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Hehwoeatsgods t1_jahc5tg wrote

Reply to comment by DocHickory in The imperfect translation between thoughts and language by LifeOfAPancake

Math is the closest we come to true speech

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abottomful t1_jahq8lo wrote

What's the equation for "that's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard"?

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ReadySouffle t1_jai57qq wrote

My knowledge of math is limited, so forgive me of any ignorance, but there is still some limitation on what math can convey. When it comes to quantity and magnitude math is quite the efficient communicator, but does math contain any structure for conveying feeling? Conveying feeling is something art may be able to do more effectively than mathematics alone. Maybe written language is the effective bridge then between the quantitative and the pictoral, at least where humans are concerned.

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[deleted] t1_jaj9i4k wrote

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ReaperX24 t1_jao8y3e wrote

Spot on. He's correct in that math is absolute in its precision, but it's still no more than an abstraction of what's actually going on. More importantly, our cognition is simply not good enough to intuitively comprehend a mathematical description of a highly complex entity or process. Like, it's totally possible to describe a table in purely mathematical terms, but even if you manage to compute that, good luck trying to convey it to other people without using language as a crutch.

And to take it a step further, our ability to use symantic languages is actually one of the main reasons why we're so good at maths. We wouldn't be able to handle anything more than basic algebra and geometry etc. if not for the fact that languages allow us to abstract complex concepts into very simple symbols. Remember that we developed written languages long before we ever considered using algebraic expressions as a mathematical notation. For the longest time, mathematicians relied almost entirely on geometry and vectors to describe mathematics, with a bit of help from symantic languages.

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apostleofbadfang t1_jat6waa wrote

Another issue with math as precise language is that at that level of logic, only a few people would be able to untangle the symbolic logic. And it would take a long time for them to do, rendering the entire exercise useless as a language, albeit prefect in conveying info.

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