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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Maximum Spin]

Might not truthfully take all that long for a different species to take our place after we're gone.

There's no really plausible extinction scenario for humans that leaves the rest of the biosphere intact anyway, though. You'd have to go for a giant meteor or something. Anything much short of that, and there will be some humans left to come back.

[MaxTheFox]

Yeah it's possible to destroy or damage technological civilization, but post-apoc humans will likely survive anything that doesn't also kill other complex animals.

[Strongpoint]

I want an ants or wasp civilization in which each hive is a person. It would be so cool.

[Quarque]

About math, I agree with McTraveller. Math seems much more fundamental than the laws of nature. If some constants of nature or elementary particles are different somewhere far beyond the boundaries of the observable universe, 1+1 will still be 2 there.
Labelling it as a human construct is not really fair, either. Other animals can count to a limited degree. Computers can do math nowadays.

And there is a degree of objectivity to it that is unique among the sciences. Only in math can you find such universal agreement between scientists about what is true, false or unknown. To deny that and write off math as yet another set of biased human opinions is taking an extreme postmodernist position, akin to saying of 'everything is just opinion and facts don't exist'

[Frumple]

For what it's worth, facts don't have to exist for some opinions to be more useful for some things than others, heh.

Math is on an incredibly fundamental level a constructed system, though. It's the major reason why there's as much agreement on what's true or not in regards to it, because of course if you're working from the same priors (mathematical axioms) using the same systems of interaction (human brains, formal logic, etc.) you're going to have broad agreement in what's true and what isn't. It's unique among sciences specifically because it's a constructed system, not something that has to deal with reality or nature in general.

Math's mostly just a language, at the end of the day -- an incredibly useful one that we've gotten a lot of mileage out of and will pretty certainly get a lot more, but that doesn't make it somehow spontaneously generate from a platonic form or somethin'. Until we meet other relatively equal intelligences, and especially ones with extremely disparate means of processing thought (and computers don't count even a little, considering humans make the things, with all that entails), we don't really have a way to prove otherwise.

We just also don't need to, to keep using it for all sorts of helpful stuff, heh.

[Quarque]

It could be that we're just talking past each other. I think you're arguing that math is still in the end a human-centric thing. To which I would say, well yes, but it is one of the least human-centric things we ever constructed.
Computers are already better at it than most humans. That does show that the human brain isn't required or even very good at it.

If a very different sentience would disagree on what mathematical axioms to work with, they are even less likely to agree on  what is "useful". It is also worth noting that mathematics isn't limited to one particular set of axioms.

[MaxTheFox]

Yeah we can do math with different axioms already. It's just usually not too practically useful.

[TD1]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cv8ClcIgw-H/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

[McTraveller]

My religion prohibits me from following twitterX or instagram or facebook or tiktok links. 

Computers are only "better" than humans at math in some aspects; they are faster and don't get bored and usually don't make trivial mistakes, but they can't make leaps of intuition or know "which method to use in what situation" unless there's a pre-coded lookup table to do so (or perhaps a brute-force search to find the method that works).

Basically, computers are bad at shortcuts and guessing, but are really good at "turning the crank."

Also, I think there is confusion between "the machines, including our brains, that we use to perform math depend on physics" and "math depends on physics."  In the One True Math, math exists outside the need to have a physical embodiment - Math Is and Was and Will Be. 

[Frumple]

Also, I think there is confusion between "the machines, including our brains, that we use to perform math depend on physics" and "math depends on physics."  In the One True Math, math exists outside the need to have a physical embodiment - Math Is and Was and Will Be. 

Though now the question is, are you a platonist just in regards to mathematics, or do you extend that to other things

[McTraveller]

What "other things"? Everything is a manifestation of Math. 

[Frumple]

Well... if nothing else, I think we've found the pythagorean mystery cultist

They're a rare breed, but they do exist even in the modern era...

[Maximum Spin]

How do you feel about beans?

[hector13]

I wouldn’t run through a field of ‘em to avoid being murdered, that’s fer sure.

[Rolan7]

My religion prohibits me from following twitterX or instagram or facebook or tiktok links. 

Perhaps we're not so different after all~
(Forgive me for I have sinned...  Though I AM *mostly* off Twitter.  I was weak!  Perhaps I should get banned again.  Last time all it took was quoting someone at himself)