Ha! Yay! Yes, now I feel like we're discussing the radicality (radicalness?) of Platonic math ... and how weird mathematicians sound (to me) when they say we're discovering theorems rather than constructing them. 8^)
Perhaps it's helpful to think about the "axiom of choice"? Is a "choosable" element somehow distinct from a "chosen" element? Does the act of choosing change the element in some way I'm unaware of? Does choosability require an agent exist and (eventually) _do_ the choosing? On 12/14/2016 10:24 AM, Eric Charles wrote: > Ack! Well... I guess now we're in the muck of what the heck probability and > statistics are for mathematicians vs. scientists. Of note, my understanding > is that statistics was a field for at least a few decades before it was > specified in a formal enough way to be invited into the hallows of > mathematics departments, and that it is still frequently viewed with > suspicion there. > > Glen states: /We talk of "selecting" or "choosing" subsets or elements from > larger sets. But such "selection" isn't an action in time. Such "selection" > is an already extant property of that organization of sets./ > > I find such talk quite baffling. When I talk about selecting or choosing or > assigning, I am talking about an action in time. Often I'm talking about an > action that I personally performed. "You are in condition A. You are in > condition B. You are in condition A." etc. Maybe I flip a coin when you walk > into my lab room, maybe I pre-generated some random numbers, maybe I look at > the second hand of my watch as soon as you walk in, maybe I write down a > number "arbitrarily", etc. At any rate, you are not in a condition before I > put you in one, and whatever it is I want to measure about you hasn't > happened yet. > > I fully admit that we can model the system without reference to time, if we > want to. Such efforts might yield keen insights. If Glen had said that we can > usefully model what we are interested in as an organized set with > such-and-such properties, and time no where to be found, that might seem > pretty reasonable. But that would be a formal model produced for specific > purposes, not the actual phenomenon of interest. Everything interesting that > we want to describe as "probable" and all the conclusions we want to come to > "statistically" are, for the lab scientist, time dependent phenomena. (I > assert.) -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
