norm

Thanks! I thought/hoped that maybe that line captured a somewhat universal experience.

You may already know these things, but just in case: The set of computable real numbers is countably infinite. Countably infinite subsets of R have me...

Not quite! From my POV you are lurching into Chess again (math with words.) It's fuzzier than that. The meanings of words aren't fixed. Everything is ...

Nice! I've read most of Rorty, and I learned from him. I don't totally embrace him, but the man could write. There's a sense in which I agree with you...

I hear you, and I agree that motive is important. There can be lazy skeptics and lazy nihilists, absolutely. But earnest people can arrive at position...

To each their own, but I find some thinkers labelled pomo to be intensely sincere in the pursuit of truth. I don't trust pejorative labels. I've had l...

I do like the epistemological issues we are touching on. Improvising, I'd say that Derrida's critique of the self's direct access to the self is prett...

I have some exposure to that way of thinking through Husserl. I used to argue myself that 'consciousness' is another name of Being. I've also liked te...

I don't think we exactly know that at least one mind exists or that matter exists. Both positions are tangled up in the same language. Concepts often ...

Yeah that's pretty much my view. There are some good points against this view (primarily directed against the intelligibility of concepts like reality...

One theory that I've toyed with is that we have intuitions of both the continuous and the discrete that don't play nice together. Measurements are cle...

That's kind of what I'm getting at. The perfect point doesn't make physical/intuitive sense. We know how to handle vectors, of course. I'm very much w...

Thanks! You'll probably learn more from the others, since I'm a philosopher/comedian at heart. To explain my personal attachment to privacy: we live i...

FWIW, I agree with Chaitin that noncomputable numbers are suspicious. I can't even show you one. I can only talk about them indirectly. But if one doe...

I'd say you'd want to look into the details, but a couple points: In the mainstream version, incomputable Cauchy-sequences of rationals are allowed. T...

Beyond the excellent point you make about these points, I'll invoke the issue of intelligibility. What exactly do we have in mind? I understand repres...

FWIW, and because no one has mentioned it yet, 'infinite limits' are taught in calculus as usefully specific ways to indicate divergence. You can even...

I can't defend theism rationally. I'm an atheist myself. I'm just chiming in to say that in general I don't think theists are philosophical types. And...

. IMO, it's a fascinating glitch. No one can help trusting induction, so in that sense it's not a big deal. I think I understand Hume, and I was dazzl...

Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. This reminds me of Witt/Heid but maybe it's mor...

I like that quote and love the self-knowledge aspect. Wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove. Different quote, but maybe related. Knowing yourself as a s...

I'm very glad you enjoyed that metaphor. As far as trolls go, a certain amount of trollishness is maybe even good, but obviously pure meanness that pr...

Good point. And tangentially: if the hidden god did come out of hiding for just me, I would believe myself and at the same time not expect others to b...

Trolls and sometimes misunderstood jokers and occasionally some people on the edge of madness. I remember a guy who was living in the woods and having...

Don't take it personally. There really are lots of roundabout theists on forums. In itself the theism is no big deal (it's just an 'uncool' position) ...

I'm with you there, but I won't entertain all propositions with the same seriousness. I don't think anyone can. I don't believe that dead people come ...

I do believe you. I was just being playful. Sorry I wasn't more careful. I did say (teasingly) that I thought you had the metaphysical heebie-jeebies,...

I relate to this as well. I love the offstage joanna newsom, and I adore Joanna Newsom herself. Where did we get that wound? I suppose all of us are b...

Yes, we are on the same page, very much. And I like Taoism. If you want to be whole, let yourself be torn. I think you are nailing the tone, which is ...

So many good themes here, it's hard to start. I'm for Shigalyovism original sin. (I'll leave in the obscure, dorky Dostoevsky joke but get back to The...

I decided to look him up. https://njwildberger.com/ My first reaction is that this guy is another Cantor crank! But if he taught at Stanford at one po...

I believe you, and personally I think you know your math very well, significantly more than me, clearly. But still, it matters that all of this is ano...

Well, I hesitated when it came to posting that, but I thought it would be rude to not reply publicly to such a friendly hello. Seems silly now. At the...

I have later Wittgenstein in mind, but I'm pointing at a cloud of thinking on the issue of meaning, so I'm using Wittgenstein as a symbol for this clo...

Do you really think so? Such an approach would ultimately be the worst propaganda for theism. Time will tell (please be telling the truth, @"Franz Lis...

Hi ! I'll private-message you about that.

IMO, these laws are redundant and/or tautological and/or 'grammatical' in some Wittgensteinian sense. (Not saying they are wrong or false, though.) Th...

We can embed the rational numbers in the real numbers this way. Let f(n) = 42 for all n in N (a constant sequence). Then the real number 42 is the equ...

I'm aware of those, and if that's he meant then it's not such a strange thought, though I agree it's not obvious to get from these to some god. Still,...

To me this is a strange thought. Why should our logic be perfectly correct? Humans just reason in a certain way, and we can examine the way we reason ...

I've read some Zapffe. Good stuff, part of the truth-telling tradition. I'm guessing you have Schopenhauer's Essays and Aphorisms. I love the end of '...

I connect the nay-sayer (our dear 'negative creep') to the skeptic as Stirner & Kojeve describe him. The stoic, who as his charms, is more of an optim...

'Minutia-mongering' is good. In this economy, we are machine-parts, some more than others. I like the way you follow the for-the-sake-of's around in y...

I hinted at this in my first reply to the OP. I'm amplify that answer here: We are social beings, profoundly interested in one another. We want to be ...

I appreciate your politeness. Sorry if implied that you weren't an atheist despite your saying so more than once. I probably read into your ambivalenc...

Hi. I think the issue here is this questionable portrait of the atheist. I'm an atheist , and I think such a statement is silly. One way to think abou...

This reminds me of the construction of the real numbers from Cauchy sequence of rational numbers. Equivalence classes are required though, because the...

Why is the most compressed the most rational theory? Are we equating rationality with efficiency here? In other words, is it just manifestly rational ...

Deep question, and we could talk about it forever. But yeah, a god-given purpose of some kind given by some kind of god. Maybe the god is just History...

Yes, indeed. And we are doing that here. It's not the same as in-person, but it's not nothing. Anonymously people can tell some truths. You don't want...