Re: Alien science

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 22:45:53 +0600

Hello Osher

On 01-Dec-02, you wrote:

>> From Osher Doctorow osher.domain.name.hidden, Sat. Nov. 30, 2002 1005
>
> I agree generally with Tim May on mathematics and physics vs computers and
> AI. My most amusing example is something of a Jonathon Swift parody of all
> four of these fields. Gulliver lands on an island inhabited by
> mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists/computer engineers, and AI
> people, all competing. He notices that they all rushing ahead to greater
> and greater complication and complexity and so on, and it occurs to him that
> this might be their weak point. Could they all have overlooked something
> simple [question-mark]. He discovers, as it so happens that I discovered
> some 20 or so years ago, that they are all using division and multiplication
> to formulate relationships involving influence and causation [I omit
> calculus limits for those unfamiliar with them], and minimally using
> subtraction and addition. Gulliver then reformulates all of their theories
> using subtraction and/or addition, and it turns out that all of the
> resulting theories are completely different from the old ones.

So have you published your reformulation of all mathematics, physics, computer science, and AI using addition/subtraction instead of multiplication/division?

Brent Meeker
"Epistimology precedes ontology."
      --- Terry Savage
Received on Sun Dec 01 2002 - 01:55:55 PST