanics of thought that are the real science.

You're like a movie-reviewer who focuses more on how the movie was produced than on the theme, plot, story, etc.

Movies exist as a way of conveying the story. Even the script is just a script and not the story itself. The real story occurs in the minds of viewers/readers when they put all the pieces together in their minds and 'get it.'

You keep arguing about social institutions as if they are the building blocks of science itself and not the support systems for the building blocks of science to be built. The real building blocks of science are the critical thinking and analytical events that produce insight into truth.

What you keep doing is talking about there being conditions outside science for science to be able to happen, but without academia, new conditions would arise for science to occur because science is something more fundamental than any academic or corporate setting in which it is procured.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Your Einstein quote is fake. I find no record that Einstein actually said that. Quite the contrary, his descriptions of his work to any scientific audience were mathematical. And what he said to non-scientists were summaries.

Well, if it's fake it's widespread false quotation.

Einstein had to communicate to institutional audiences in a language they would accept. That doesn't mean that his concepts couldn't be explained in other ways to different audiences.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

You are making up a fictional Einstein to support your argument.

The real Einstein was absolutely part of the scientific institution. He was educated at University. He worked in mathematics. He was in every way one of the top Scientists in the world of Institutional science.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

My thesis is that real science advances (i.e. pushing the boundaries of what we know) are always done by institutional scientists working within scientific institutions. It is the institution that facilitates scientific advancement. This is not just true in academia, it is also true in industry. Every great technological advancement in the private sector for the past 200 years has come from institutional science; the transistor, the radio, the computer, self-driving cars... all created by people with scientific educations working within institutional science.

Education is a necessity. You have to understand the current state of scientific understanding before you advance it.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

You are making up a fictional Einstein to support your argument.

Google it and tell me why all these people have posted memes etc. about a supposedly false quote. Is it a conspiracy to misquote Einstein?

Quote:

The real Einstein was absolutely part of the scientific institution. He was educated at University. He worked in mathematics. He was in every way one of the top Scientists in the world of Institutional science.

It doesn't matter whether he or anyone else worked as part of academic institutions or worked in a patent office or other non-academic job and just practiced critical thinking/theorizing. When someone comes up with the right answer to a question, it's right regardless of where they work or how they came up with the answer.

No one might listen to them because they work in fast food and announce that gravity waves are real, for example, but if they are real then they are regardless of who's saying so.

Of course there is also legitimacy in doing science that turns out to be wrong. E.g. if gravity waves had turned out to be a false prediction, Einstein would still have been legitimate for theorizing their existence, just as anyone working in fast food would be as well, assuming their theoretical logic was strong enough to validate the hypothesis.

It's not about math. It's about logic. Einstein knew that nothing could move faster than light because nothing can exceed the speed of information moving away from itself. Likewise, he figured out that the rate of time has to change in order for light to change frequency without changing speed. Whether or not he had come up with equations and math to model his claims, they would have been right either way; i.e. because they were (and wrong if they weren't, regardless of how good his math was).

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

by institutional scientists working within scientific institutions.

It ultimately doesn't matter for truth itself, however, whether it's discovered in a laboratory or an outhouse. 2+2=4 whether it's counted out by someone with a PhD or a GED.

Quote:

It is the institution that facilitates scientific advancement. This is not just true in academia, it is also true in industry. Every great technological advancement in the private sector for the past 200 years has come from institutional science; the transistor, the radio, the computer, self-driving cars... all created by people with scientific educations working within institutional science.

Institutions are tools to facilitate, but they also hinder and waste in various ways. You worshiping them in the way you are here is like saying diamonds would never have been discovered in Africa without European colonization. It is simply not true and biased toward certain people against others as well.

Quote:

Education is a necessity. You have to understand the current state of scientific understanding before you advance it.

You should just stop talking like this because it's condescending. If someone knows what they are talking about, it's not for you to judge whether their education took place at a university or a public library.

Likewise, if they get the wrong answer, it doesn't help for you to criticize them from reading and studying at a library or otherwise instead of just explaining to them why they're wrong and why/how the right answer is right.

You're just not a good person when you keep going on about academia and institutions instead of just explaining what you know and admitting when others know what they are talking about.

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@livinglava,

2+2=4 is more true, from what I've gathered the addition symbol in Latin is "-" although you are right, there is no reason,beyond a sophisticated demeanor that hides ones true intention, to disregard an intended meaning described by one from another. One may be blind, but still sees through illusion, one may be deaf but still listens to the self. It may be darkest before the dawn but if one is bored of the daylight, why wouldn't one hide from the sun?

1 Reply

@livinglava,

Quote:

It's not about math. It's about logic. Einstein knew that nothing could move faster than light because nothing can exceed the speed of information moving away from itself

This is completely incorrect. I have actually read Einstein's papers, including his paper on Special relativity. You can read them too.

http://hermes.ffn.ub.es/luisnavarro/nuevo_maletin/Einstein_1905_relativity.pdf

You can't just make up stuff and then falsely claim that Einstein said it to support a point. We have Einsteins paper's and letters. You can see what he actually said.

His papers (and his arguments about the speed of light) are quite mathematical, but you may be able to follow through the type of arguments he is making.

But come on... it really hurts your argument when you invent your own ideas and put them into the mind of Einstein.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

Einstein wasn't just some random guy with ideas. Just having a random speculation that happens to be correct gets you nothing. Great Physicists, including Einstein, have to do the work to develop the mathematics behind any discovery. It isn't idle daydreaming... it is arduous work by educated minds that advances physics.

Einstein poured over advanced mathematics day and night over a period of 10 years before he finally was ready to publish his paper on Relativity. Again, you can read his papers and his letters.

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@Osibos,

Osibos wrote:

2+2=4 is more true, from what I've gathered the addition symbol in Latin is "-" although you are right, there is no reason,beyond a sophisticated demeanor that hides ones true intention, to disregard an intended meaning described by one from another. One may be blind, but still sees through illusion, one may be deaf but still listens to the self. It may be darkest before the dawn but if one is bored of the daylight, why wouldn't one hide from the sun?

"Why wouldn't one hide from the sun?"

A: because one may have the foresight to wish to avert the consequences of choosing darkness over light.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Quote:
It's not about math. It's about logic. Einstein knew that nothing could move faster than light because nothing can exceed the speed of information moving away from itself

This is completely incorrect. I have actually read Einstein's papers, including his paper on Special relativity. You can read them too.

http://hermes.ffn.ub.es/luisnavarro/nuevo_maletin/Einstein_1905_relativity.pdf

You can't just make up stuff and then falsely claim that Einstein said it to support a point. We have Einsteins paper's and letters. You can see what he actually said.

His papers (and his arguments about the speed of light) are quite mathematical, but you may be able to follow through the type of arguments he is making.

But come on... it really hurts your argument when you invent your own ideas and put them into the mind of Einstein.

You are proving my point in this thread.

Martin Luther advocated translating the Bible into the vernacular for Latin-illiterates to read scripture, yet what you are saying about Einstein is like arguing that Martin Luther published his 95 Theses in Latin.

Math is a language, like Latin or English. There is nothing wrong with writing/reading math, just like there is nothing wrong with communicating in Latin, but your problem is that you want to insist on math being the best and excluding people who don't use it (well) from reading and thinking about science for themselves.

You are thus taking the same position as the church authorities did against Martin Luther for wanting to make direct study of scripture available to the common people by publishing it in the vernacular.

And while there may be some benefit to studying scripture in different languages/translations, it is false to say that proficiency in Latin or Hebrew or Aramaic is a precondition for studying/understanding the truths contained in scripture. Likewise, doing the math may provide certain insights, but for some reason you can't see how it is possible to understand the relationship between redshifting light frequency and time dilation (or other scientific issues) without using math directly.

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@livinglava,

Just adding that the Romans didn't use plus and minus signs. (Plus and minus signs were introduced to Britain in 1557, to Germany pre-1483.)

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@livinglava,

Saying the "math is a language" is true in one sense, but it is wrong in another sense. That is the problem with non-mathematical languages. They are open to nuance and uncertainty.

My favorite example of this... is this.

- I can say "The children are ready to eat." This means that they are hungry, ready to take a mean (in my house this means they have washed their hands).

- I can also say "The cookies are ready to eat". This means that they are cooked and frosted, and that they are ready to be enjoyed.

But, If I say, the "chicken is ready to eat"... now we have a real problem.

These types of uncertainty don't happen in mathematics. It is a precise language that can be readily understood with certainty.

1 Reply

@livinglava,

This is something that often happens between scientists and non-scientists.

A scientist with an expertise in the field that comes from years of studying and experience, meets with a non-scientist who has read about the same field on the internet.

- The non-scientist will say something to show how much they know... for example they will say "the second law of thermodynamics means that the universe tends towards disorder".

- The scientist will recognize this as a simplification of the real science and will agree.

- Then the non-scientist will continue to talk, this time pushing the simplification too far. They will say something that is a misunderstanding such as... "so this means that life can't evolve to a more complex form (i.e. a living organism) from simpler forms (i.e. molecules).

- The scientist will try to explain where the non-scientist is wrong. Now the scientist has real knowledge from years of study that the non-scientist doesn't have.

- The scientist can't use mathematics because the non-scientist doesn't understand that. The scientist can explain what terms like entropy really mean, because the non scientist doesn't have the background.

- What the non-scientist has is simplistic, dumbed down philosophical explanations about what terms like "entropy means". And the non-scientists can't see how they are misunderstanding the topic because they don't have the knowledge or background.

What often ends up happening is that the non-scientist relying on simplifications, misunderstandings and things they read on the internet insisting that the real scientist is wrong. The real scientist will sometimes try to be patient and to give a good explanation, but these things are complicated and the non-scientist usually decides to stick with their simple understanding anyway.

This is a frustrating process for scientists. The real solution is for everyone who wants to do science to take the time to get a real education (including the mathematical background).

Of course the scientists (that is institutional scientists) go on advancing the knowledge at the core of semiconductors, and medicine, and space travel, and materials and so many other things. And the non-scientists continue to come up with weird theories and misunderstandings on the internet.

The real problem, in my opinion, is when society doesn't listen to to scientists on matters of science. Scientists don't know everything. But lack of willingness to accept scientific expertise from the experts is a problem when it comes to important scientific questions like climate change, or preventing epidemics, or how to produce enough food.

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

I only noticed this just now:

Osibos wrote:

from what I've gathered the addition symbol in Latin is "-"

From where did you get this information? Have you seen any Latin/Roman originals showing such?

The - sign, first appeared in 1481 the German algebra manuscript of "Mercantile Arithmetic oder Behende und hüpsche Rechenung auff allen Kauffmanschafft" (printed in 1487).

The + sign is a bit older, instead of writing "et", Nicole d’Oresme used "+" and appeared later (in 1417) in a manuscript as well.
The first printed + sign appeared in the same book mentioned above.

2 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Just adding that the Romans didn't use plus and minus signs. (Plus and minus signs were introduced to Britain in 1557, to Germany pre-1483.)

It was just an example to make a point, but thanks for the cultural history.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Saying the "math is a language" is true in one sense, but it is wrong in another sense. That is the problem with non-mathematical languages. They are open to nuance and uncertainty.

My favorite example of this... is this.

- I can say "The children are ready to eat." This means that they are hungry, ready to take a mean (in my house this means they have washed their hands).

- I can also say "The cookies are ready to eat". This means that they are cooked and frosted, and that they are ready to be enjoyed.

But, If I say, the "chicken is ready to eat"... now we have a real problem.

These types of uncertainty don't happen in mathematics. It is a precise language that can be readily understood with certainty.

1) I've seen terrible logical reasoning come out of mathematicians who were using math without applying adequate critical thinking to assess whether the mathematical results made sense in a real context.

If you think about it, faulty mathematical reasoning is responsible for so many everyday errors. E.g. someone will say something like, how can the same nation that went to the moon murder so many children as part of their global imperial rule? Here, representing a vast diverse collection of people and actions with the variable, "nation" allows the logic of USA = USA despite the fact that NASA is totally separate from the military activities that would be criticized as 'imperialist' by some critics. So because the symbols/variables were not adequately well-thought-out, the math ended up generating false conclusions despite correct logic at the level of symbolic processing of variables.

You need to see that there is nothing quantitative to save you from misinterpreting the relationship between variables/symbols and what they represent. This is why math is no more accurate than any other language, even though it would seem to be because 2+2 always = 4. In reality, 2+2 clouds can combine to equal one big cloud or split into six smaller clouds. That doesn't mean 2+2 doesn't always = 4, but it does mean that quantification doesn't always represent reality accurately.

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@livinglava,

livinglava wrote:

Osibos wrote:

2+2=4 is more true, from what I've gathered the addition symbol in Latin is "-" although you are right, there is no reason,beyond a sophisticated demeanor that hides ones true intention, to disregard an intended meaning described by one from another. One may be blind, but still sees through illusion, one may be deaf but still listens to the self. It may be darkest before the dawn but if one is bored of the daylight, why wouldn't one hide from the sun?

"Why wouldn't one hide from the sun?"

A: because one may have the foresight to wish to avert the consequences of choosing darkness over light.

The moment we avert ourselves not to see the light is the moment we think the moon is the sun.

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

From Catholics.

1 Reply

What's more true: 2+2=4 or II+II=IV?

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