I’m not an idealist so we can agree there’s external reality, but plenty of mathematicians argue that math has nothing to do with it.
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I am a pure partisan in that. Math is external reality and part of the fabric of reality. We are also part of the same fabric.
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That’s a challenging position because there are multiple internally consistent but mutually contradictory versions of some bits of math
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Imagining humans, even white Christian males, invented the Mandelbrot set or Godel's paradox is giving ourselves too much credit
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I’m enough of an institutionalist that I don’t care about whether those things are “true”. I care how knowledge is created & propagated
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that's an honest position. I wish more people were as honest. I am the opposite. I care about new truths, not how they're found
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If you care about new truths you should care about how they’re found. Chasing “pure reason” you can cripple actual engines of knowledge
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My objection is to sheer bad faith. It's like claiming 2+2=4 is suspect because of who said it.
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What sets logic, math etc apart from scare-quote social science "truths" is that you can validite for yourself
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Exactly, they're true outside of any social context and would be true in all the alternate timelines.
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