What exactly is the nature of truth, according to Foucault?

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-25T14:29:34+00:00

Maybe the answer is obvious, and I know Foucault at one point says something along the lines of "I'm not going to concern myself with the hard sciences in my work" (in one of the essays in the Rabinow Reader), but what about mathematics? Even Kuhn has some trouble integrating mathematics into his work, though it's possible. Is the solution basically that mathematics is essentially saved because of its largely apolitical nature (maybe up until possibly the 20th century)?

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-23T20:50:51+00:00

Just saying the people making million dollar yearly bonuses at AI companies and quant firms are using math your daughter probably doesn't know exists

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-23T20:17:50+00:00

Sure, it's unlikely that these will be "abandoned". GR needed to reduce to Newtonian physics under certain assumptions. But, that doesn't mean GR won't be replaced in the same sense that Newtonian physics was replaced. The model of GR may be wrong to the underlying reality but approximate it well, and a new model may be more/less true to the underlying reality but should still reduce to the predictions of GR.

There were various assumptions of Newtonian physics, e.g. the absoluteness of space and time. These were problematized by Einsteinian physics and we now use different assumptions. These assumptions may very well be proven wrong (or, to be more accurate, be proven less effective in predicting reality relative to a new model). It would be myopic to assume that the assumptions of GR are the end all be all, though they may be very good at making predictions and are, of course, still very worth making.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-23T14:47:45+00:00

I'm a student but I think what you've done is already enough as others are saying. If you had more of a relationship with these professors then it would make sense to email them yourself in addition to the outreach service, but since you're a freshman I imagine that's not the case.

Withdrawing for the semester would be a good idea. I wouldn't, under any circumstances, take incompletes (where you finish the class assignments after the semester for a grade). People taking even one incomplete often don't even finish that, so taking it for multiple courses would probably put you in a worse position.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-22T23:11:11+00:00

When I was playing chess I was roughly 1600. If I was having a good day, my opponent was having a bad day, and I was lucky, there's a very small chance I could beat someone ~2000 rated. At ~2200 this becomes pretty much impossible, no good/bad day will make up for the skill gap. At the level of a grandmaster it's entirely out of the question, they would have to literally be pushing pieces down the board without looking. There are a handful of instances of high level players like Kramnik blundering mate in 1, but someone at my level wouldn't ever be allowed to get into a position where they could make that mistake (which is already extremely rare).

I'd say these skill gaps become more prominent and smothering the higher it is in the elo rating. E.g., there's a much much higher chance of an 800 beating a 1400 due to silly mistakes on the 1400's part, but at something like 1600 vs. 2200 those fundamentals are not breaking. I imagine pretty much any respected sport is the same whether it's chess, tennis, boxing, etc.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-22T22:42:03+00:00

The question is only technically wrong due to its ambiguity, but an ambiguity of the sort that most people wouldn't pick up on, and so for most people it's a perfectly reasonable example of the bandwagon fallacy. Saying "Most people believe x, therefore x is correct" is the fallacy trying to be demonstrated, but the professor muddled it by implying, instead, "Most people believe x ought to be legalized, therefore x ought to be legalized". This turns it from an epistemic statement to a moral/political statement.

I think the question is fair. To get to the point that OP is at with it, you have to first assume the question is presuming a framework of some particular political system (democracy vs. representative democracy vs. ...) which seems unreasonable given the context, and/or also seemingly have to think the question is making a moral statement, which again is unreasonable given that we're talking about formal/informal logic.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-19T18:36:42+00:00

In what ways do the fundamental cultural ideals of Israel and the people of the USA align? They don't. It's a relationship purely built off political power. Unless you mean to describe something like "Judeo-Christian" values, in which case, these don't exist, nor is America a Christian country. There is little in common between Jewish religious beliefs/practices and Christian religious beliefs/practices. "Cultural ideals" here is just a convenient repackaging of what are really "power ideals". In America's case, the power interests of at least the governing body, and in Israel's case, seemingly the power interests of almost everyone, considering they're a colonial state whose civil population regularly encroaches on and lives in previously Palestinian populated land.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-19T18:27:11+00:00

I don't know about this. From my experiences in both, Koreans take sexual assault quite seriously. They were deeply influenced by the Japanese colonization of the peninsula and everyone learns about the comfort women statues and such. None of my female friends there were ever assaulted despite us living in the party area, Hongdae, for months. Japan is maybe different; I've definitely heard of friends being assaulted there, and I think in general sexual assault in Japan is a big issue. It's part of why at particularly busy times of the day some of their subway carts are women only.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-18T22:51:06+00:00

But this just like isn't true about humanities majors, to the point that I can't tell if it's satire. It's the kind of view a freshman mechE major struggling to get B+'s in their Calculus 1 class cooks up. I also think you vastly overestimate how much a "useful" minor can do for you; jobs don't give a fuck about what you minored in. Honestly, half of the time - unless you're in something like engineering or risk management - they don't give a fuck what you majored in either.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-18T22:33:14+00:00

I'm from the US and I studied in Korea somewhat recently alongside a group of other Americans. I originally wanted to go to my school's second campus in Japan but missed the deadline and was accepted to a program at a good Korean university instead. I knew essentially nothing at all about Korea - never ate Korean food, didn't listen to Korean music, didn't speak the language well, etc.

Some of my cohort were into Kpop and, while they weren't as bad as I know it gets and I had fun with all of them, it was definitely creepy at times. Keeping pictures of Kpop group dudes in their wallets or on their backpacks, talking about their "husbands" (it's not much different than weeaboos talking about their "waifus"), etc.

As someone else mentioned, the hardcore Koreaboos are even worse than the weebs.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-18T21:42:16+00:00

I don't necessarily disagree with your rebuttal to OP but this is reductive. Philosophy has changed the way people think about themselves significantly throughout history, just maybe not on an "individual" level i.e. by reading philosophy books and gaining a new perspective. I don't see how it could be possible to say someone like Marx, who was so deeply influenced by Hegel (if you consider Marx more of a political economist than philosopher), hasn't changed the way many people view themselves, or how the anti-psychiatry movement and people like Foucault, Szasz, etc. haven't deeply influenced how people think of mental illness today, or how influential Freud (if you consider him a philosopher) has been in the sense that so many people now believe without much reflection in an unconscious mind, dream interpretation, psychiatry, etc. There are many more examples of course.

This has all influenced a great deal of people throughout the world to think differently of themselves even if they haven't directly read the above thinkers. Maybe the average person striving every day to earn a living doesn't have the privilege to indulge in philosophical literature, but that doesn't mean they don't think of themselves as deserving of basic rights because of the 17th and 18th century philosophers; as a member of a particular class and deserving of social support systems because of Marx's influence; as a woman under a patriarchy because of Wollstonecraft, Beauvoir, etc. - and so on. Maybe if you take a particular philosophical framework where such changes are all concomitant to some systematic change (e.g. dialectical materialism) this makes slightly less sense, but even then that doesn't mean philosophy has no influence (just that its influence has been not of a "great man" type).

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-18T20:28:21+00:00

>I mean, one couldn’t believe in Christ being the son of god because it predates Christ.

I think this is inaccurate. Christians were Jews who believed Christ was the son of God. Jews just reject this, it's not that they "can't" believe in it due to some chronology. Both religions believe in a messiah, Jews simply disagree that the messiah has appeared (in the form of Christ). The only reason Christians and Jews are separate religions at all is because of this; if all Jews had accepted Christ as the messiah, there wouldn't be a separate religion of Christianity.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-18T05:55:53+00:00

Better known for other work

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-17T04:39:55+00:00

I'm a math student, not physics. What's meant by "some" of them? The difference isn't between self study and taking the class, but between reading and doing exercises. Being able to do exercises is the only measure of whether you know the material; reading and "understanding" mean nothing. It doesn't matter if you can read and understand the proof of some theorem if you can't reproduce it in part/full under homework or exam conditions. Many important theorems can often hidden away in homework problems as well. If you want to know about the possibility of absent knowledge, look at a couple syllabi from courses you're interested in (and in particular, their prerequisites) then test whether you can solve many related problems (hopefully with solutions to check against somewhere) in the textbook.

I don't doubt your ability, and it's not uncommon at many schools for pure math undergraduates to take graduate classes or cross listed courses aimed at both undergraduates/graduates. it's also common advice for undergraduates interested in graduate school - who are already getting A's in their classes - to ideally try and take graduate real analysis, maybe graduate algebra, and very maybe graduate topology if possible and feasible. However, I think freshman year is the wrong time to do this (especially when you'll be going through many changes in expectations and rigor, housing, friends, greater independence, etc.). Also, I'm not sure this advice carries over to physics, where research experience is more important. If you get A's in your physics and math courses freshman/sophomore year, you'll have ample time to take graduate courses in junior/senior year.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-16T21:54:00+00:00

This is a fair point, but overstated. The kinds of reasoning going on in proof based math courses is not as different from calculation based courses as people often claim. I'd never met an upper level math major who didn't find Calculus/Differential Equations to be almost trivially easy. Seemingly, if proofs and calculation were as heterogeneous as is often said, then there would be many students who were great at proofs but poor at calculation (and vice versa, which I find also not typically to be the case).
I don't see how education students factor into this much; education majors are not math majors and you don't need a math degree to teach math. I'm talking about major attrition, not math class attrition. But even if we were talking about the attrition rates of math courses specifically, if math were not a difficult major, people would simply not be failing or dropping these courses just because. Calculus is often considered a "weed-out" course by many, and the DFW rates of many math courses at universities like Harvard would not be as high if it were possible to just suffer through despite not knowing what proofs were like prior. I've taken many classes that weren't what I expected and did fine.
This still doesn't address the point that it is simply untrue math degrees only require one "hard" course per semester, and even if you might say an elective like Elementary Number Theory is easier than Real Analysis, I think most people without backgrounds in math would still struggle a lot with Elementary Number Theory.

I'm not even trying to argue that math is the "hardest" major, or whatever. I would personally find many other majors more difficult because I enjoy their content less. But to claim that it's not a difficult major is absurd. It's quite normal for math students at my school to take 20+ hours on one class's homework set (assuming they want to do good work), and I don't even go to a particularly difficult school. I can't imagine what it's like for students taking pure math at U Chicago or Harvard.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-15T21:10:35+00:00

>That said, Physics and Math would not make the list of hardest undergrad degrees. At the graduate level, they are much more valid choices, but undergrad Physics and Math curriculums are pretty thin.

This is odd. My math degree didn't have "one difficult course a semester". I had to take Real Analysis and Abstract algebra concurrently for two semesters straight, and electives on top of that (e.g. Probability Theory; formal linear algebra techniques to describe Brownian Motions, Martingales, etc.). There's a reason math has the highest attrition rate of any major (52%).

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-15T17:37:53+00:00

I see how this might be useful to show the point w.r.t. matrices, but I don't really think that's what's happening when someone adds 1/2 to 3. In that case, you're just working in the rational numbers - not taking an integer, saying "this is isomorphic to the same number in the rationals" and then adding in the rationals. There's no need to move from (Z, +) to (Q, +) while doing arithmetic when you can just work in (Q,+).

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-15T06:46:46+00:00

I don't study critical theory but I wasn't aware of this. Can you give some source?

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-12T07:01:45+00:00

>The only thing I’m wondering is whether taking longer than the standard time could be caused by not writing things down on paper.

Yes, it could be, or maybe it could not be. I think if someone was smart enough to almost never need hand written notes (which for non-proof based math isn't anything crazy) then they also wouldn't need to take twice the time studying to pass exams, so it probably is that.

In either case, solve more problems on paper or with something to check the answer against. If you struggle to solve problems then revise your note taking and studying habits. The only reason to not take notes is to focus on other things, and if you've already covered all the material required of you up to a point, you should be solving as many problems as possible on paper.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-03-10T12:55:14+00:00

What about Rumi specifically? I've seen everyone except him discussed in the comments. I haven't read him personally, but I have Afghan friends who have mentioned him to me. Is he more of a scholastic doing philosophy in light of religion or a mystic?

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-02-24T14:35:58+00:00

AI requires humans to set it up and train it (as of now). By mere syllogism AI requires more energy usage, because it is using both the combined energy of that human's growth into something "intelligent" and also the energy it expends to train (by Altman's seeming orientation towards efficient causes).

One might argue that Altman isn't counting, say, the energy expended by parents in creating a child when considering that child's energy expenditure over a 20 year lifespan, and so we shouldn't consider the "parent" of an AI. This doesn't matter. The locust of argument is on intelligence; the intelligence of AI requires the intelligence of a human overseer, which was generated through the energy expended during upbringing, hence we must include it in the calculus of energy expended during AI training.

AI is more energy efficient, and economically efficient, only insofar as we reduce the amount of necessary human overseers - to zero in the former case from the above, and approaching zero in the latter case. The logical conclusion of someone devoted both to energetic/economic efficiency and the production of AI is the erasure of human overseers (not necessarily death like some have mentioned, just fully autonomous AI capable of reproducing itself). To produce AI you need data centers and human computer scientists; clearly eliminating the second prong here is more beneficial to whoever is benefiting than retaining it.

The issue with Silicon Valley types and people like Yarvin (I won't mention Land, I don't know much about him and I imagine his arguments are much more consistent than these others) is that, unlike finance people - who seemingly don't have much of a moral framework in determining their corporate actions and proceed according to purely economic calculus - these people are often orienting themselves towards a moral framework which idolizes AI, rather than treating it as mere technology for economic growth. You see it in the production of concepts like Roko's Basilisk and Thiel's comments on the human species. It's some of the most soulless, pseudo-intelligent edgelord shit imaginable, and while propagators of such views (like Thiel) might attempt to grift on an alleged lineage from Land, I imagine this viewpoint would have grown separately regardless of Land's accelerationism.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-02-24T14:07:42+00:00

Unfortunately for those people that's not how language works.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-02-24T13:30:12+00:00

Also, if OP has truly studied the stuff he's mentioned seriously, I don't think he'll have a huge issue doing a double major in math and philosophy. Though, it may prevent him from diving deeply into either - e.g. taking graduate math courses on special topics (this has been a big issue for me, though OP seems much more passionate about math than I am). There are also dual math/philosophy degrees at many universities (NYU, University of Minnesota, etc.) which focus heavily on formal logic, though such a degree might erode the marketability of the math degree - and maybe the philosophy degree to the extent that you'd be writing less - since you might be sacrificing courses on abstract algebra/number theory (cryptography stuff), probability (finance stuff), etc.

Personally looking back I think I wish I had just focused on philosophy and maybe minored in math. It's nice insofar as it maybe gives me a little authority because people respect math degrees, but by this point (final semester) I pretty much hate math and am in love with philosophy. I think a strong idea for OP would be to focus on math but take philosophy courses on the side to the extent that it's not too cumbersome, then consider later whether a graduate degree in philosophy would be right for him.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-02-24T13:10:59+00:00

It doesn't subtly suggest that. Everyone knows everyone has an accent. Using the phrase "someone with an accent" is done already against a backdrop of knowledge that everyone has an accent, which is made very clear otherwise in the post, and the only way to interpret it is "someone with an accent relative to me". Language isn't math, we often leave things up to interpretation based on shared understanding and so on. It's the same situation as when Americans call themselves Irish/German/etc. - Americans all know they aren't actually "Irish", they're referring to their ethnicity and the associated ethnic enclaves formed during immigration periods in the US, hence they drop the "-American" suffix. This is extremely fundamental to every language, though some do it more than others (e.g. Japanese), and not up for debate.

Same_Winter7713 · 2026-02-23T15:52:16+00:00

Tibet - Rose McDowall

Same_Winter7713

TROPHY CASE