4 ms·

[flagged]

by quinndupont 4mo ago

[flagged]

vessenes 4mo ago
I don’t love the tone here, but I do think you get at a key question in mathematical philosophy. Mathematicians have engaged, vigorously, on this very philosophical question for centuries - is math discovered truth, or is it more akin to building an edifice where you first define the materials, then the structure, and see where it leads? There are lots of strong feelings on both sides. For instance: “God created the integers, the rest is the creation of man” — Kronecker, 19th century sums up one particular perspective. To me, it’s probably a mix of both - some fantastic results in imaginary numbers show up as describing key electromagnetic effects many decades after they were first ‘discovered’ by theoretical mathematicians. NB: My original comment led with a pejorative, which was rightly flagged.
- dang 4mo ago
  > Who hurt you bro? Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - vessenes 4mo ago
    My apologies. I’m out of the edit window, so I can’t remove it, but I tried!
    - dang 4mo ago
      Appreciated! I've re-opened it for editing if you want to. For us the main point is just to fix things going forward!
      - vessenes 4mo ago
        Thanks Dan, much appreciated!
dang 4mo ago
Can you please make your substantive points without fulminating, as the site guidelines request (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)? We're trying for curious conversation here, and you've clearly got something interesting to say, but when you put it this aggressively, curiosity gets fried (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20withers%20fries&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)

4 ms·

[flagged]

by quinndupont 4mo ago

[flagged]

vessenes 4mo ago
I don’t love the tone here, but I do think you get at a key question in mathematical philosophy. Mathematicians have engaged, vigorously, on this very philosophical question for centuries - is math discovered truth, or is it more akin to building an edifice where you first define the materials, then the structure, and see where it leads? There are lots of strong feelings on both sides. For instance: “God created the integers, the rest is the creation of man” — Kronecker, 19th century sums up one particular perspective. To me, it’s probably a mix of both - some fantastic results in imaginary numbers show up as describing key electromagnetic effects many decades after they were first ‘discovered’ by theoretical mathematicians. NB: My original comment led with a pejorative, which was rightly flagged.
- dang 4mo ago
  > Who hurt you bro? Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - vessenes 4mo ago
    My apologies. I’m out of the edit window, so I can’t remove it, but I tried!
    - dang 4mo ago
      Appreciated! I've re-opened it for editing if you want to. For us the main point is just to fix things going forward!
      - vessenes 4mo ago
        Thanks Dan, much appreciated!
dang 4mo ago
Can you please make your substantive points without fulminating, as the site guidelines request (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)? We're trying for curious conversation here, and you've clearly got something interesting to say, but when you put it this aggressively, curiosity gets fried (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20withers%20fries&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)