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To the extent that physical objects like rocks exist, we only know about them through our limited perceptual faculties. And those faculties have been honed to give us a representation of physical objects that is somehow useful. So there’s a difference between the actual rock and how we perceive it. Math is interesting because it’s part rock, and part perceptual faculty (imo). The parts of math that describe properties of the physical world do exist, like the rock, but math is our flawed perception of those properties (maybe lol)

Michael Welnick 2y ago

There might be some objective way to perfectly describe physical reality but I suspect that it would be completely incomprehensible to humans. That theoretical description might exist in the same way as a rock but that’s not what math is. That description would likely not resemble math at all

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Discussion

monk_cactus 2y ago

definitely

I think I’m more saying this:

“real” rock >> human perception of rock

physical laws >> math

the things on the left do exist, while the things on the right are representations. the representations depend on humans for existence, but what they represent probably does exist

Michael Welnick 2y ago

I like this description

Michael Welnick 2y ago

Also I just thought that it might be the case that the actually theory of everything is dead simple like A=A or just “42” but we’re not smart enough to deduce how everything else follow from that

monk_cactus 2y ago

yea the theory of everything is tough when you consider that even something as simple as ordering events becomes impossible outside of small local spaces. cause-effect models and continuity are like our basic assumptions but they don’t even hold up without time