Is Our Math Wrong?
I have always had this feeling that our math is wrong. Not wrong completely, but sort of incomplete or inaccurate, in a sense that it fails to map out the universe and reality as it is. It is built on theorems one on the other, the conclusion of one theorem is the premise of another, but when you have hundreds of theorems, it feels like the entire system was broken somewhere earlier, especially after you get into calculus, it looks like the entire system has major problems.
@builderofcastles has suggested to me that things like pi could be a rational number in a different kind of system. And there were ancient Sumerians that understood well trigonometry with weird extras that nobody understands now. I have heard about this too, so it made me think.
0
I have always had the feeling that there is something wrong with the concept "zero". So if you have a situation 1-1=0, it looks good on paper, but this situation literally never happens in the real world. Things never vanish into nothing in the real world.
They either change location, or they change their structure, but they never vanish into nothing. So if you burn a piece of paper, you could say that there was a paper there, and now there isn't. But this is false, a process just happened, the process of burning, that turned the paper into ash. But the paper is still there, just in another form.
Or when you learn in kindergarten to count, they say this basket has 3 apples, if John removes 3 apples, how many apples are left there? Well 3 of course, it's just that they are in John's hands, not in the basket. In the basket there are 0, but that doesn't mean that the apples simply just vanished into nothing, they were just moved into John's hand.
So you can kind of feel, that the concept "zero" is really problematic, and it kind of reinforces this nihilistic view of the world, where everything turns into nothing, but this literally never happens.
Errors
But the problem doesn't just stop there, then you end up with other errors if you go further down the line, things like √-1 or ∞.
The √-1 basically represents incompleteness, it arises frequently when you deal with angles in trigonometry, and it always cancels out if you input the correct angle, and the equation turns into a real number.
The ∞ basically represents a process not a number. If you add 1+1+1.... together for a eternity that would be the concept of infinity, but it's certainly not a number it's a process, it symbolizes an ongoing event rather than a fixed concept.
Conclusion
It sort of looks to me like our current math system fails to distinguish between processes and concepts and they mix them together.
Luckily modern math is researched with the use of computers, where the programming language is more rational than the math description, so you can't really make many mistakes, since the computer won't let you.
You can't run a for loop forever, and say that it's a number, your computer will fry.
So luckily these misconceptions are mitigated in real testing events where we have to use finite resources to uncover the secrets of the world, any bogus math will quickly be unmasked.
But that doesn't mean that we should not pay more attention to this, some concepts may indeed be wrong.
Sources:
https://pixabay.com
Nice post !
A couple more examples how math does not hold up in the real world...
1+1=2 does not always apply in the universe as there are plenty of cases in the real world where the total is more then the sum of it's parts. (working in groups / nutrition of whole foods / a record player and a record combined give music as emerging property / same goes with consciousness and life as the sum of all cells is more compared to adding them all up with currenth math system)
156828 is a bigger number than 100000000000000000 when you look at it from an information angle as the 2nd number can be compressed much smaller similar to a .bmp and .jpg file size. In a universe where everyting is just information the most compressed will occur more often.
I'm quite convinced the way we see math right now will change in the future.
I think I understand what you are saying, but your description can be confusing.
It's not that 1+1 = 3.
It more like if we say 1 object plus another object is 2. And then the subsets of that object each add up to say 1000 parts.
So 1+1 = 2
And consecutively 1000+1000=2000
And logically it would follow that 1000 = 1 since the subsets of the set represent the same thing as the 1 represents.
Yes I think this problem arises from the fractional system how it's represented in the decimal base system.
This is why said a binary number system is more efficient. Fractions could be represented as probabilities, and easily added up, and they always equal 1 in total.
Yes I agree the binary number system is more efficient than the decimal number system. And fractions can also be represented by probabilities. It doesn't always have to be a 1 or 0, it can be a probability assigned to it, where we have 70% for 1 and 30% for 0 for example.
It certainly explains the quantum mechanical phenomena better like the superposition of particles.
Efficiency of a numeric system must be judge of the context that it is used. Ancient civilizations used base 12 by counting the creases on their fingers on one hand instead of counting the fingers on two hands. It is much more efficient in commerce than the decimal system - what is 1/2 of 12, 1/3 of 12, 1/4 of 12. That is why we still see references to 12 (dozen eggs, inches in feet etc.) They also used it to signify sections of space (zodiac). Why are there 360 degrees in a circle (not 100). I have a hypothesis that when they reference the age of the ancient people in the bible that one must remember that they used base 12 as well as they used a lunar calendar. This means that the age of Methuselah was 114 years - still extremely old but far more reasonable than 969.
I have written elsewhere that colour could reasonable be describe base 256 instead of hex code. For
instance red could be ☻,0,0 instead of ff,00,00
btw i got supply in maths hahaha
Well, if we are thinking deeper at math it is subjective too :p
mathilosophy?
Zero.... Maths reverse in existentials questions ;) I had one to remember like this, about the - (less), I'll try to remember. Great post, thanks for sharing.
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@permatek - My last post : How Silicon Valley discovered LSD
I follow a guy on Facebook, Steve Patterson. Very interesting.
http://steve-patterson.com/pi-rational-finite-number/
I wouldn't call it "wrong" exactly, it's an abstraction. And like most, if not all, abstractions it's "leaky."
It's good enough to get us this far though. That is devices that communicate wirelessly across thousands of miles, landing on the moon, sending probes across the galaxy to help us learn...
Eventually we'll learn more, have better theorems and better math. That's the great thing about science, it moves on and improves as we learn more.
But you have to have a certain mindset for creativity, because only creativity creates massive breakthroughts.
And the current adademic/educational system doesn't incentivize innovation, it's an indoctrination based system, you are not taught to question things.
The biggest innovation currently in the world, is the cryptocurrency phenomena. And that wasn't created by a conformist. Satoshi really had a out of the box mentality when creating BTC.
LOL
As a graduate of public school and college, I questioned and continue to question bitcoin. (As does one of my business partners, who has definitely thought outside the box and created something we hope will become big.)
I criticize Bitcoin too:
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@profitgenerator/bitcoin-vs-bitcoin-cash
But otherwise I am confident in the success of cryptocurrencies in general.
Too drunk to read the entire article right now, but from this I think I might finally be getting through to you! ;)
I think Bitcoin will be an utter failure at it's actual goal of being a currency. It's an investment vehicle and always will be.
Something will come along using the concepts of bitcoin though, which might be viable as a currency. Not sure I agree that Bitcoin is corporate backed (no idea where you're getting that from) but there are corporate backed projects working on cryptocurrency that fixes some of the technical limitations of bitcoin.
Good post! I like. Follow you upvote
Read through the post twice. I like the way you think! Now solve for x haha
I love this topic, it has drove me mad for years. We have 360 degree's in a circle, which is meant to represent 1 orbit of the sun, problem being we have 364.25 days in a year, so what happened to the other 4.25 degree's. They were dropped to make maths conveniently work... We have been lied to forever and a day and the masses are simply too enslaved to give a toss :(
I think you are confusing some things there, the angle of a circle has nothing to do with the time it takes for the earth to circle around the sun. The orbit is more elliptical not that smooth circle anyway.
no i think its you who is missing something, sorry but what i stated was perfectly accurate ;)
your reply is that of something my topologist uncle would give. It is complete ignorance of the facts which is understandable from somebody who has been and got letters after their name in the subject that is supposedly the answer to everything, but its broken and needed breaking to work in the first place :/
I can't argue with you if you don't understand basic concepts. The angle of a circle has nothing to do with the time it takes for the earth to circle around the sun.
It's not the same unit of measurement, it's like comparing apples to stones. The observation that the number 360 and 365.25* are close to eachother is just coincidence.
ohh i understand the basic concepts, they just dont work in the real world haha :)
It's 365.25 days. The orbit of the Earth and its rotation are physical realities. Why would you expect to get a round number or even an integer when dividing these two?
I request tangible evidence to substantiate this theory please? until it has been proven without the use of BBB theories and maths or even computer simulations, it is simply another concept, but it is claimed that 360 degree's of a circle represent 1 orbit of the sun, ok so i was maybe a day out, either way there are more than 360 days in a year. They are not representative of one another, yet trigonometry would also be broken if there were anything other than 360 degrees to a circle, everything stems from this premise which is clearly wrong.
Of course this does lead into conspiracies, Im not going to try convincing you that the earth is flat, nor will i try to convince you it is a ball, at the end of the day until it has been proven beyond a shadow of doubt we could be anywhere, I know id rather put my money on us being in some magical realm than either of the other 2 theories myself, but it is still irrelevant its just another divide used to conquer us by government, same as maths, science and languages, there is a very good reason those are the 3 most important subjects in school ;)
The "degree measure" of a circle is a social construct. We inherit it from a long line of users. At some point someone decided to divide the full angle into 360 parts. It's completely artificial. Maybe they thought there were that many in a year but it is much more convenient than 365.25 in a full ange!
I'm not disputing the convenience of it, that is pretty much my point. :D
You said "Things never vanish into nothing in the real world."
I have a philosophical question about this. If a person has an original thought where do you think that it came from? If they die and it is not written down or relayed to someone verbally, then what happens to it?
You don't have to answer unless you just want to, I'm just giving you something else to ponder while you are looking for original thoughts and trying to figure out the problems and inadequacies of our math system.
I would not say it came from nothing, although it certainly could look that way.
There are random variables popping up so it could come from where they do. This is a complex subject and I have already written a few posts about this.
But even if you think that information vanishes after a person dies, it always come back in some other form, so it's not permanent.
Sort of like how you you get a random number with the probability of 0.00000000000000000001%, it's a very rare event. But eventually it will repeat itself.
So any thought or information that arises in somebody's mind, will eventually arise in somebody elses mind in the distant future.
I think that is how nature works basically.
Who knows where some thoughts come from.