Comment Should buy a (Score 1) 198
1.2 Million will buy you a great lawyer...
Comment Largest integer (Score 1) 66
I been wondering, what is the largest integer a computer like this can handle? Is it still 64bit? Or can it handle numbers with millions of digits?
Teenager on TiKTok Resurrects an Essential Question: What is Math? (smithsonianmag.com) 160
Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a story that all started with a high school student's innocuous question on TikTok, leading academic mathematicians and philosophers to weigh in on "a very ancient and unresolved debate in the philosophy of science," reports Smithsonian magazine.
"What, exactly, is math?" Is it invented, or discovered? And are the things that mathematicians work with — numbers, algebraic equations, geometry, theorems and so on — real? Some scholars feel very strongly that mathematical truths are "out there," waiting to be discovered — a position known as Platonism.... Many mathematicians seem to support this view. The things they've discovered over the centuries — that there is no highest prime number; that the square root of two is an irrational number; that the number pi, when expressed as a decimal, goes on forever — seem to be eternal truths, independent of the minds that found them....
Other scholars — especially those working in other branches of science — view Platonism with skepticism. Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing "outside of space and time" makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago. Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, "has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science." The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he'll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all...?
Platonism has various alternatives. One popular view is that mathematics is merely a set of rules, built up from a set of initial assumptions — what mathematicians call axioms... But this view has its own problems. If mathematics is just something we dream up from within our own heads, why should it "fit" so well with what we observe in nature...? Theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner highlighted this issue in a famous 1960 essay titled, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences." Wigner concluded that the usefulness of mathematics in tackling problems in physics "is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve."
"What, exactly, is math?" Is it invented, or discovered? And are the things that mathematicians work with — numbers, algebraic equations, geometry, theorems and so on — real? Some scholars feel very strongly that mathematical truths are "out there," waiting to be discovered — a position known as Platonism.... Many mathematicians seem to support this view. The things they've discovered over the centuries — that there is no highest prime number; that the square root of two is an irrational number; that the number pi, when expressed as a decimal, goes on forever — seem to be eternal truths, independent of the minds that found them....
Other scholars — especially those working in other branches of science — view Platonism with skepticism. Scientists tend to be empiricists; they imagine the universe to be made up of things we can touch and taste and so on; things we can learn about through observation and experiment. The idea of something existing "outside of space and time" makes empiricists nervous: It sounds embarrassingly like the way religious believers talk about God, and God was banished from respectable scientific discourse a long time ago. Platonism, as mathematician Brian Davies has put it, "has more in common with mystical religions than it does with modern science." The fear is that if mathematicians give Plato an inch, he'll take a mile. If the truth of mathematical statements can be confirmed just by thinking about them, then why not ethical problems, or even religious questions? Why bother with empiricism at all...?
Platonism has various alternatives. One popular view is that mathematics is merely a set of rules, built up from a set of initial assumptions — what mathematicians call axioms... But this view has its own problems. If mathematics is just something we dream up from within our own heads, why should it "fit" so well with what we observe in nature...? Theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner highlighted this issue in a famous 1960 essay titled, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences." Wigner concluded that the usefulness of mathematics in tackling problems in physics "is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve."
Comment My virtual business (Score 3, Interesting) 72
Just a little background on myself.. I run a virtual world business. Skidz Partz in second life, and while.. I understand all the laughter and criticisms, I have made my living from it making tools other gadgets. So I guess I am one out of the ten.
One of the reason 9 out of 10 businesses fail in virtual worlds, is they are so easy to start. Its nothing to buy land (rent server space) and set up shop. You don't even have to have a product of your own. The hard part, is taking it seriously, customer support, having events and such.
The second reason is most people open the store and think its like a web page, place things for sale and people buy.. completely automated.. no work at all.. I find, in virtual worlds the community factor is something that those 9 don't take into consideration. When coke put up there sim, it was empty of anyone that works there. People come to virtual worlds to communicate, explore, and create, and it defeats the whole purpose of the virtual world not to have a staff on hand to communicate and reach out to the audience.
And, as far as the fancy ligth show, and physics, I would agree that the core business user of a virtual world would not care about those things, but I believe the base users do. They want a great experience with great graphics. Most people that come into second life just want to escape reality for a bit, roll play, chat with friends and those thing add to the experience. And if you have not seen the wind light version of secondlife, I recommend you take a look, its stunning.
And now time to defend virtual worlds a bit... Last night I was searching the net high and low for a mathematical solution, but could not find it anywhere. I join the mathematics group in second life and had the answer I was looking for in just seconds. This is a great example of how the community is very powerful function in virtual worlds. In the future, I do believe virtual worlds will increase in popularity. I know IBM, Google, and Second life are working together now on something even bigger and better. While, right now, I would never suggest using second life as a work at home but in a virtual office, with the price of gas I believe something like that will become even more popular or more likely in the future.
Well.. just my 2 cents.
One of the reason 9 out of 10 businesses fail in virtual worlds, is they are so easy to start. Its nothing to buy land (rent server space) and set up shop. You don't even have to have a product of your own. The hard part, is taking it seriously, customer support, having events and such.
The second reason is most people open the store and think its like a web page, place things for sale and people buy.. completely automated.. no work at all.. I find, in virtual worlds the community factor is something that those 9 don't take into consideration. When coke put up there sim, it was empty of anyone that works there. People come to virtual worlds to communicate, explore, and create, and it defeats the whole purpose of the virtual world not to have a staff on hand to communicate and reach out to the audience.
And, as far as the fancy ligth show, and physics, I would agree that the core business user of a virtual world would not care about those things, but I believe the base users do. They want a great experience with great graphics. Most people that come into second life just want to escape reality for a bit, roll play, chat with friends and those thing add to the experience. And if you have not seen the wind light version of secondlife, I recommend you take a look, its stunning.
And now time to defend virtual worlds a bit... Last night I was searching the net high and low for a mathematical solution, but could not find it anywhere. I join the mathematics group in second life and had the answer I was looking for in just seconds. This is a great example of how the community is very powerful function in virtual worlds. In the future, I do believe virtual worlds will increase in popularity. I know IBM, Google, and Second life are working together now on something even bigger and better. While, right now, I would never suggest using second life as a work at home but in a virtual office, with the price of gas I believe something like that will become even more popular or more likely in the future.
Well.. just my 2 cents.
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