Well said! Of course, my contrarian nature (and my laziness) forces me to cross-check a proposition from one narrative to another, which is what lead me to the Ramsey sentence concept and what I find intriguing about category theory. I'm completely incompetent to talk about anything Carnap did or any component of category theory, really. And I'm not a mathematician or philosopher. But I do grok reusable components, composition, and [ab]use.
Consuming any narrative *is* self-programming. You are what you eat, be it Rick and Morty or Quantum ElectroDynamics. For those of us who program themselves *toward* a (mythical) objective, the question becomes one of nature-nurture. Is self-programming built in or acquired? And what's the value of a liberal education (or travel as a kid)? Can self-programming be modified ... programmed-self-programming? Or are we doomed to be just like that old person, accidentally radicalized by the Fox News playing 24/7 in the nursing home? On 1/5/21 1:36 PM, jon zingale wrote: > To be clear, I was commenting on what math study feels like. The worst of it > being when I do not actually follow a proof (due to laziness, > ill-preparedness, or any other lack of ability) and somehow come to rely on > the theorem as fact. I suppose this is both unavoidable and an illustration > of my own capacity to blindly follow a perceived authority. > > It sounds to me that you are speaking of an explorative mathematical > practice, one with a fixed logic and a context. One where deductions act as > a holonomic constraint for deriving further tautologies[1]. While there is > something of this in any mathematical exploration, I feel that the > characterization is a bit thin. In my experience, the acquisition of > mathematical ideas come with a psychological/conceptual development on my > part, and not simply *more of the same* as *tautology* would imply. This > subjective experience I would not only hesitate to abstract away but > possibly consider the meaningful content. The changes to my mind are what I > seek in mathematical practice, and something like auto-suggestion appears to > sit at its core. > > [1] to paraphrase Wittenstein -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
