Eureka! II
2005.05.30 11:37

Recently I found two of very insightful comments among many.
One is Morosoph's Math is not just another language. For those who are not philosophy major, the true value of his comment might be hard to see though, I intend to make a comprehensive analysis on his this very insightful comment on the essence of relationship between mathematics and language. Soon.
The other one is Marxist Hacker 42's Re:A big part of war. His comment is a little bit generalised and especially as to the extension of the theory to the two World Wars, I have something to say.
Coming soon.
In case you were not found Morosoph's comment, here is the one.
Mathematics is not just another language (Score:3, Insightful) by Morosoph (693565) on 2005.05.12 8:27 (#12504527) (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tim.wesson/ Last Journal: 2005.04.13 23:06)
Maths has a language, but it is a lot more, or a lot less, depending upon which way one want to look at it.
Maths is the art of finding what must be true within a system often expressed in liguistic form, but whereas a language is a local (though often approximately copied) utilitarian structure that binds meaning together; mathematics is a one-to-one mapping of a structure that is found to be the same by all practicing mathematicians (which is pretty close to objectivity if you ask me) onto an agreed linguistic form. When mathematicians use different symbols and reasoning, they still find the same things to be true as they find when they use the original set. That is: the linguistic element is arbitary to a high degree; it is not the important thing; rather: the underlying structure that exists before it is expressed symbolically is what is important.
If you believe maths to be, rather than having a language, you will not be a very competent mathematician, for you will be inclined to engage in symbolic manipulation as an arbitary and bizzare exercise without intuiting the underlying nature of mathematical truth.
When I say that maths can be viewed as being less than a language, I mean that the above-mentioned structure is highly restrictive. The potential of using mathematics for conveying "human meaning" (to do with day-to-day judgement and decision-making) is extremely poor. Insofar as mathematics is used to help in everyday matters, it does so by analysing a system that is intuited to have the right properties. Normal language and reasoning is then used to build an analogy [slashdot.org] with the phenomenon under consideration, but common language and understanding build the bridge, not mathematics.
-- Why you Should use 'Viral' Licenses [slashdot.org]
And the Marxist Hacker 42's
Re:A big part of war (Score:3, Funny) by Marxist Hacker 42 (638312) * on 2005.05.25 7:56 (#12628739) (http://www.informationr.us/ Last Journal: 2005.05.28 4:45)
Got that last bit backwards. War is the natural end result of IMPERIALIST NATIONALISM, of which RACISM is a historical subset because not so long ago people of different races rarely found their way to become a citizen of another country (heck, less than 500 years ago 90% of the human race lived and died within 10 miles of where they were born).
Go back even further, and imperialist nationalism is just tribalism written on a large scale. We've got a couple of million years of evolution wiring us to be culturalist- and for those of relatively low intelligence the most outward sign of culture is race (it isn't for me- but a talk with Red Warrior convinced me that this is yet another way that I'm normal and the rest of the world is strange).
It's really thanks to that evolution that war and racism happen- and there are only two real solutions for the problem: 1. Evolve more. 2. Recognize that racism/culturalism/nationalism is a common trait of being human- and design our societies to avoid trade and contact with other cultures.
The first is best described by the aim of those worshiping "diversification", the second by those worshiping St. Augustine's Just War theory of never being an invader. Unfortuneately, due to an accident of history that wiped out most of the native population in America, most Americans are of the first- and most of the rest of the world is the second. Every one of our foreign wars can be traced to this basic conflict in philosophy, except for WWI and WWII- where the main force we were fighting against had a perverted combination of the two (invading but not putting up with diversity).
-- Ideas Inform, Relationships Transform
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Thanks for That!(Score:2)
by Morosoph (693565) on 2005.05.30 19:06 (#12675303) (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tim.wesson/ Last Journal: 2005.09.17 20:46)
You need to fix your link though, so it reads http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=148921 &pid=12504117#12504527 [slashdot.org]!
You missed a ':' after the "http", so you got a relative jump, rather than an absolute one.
As for MH42's comment, I wouldn't say that all war is tribal; some is reasonable defence of something intrinsically worthwhile. However, an awful lot is, and our biology affects us even when we're acting freely. Strangely, many believe ourselves to be acting most morally when held in the most vice-like grip of tribalism; leniency is 'cowardly', and intelligent action is a failure to respect 'the victim' (the enemy, however, only receives 'justice').--Why you Should use 'Viral' Licenses [slashdot.org]
Re:Thanks for That!(Score:1)
by mercedo (822671) on 2005.05.31 22:41 (#12683401) (http://slashdot.org/~mercedo/journal/109855 Last Journal: 2005.09.27 11:22)
For a try starter, I wrote on the nature of things behind reasonable approach both by linguistic and mathematical means. Here [slashdot.org]is my argument, any comment welcome.--Ancient Greek Philosophers -18c Enlightenment Thinkers -Slashdotters