tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post114392385912763343..comments2023-10-29T06:41:23.910-07:00Comments on Halfway There: So much smarter than youZenohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09058127284297728552noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-19908059532336216092010-09-30T01:17:33.635-07:002010-09-30T01:17:33.635-07:00I'm just a quasi-linguist with minor mathemati...I'm just a quasi-linguist with minor mathematics experience--but I lived in Prague and studied Czech. "Tak," or "Tak?" does mean something like "Right?" "Yes?" or, "You know what I mean?", but in Polish, not Czech. Usually you don't hear nonnative speakers use words like that as a visitor in another country, but if they do, I think they would try to use the words of that country, which in Prague would be "Ano?" "No?" ("'no" means yes in Czech) or even "Yo?" There must be something I missed; it could easily have happened, because I only glanced quickly inside "A Tour..." and gagged immediately on the writing. I can't tolerate it. No matter what it is that the guy is trying to say. I don't care because I can't take my medicine that way. <br /><br />It reminds me of movies. Sometimes you see a movie where some guy is using pieces of his native language, when otherwise he speaks perfect English, like "!Gracias, senor!" while speaking probably with an American from Hollywood. He must be doing it to make sure we all know that we're in Guatemala. I guess when it came to the strange and difficult words "thank you," his mind went blank.<br /><br />If Berlinski's listeners could understand "A function indicates a relationship in progress, arguments going to values", why can't they understand, "Right? You know what I mean? Do you understand?"Patty McCredienoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-64472758673925599932009-11-11T11:34:14.449-08:002009-11-11T11:34:14.449-08:00My thought was they may have been listening intent...My thought was they may have been listening intently thinking "Surely we invited this guy for a reason? We've digressed into...limits?"Ericnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-13369714083342004592009-11-10T08:29:22.460-08:002009-11-10T08:29:22.460-08:00It seems plausible to me that the mathematicians i...It seems plausible to me that the mathematicians in the audience were simply stunned at the inanity of his example. They were probably like, "Oh my god, are all American mathematicians this stupid? How is this <i>possible</i>?"James Sweethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17212877636980569324noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-87280412338138279552008-03-10T12:26:00.000-07:002008-03-10T12:26:00.000-07:00"I look out toward my audience. Swoboda and Schwei..."I look out toward my audience. Swoboda and Schweik are looking at me intently, their faces serene, without irony. It is plain to me that they do not know the answer yet."<BR/><BR/>Umm, OK. Maybe, MAYBE, the mathematicians were thinking "There's going to be an insight somewhere in here..." Frequently, the biggest ideas come from reexaming the obvious. Of course, it sounds like Berlinski never reached any insight which hadn't been reached 300 years ago, so I'm guessing that everyone walked away thinking "That talk didn't go anywhere..."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-1144359667361110272006-04-06T14:41:00.000-07:002006-04-06T14:41:00.000-07:00You know, it's a common complaint of math teachers...You know, it's a common complaint of math teachers that students think you can't ever reach a limit (because students only understand the getting closer and closer description, and not the epsilon-delta definition). So it's interesting that Berlinski would think that mathematicians would be so fascinated by an explanation of exactly the thing that we keep trying to get our students to understand is false. I think I'd feel pretty tired after an hours worth of listening to drivel like that.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-1144278728701834672006-04-05T16:12:00.000-07:002006-04-05T16:12:00.000-07:00I read that, years ago, and thought it was awful.N...I read that, years ago, and thought it was awful.<BR/><BR/>Now that I know the author is a Creationist, I understand the whole segment about how numbers approach limits "as Man approaches God", without ever reaching them.<BR/><BR/>What a kumquat.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-1144078558494213932006-04-03T08:35:00.000-07:002006-04-03T08:35:00.000-07:00“They approach, those values, the number 9, so tha...<I>“They approach, those values, the number 9, so that the function is now seen as running up against a </I>limit<I>, a boundary beyond which it does not go.”<BR/><BR/><BR/>Swoboda leans back and sighs audibly, as if for the first time he had grasped a difficult principle.</I><BR/><BR/>It takes a lot of self-confidence to interpret loud sighs from your audience in quite that way.<BR/><BR/>Incidentally, Berlinski seems to be claiming that if a function has a limiting value at some point, its value cannot "go beyond" that limit as it approaches that point. But that's trivially false; a limit is not a bound. For instance, x * cos(1/x) has the limit 0 as x approaches 0, but it oscillates and "goes past" 0 an infinite number of times on the way.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-1144015499737774962006-04-02T15:04:00.000-07:002006-04-02T15:04:00.000-07:00I'm trying to choose an interpretation of the acti...I'm trying to choose an interpretation of the actions of the Hungarian mathematicians. I can think of several:<BR/><BR/>The one I like best, but is least likely, is that limits are elementary, but deep. It's possible to come back to limits over and over and come away with a new aspect of understanding.<BR/><BR/>More likely (from what I have seen of math conference and seminar talks) is that his audience was sitting politely and quietly thinking to themselves: "is he ever going to get to something interesting?" "I wish I had brought a notepad so I could be working on my research instead of listening to this." 'Surely I can find something kind and complementary to say at the end of this, but I'm not attending his conference session next time." " I wonder if he's actually going to spend any time at all on the interesting stuff or if he's just going to wave his hand over it at the end?" "Surely I can stay awake and pretend to be interested for another x minutes."<BR/><BR/>I'm afraid most mathematicians are pretty much resigned to boring talks in which 1/3 of the material is too easy, 1/3 is interesting (to us), and 1/3 is over our heads... I'd expect a talk on Tychonoff's theorem would be 1/2 too easy, and 1/2 just right, but I've attended too may talks to be surprised at one where nothing actually qualified as interesting.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-1144000363078360492006-04-02T10:52:00.000-07:002006-04-02T10:52:00.000-07:00BTW, it hit me that what you are describing Berlin...BTW, it hit me that what you are describing Berlinski doing (or he himself describes) is rather the same as what Behe did after the Kitsmiller-Dover case, officially seemingly totally misinterpret the outcome of a social interaction. <BR/><BR/>In Behe's case it was attributed to him being too incompetent to understand his incompetence. It looks to me the same may be the case for Berlinski.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-1143999714486543122006-04-02T10:41:00.000-07:002006-04-02T10:41:00.000-07:00It doesn't explain why Berlinski seem to be a bad ...It doesn't explain why Berlinski seem to be a bad philosopher too. In the paper "On the Origins of Life" at http://www.discovery.org he ends "But let us suppose that questions about the origins of the mind and the origins of life do lie beyond the grasp of “the model for what science should be.” In that case, we must either content ourselves with its limitations or revise the model." He is erroneously assuming that we can't answer questions by "We don't know (yet)", or that such an answer would necessarily depend on a limitation of science.<BR/><BR/>BTW, in Zeno's post "David Berlinski vs. Goliath" there is an observation that Berlinski thinks a scientific theory must be highly mathematized. In the above piece Berlinski uses the phrase “the model for what science should be”, and attributes it to "the mathematicians J.H. Hubbard and B.H. West, in “On the Origins of the Mind” (Commentary, November 2004). The idea that science must conform to a certain model of inquiry is familiar. Hubbard and West identify that model with differential equations, the canonical instruments throughout physics and chemistry."<BR/><BR/>It's very philosophical to try to confine the method of science to a specific model. It's also unclear if it's doable. After all, we know from Gödel that even rather simple formal systems needs to be indefinitely axiomatised as they are explored. If the result of science is unbounded, the boundedness of the models of it's methods isn't immediately obvious. Experience tells us otherwise, different fields use more or less different variants. So far, the method of science is more art than science. :-)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-1143995690775756022006-04-02T09:34:00.000-07:002006-04-02T09:34:00.000-07:00Matthew at UPenn has clued me in to the fact that ...Matthew at UPenn has clued me in to the fact that Berlinski's Princeton Ph.D. is in philosophy, not math. That could explain a couple of things. (Berlinski's bio at anova.org says the doctorate is in math, but the Discovery Institute agrees it's philosophy.)Zenohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09058127284297728552noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-1143982998516587852006-04-02T06:03:00.000-07:002006-04-02T06:03:00.000-07:00Already the setup of the story is strange. Why wo...Already the setup of the story is strange. Why would he lecture on Tychonoff's Theorem for such an audience? It is a beautiful theorem, but it is also textbook material.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15868947.post-1143931890598285722006-04-01T14:51:00.000-08:002006-04-01T14:51:00.000-08:00Perhaps Hungarians are not familiar with the expre...Perhaps Hungarians are not familiar with the expression: "Duh".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com