On the Weaknesses of the Mathematical Mind

https://uneasymoney.com/2019/10/04/jack-schwartz-on-the-weaknesses-of-the-mathematical-mind/https://uneasymoney.com/2019/10/04/jack-schwartz-on-the-weaknesses-of-the-mathematical-mind/

by brandonlc • 7 years ago

8 2 7 years ago

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defaultcompany• 7 years ago

This reminds me of a great talk by Bartosz Milewski [1] about the motivation and philosophy behind category theory. He makes the observation that our "monkey brains" are not good at dealing with complexity at all and we only really have one good strategy for dealing with it, that being to chop up complex problems into smaller, simpler problems which we can solve in isolation and then combine the results back together to approximate a solution to the larger problem. His point is that we do this everywhere and therefore it's no wonder that category theory is able to describe so many disparate areas of mathematics - because it's really describing just this mechanism, not some deep truth about the universe itself. Like - what if we as humans are so "register bound" that we can't solve any problems which can't be chopped up and put back together like this - such as those in the social sciences. His presentation style is wonderful - i recommend the whole talk but this part starts at 37:20.

[1] https://youtu.be/I8LbkfSSR58

Josh379• 7 years ago

This is a beautiful thought; however, it doesn’t prove that social problems are unsolvable. Despite the political bitterness so prevalent today, historically, we are on a good social trajectory with better understanding of our biases and prejudices.

On the Weaknesses of the Mathematical Mind

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