Conversation

QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
people seem to ask this question a lot and honestly i’ve never really understood it. when you play tic-tac-toe you learn that perfect play is a draw. that’s a mathematical fact you can prove. does it “come from” somewhere? i dunno! what does that mean?
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pendertif
@pendertif
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan
Where does math come from anyway? The harmonic series is to music notation as ???? math
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
if someone thinks they understand what the question is asking i’d really genuinely appreciate it, iirc it crops up all the time, alongside “is math discovered or invented” (short answer: people invent rules to games and then discover good and bad strategies for those games)
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QC (in Berlin 7/29-???)
@QiaochuYuan
hmm okay here is what i'm hearing so far: it sounds like the real question is something about the correspondence between mathematics and reality. why is math so good at describing reality, what makes that correspondence work, something like that?
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krg
@krgmthctrs
Replying to
@QiaochuYuan
I understand asking the question and also wonder why it’s a question sometimes. “Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics…” feeling. Why should it be so unreasonable actually? Stuff in the world can be seen to follow rules and math studies things that follow rules, I think.