Just how big is it?

[HalationEffect]

Sure, if that's what you want to call an argument over whether "equal" and "is defined to be" mean the same thing or not. Basically, that's what you freakazoids got down to.

I almost said it was a problem of epistemology - be thankful for small mercies!

[Qqmike]

S-R, "an argument over whether "equal" and "is defined to be" mean the same thing or not."

Yeah, ain't that the truth. Terminology, notation, convention, definitions.
I gotta get some sleep tonight! :-)

[Qqmike]

Halation is saying stuff like, "I almost said it was a problem of epistemology - be thankful for small mercies!

Whew! So glad I missed your post when I posted above! Epistemology ... does that ever bring back memories of academic search-for-truth from my 20's! And, certainly, we won't be discussing the god Nietzsche ( I still like you N). Fact is, you reach a point (of age, of exhaustion) where what counts is what's operational:
Does it work?
Yep.
Good. Go with it.
Done deal. Today we found some truth amongst the noise.

[HalationEffect]

I only ever read a little of Nietzsche; just enough to realise that he didn't really 'speak to me'.

In my 20's I was more aligned with Descartes and Sartre, while these days I'm becoming more interested in the work of Wittgenstein, Russell and Spinoza.

[Qqmike]

I can relate to your interest in Sartre, have read Descartes, not read the others (except Bertrand R, right?).
These days? While I have an itch to review the nihilist Nietzsche and maybe some Kafka, it's been Charles Bukowski for me.
;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski
(I realize he seems to look like and act like a poet, but ... )

[HalationEffect]

I can relate to your interest in Sartre, have read Descartes, not read the others (except Bertrand R, right?).
These days? While I have an itch to review the nihilist Nietzsche and maybe some Kafka, it's been Charles Bukowski for me.
;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bukowski
(I realize he seems to look like and act like a poet, but ... )

It's interesting (to me anyway) that often you need only scratch a poet, or indeed almost any really thoughtful writer, and you might find a philosopher lurking below the surface. Kurt Vonnegut, William Blake, and Dylan Thomas immediately spring to mind, just off the top of my head.

I'm not familiar with Charles Bukowski; the name rings only a faint, distant bell.

I really liked a quote of Bukowski's on the Wikipedia page, on the subject of writing (I'm a bit of a frustrated wanna-be writer myself) - "Somebody at one of these places [...] asked me: 'What do you do? How do you write, create?' You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it".

I may have to read more about him... if I ever find the time! So much to learn, so many experiences to be had, so little time to do it all in. Mortality is annoying. All I ever wanted to be was a polymath(*), but that's a tall order in the time we're given.

Oh, and yes, the Russell I referred to in post #64 was indeed Bertrand.

(*) As Robert A. Heinlein said: "Specialisation is for insects".

[Qqmike]

You hit the jugular there, you identified a famous and often misunderstood quote from Bukowski (which is also on his grave stone): Don't try.
I've run into different expressions of this rule in different places through the years (do what your hand turns to naturally, follow a path of heart), but 'Don't try' is typical Bukowski, brief and hits right on. Certainly applies to the arts, but I think also to math and sciences (perhaps a la Paul Halmos's position that much of (doing) math is art, working as an artist).

"So much to learn, so many experiences to be had, so little time to do it all in. Mortality is annoying."

Well said!

[SteveRiley]

What was this thread supposed to be about again?

[Qqmike]

2^n

[Qqmike]

... but we extended it to semantics, linguistics, philosophy (general), philosophy of mathematics, barfly poetry, and No Exit.

[SteveRiley]

No Exit.

This much is certain.

[HalationEffect]

You hit the jugular there, you identified a famous and often misunderstood quote from Bukowski (which is also on his grave stone): Don't try.
I've run into different expressions of this rule in different places through the years (do what your hand turns to naturally, follow a path of heart), but 'Don't try' is typical Bukowski, brief and hits right on. Certainly applies to the arts, but I think also to math and sciences (perhaps a la Paul Halmos's position that much of (doing) math is art, working as an artist).

You'll probably not be surprised to learn that Paul Halmos is another name with which I'm unfamiliar (but I see from his Wikipedia page that he worked with John von Neumann, who I very much have heard of).

To be honest, the only modern-day mathematicians I'm even passingly familiar with are Andrew Wiles (because he proved Fermat's Last Theorem) and Marcus du Sautoy (because I watch BBC's 'Horizon' shows).

What was this thread supposed to be about again?

Ermmm... can I get back to you on that?

[Qqmike]

I haven't followed mathematics lately.

HalationEffect: "Paul Halmos is another name with which I'm unfamiliar (but I see from his Wikipedia page that he worked with John von Neumann, who I very much have heard of)."

I also worked with Halmos ... as a struggling graduate student taking his Real Analysis course :-)
I once presented a short, 3-line insightful proof to a complex, delicate theorem by abstracting to a higher-level operator space and using a fixed point property of Hilbert spaces. His response was simple, "Mr Qq, I'm impressed, very clever, too clever, so clever that I can't see what is really going on at the detail level, thank you, please sit down now, and can anyone present a proof I can understand?" He was right, of course, I didn't really understand the theorem at a meaningful level; to me it was just another opportunity to abstract some pure, clean math out of it. (I majored in algebraic topology, if that tells you anything.)

What was the question now?

[HalationEffect]

No Exit

This much is certain.

Hell is other people.

[Qqmike]

"Hell is other people." -- you would like Bukowski