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It Seems Minds Trained in Rigorous Mathematical Reasoning Are Still Rare

2008/7/6 8:13:22

Haven't been too healthy these past two days. Friday night it was nearly an all-nighter of mahjong, and yesterday afternoon braved temperatures close to 40°C for a round of football. Fortunately, in mahjong it was basically one winner cleaning out the other three, and in football I didn't actually get on the pitch — just did some practice drills with the ball and then cheered from the sideline. The football atmosphere here is great — someone actually came from another city just to play. However, this ID's body truly hasn't fully recovered. Walking and doing other things feels perfectly normal, but the moment I start dribbling and running, I can clearly tell something's off. Keep pushing forward.

Just skimmed through the replies to Friday's post. It seems minds that have received rigorous mathematical reasoning training are still rare. Of course, I'm pleased that some friends have roughly understood the logical relationships in the post, but since most people are still confused, a few more words are necessary.

It seems most got tripped up by this sentence: "Note, a rigorous proof must consider this situation — the scenario of humans eating humans. Otherwise, for example, if cannibalism could be sustained, then it would be impossible to rigorously prove in theory that the human world must contain material objects." Many people mistakenly assumed that this ID's subsequent reasoning was aimed at rigorously proving the necessary existence of material objects. In fact, it's precisely the opposite. This ID's subsequent reasoning used a design strictly constrained by two premises — that humans must die and that humans must eat — to prove that the necessary existence of material objects cannot be rigorously derived from these two premises alone. Therefore, the scenario of cannibalism became one of the cases in the subsequent rigorous classification. Otherwise, the later classification of the human world wouldn't need two categories at all — just the second category would suffice.

Furthermore, many people are still poisoned by Stalin's inane dialectical materialism (note, anyone with a bit of theoretical history knows that dialectical materialism has nothing to do with Marx; rather, it was Stalin's book Dialectical Materialism and Historical Materialism that smuggled in private agendas and poisoned the minds of billions, including Mao's). They can't sort out the relationship between theory and reality.

Reality is merely a special case. As for slogans like "theory must be tested by practice" and "practice is the sole criterion for testing truth" — these are nothing but platitudes endlessly mouth-pleasured by the intellectually challenged dialectical materialists. Reality is a special case, practice is a special case, and theory — if even a single special case falsifies it — that theory is of course defeated. There's nothing miraculous about this. Reality and practice have none of the special status or divine authority that the intellectually challenged dialectical materialists attribute to them.

A theory, even if proven correct by reality and practice, is still wrong if any single non-real, non-practical, purely theoretical construct with rigorous logic proves it false. The verification of a theory by reality and practice has, in essence, no primacy or divine authority whatsoever.

Practice can at most provide a special case for testing theory. Practice can falsify theory, but it cannot prove theory — because a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion special cases cannot prove any theory, let alone the self-indulgent, trivial practice conducted by finite humans in finite history.

Let "practice is the sole criterion for testing truth" continue its dialectical-materialist-level intellectual self-pleasuring of standards. If people enjoy self-pleasuring, let them continue — but truth has nothing to do with self-pleasuring.

Without breaking free from the narrow confines of reality, you can never truly theorize. Even when you do theorize, it's merely a more crudely simplistic textual imitation of the special case that is reality. And our reality is that there are far too many such slogan-style, intellectually stunted theories — which, of course, is also a means of dumbing down the populace in capitalist society.

Just because reality doesn't show us cannibalism doesn't negate the theoretical possibility of a purely cannibalistic society. And in fact, those transmuted forms of cannibalism — setting aside those actual historical horrors of parents exchanging children to eat — look at today's world: behind every capitalist social relationship, which one isn't a strict structural equivalent of cannibalism? Devouring people without spitting out bones or spilling blood — that is the upgraded version of cannibalism.

How pitiable that so many people, while being devoured, still so joyfully add bricks and mortar to capitalism's edifice.

Wake up. The darkness has given you eyes, but without the light of theory, you can never find true illumination. Of course, if you're accustomed to mistaking the glow of fireflies for the sun, then carry on with your Red Sun — for certain levels of intellect, that may be the more compassionate choice.