On 6/14/2015 2:49 PM, LizR wrote:
On 15 June 2015 at 08:22, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
I'm not saying it's ineffective. I'm saying it's not a mystery why it's
effective.
Because the universe appears to operate on principles that map very well onto some parts
of maths,
I think that's an illusion of selective attention. Remember how Kepler thought the size
of the planetary orbits were determined by nesting the five Platonic solids. An
impressive example of the effective of mathematics - except it turned out there weren't
just five planets. Now we regard the orbits as historical accidents and predicted by any
mathematics. Instead we point to fact that they obey Newton's law of universal
gravitation to great accuracy. Another impressive example of the effectiveness of
mathematics...except it's slight wrong and Einstein's spacetime model works better.
and may even map exactly (we have no reason to think not - every improvement in
measurement so far indicates this,
Except when they don't.
but there will always of course be room for doubt - just room that's been getting
steadily smaller over the last few centuries).
But you haven't said why it does so. I may not agree with Bruno or Max Tegmark, but at
least they have a theory for why this
They have a theory for why THIS might be so no matter what THIS is. You just have to find
the right mathematics to describe it and miracle of miracles the mathematics is obeyed!
Brent
/might/ be so, and I haven't seen any definitive demonstration of mistakes in their
theories as yet (there are lots of suggestions that may become definitive with more
work, of course).
So far, your answer to the question of the "unreasonable effectiveness" of maths is
basically "It works that way because it works that way, I can't explain it - but trust
me, it isn't worth explaining."
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