Rick McQueen's response to Assignment 1
I haven't thought much about magic in a long time, but now that I give the matter attention, my evaluation is that mathematics and magic are ethically diametric. One relies on the understanding of the audience; the other has a deathly fear of the audience's understanding. The author of a logical proof goes to lengths to ensure that nothing is hidden and nothing is skipped. While the "size" of a step may increase as one advances in the literature (unless one advances so far as to reach Principia Mathematica), all of the steps are always visible. A magician, by contrast, obscures as much as possible: talking with intent to distract from what one's hands are doing, performing only whatever subset of reassuring measures will not disturb the trick at hand, practicing quick sleights so as to deny perception of a step. A magic trick may use some branch of math - presumably group theory or topology, with occasional arithmetic or combinatorics - but these are used precisely because the standard audience can be trusted to not understand what has occurred.
On a side note, the STEM fields are sometimes viewed as though they were magic - not the parlor tricks of magicians, but the art of witches and faery folk. I consider this view socially unhealthy, though it does sometimes help me procure social status in everyday interactions.
The appeal of mathematics to me resists meaningful reduction. It is simply that, up to a point, I enjoy abstraction. Earlier on I thought that math explained the world, but of course analogs to the axiom do not and cannot exist in science. To understand the world, we must reverse-engineer it from within it. And in reality, certainty is impossible, though ironically those who invoke this principle most tend to suffer the most from terminal certitude.
More disappointingly, because it was avoidable, is the cavalier attitude mathematicians have on the topics of infinity and the axiom of choice. It is all but inconceivable to me that a system which includes the Banach-Tarski Paradox describes the universe.
One way to think about the relation of math to philosophy and science is that math constrains the set of possible worlds. For an example, read about spherical and hyperbolic geometry.
I've not witnessed many magic tricks, or if I have I've forgotten them; this part of the prompt brought to mind a time from early childhood when the French Drop was deeply impressive and mysterious to me.
On a side note, the STEM fields are sometimes viewed as though they were magic - not the parlor tricks of magicians, but the art of witches and faery folk. I consider this view socially unhealthy, though it does sometimes help me procure social status in everyday interactions.
The appeal of mathematics to me resists meaningful reduction. It is simply that, up to a point, I enjoy abstraction. Earlier on I thought that math explained the world, but of course analogs to the axiom do not and cannot exist in science. To understand the world, we must reverse-engineer it from within it. And in reality, certainty is impossible, though ironically those who invoke this principle most tend to suffer the most from terminal certitude.
More disappointingly, because it was avoidable, is the cavalier attitude mathematicians have on the topics of infinity and the axiom of choice. It is all but inconceivable to me that a system which includes the Banach-Tarski Paradox describes the universe.
One way to think about the relation of math to philosophy and science is that math constrains the set of possible worlds. For an example, read about spherical and hyperbolic geometry.
I've not witnessed many magic tricks, or if I have I've forgotten them; this part of the prompt brought to mind a time from early childhood when the French Drop was deeply impressive and mysterious to me.
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