Toby Meadows
@TobyMeadows
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logician: I do math that mathematicians think is philosophy ... and I do philosophy that philosophers think is math
Irvine, CA
Joined July 2009
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Pinned Tweet
A thread that is probably misguided. Let's call it:
An ordinary language response to a structuralist problem in philosophy of mathematics.
It's not very catchy.
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At the risk of a little cancellation, I'm going to point out that most mathematicians are terrible at philosophy of mathematics.
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@focusfronting
I once had a supervisor once who had a history of ripping me up.
I had to get coached by a few other faculty members on how to do the breakup meeting.
It's hard to explain now how difficult it was to say, "I'm sorry, but I think I'll have to leave this meeting now."
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tldr:
The marriage scenario is odd but fine.
The overwhelming aura of self-congratulation projected and amplified by this article defines a new level of ultra-cringe.
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@alexbryant_
A thing I keep struggling with (among other things) is that Byrne concedes that the book isn't scholarly and hasn't got much philosophy in it.
It sounds like a commercial book rather than a research piece. In that case, it seems that OUP should be able to do as they please.
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@KamerynJW
i think it's pretty obvious everyone thinks in english and some people just speak in differnt languages
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Sometimes I feel depressed about doing set theory and philosophy.
Then you see a bunch of "smart" people say a bunch of really dumb stuff about set theory and philosophy ...
and then I feel even more depressed.
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Question: Are there any theorems that make you kinda angry?
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Happy independence day!
On this day in 1963, CH was finally unshackled from ZFC.
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I've found it easier to just not traffic women, but good luck with that.
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If stats is so good why don’t mathematicians use it on math?
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Five
"four" has 4 letters. can you think of another number with this property?
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@KamerynJW
@duns_sc0tus
wanting your kid to have a phone at school makes so much more sense to me after becoming a migrant in an ultraviolent country with extremely underdeveloped transport infrastructure
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@virgil_30
not to mention the parent of the children ... imagine being convinced that your child had been murdered
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Remember kids: arXiv ain't a journal.
Eitan Wander: A Renunciation of Axiom, A New Conception of Logic
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Hot take: analytic philosophy is fun; more people should try it.
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One of the things I've found personally helpful about all this, is the blatant demonstration that really, really rich people can be complete fucking losers.
Business Insider is toast.
You will hear from us in a few weeks.
It will look something like this:
At My Signal, Unleash Hell
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mathematicians worrying about phil math without knowing any phil math ...
i don't even know where to start with this
The rest of the passage is truly eye-opening. Hersh ties many of our problems in mathematical communication and education to our philosophical incompetence about what mathematics really means. To put up bluntly, the formalist view is making us lousy communicators and teachers.
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@kareem_carr
tbh, sometimes I've felt a little like that with your comments on the philosophy of mathematics.
But the grief you cop on here is just awful.
It's really clear that to me that you have a lot of expertise and interesting things to share about stats.
Keep it up.
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Sometimes I wonder if Twitter provides anything even resembling a sensible sample of humanity:
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@kareem_carr
Why?
Because it's a good anecdote.
It's a celebration of von Nuemann's obviously staggering talent.
It doesn't mean that to contribute you need to be like him.
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@KevinZollman
@seanmcarroll
I think this just reveals that "debate" -- as in the spectacle -- isn't a truth seeking activity.
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@littmath
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a set in possession of a good cardinality, must be in want of a well-ordering."
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Or the All Philosophy is Terrible people.
While I have some sympathy for this position, discussions with them often reveal the zaniest positions on ontology out there.
It's more of Every Philosophy but Mine is Terrible position.
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@KevinZollman
I think a lot of people fixate on the pathway they followed and freak out when the tide washes it away.
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Imagine a mathematician getting ready to enjoy a satisfying day of math after the weekend.
Now imagine their disappointment when they look over at Twitter and see ...
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I'm speaking at the Barcelona Set Theory Seminar on Wednesday:
SPEAKER: Toby Meadows (UC Irvine)
TITLE: What set theory could not be
TIME: December 2 at 16:00 (CET)
PLACE: The Seminar will take place online at the following address:
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Then there's the Not Quite Formalist who thinks that platonism can't be right, but delimits the realm of real math quite tightly around their area of expertise.
Just a coincidence you understand.
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But plenty of mathematical objects are just intended to diverge from physi reality.
Sometimes it's a feature rather than a bug.
Math doesn't always have to be beholden to science.
In my opinion, these kinds of glitches in mathematical reality, places where it diverges strongly from our physical reality, are to be expected because mathematical systems aren't perfect, idealized copies of our physical world.
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Wow a whole lot of people are talking about Peano Arithmetic right now.
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@peligrietzer
Having heaps of superficial knowledge, which is common to autodidacts, is hardly the same thing as being a competent researcher or teacher.
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Logic, game theory and probability have a massive overlap.
But I want to suggest something controversial:
I think logic generally offers a more immediate analysis of human attitudes than probabalistic techniques.
Hooray for probability and game theory in philosophy! Let's keep going, with concerted effort soon we can rule the whole field with an iron fist.
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you can see why this journal is so highly ranked ...
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@littmath
It will always work since you'll eventually find a proof of the statement or a proof of its negation.
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might be immoral to post this, but it's such sweet bit of twangling
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cringe
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Just tried to get chatGPT to prove p v ¬p using natural deduction.
It couldn't do it correctly even after I walked it through a correct proof.
Then for a while it refused to concede that it failed.
It's mostly just interesting to get a feeling for the corners of the thing.
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@beneltham
It's not so bad if you're willing to travel.
Australian attitudes toward academia and, in particular, the humanities are - I think - the most negative in the English speaking world.
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Petition to make this the default salutation among set theorists on Twitter and beyond.
"Oh. A set theorist!"
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Better: does Foundations need Mathematics?
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@jbeardsleymath
I think this is bad advice.
You should do a PhD in math or the humanities if you think it will bring some kind of fulfillment in itself.
If you can do a PhD you can get another kind of job. Thinking that you can't do anything else, is not a good mental health place to go.
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What is logic?
... please find me another field of research where this has a simple answer first ....
... mainly because I'm a logican and so will use that information to fashion an analogous response for logic.
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Gonna start exclusively working in nothing at all.
Whenever anyone makes any claim at all, I'm gonna correct them and say "actually that's only true if you assume something."
I think as a bit i'm gonna start exclusively working in RCA_0 online, and whenever someone make some claim for which RCA_0 isn't strong enough I will correct them with a helpful "actually that's only true if you assume weak Kőnig's lemma" (or ATR or whatever as appropriate)
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Classical logic is the one true logic!
Heyters gonna heyt … but even they admit it's not not true.
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Wait until this circus discovers the Axiom of Determinacy.
The Axiom of Choice is convenient, but wrong.
This matters when using theorems in actual computations (BHK). Yes, you can do beautiful things with AC—but in the same way you can do beautiful things with a halting oracle.
Better to define a “basis-equipped vector space” if needed.
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@littmath
Sometimes I like to print that page and carry it around with me.
Looks a little weird at the gym, but who cares?
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Why is it that one bad math take tends to spawn thousands more bad math takes?
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TFW you forget to stop Zoom recording and you record yourself have a long conversation with your cat after class.
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I've reached the age where I'm comfortable complaining about the way young people complain about even younger people.
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Putnam and Putnam!
So apparently in the 3rd century people used to try to make out like Plato and Aristotle were basically in agreement, and in the 19th century Edward Caird did the same kind of thing with Kant and Hegel, so who could we be doing that with now? Carnap and Quine, obv, but who else
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I've had a horrible day, so I'm going to hazard some opinions:
1. 2 + 2 = 4;
2. Black Lives Matter;
3. Health Insurance shouldn't be tied to your job; and
4. The best country in the world deserves the best educated electorate.
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@littmath
@lastpositivist
Note to readers: Daniel knows perfectly well that 5 is the largest number but has long since sold his soul to BIG NUMBA.
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I hear you.
The things people say about set theory on here just boggle the mind.
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@AsafKaragila
@ZachWeiner
But knowing that a strategy exists is quite cold comfort if you don’t actually know the strategy.
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This is so shallow I think I just grazed my chin.
When I talk about words I'm using words to represent words. This is not a paradox.
The painter’s paradox:
Look at the easel. Does the fact that Munch is using paint to depict paint prevent the ensuing image from counting as a representation of paint?
Can you paint paint?
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@SC_Griffith
@littmath
There was a small set in V_\beta
That contained an ordinal \eta
But try as it might
It just couldn't quite
find map from its reals onto Theta.
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This can be bad faith, but often philosophers are pointing at something they can be rightly proud of: probably the best field specific web encyclopedia.
Often we just want people to read a little background before they start spouting ideas which are inevitably unoriginal.
A question for my philosophy twitter friends. When I ask a question on Twitter and you reply with a link to a 20k word article on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, what are you expecting to happen next?
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Analytic philosophy cops a bit of a beating these days.
Some of it is well enough deserved, but here are some generally positive remakes about it.
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Please let this be the last online quarter.
I want my garage to be a garage again.
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@littmath
probably shouldn't use the material conditional to understand the meaning of a counterfactual tho
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@littmath
I was hoping there wouldn't be a second tweet and we'd just have to figure out what you were thinking on our own.
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I feel I should point out that the converse is similarly depressing.
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Upward Löwenheim Skolem theorem.
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From my armchair, I have calculated analytically and a priori that we are beloved by all other disciplines.
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Why do people get so cranky about saying things like:
(1) M is a model of ZFC that thinks A is not true.
(2) M is a model of ZFC that says 0# exists but M is wrong.
(3) M is a model of ZFC and M has had a very long day.
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twitter ...
Math1: Foundations suck!
Math2: No they don't!
\repeat and take the direct limit to obtain:
Math1&2: Philosophy sux!
\a little while later:
Math1&2: I really think math is like, you know, real.
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Only refer to professors with definite descriptions, never a rigid designator.
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@katiedimartin
But who's divorcing who?
I can't figure it out.
Maybe their bond will strengthen as they both move into ultra denial ... and in all likelihood, noticably enhanced celebrity.
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Is a proof better when it is in accord with "why" you think a theorem should be true?
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i think the most annoying thing is the attempt to tie overly terse exposition styles to formalism without any real hint of an argument
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