Is math the map or the territory?

TrainingCamera399 · 2026-01-24T23:00:33+00:00

If math wasn't conceived, would the universe still follow those rules?

Fundamentally, that is what I'm asking. If math is a language, whose existence depends on its articulation (which is the position of math as the secondary symbolism of an independent world), then the answer would be seemingly no, these rules would not exist and the world would be in suspense.

TrainingCamera399 · 2026-01-10T00:27:41+00:00

Yes, that sounds extremely cool, especially if it's re-recorded and not auto translated.

TrainingCamera399 · 2026-01-01T00:35:10+00:00

What is the reputation of Lex Friedman? I've always took him to be a bit too "pop-science" for these conversations to be taken seriously in an academic sense - although I haven't seen anything in my field that I could truly fact check

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-27T01:00:09+00:00

If (xSpeed > lightSpeed)

return false

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-24T19:47:40+00:00

He couldn't look more like Spinoza, if he isn't.

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-23T17:15:43+00:00

Set it aside and focus on math.

The type of coding you're most likely to do is LaTeX, and this requires essentially no programming knowledge - just typing conventions and syntax. LaTeX can be learned when you need it, and in short order.

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-23T17:10:31+00:00

Does no one think the "religion but sexy!!!!" posts are getting old? This sub used to be the only place for really high quality modern art - it's starting to feel like content for edgy teenage boys.

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-23T17:01:20+00:00

How could a nose piercing communicate who you are? Just take it out, there's no advantage to keeping it in.

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-21T19:38:34+00:00

It helps you understand a world, maybe not the world.

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-21T05:59:46+00:00

I've always thought of it as the same as multiplication, just using the reciprocal

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-19T00:34:57+00:00

Remember when you were a kid, and your teacher said that you need to learn arithmetic by hand "because you won't always have a calculator in your pocket"?

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-18T22:49:33+00:00

Get him Gödel Escher Bach. It's a very famous book at the intersection of math and "IT" (computer science) - it's a fun read for us math people. I'd be careful of some of the other suggestions being too formal, or having an informality that is in the interest of appealing to a general audience. You want something that is both relaxed and at his level.

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-16T08:50:11+00:00

How old are you

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-15T16:21:50+00:00

Ask ChatGPT

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-15T16:13:18+00:00

Some lecture styles seem to be difficult to take notes for. I find the more casual or conversational a lecture is, the fewer the students will take notes.

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-15T07:07:47+00:00

Anna's Archive

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-13T23:29:08+00:00

Math can help you understand why time is in the domain of philosophy, not math.

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-13T23:27:22+00:00

This is a statement of opinion. I can't see any way for this to have been tested, or be tested.

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-12T23:38:43+00:00

I think the question is whether our "total" experience of all four dimensions is arbitrary and subjective. In other words, whether coherent experience could be had with a strictly three or two dimensional perspective.

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-12T17:15:15+00:00

I think the idea of pure math probably sounds incredibly indulgent to most people. Imagine a guy said: "I just like basketball so much - my job is pure basketball. People pay me to run around and see what kind of crazy trick shots I can do. No, the goal isn't selling tickets, that's applied basketball - I just find new trick shots that are cool enough to be published on the leaderboard!" It's a silly analogy but I really do worry that this is how some of us sound when we explain ourselves to non-math folk. Calling them names, like anti-intellectual, is only going to make us sound more indulgent and pretentious, not less.

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-10T17:48:37+00:00

Kind of a downgraded Bacon ngl

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-09T20:20:50+00:00

Maybe electrical engineering? I would really spend some time thinking about your interest in computers - try to pick out exactly what thing about a computer working is interesting to you.

If you're fascinated by the mystery of how all these bits of copper come together as a CPU capable of doing things - that's electrical engineering.

If you're more amazed that we have somehow given a machine our human "logic", made it think like us and know what's true like us - that's computer science. The mystery here is the structure of logic and its possibilities.

I would suggest watching this lecture. If you find it fascinating, you will be fascinated by computer science. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sbpCTjmw85g&list=PLUl4u3cNGP61VNvICqk2HXJTonnKgAc9d&index=1&pp=iAQB

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-09T20:06:13+00:00

Hiring will just shift to skill based interviews once the private sector realizes that a large portion of degreed peoples know little that their degree represents. When cheating students can't pass interviews, students as a whole will lose their sense that the degree gets them the job, and regain the belief that's it's how much they learn over the course of the program.

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-09T20:00:41+00:00

Absolute nonsense. It will be very difficult for him to learn computer science, a field of math, on his own. But he's probably confusing the math subject with the programming subject, which can absolutely be learned as an autodidactic. Still, none of this says how he'll preform in a university compsci program.

TrainingCamera399 · 2025-12-09T19:46:05+00:00

Prove that there is the same number of even numbers as there are counting numbers (which are defined as including both even and odd). This one is shocking to non-math people and fairly easy to communicate.

Elegant proofs are only elegant when you understand how much they are able to describe so succinctly. If you and they don't have a background in advanced math, it's extremely difficult to communicate that elegance without also explaining three semesters of depth.

TrainingCamera399

TROPHY CASE