shminux comments on Math is Subjunctively Objective - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 July 2008 11:06AM

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Comment author: shminux 11 September 2012 10:11:59PM 4 points [-]

What many people don't quite understand is that mathematics, like the sciences does not invent things, it discovers them. The structures are already there.

That is not such an unquestionable truth, there are many different schools of thoughts. None overly useful.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 12 September 2012 12:14:19AM 0 points [-]

None overly useful.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by that, but Platonism has been useful for inspiring Tegmark's Ultimate Ensemble, which has been useful for inspiring UDT.

Comment author: shminux 12 September 2012 12:22:52AM 0 points [-]

Can't say that I find either very useful (in the instrumentalist sense, anyway), but I suppose if you count inspiration for a couple of rather speculative ideas as useful, I agree.