2+2=4

wil

wil

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a figment of your imagination
Now there are maths in which this won't work....

But for us...for most of what we do...we find this not only valuable, but we agree on it.

Like the earth is round(ish) we agree on that too. It wasn't always so before (and even well after) Pythagorus said it, another proved it, but it wasn't until Magellan that they got all the way around...and even then there were disbelievers... but most of us have come to know it to be so....

And pictures from space helped as well....

Well we have no pictures of heaven or hell. We've got no evidence that the world can grasp on the hereafter...

Why is this...because it hasn't been proven to all. We've got conjecture and opinion...learned conjecture and opinion to be sure...but we have it not only on both sides, but on all sides...

Atheist to Zorastrian... with Buddhist, Christian, Diests, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Pagans, Rastas, Taoists and umpteen more in between each with dozens, hundreds or thousands of variations within them.

So each post on this site is accompanied with the invisible caveat..."This is my belief, my understanding, my opinion of what we are discussing, yours may vary."
 
If only it were so simple. *Sigh*. It has become quite fashionable to choose the right to believe that 2+2 does not equal 4. Why? Because the person does not want to believe it, or believing it is inconvenient. And their 'right' to believe something trumps any facts to the contrary.

If people can take such an attitude towards information that is factual, what chance do we have on the spiritual/religious information that you are talking about?
 
I don't think so GK...of course I am the rose colored glasses guy.

We can agree on straight forward facts.... when they become complicated (climate change) despite the fact that 97% of scientists agree...30% of the US chooses to believe the 3%...

Then we get to politics and religion.... I have Pagan friends, Buddhist friends, Catholic friends...I attend various services...we have great discussions...despite the differences in our beliefs.

In these anonymous situations some folks are not interested in conversation, but conversion, not interested in hearing and discussing others beliefs, but getting folks to believe theirs.

I unfortunately fall into that trap sometime...
 
Gordian Knot said:
And their 'right' to believe something trumps any facts to the contrary.
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So true! A previous Prime Minister of ours took us to war on that very premise.

wil said:
If people can take such an attitude towards information that is factual, what chance do we have on the spiritual/religious information that you are talking about?
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None, in my opinion, as that question ultimately addresses 'absolutes', which those people a priori dismiss, it seems to me, as 'an inconvenient truth'.

The Catch-22 is, for those who are wedded to the relative, there is no logical means of dismissing the absolute. It's the finite insisting there is no infinite, the many insisting there is no 'One' ... even though the most obvious and relative of all relative arguments: cause and effect, point to just that. A First Cause, such as the Big Bang.

It's just where one chooses to locate one's horizon. Did something cause the Big Bang? If not, why and how did it happen?

Or so it seems to me.
 
Wil, people can take the most simple facts and corrupt them or just deny them. They do it every hour of every day here in the U.S. Take dinosaurs. According to the man* in charge of the Texas school board that will decide what information goes into every textbook in half the country, dinosaurs and men walked side by side. Dinosaurs were on the Ark with Noah. He insists creationism by taught side by side with science in our public schools.

There is just no way one can justify that as a fact except by simply ignoring the mountainous evidence to the contrary (about the first part anyway). The right to believe something trumps any facts to the contrary.

*And what is this man's credentials to decide not only which facts to put in the school books but will also decide if a fact is a fact or not? He is a dentist.
 
wil said:
So if we can't agree on what has been proven....
How will we agree on the unknowable?
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I think we – GK and I – are not disputing your facts.

I, and I think GK – are suggesting you've selected only those facts that support your thesis.

Crime rates are going down. That's a fact.
But that alone does not prove that people are opting to make altruistic choices. 'Experts' suggest all manner of reasons, not the least a much greater likelihood of getting caught. New criminologies are emerging. Computer crime is the biggest 'iceberg' being spoken of at present. We might not take their lives, but we steal their identities.

Slavery has gone, but many residents of the civilised world live in not too dissimilar conditions. Human trafficking is a global problem. People enjoy greater sexual freedom, but STDs, Aids etc. is epic in the damage it's causing. It may have peaked, but then it's ground down the peak. Drug abuse afflicts whole communities. Dissatisfaction. Social and moral malaise. I could argue that we do good in pursuit of a personal sense of satisfaction.

We ... some of us ... enjoy life more, but at what cost? I'm not talking about heart transplants. I'm talking about meaningless material goods – like cheap devices – that devour resources vital to the very existence of those in the Third World. Rather than grow food, Nigerian farmers grow flowers so we can have them in supermarkets all year round. The fashion industry. Cosmetics.

I think we're also saying your thesis is counter-balanced by the facts that certain pathologies, which you have not accounted for, are on the increase.

So I think we're saying you have to spread your net wider to get a more representative picture.

Don't count your chickens yet, old chum ... they might come home to roost!
 
Yes GK and that was the point in my first post...

This has nothing to do with our planet becoming more peaceful, more caring, more civilized as time goes on....we already derailed another thread on that.


This has to do with the knowable and the unknowable...
 
I read a brilliant account by a philosophy buff, which I'll have to hang off a 'reconstructed' narrative ... but it's the point, and I think that emerges.

A philosophy boffin was asked about what we can know.

I know this: I drive a blue sedan to work, and I park it in a bay reserved for me.

I know this: The square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides.

Which means more to me, in my life? That sedan. Without it, I'm stuffed.

But which would I bet my life on? Pythagoras' Theorem. Why? Because it's always true. It is never is not the case. It's an absolute.

The sedan. It might have been stolen. Or repossessed. And sometimes, on a masochistic whim, I take the bus. Or call in sick. Or go on vacation. Or ...

... I think you get my point.
 
I liked that, Thomas, and what struck me is that Pythagoras' Theorem is always true for us here, right now. The physical dimensions as they work here right now might not always work like this and perhaps not everywhere. It's a bit out there, but the point is that there is always a bigger picture.
 
A Cup Of Tea said:
The physical dimensions as they work here right now might not always work like this and perhaps not everywhere.
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Well I think theorems always do, wherever, because they're working with fixed quanta? I'd like to hear a mathematician's comment, mine is amateur ...

But I do take your point about bigger pictures ...
 
Non mathematician willing to throw in his response on something he knows nothing about....

(I know, right? What else is new?) ( By the way, the slang and colloquialisms used by Thomas and myself are perfect examples of why it is so hard to interpret the bible.... They used phrases of their day similar to 'raining cats and dogs' and 'haven't seen you in a minute' (meaning months or years) ) But I digress....

Tis the current issue with math and discovery of the theory of everything (er...G!d) that our math doesn't work...it is constantly needing amending. We start with an imaginary given....you know zero.... and then build from there. So what works to calculate the vastness of space is different from that which works for us here or our newest minutest particles and waves, and particles that act like waves, and disappear and reappear elsewhere....and that Pythagorean Theorem works in 2 dimensions, not properly in the warped world of 3 dimensions nor in 4, 5 or more...

Sort of like us....we can see what we can see....we can understand what we can understand....the rest is currently beyond us....we don't currently have a powerful enough microscope or telescope to see further....or if we did we don't have the capacity to categorize and analyze the data...
 
wil said:
and that Pythagorean Theorem works in 2 dimensions, not properly in the warped world of 3 dimensions nor in 4, 5 or more...
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I mostly agree with this, but the 3rd and 4th dimensions isn't always relevant. Like here on earth where space is somewhat constant. But around a star where space is curved the other dimensions could be relevant...as far as I understand it.

I'm getting my physics from collage level physics and The Tao of Physics from 1975...I expect to be corrected on this.
 
wil said:
3rd dimension doesn't matter... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wqtqo3DFdo

sure...
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See, the genius agrees with me!

But for example: A 3D ladder leaning against a 3D building in 3D space. We can use the Theorem to find out how high up the ladder reaches. The width of the ladder, building or environment is irrelevant. No?

pytharorean-word-problem.png
 
A Cup Of Tea said:
See, the genius agrees with me!

But for example: A 3D ladder leaning against a 3D building in 3D space. We can use the Theorem to find out how high up the ladder reaches. The width of the ladder, building or environment is irrelevant. No?

pytharorean-word-problem.png
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Yup, but the angle of inclination on that ladder is not safe to climb...

but you've made a perfect example of how we only have a portion of the information required.
 
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