> mathematical truth is the only kind of truth that can be communicated to other people
this seems needlessly limited to me, can't we communicate all kinds of truths to each other? if I say "I'm outside for a walk" is that not communicating truth?
> I have felt noticeably smarter in all aspects my life …
> mathematical truth is the only kind of truth that can be communicated to other people
this seems needlessly limited to me, can't we communicate all kinds of truths to each other? if I say "I'm outside for a walk" is that not communicating truth?
> I have felt noticeably smarter in all aspects my life - especially in my ability to quickly grasp new concepts and situations - during the math-oriented periods.
intriguing, I haven't experienced this but I've never done more than 1-2hrs of pure math per day and/or I wasn't paying super close attention to how my cognitive abilities changed during that time
> Coming up with proofs is about as intuitive an activity as any other
true, and perhaps a bigger point of this essay should have been that math itself is not just about rigor and logic
> If you take this position I think you also have to believe computers cannot be intelligent
I don't think so, because I can just think of intelligence as a functional property (how you relate inputs to outputs, which indeed can be a purely syntactical property), whereas I think of consciousness as not purely functional – it depends somewhat on the substrate/implementation details
> there may be spiritual truths that remain inaccessible to math - math might not lead us to satisfaction and joy
maybe my thesis is: if the world is truly, deeply amenable to formal methods through and through, then even spiritual truths, satisfaction, joy etc should all be graspable with formal methods, given enough memory/computational power. if the universe itself is a mathematical object, then this would have to be true. but maybe memory/space constraints make this impossible to ever answer, I'm not sure if I'm even asking a real question at this point
very excited to discuss this more irl
> mathematical truth is the only kind of truth that can be communicated to other people
this seems needlessly limited to me, can't we communicate all kinds of truths to each other? if I say "I'm outside for a walk" is that not communicating truth?
> I have felt noticeably smarter in all aspects my life - especially in my ability to quickly grasp new concepts and situations - during the math-oriented periods.
intriguing, I haven't experienced this but I've never done more than 1-2hrs of pure math per day and/or I wasn't paying super close attention to how my cognitive abilities changed during that time
> Coming up with proofs is about as intuitive an activity as any other
true, and perhaps a bigger point of this essay should have been that math itself is not just about rigor and logic
> If you take this position I think you also have to believe computers cannot be intelligent
I don't think so, because I can just think of intelligence as a functional property (how you relate inputs to outputs, which indeed can be a purely syntactical property), whereas I think of consciousness as not purely functional – it depends somewhat on the substrate/implementation details
> there may be spiritual truths that remain inaccessible to math - math might not lead us to satisfaction and joy
maybe my thesis is: if the world is truly, deeply amenable to formal methods through and through, then even spiritual truths, satisfaction, joy etc should all be graspable with formal methods, given enough memory/computational power. if the universe itself is a mathematical object, then this would have to be true. but maybe memory/space constraints make this impossible to ever answer, I'm not sure if I'm even asking a real question at this point