Post AMsPNxopsT4cFRTyqG by ralismark@fosstodon.org
 (DIR) More posts by ralismark@fosstodon.org
 (DIR) Post #AMsOUslYxiK2eMge7U by urusan@fosstodon.org
       2022-08-25T05:17:49Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       Something I heard on the Internet:There's a spectrum from "Natural Language" to "Programming" and "Mathematics" falls in between these two extremes.Natural Language maximizes expressiveness at the cost of realism. You can express anything you want, but it can easily be contradictory or incoherent.Mathematics keeps a high expressiveness but gains a lot of realism. Still, you can explore some pretty unreal mathematics.Programming is very poor at expression, but all valid programs are real.
       
 (DIR) Post #AMsPNxopsT4cFRTyqG by ralismark@fosstodon.org
       2022-08-25T05:27:47Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @urusan it's also a spectrum of precision:with language you can have pretty much any amount of ambiguitymathematics requires formalism but still permits some degree of ambiguity due to it being read by peoplevalid programs are unambiguous in what they do (up to stuff like undefined behaviour i guess)
       
 (DIR) Post #AMsRbZQjYDMKZPpCoS by jonny@social.coop
       2022-08-25T05:52:36Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @urusanI'm gonna disagree with the characterization of language as lacking realism, contradictory or incoherent statements are very real in a nontrivial sense that they reflect the reality of the speaker, including utterances w the ontological status as knowing jokes etc. that don't make a claim on material truth. there are axes here but I don't think realism is one. expressiveness is equally hard to quantify
       
 (DIR) Post #AMsXn3A9wfNth8vgum by HappyHeathen@kolektiva.social
       2022-08-25T07:01:57Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @urusan Programming is just a framework within which one interacts with mathematics. The natural language aspect of it is merely an abstraction layer. (Here's where the meme would say "prove me wrong.")
       
 (DIR) Post #AMsY2ceKHztw69SuPY by sotolf@social.linux.pizza
       2022-08-25T07:04:47Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @urusan How is programming poor at expression, it's very much a tool to communicate with other programmers, or else we would all program in assembly still, I don't understand this take to be absolutely honest. Maybe you're just more experienced with maths?
       
 (DIR) Post #AMtcxjz6HfzoKQdLqi by Azure@tailswish.industries
       2022-08-25T19:34:40.129781Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @urusan How do you define 'unreal' mathematics? Is it a Tegmark style "Only computable mathematics is real" thing?