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The damn symbols, notions, concepts, logic, rationalising, calculating... I hate it when the mind gets boggled down in concepts, ideas, signs and starts naming the unnamable. Names and verbal thinking are bad enought... From there it's but a tiny step for the mind to become a system of virtual concepts unable to feel alive.
Those kind of people would get you thinking brain is nothing but hardware, mind - nothing but software.
I read plenty of research papers today (as you may have guessed by my journal) including one about math in humans and non-human animals (even including salamanders). Humans seem to map advanced math to parts of the brain handling symbols instead of using only the built-in calculator most animals use. Now I kind of understand why basic math (square roots, functions, geometry) was so enjoyable for me and why I started hating it when I was denied my rigth to solve problems intuitively in my mind, but forced to write every damn thing on paper using boring symbols like everyone did. Language and math are different.
The colors were tricky.
[series description]
The damn symbols, notions, concepts, logic, rationalising, calculating... I hate it when the mind gets boggled down in concepts, ideas, signs and starts naming the unnamable. Names and verbal thinking are bad enought... From there it's but a tiny step for the mind to become a system of virtual concepts unable to feel alive.
Those kind of people would get you thinking brain is nothing but hardware, mind - nothing but software.
I read plenty of research papers today (as you may have guessed by my journal) including one about math in humans and non-human animals (even including salamanders). Humans seem to map advanced math to parts of the brain handling symbols instead of using only the built-in calculator most animals use. Now I kind of understand why basic math (square roots, functions, geometry) was so enjoyable for me and why I started hating it when I was denied my rigth to solve problems intuitively in my mind, but forced to write every damn thing on paper using boring symbols like everyone did. Language and math are different.
The colors were tricky.
[series description]
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1100 x 780px
File Size 227.5 kB
"Now I kind of understand why basic math (square roots, functions, geometry) was so enjoyable for me and why I started hating it when I was denied my rigth to solve problems intuitively in my mind, but forced to write every damn thing on paper using boring symbols like everyone did."
I almost did a fucking spit-take. I'm the only person I know who's ever said that. YOU STOLE MY OBSCURE GLORY.
I've read a bit in the past on mathematics throughout animals but I'll be hitting up those links, for which I thank you. And as for everything else, Hell in this day and age is [often] being an intuitor -- it's very isolating at points.
I almost did a fucking spit-take. I'm the only person I know who's ever said that. YOU STOLE MY OBSCURE GLORY.
I've read a bit in the past on mathematics throughout animals but I'll be hitting up those links, for which I thank you. And as for everything else, Hell in this day and age is [often] being an intuitor -- it's very isolating at points.
me and math don't get along even with the use of paper and a calculator, so i'm quite envious of your ability. that being said though, i've been frustrated with "show your work" problems when there's no need.
i can only equate that to coding, where in it's easier to follow my stream of consciousness then... describe what's happening in each piece vocally i suppose. perhaps not nearly the same thing, but i understand the difference between what's going on in one's head verses the language or expression of it.
i can only equate that to coding, where in it's easier to follow my stream of consciousness then... describe what's happening in each piece vocally i suppose. perhaps not nearly the same thing, but i understand the difference between what's going on in one's head verses the language or expression of it.
The dependence on symbol manipulation is a legacy of formalism (post-Bourbaki) and the progressively heavy abstraction of mathematics. For many years, mathematics depended on a system that codifies certain ways of thinking, proving hypotheses, etc. under undecidable assumptions, before Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem revealed the limits of thinking based on rules.
The latest forms of mathematics are not so mechanical nor precise as it was before quantum physics, Gödel and chaos theory introduced limits to our ability to describe the world. Mathematician/Physicists are becoming more open to borrowing models from spirituality to find new ways of expressing ideas and relations.
Early civilizations like Babylon, Greek and Arabic tend to have a strong tradition of graphical representations of abstract ideas and relations, which were lost in favour of European system of axiomatic symbol manipulation. However, with developments of new philosophies and math (fractals, complexity theory, fuzzy logic, etc.) we're starting to rediscover this "visual" and "textural" way of thinking, even when they're still subsumed by the need for algebraic formulation.
Personally, I am also trying to break free of this symbol-algebraic way of thinking, but it's really hard after years of training in formal maths. Too often I'm saddened that the beauty of abstract thought and mathematics is obscured in the eyes of my peers by years of bad early education, leading to a "hatred of numbers". The world outside academia still hasn't caught up, and are still "locked" into archaic lessons.
The latest forms of mathematics are not so mechanical nor precise as it was before quantum physics, Gödel and chaos theory introduced limits to our ability to describe the world. Mathematician/Physicists are becoming more open to borrowing models from spirituality to find new ways of expressing ideas and relations.
Early civilizations like Babylon, Greek and Arabic tend to have a strong tradition of graphical representations of abstract ideas and relations, which were lost in favour of European system of axiomatic symbol manipulation. However, with developments of new philosophies and math (fractals, complexity theory, fuzzy logic, etc.) we're starting to rediscover this "visual" and "textural" way of thinking, even when they're still subsumed by the need for algebraic formulation.
Personally, I am also trying to break free of this symbol-algebraic way of thinking, but it's really hard after years of training in formal maths. Too often I'm saddened that the beauty of abstract thought and mathematics is obscured in the eyes of my peers by years of bad early education, leading to a "hatred of numbers". The world outside academia still hasn't caught up, and are still "locked" into archaic lessons.
Interesting read. Many thanks.
Yes, what the avant-garde of math/physics is doing nowadays is amazing if not inspirational.
And how science is getting closer to concepts in the occult is either scary or surprising.
What I didn't like about education in maths was that it put emphasis on learning of rules (via brute-force repetition, most often) and associating them with symbols ("if you see ω - do this..." type of mechanical thinking) instead of understanding the concepts both intuitively and logicaly and then using symbols only as a means of communication, not thinking (I tried to do that, until alot of things i only learned, but didn't yet understand, accumulated and I lost hope). It's just dry...
I still wonder how slightly advanced math would be handled in the brain if it wasn't learned via symbols.
Yes, what the avant-garde of math/physics is doing nowadays is amazing if not inspirational.
And how science is getting closer to concepts in the occult is either scary or surprising.
What I didn't like about education in maths was that it put emphasis on learning of rules (via brute-force repetition, most often) and associating them with symbols ("if you see ω - do this..." type of mechanical thinking) instead of understanding the concepts both intuitively and logicaly and then using symbols only as a means of communication, not thinking (I tried to do that, until alot of things i only learned, but didn't yet understand, accumulated and I lost hope). It's just dry...
I still wonder how slightly advanced math would be handled in the brain if it wasn't learned via symbols.
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