[FRIAM] truth, reality, & narrative

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Well said! Of course, my contrarian nature (and my laziness) forces me to cross-check a proposition from one narrative to another, which is what lead me to the Ramsey sentence concept and what I find intriguing about category theory. I'm completely incompetent to talk about anything Carnap did or any component of category theory, really. And I'm not a mathematician or philosopher. But I do grok reusable components, composition, and [ab]use.

Consuming any narrative *is* self-programming. You are what you eat, be it Rick and Morty or Quantum ElectroDynamics.

For those of us who program themselves *toward* a (mythical) objective, the question becomes one of nature-nurture. Is self-programming built in or acquired? And what's the value of a liberal education (or travel as a kid)? Can self-programming be modified ... programmed-self-programming? Or are we doomed to be just like that old person, accidentally radicalized by the Fox News playing 24/7 in the nursing home?

On 1/5/21 1:36 PM, jon zingale wrote:
> To be clear, I was commenting on what math study feels like. The worst of it
> being when I do not actually follow a proof (due to laziness,
> ill-preparedness, or any other lack of ability) and somehow come to rely on
> the theorem as fact. I suppose this is both unavoidable and an illustration
> of my own capacity to blindly follow a perceived authority.
> 
> It sounds to me that you are speaking of an explorative mathematical
> practice, one with a fixed logic and a context. One where deductions act as
> a holonomic constraint for deriving further tautologies[1]. While there is
> something of this in any mathematical exploration, I feel that the
> characterization is a bit thin. In my experience, the acquisition of
> mathematical ideas come with a psychological/conceptual development on my
> part, and not simply *more of the same* as *tautology* would imply. This
> subjective experience I would not only hesitate to abstract away but
> possibly consider the meaningful content. The changes to my mind are what I
> seek in mathematical practice, and something like auto-suggestion appears to
> sit at its core.
> 
> [1] to paraphrase Wittenstein


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