/sci/ - Science & Math

>>2658684
Not that anon, but Chaos is supposed to be a "different" kind of science because of the nonlinearity of the equations involved and because of the intuitiveness and surprising effectiveness of fractal geometry. That said, the book is 20 years old and there must be something newer and updated available.

I recommend The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought by Thomas Kuhn

Philosophy is the most objective field of study there is, because it takes the least for granted and tries to prove everything. It is the least subjective, the least biased, the most proven.

What is more questionable is whether it leads anywhere. Some say it begins in wonder and ends in confusion.

>>2652966
I just got back from being gone all day and I wanted to say THANKS for taking the time to explain this. Sadly, this WAS the most interesting conversation I've had all day.

>>2652814
The point is, how do people who protect animals sometimes and kill them sometimes think about it? What are the actual moral beliefs these people have? I assume that you don't talk to such people, so perhaps a fictional treatment would get your imagination started, but if you don't like to use fiction in this way, the original question still stands.

>>2652841
Very interesting. So, if you have a moment: suppose I imagine two cubes next to each other, each with some function graphed in it. Now I want to use this to understand, say, a discrete change in c that leaves xyz untouched. How do I map the graph from the cube 1 to cube 2 so as to show that points a1 and a2 are identical in the xyz axes but differ in c?

>>2652794
This is probably the most interesting conversation I'll have today.

>>2652770
But since every herder, rancher, etc in human history has confronted this issue, simultaneously caring for animals and being prepared to kill them--i.e., granting them some moral consideration without treating them as one things humans should be treated--why not find out what they actually think, instead of assuming that (just because you can't imagine it) there's no valid line of thought that they could have? I mean, have you even read Charlotte's Web?

>>2652750
Very helpful indeed. Thanks. If you have a moment for follow-up: is there any way to move from (x1, y1, z1, c1) to (x1, y1, z1, c2)? Or is that beyond the representational resources of this system?

(In case I've stepped on my tie again--given only one spot on the page satisfied (x1, y1, z1), I'm inferring there's only one spot on the page that satisfies (x1, y1, z1, cn) for all n.)

But almost everyone knows that animals deserve some protection. Very few people are completely immune to all suffering of all animals. To argue from that to vegetarianism is at best a slippery slope and at worst a non sequitur. People can be quite happy eating fish but not beef, or beef but not dog. So you're trying to base an argument from possible sentiments towards animals without addressing the actual sentiments actual people actually have.

>>2652685
Dumbass here...how do you model the fourth dimension as color? I understand that color is just another variable, like displacement in one of the 3 dimensions you can visualize in a 2-D diagram with foreshortening, but I can't visualize changes in the color of the diagram representing a fourth spacelike dimension.

The hell you think linguistics means learning foreign languages or teaching foreign languages or something? Is that what you're saying you think?

the Franklin Mint

Cancer is constantly mutating. The neoplastic genome is highly unstable. And it could become airborne, as much as any other cell can become airborne. But it is not communicable. Except in Tasmanian Devils.

I think σ(n) is the sum of the divisors of n including n. So σ(10) = 1+2+5+10 = 18. Now 10 and 18 are not coprime. Nor is it a prime or a power of a prime, so it is not solitary.

Look: there is no science of how to live. There is no science of what is of real value and what is idle. There is no science of government, of ethics, of family life, of love. There is no science of history, of beauty, of loyalty, of courage. Science is untouchable for the rational understanding of what we can observe and measure reliably and repeatedly. But there's a hell of a lot more to think about than that.

ITT a bunch of nerds pretending to have ideas about human life.

>>2641969
Philosophy=love of knowledge

>>2641732
Enter the job market as a thoughtful person who can speak and write well. Learn on the job. University is not vocational training.
>>2641888
Yeah, in the states you need a college degree to enter law school. I think the first year of law school is unlearning all the ethics and cooperative impulses acquired during college.

>>2641928
Each element must be chosen either yes or no (2 choices) for each subset (n times). Choose yes or no for the first element and that divides the subsets into 2 groups (those with and those without the first element). Then those groups are each divided into 2 groups for the second element (those with and those without the second element). Thus the size of the set of subsets doubles each time you choose with respect to an element. By the time you've chosen for all the elements, the set of subsets has doubled n times.

>>2641890
No, it's right (though your notation for exponentiation is nonstandard). Consider. The power set is the set of all subsets. So consider a set of cardinality n. Each subset must make a choice {yes, no} with regard to each element. So the number of subsets is the number of ways to make all of these choices: 2x2x...x2 (string length=n). This is 2^n.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/settheory-alternative/#NaiSetThe
Sets members of themselves indeed.

The head is at the top of our bodies, but it used to be in front.

I don't know what Leibniz's philosophical motivations were in developing calculus, but philosophically, the most interesting issue has to do with infinitesimals. He and Newton believed in them; Berkeley decried them; Cauchy and Weierstrass obviated the need for them; and Abraham Robinson proved that they do exist. Fascinating.

Georgia Tech is just a wonderful intellectual atmosphere. Texas A&M has nice places to learn but it's mostly a dumbass dumpster.

Free podcasts: Philosophy Bites and In Our Time.