Thursday, July 13, 2006

 

JSH: My working theory on the psychology

To me mathematics is about the search for truth as the highest ideal, and a mathematical proof is a part of the ideal of truth as it is perfect, absolute, inviolable.

A mathematical proof is just true, no matter what, and cannot be broken, tarnished or made false.

A mathematical proof is an absolute outside of time.

So I wonder about people lying about mathematical proofs, and the explanation I'm working on now is that for many of you, everything I said above is foreign.

And I don't think you believe it.

So to you a mathematical proof is a human construct that can be broken or malformed, or may be true one day and false the next, and your view, I believe, is that most importantly proof is what people BELIEVE to be true.

That would explain how people could keep lying about my research, I think, as some part of them may think that if they just keep saying it's wrong enough times, it may be wrong, as if there is some changeable thing about the research.

In reality, my past mistaken ideas—when I thought I had proofs and did not—were just wrong, and never right. Correct ideas of mine, are just correct, independent of me.

I have no impact on the truth or falsity of even my own ideas.

Their truth value stands one way or the other—true or false—without regard to me, at all.

That reality is what seems to be missing from the mental paradigms that many of you are clearly using.

For many of you, I believe, there are no absolutes, not even mathematical proof.

While to me, there is nothing outside of mathematical proof, so with us inside of it as well, no thing stands apart from absolute truth, not even nothing.





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