Oh hey we're discussing math now. Cool, one of my favorite things.
Math is... well, first of all, it's almost entirely in-the-head (or in-the-calculating-machine), in that unlike science it is not tested by reality. But in another sense it is shaped by reality in that...
Take geometry. Geometry is
obviously shaped by our 3D pseudo-Euclidean reality. Is it too hard to imagine that algebra might be too?
What I mean to say is that mathematics is neither separate from the universe (thus, it is not "ultimate truth"), but neither is it like science, constantly tied to reality by test after test (thus, it is not "truth in description of the universe"). Math is just... patterns, in a sense.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of mathematics if you think it is in any way attempting to approximate truth.
How so? That is exactly what math does? Of course, 1+1=2 is as much truth as knowing that hurting someone makes them feel bad, but it's when we try to string all the little truths together that we get mixed up and start to conjecture things that may or may not be correct.
EDIT: Also, humanity's greatest analytical strength is literally it's ability to imagine perfect scenarios and approximate them--because actual perfection is pretty much impossible.
1+1=2 is not exactly a trivial math statement. It could just as equally be 0. You're assuming every single Peano axiom when you make that statement, and that's a lot of assumptions.
And you assume that stabbing someone and making them feel bad IS a trivial psychological statement. We haven't found a unified theory in mathematics, and we certainly haven't found one socially in the form of religion or system of beliefs. The point is that we do not know the truth, and even though through observation we can come close to it, in the end it's all just approximation.
Where did he assume that??
Someone said the universe doesn't have morals. It does. They are as follows:
That is all.
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of mathematics if you think it is in any way attempting to approximate truth.
How so? That is exactly what math does? Of course, 1+1=2 is as much truth as knowing that hurting someone makes them feel bad, but it's when we try to string all the little truths together that we get mixed up and start to conjecture things that may or may not be correct.
EDIT: Also, humanity's greatest analytical strength is literally it's ability to imagine perfect scenarios and approximate them--because actual perfection is pretty much impossible.
1+1=2 is not exactly a trivial math statement. It could just as equally be 0. You're assuming every single Peano axiom when you make that statement, and that's a lot of assumptions.
Mathematics is about building off of a few underlying constructs. Any notion of "truth" is relative. In homotopy type theory, truth is nothing more than another type.
"2+2=5" - Ispil, December 2016
"Any notion of "truth" is relative." - an eeeviiiil post-truth moral relativist