I blush as I write the truism that it is possible, given obvious reasons, that anybody anywhere might discover or hit upon a mathematical truth. Any body. Even NPR listeners. Even DIE commissars. Even, yes, female professors. I blush because this is not only obvious, but it is idiotically obvious, and when you are forced to write something idiotically obvious, you cannot escape a sting to your conscience.
Imagine how the left would lose their minds if they had to face that the classical liberal order rose inextricably intertwined with Christendom and the Catholic church, lol. The entire idea of 'contingent truth' and education for the masses began with the RC and its monks. Ireland pioneered this during the 'Dark Ages', building schools and educating people. By the 12th century this goes more broadly in Europe. And voila, The Age of Reason is born.
The monks ran the schools out of monasteries but also built schools and libraries, while also copying the great works for wide publication. The printing press comes along and changes everything. Now, 'reason' is available to anyone who can read. And in the West, literacy skyrocketed. This changed everything. Anyone could do science and math etc, and you see the explosion of science and math and other fields as a result.
The amazing aspect of all this is the adherence to 'reason', not a 'truth' handed down to you by a king or religious authority or a warlord or tribal leader or the state. Reason is accessible to anyone. As an aside, this is what makes me most angry about the victim activism today - anyone can access the power of science and reason and elevate themselves. All the info is in books you can take out for free at your local library or buy at low cost. You can also often hear lectures by amazing profs online for free.
This is the 'ladder' of progress that all societies can climb. And of course, some societies may have developed certain understandings that are scientific or mathematical, and they all can be folded into the canon of thought on a given subject. It's an open system that only demands logic and reason to participate. This is how we create knowledge in the West and it's how we generated the massive progress all of humanity enjoys now.
What's most maddening about all of this is that there is no barrier to entry to this intellectual world. We welcome people of all creeds, colors, ethnicities etc., and the record shows that. Pretending that the very idea of 'modernity' itself isn't accessible to other people's is ridiculous, and pretending that anything like what the West has created exists in any other culture is even more absurd. The gift of reason is available to all who would pick it up and use it. And those who adhere to it welcome new ideas - but they receive no favor cuz of who creates them. They all must 'win' in the marketplace of ideas and scholarship.
Sadly, the Left has so weakened this system of knowledge creation and has perverted it for their purposes, using the claim of 'science' for their politics. Given that most people cannot even define what 'Modernity' or The Age of Reason even means, it seems they have succeeded in their campaign to denigrate the West and its ideas to most Western peoples.
The Left will destroy anything that stands in the way of their revolution, including and especially 'reason'. Sadly, they don't realize their entire edifice sits atop the foundation they are destroying. Wait until the mob turns on them...But of course, once that happens, anarchy and chaos will reign. There is no guarantee we will recapture the magic the West created for all of humanity.
And this is exactly what they're mad about. Because they think that these "socially constructed" categories of people cannot achieve "equity" without granting special privileges to some while handicapping others. Because even though there are no innate differences between these "social constructs", secret conspiracies keep some of them down while promoting others.
But in the real sciences and in engineering, your work is either useful or not useful, and reproducible or not reproducible. It's unclear how to convince people to use and promote ideas and machines based on the identity of the person who made it rather than based on utility. After decades of success peddling privilege carve-outs in the pseudosciences, it's been very disappointing to discover that the same tactics don't work when applied to things that can be measured and tested (and therefore it must be measurement and testing that are sexist, racist, etc.!)
Great comment. I’d only offer that the status of ideas based on the authority who issued them was the status quo for humanity pre-modernity. It’s not hard to imagine that state at all. Slow ‘progress’ and lots of oppression and depredation, we will simply revert to how things have been for humanity for most of its existence.
As you point your own fingers, lol. It’s a huge mistake of reasoning that many activists make, setting themselves up as morally superior to ill defined ‘others’ who are somehow less enlightened.
"Reason is accessible to anyone" is a lot trickier than it may seem, it depends on the quality and nature of one's reasoning abilities...and a monk could tech Westerners a thing or two about important but not broadly known and appreciated aspects of that.
I think you missed my point. Reaons vs. 'faith' is available to anyone. The degree to which one can reason things through is limited by one's intelligence but it's still there nonetheless.
Ms. Ball is spouting obvious nonsense and she knows it. Making sense is no longer the point — it’s all performative, as demonstrated by Lindsay, Pluckrose and Boghossian, following in the illustrious footsteps of Sokal.
Why do you say I am engaging in non-rational behavior? I am not at all.
I would suggest that you might be doing at least one of the things we stipulated were bizarrely irrational: Either you are jumping to conclusions about how I know what I know, or you think you can read my mind.
Otherwise how is it you assert that I am irrational when you have no way of knowing what I know and how I might know it?
You seem to be quite the little busy-body here. Maybe with a little less quantity and a little more quality you might avoid embarrassing yourself? Just a thought…
One wonders if the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association needs a new entry called ‘Leftism’ .. a mental condition characterised by the individual rocking backwards and forwards whilst speaking gibberish.
Two observations from your first para: (a) I didn't get any "inflamed hackles" or "cringe" at all from your fifth sentence, but that possibly may have been your own fault, in that with your third and fourth sentences you made it way too obvious that you were either joking or trying to trigger your audience; and (b) your later restriction of discussion to professional mathematicians took me by surprise, as I'd read your first sentence literally, without ever considering such an occupational scope. ;)
For your article overall, thank you: it's great fun reading such witty deconstruction, even if the target is so pitiful. :)
Say what you will, but Ms. Ball sure punches above her weight. Someone needs to explain to me why I'm just now hearing about her and she is not yet a Nobel Prize winner ... well, we know why ... all you sexists out there. At the website Womanthology (https://www.womanthology.co.uk/researching-link-mathematics-origin-life-earth-associate-professor-rowena-ball-australian-national-university-canberra/), she sets the bar high (block caps mine for emphasis): “… one of my recent projects concerns the origin of life on Earth, and you might wonder what maths has to do with that. The answer is that we can MODEL the complex steps of chemical evolution, which led to biological evolution in the primordial soup more than 3.8 billion years ago, by WRITING DOWN equations that describe changes in all the interacting chemical species and the TEMPERATURE.
We SOLVE these equations in the computer, and the resulting data tell what conditions MUST HAVE BEEN present for life to emerge ….
These are ‘computational experiments’, which can then guide and inform REAL experiments by OTHER SCIENTISTS in laboratories, and inform the search for extra-terrestrial life.”
Now ya gone and done it, Briggs. Yes, "rotational freedom" is chuckle-worthy, not gonna lie. But you'll have to answer for it if the female special forces pick that ball up and run with it. Let us not be surprised if a new "research field" will soon be birthed as a result. Alas, probably inevitable.
"To which the only rational response is, No, you don’t. You can be utterly ignorant on the workings of internal combustion engines, not having a clue what a piston is or how it might function, and still be able to drive a car. Yet if you were to cruise past Ball, she would say “There goes a mechanical engineer.” "
I laughed at this and my two year old next to me declared "Dats funny daddy!" Ergo-she is obviously a world renown comedian. You see, she was able to ascertain, through complex social cue computations, that the above paragraph was funny, without even being able to read yet!
On a side note, I am going to start doing all my investing through my 4 year old nephew who guessed the closest dollar amount of coins in my dad's coin jar at our families Christmas party. Clearly he is a genius in all financial matters. He has a hot tip on the latest Paw Patrol action figure collection in case anyone else wants in on this action.
I wonder if climate models can model the effect of imaginary transformations of the geographical landscape; for example, the effect on global climate with no Andes mountain range.
I believe there is somewhat of a flaw here...imho indigenous peoples have (or, have the potential for) substantial and maybe even superior phenomenological insights, that could be but are not engaged with within mathematics, to mutual benefit. But Western culture tends to not be interested in such things in an *as* serious way.
Is the de-mathematization of the world a method to pacify the world?
It is often argued that all scientific/technical progress is inspired and geared toward War. All such knowledge is based on math, because mathematics adds structure to any empirical truth.
The extension of knowledge from one domain to another domain is achieved using math, always.
And war is the main industry of mankind.
A professionalization of all war requires the exclusion of amateurs. That is: indigenous people.
The kind of people who cannot count how much food and weapons they need to invade the other little island, far away, and they will be lucky if they find the way to get there.
Conclusion: the current trend in politics is to make sure that the inmates of the asylum are happy and calm. You don't need to know anything to be happy. In fact, the more you know, the more unhappy you become. Just stop opposing resistance and let the smothering mothers/legislators everywhere to change your aboriginal diapers. That will pacify the world, and dissolve nations, and bring untold prosperity to the working class, and we will achieve equality, and the land of milk and honey, and this is not communism at all, shut your piehole.
In reality, war will continue and become worse. And this promotion of ignorance is only a clever way to mark for genocide all the unfit people, according to these lying bastards.
Imagine how the left would lose their minds if they had to face that the classical liberal order rose inextricably intertwined with Christendom and the Catholic church, lol. The entire idea of 'contingent truth' and education for the masses began with the RC and its monks. Ireland pioneered this during the 'Dark Ages', building schools and educating people. By the 12th century this goes more broadly in Europe. And voila, The Age of Reason is born.
The monks ran the schools out of monasteries but also built schools and libraries, while also copying the great works for wide publication. The printing press comes along and changes everything. Now, 'reason' is available to anyone who can read. And in the West, literacy skyrocketed. This changed everything. Anyone could do science and math etc, and you see the explosion of science and math and other fields as a result.
The amazing aspect of all this is the adherence to 'reason', not a 'truth' handed down to you by a king or religious authority or a warlord or tribal leader or the state. Reason is accessible to anyone. As an aside, this is what makes me most angry about the victim activism today - anyone can access the power of science and reason and elevate themselves. All the info is in books you can take out for free at your local library or buy at low cost. You can also often hear lectures by amazing profs online for free.
This is the 'ladder' of progress that all societies can climb. And of course, some societies may have developed certain understandings that are scientific or mathematical, and they all can be folded into the canon of thought on a given subject. It's an open system that only demands logic and reason to participate. This is how we create knowledge in the West and it's how we generated the massive progress all of humanity enjoys now.
What's most maddening about all of this is that there is no barrier to entry to this intellectual world. We welcome people of all creeds, colors, ethnicities etc., and the record shows that. Pretending that the very idea of 'modernity' itself isn't accessible to other people's is ridiculous, and pretending that anything like what the West has created exists in any other culture is even more absurd. The gift of reason is available to all who would pick it up and use it. And those who adhere to it welcome new ideas - but they receive no favor cuz of who creates them. They all must 'win' in the marketplace of ideas and scholarship.
Sadly, the Left has so weakened this system of knowledge creation and has perverted it for their purposes, using the claim of 'science' for their politics. Given that most people cannot even define what 'Modernity' or The Age of Reason even means, it seems they have succeeded in their campaign to denigrate the West and its ideas to most Western peoples.
The Left will destroy anything that stands in the way of their revolution, including and especially 'reason'. Sadly, they don't realize their entire edifice sits atop the foundation they are destroying. Wait until the mob turns on them...But of course, once that happens, anarchy and chaos will reign. There is no guarantee we will recapture the magic the West created for all of humanity.
> they receive no favor cuz of who creates them
And this is exactly what they're mad about. Because they think that these "socially constructed" categories of people cannot achieve "equity" without granting special privileges to some while handicapping others. Because even though there are no innate differences between these "social constructs", secret conspiracies keep some of them down while promoting others.
But in the real sciences and in engineering, your work is either useful or not useful, and reproducible or not reproducible. It's unclear how to convince people to use and promote ideas and machines based on the identity of the person who made it rather than based on utility. After decades of success peddling privilege carve-outs in the pseudosciences, it's been very disappointing to discover that the same tactics don't work when applied to things that can be measured and tested (and therefore it must be measurement and testing that are sexist, racist, etc.!)
Great comment. I’d only offer that the status of ideas based on the authority who issued them was the status quo for humanity pre-modernity. It’s not hard to imagine that state at all. Slow ‘progress’ and lots of oppression and depredation, we will simply revert to how things have been for humanity for most of its existence.
Some useful things have dual usefulness, like destroying the ecosystem.
And you think people want to destroy the ecosystem?
In a sense, not (adequately) wanting to not is the effective equivalent, from an outcomes perspective.
I've noticed that most humans enjoy pointing the finger that others, but are not so fond of pointing it at themselves.
As you point your own fingers, lol. It’s a huge mistake of reasoning that many activists make, setting themselves up as morally superior to ill defined ‘others’ who are somehow less enlightened.
You are without fault in this regard are you?
*at others
"Reason is accessible to anyone" is a lot trickier than it may seem, it depends on the quality and nature of one's reasoning abilities...and a monk could tech Westerners a thing or two about important but not broadly known and appreciated aspects of that.
I think you missed my point. Reaons vs. 'faith' is available to anyone. The degree to which one can reason things through is limited by one's intelligence but it's still there nonetheless.
Is it available to someone with a severe mental handicap, or someone in a coma?
Really? Whatevs.
Oh how I love irony.
Zero substance from you, have you noticed? What is this, Twitter?
I think I figured out who is teaching math to Boeing engineers!
I don't know about mathematics, but retardation clearly knows no sex or ethnic boundaries.
Even obscure, rural, clerics can discover important mathematical truths.
Ms. Ball is spouting obvious nonsense and she knows it. Making sense is no longer the point — it’s all performative, as demonstrated by Lindsay, Pluckrose and Boghossian, following in the illustrious footsteps of Sokal.
Thinking one can read minds is also not peak rationality.
Quite. It’s the same bizarre irrationality as jumping to conclusions about how someone might know something.
So why do you do it, for fun/irony?
Why do I do what?
Engage in non-rational behavior.
Why do you say I am engaging in non-rational behavior? I am not at all.
I would suggest that you might be doing at least one of the things we stipulated were bizarrely irrational: Either you are jumping to conclusions about how I know what I know, or you think you can read my mind.
Otherwise how is it you assert that I am irrational when you have no way of knowing what I know and how I might know it?
You seem to be quite the little busy-body here. Maybe with a little less quantity and a little more quality you might avoid embarrassing yourself? Just a thought…
One wonders if the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association needs a new entry called ‘Leftism’ .. a mental condition characterised by the individual rocking backwards and forwards whilst speaking gibberish.
Two observations from your first para: (a) I didn't get any "inflamed hackles" or "cringe" at all from your fifth sentence, but that possibly may have been your own fault, in that with your third and fourth sentences you made it way too obvious that you were either joking or trying to trigger your audience; and (b) your later restriction of discussion to professional mathematicians took me by surprise, as I'd read your first sentence literally, without ever considering such an occupational scope. ;)
For your article overall, thank you: it's great fun reading such witty deconstruction, even if the target is so pitiful. :)
One can certainly say the great Ball is adept at sending smoke signals. But there was no mention of mirrors, a serious omission.
B-b-b-ut Ada What’s-her-name! And Heddy Lamarr!
(“That’s Hedley.”—I had to insert that, sorry)
My liver makes enzymes, so I must be a biochemist; it makes them in ways that make mathematical sense, so I must also be a mathematician
Say what you will, but Ms. Ball sure punches above her weight. Someone needs to explain to me why I'm just now hearing about her and she is not yet a Nobel Prize winner ... well, we know why ... all you sexists out there. At the website Womanthology (https://www.womanthology.co.uk/researching-link-mathematics-origin-life-earth-associate-professor-rowena-ball-australian-national-university-canberra/), she sets the bar high (block caps mine for emphasis): “… one of my recent projects concerns the origin of life on Earth, and you might wonder what maths has to do with that. The answer is that we can MODEL the complex steps of chemical evolution, which led to biological evolution in the primordial soup more than 3.8 billion years ago, by WRITING DOWN equations that describe changes in all the interacting chemical species and the TEMPERATURE.
We SOLVE these equations in the computer, and the resulting data tell what conditions MUST HAVE BEEN present for life to emerge ….
These are ‘computational experiments’, which can then guide and inform REAL experiments by OTHER SCIENTISTS in laboratories, and inform the search for extra-terrestrial life.”
Now ya gone and done it, Briggs. Yes, "rotational freedom" is chuckle-worthy, not gonna lie. But you'll have to answer for it if the female special forces pick that ball up and run with it. Let us not be surprised if a new "research field" will soon be birthed as a result. Alas, probably inevitable.
"To which the only rational response is, No, you don’t. You can be utterly ignorant on the workings of internal combustion engines, not having a clue what a piston is or how it might function, and still be able to drive a car. Yet if you were to cruise past Ball, she would say “There goes a mechanical engineer.” "
I laughed at this and my two year old next to me declared "Dats funny daddy!" Ergo-she is obviously a world renown comedian. You see, she was able to ascertain, through complex social cue computations, that the above paragraph was funny, without even being able to read yet!
On a side note, I am going to start doing all my investing through my 4 year old nephew who guessed the closest dollar amount of coins in my dad's coin jar at our families Christmas party. Clearly he is a genius in all financial matters. He has a hot tip on the latest Paw Patrol action figure collection in case anyone else wants in on this action.
I wonder if climate models can model the effect of imaginary transformations of the geographical landscape; for example, the effect on global climate with no Andes mountain range.
I believe there is somewhat of a flaw here...imho indigenous peoples have (or, have the potential for) substantial and maybe even superior phenomenological insights, that could be but are not engaged with within mathematics, to mutual benefit. But Western culture tends to not be interested in such things in an *as* serious way.
Is the de-mathematization of the world a method to pacify the world?
It is often argued that all scientific/technical progress is inspired and geared toward War. All such knowledge is based on math, because mathematics adds structure to any empirical truth.
The extension of knowledge from one domain to another domain is achieved using math, always.
And war is the main industry of mankind.
A professionalization of all war requires the exclusion of amateurs. That is: indigenous people.
The kind of people who cannot count how much food and weapons they need to invade the other little island, far away, and they will be lucky if they find the way to get there.
Conclusion: the current trend in politics is to make sure that the inmates of the asylum are happy and calm. You don't need to know anything to be happy. In fact, the more you know, the more unhappy you become. Just stop opposing resistance and let the smothering mothers/legislators everywhere to change your aboriginal diapers. That will pacify the world, and dissolve nations, and bring untold prosperity to the working class, and we will achieve equality, and the land of milk and honey, and this is not communism at all, shut your piehole.
In reality, war will continue and become worse. And this promotion of ignorance is only a clever way to mark for genocide all the unfit people, according to these lying bastards.
"is achieved using math, *always*" - have you a proof to accompany this ambitious comprehensive claim?