On Oct 17, 7:34 pm, Steven D'Aprano <steve +comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > That is no more deep and meaningful than the fact that while some people > say "one plus one equals two", others say "eins und eins gleich zwei", > some say "un et un fait deux" and some say "один и один дает два". > Regardless of whether you write two, zwei, два, δυο, 2 (in decimal), 10 > (in binary), II (in Roman numerals) or even {0,1} using set theory > notation, the number remains the same, only the symbol we use to label it > is different.
And Ben said: > A belief that doesn't match reality is a delusion. That doesn't change > when someone thinks it's an epiphany: it's still a delusion. > If a claim about reality doesn't actually match reality, it's untrue. > That doesn't change when someone believes it: it's still untrue, or > claims it's “part of a bigger picture”. These are classical platonist claims: In short objective reality exists aside from the subjective perception of it. Here is an extract from Gurevich's http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gurevich/opera/123.pdf ------------------------------------------ Q: Still, most mathematicians are Platonists, is that right? A: I think so. Q: Somehow we independently grow to become Platonists. A: I do not think it is always independent. To an extent, we learn the attitude. I remember, in a geometry class, my teacher wanted to prove the congruence of two triangles. Let’s take a third triangle, she said, and I asked where do triangles come from. I worried that there may be no more triangles there. Those were hard times in Russia, and we were accustomed to shortages. Q: What did she say? A: She looked at me for a while and then said: “Shut up”. But eventually I got the idea that you don’t have to build a triangle when you need one; all possible triangles exist ahead of time. -------------------------- Quantum physics would not exist if all physicists were as cock-sure of objective reality. Nor would computer science. Heres a capsule history: Kronecker and Cantor disagree on whether sets exist. K: Only numbers exist. C: All manner of infinite sets exist A generation later and continuing Hilbert and Brouwer disagree on what constitutes a proof A generation later Godel sets out to demolish Hilbert's formalist agenda. Turing tries to demolish Godel. He does not succeed (Simple questions turn out to be undecidable/non-computable. However a side-effect of his attempts is... the computer Python version: The integers that exist in builtin type int exist somehow differently from the integers in function nats def nats(): ... n = -1 ... while True: ... n +=1 ... yield n which once again exist differently from the integers in range(10). In short: To be a computer scientist (as against classical scientist) is to know that "to exist" "to be true" "to be valid" are more real valued than boolean predicates -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list