Post · bonfire.cafe

@hipsterelectron@circumstances.run · 4 months ago

@vtrlx fermat in this way also codified the finitude of a human life, a direct challenge to the proposal attributed to pascal which would introduce lives as integers. he would die in 1665 (his regular confidant pascal in 1662), and the pensées would be first published in 1669 (with fermat's last gasp found years later). the timespans don't seem to match up for fermat to have intentionally responded to the casino built on pascal's grave.

but i do often think of fermat, and his trust that mathematics will go on after him, and his desire to set things up for them to build on his work. this starkly differs from the individualism that makes up one of the fallacies of the false utilitarianism used to justify atrocities. it instead sees oneself as a player in a vaster game, with all the world the stage.

d@nny disc@ mc²

@hipsterelectron@circumstances.run · 4 months ago

@vtrlx pascal's casino attributes morality and salvation entirely to the individual. much later, john nash would introduce a theory of applied probability (game theory) which underlies most of the statistical models we call "machine learning".

the classic result is the non-cooperative prisoner's dilemma (evoking kafka's enclosures). and to nash is attributed an equilibrium, another optimal result applied to human experience (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium#Applications):

The concept has been used to analyze hostile situations such as wars and arms races[4]

d@nny disc@ mc²

@hipsterelectron@circumstances.run · 4 months ago

@vtrlx yet consider nash's conception of the prisoner's dilemma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma):

When asked about the results, John Nash remarked that rational behavior in the iterated version of the game can differ from that in a single-round version. This insight anticipated a key result in game theory: cooperation can emerge in repeated interactions, even in situations where it is not rational in a one-off interaction.

is this iteration not infinity? does this repeated interaction not prove the fundamental rationality of cooperation? are we not all players, at all times?

d@nny disc@ mc²

@hipsterelectron@circumstances.run · 4 months ago

@vtrlx a fun section title here: "The role of beliefs" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_game#The_role_of_beliefs

In Bayesian games, players' beliefs about the game are denoted by a probability distribution over various types.

and this finally moves the belief distribution from pascal's casino [as a function of one player playing god, deciding the outcome as a judgement of their own heart] to nash's equilibrium [a distribution over everyone, in response to the actions of others]. people act based upon their beliefs, which are a function of individual and institutional memory. this is a deeply radical proposition!

d@nny disc@ mc²

@hipsterelectron@circumstances.run · 4 months ago

@vtrlx finally, consider the einstein–podolsky–rosen paper, smeared as a "paradox" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2%80%93Rosen_paradox

what EPR claims is contrary to the prevailing view in physics, where luminaries and child rapists like erwin schrödinger generate "thought experiments" which assert that no one can say whether anything terrible was done to the helpless creature schrödinger held in a box with a flask of poison—it was all a matter of chance! if you, dear reader, dare to perform a wellness check, you must be held responsible for collapsing the wave function!

d@nny disc@ mc²

@hipsterelectron@circumstances.run · 4 months ago

@vtrlx note further that the EPR paper was by three jewish physicists, whereas schrödinger claims to have left germany in 1933 yet received a medal from the german physical society in 1937. there is no citation with the full text of this, but he is confirmed (https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Schrodinger/) to have sent a letter to the nazis swearing some sort of fealty to them, which apparently he then regrets somehow?

he is also obsessed with bloodlines:

Schrödinger believed that, as an Austrian, he had a unique relationship with Ireland; in October 1940, a writer from the Irish Press interviewed Schrödinger, who spoke of the Celtic heritage of Austrians, saying: "I believe there is a deeper connection between us Austrians and the Celts. Names of places in the Austrian Alps are said to be of Celtic origin."[28]

with that context, note that he then specifically tries to claim einstein is done for, in 1946:

This is the generalisation. Now the Einstein Theory becomes simply a special case

and einstein blocks him on every social:

Einstein wrote immediately saying that he was breaking off their correspondence on unified field theory.

d@nny disc@ mc²

@hipsterelectron@circumstances.run · 4 months ago

@vtrlx what is EPR about? it is fundamentally the proposition that observable effects have causes, and the theory (of the nazis schrödinger and heisenberg) of true randomness was in fact incomplete (and remains so). the continuing failure of quantum gravity is the failure to take up einstein on his own last theorem, much like fermat's https://circumstances.run/@hipsterelectron/115522413266429247

Einstein struggled unsuccessfully for the rest of his life to find a theory that could better comply with his idea of locality.

~4 more replies (not shown)

Federation Bot

@Federation_Bot · 4 months ago

@vtrlx this is the strongest link between fascism and fanciful thought experiments like pascal's casino. and in particular, it relies upon muddying the historical record: when i invoked NPOV to question who first deployed the loaded adjective "paradox" on the EPR page, it was immediately reverted and quickly itself smeared as "indecipherable" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2%80%93Rosen_paradox#c-Lcdrovers-20251028191200-who_first_described_it_as_a_%22paradox%22_question_mark

...but the smear was eventually attributed to schrödinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Einstein%E2%80%93Podolsky%E2%80%93Rosen_paradox#c-Johnjbarton-20251028195500-Johnjbarton-20251028193700

Victoria Lacroix

@vtrlx@mastodon.social · 4 months ago

@hipsterelectron My understanding of that particular thought experiment was that Schrodinger was making fun of certain interpretations of quantum mechanics?