A Single Country in the World

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Happy Ent said:

I think I disagree here.

Because you say “beyond us” (emphasis mine). 

See, Scot, I have you down as a Platonist. You worry a lot about Truth, what’s really Out There, what is the Ultimate, Innate, Ideal, True Form. This is pure Platonism. It is very well aligned with the view of Reality that many, many mathematicians have. They are logical positivists, and some of them ask Deep Questions about the Nature of Infinity, and Truth, and Whether The Integers Exist and the reals are just man-made, and so on. Not only do these deep-sounding questions hold the attention of a nontrivial fraction of professional mathematicians (say, Hilbert), they also attract the fascination of many amateurs (say, A Ellison). 

I mean this in the kindest way—there is a certain branch of physics that is able to attract the attention of the masses (say, me), to do with Quantum Shit, and I think maths is just like that—some questions sound as if they resonate with Deep Questions that the curious, idle mind will have thought about anyway, and science presents some more-or-less well-defined hooks to hang that folk intuition on. I have fuck-all to say (or even think about) solid state physics, but Quantum Shit really gets me interested.

But science is not about truth. There is no Platonic world of ideals that we try to catch glimpses of. In particular, there is no Holy world of Mathematical Truth from which we are forever separated, nor was that proved by Gödel. Gödel just hammers home that inference (logical positivism) or induction are provably incomplete modes of reasoning, so the already-rejected idea that deduction is science is merely established yet-again using the deductionists’ own main weapon. As if that were necessary. Gödel convinces nobody interesting, he merely makes the stubborn Hilbert/Plato/deduction/logic crowd look even more absurd because he takes their only weapon and establishes Popper’s point in their own frame of reference.

To sum up:

Scientists: “Our quest is not the quest for Truth. Therefore, no confirmation.” (And Popper put this best.)

(most of the audience goes home now. The film is over. Only two groups are left: the postmodernists who completely misunderstand this message. And the logicians.)
Hilbert et al.: “But wait! Truth exists! We have all this fantastic machinery called math, and …”

Gödel steps in, takes in the machinery out of Hilbert’s hands and makes Hilbert look foolish. The remaining people in the audience (von Neumann) also goes home.

Caveat: Professionally, I’m a logical positivist, so Popper’s position is very far from what I’m paid to defend. (I’m a bit like a priest who lost Faith.)

I definitely fall towards the Platonist side of things but I do see your point.

[Jo498]

3 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

But science is not about truth. There is no Platonic world of ideals that we try to catch glimpses of. In particular, there is no Holy world of Mathematical Truth from which we are forever separated, nor was that proved by Gödel. Gödel just hammers home that inference (logical positivism) or induction are provably incomplete modes of reasoning, so the already-rejected idea that deduction is science is merely established yet-again using the deductionists’ own main weapon. As if that were necessary. Gödel convinces nobody interesting, he merely makes the stubborn Hilbert/Plato/deduction/logic crowd look even more absurd because he takes their only weapon and establishes Popper’s point in their own frame of reference.

To sum up:

Scientists: “Our quest is not the quest for Truth. Therefore, no confirmation.” (And Popper put this best.)

(most of the audience goes home now. The film is over. Only two groups are left: the postmodernists who completely misunderstand this message. And the logicians.)
Hilbert et al.: “But wait! Truth exists! We have all this fantastic machinery called math, and …”

Gödel steps in, takes in the machinery out of Hilbert’s hands and makes Hilbert look foolish. The remaining people in the audience (von Neumann) also goes home.

Caveat: Professionally, I’m a logical positivist, so Popper’s position is very far from what I’m paid to defend. (I’m a bit like a priest who lost Faith.)

Logical positivism as practiced from the 1920-40s has been as dead as a doornail in philosophy for decades. It was buried in the early 60s or even earlier (by internal contradictions, by Quine's "Two dogmas of empiricism" and by the rise of Scientifc Realism) and by now it is largely irrelevant.  And Popperian fallibilism does not fare much better although it survived longer, maybe due to the longevity of Sir Karl...

I am not really sure I understand what you are talking about. Note that many mathematicians and philosophers still defend Platonism, so the impact of Goedel's incompleteness theorem seems quite limited. It is only about derivability/provability, not truth. If anything it show that the latter cannot be reduced to the former, so it could be seen to strengthen the platonist stance. It is clearly not seen as a rebuttal of platonism. Platonism is different from Hilbert's brand of axiomatism (There are other good arguments against platonism, though and they have been around since Aristotle   )

Neither has Popperian fallibilism any impact on Platonism (in mathematics or elsewhere). They hardly touch each other. Note also that the later Popper's "Welt/World 3" seems dangerously close to a platonist world of Ideas (it certainly seemed that way to one professor I studied with who recalled being appalled when he attended a seminar or lecture where Popper first introduced that notion).

And what the hell is that sub-discussion doing in a sophomoric thread on a World State?

[Jo498]

6 hours ago, maarsen said:

Philosophers discussing mathematics is like monks discussing sex. If you can't do it,  any talk about it comes across as irrelevant.  Godel's theorem holds not just holds for mathematics but for any logical system complex enough to contain addition. 

Do you really think that people doing (professionally) philosophy of mathematics have not studied maths as well? Furthermore, if your "argument" was true ornithology would be impossible: If you cannot fly like a bird, you better not talk about birds.

[felice]

11 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

America and Australia are exactly the examples I feel prove my point. The European expansionist ways already ruined civilisations there, no need to carry this mentality and its consequences out into space.

Yes, bringing up genocidal looters like the conquistadors is hardly arguing in favour of allowing humans off-planet. But I don't think it becomes an issue until we discover alien life; there's (probably) nothing/no-one on Mars to be adversely affected by our presence, for example.

11 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

You are contradicting yourself here. All people can never be equally represented if you do not allow their languages in public discourse.

On the other hand, you can't have public discourse if everyone is speaking different languages and most people don't understand what anyone else is saying. And I'm not convinced computer translation of everything is ever going to be sufficiently accurate or practical. I recommend Esperanto; it's nobody's native language, so ideal as everybody's second language.

[Red Tiger]

On 22-10-2016 at 6:49 PM, zelticgar said:

Right? The arrogance to think it is even possible to come up with a system that would address all the needs of billions of individuals is stunning. The answer to a challenge or conflict becomes "Be tolerant, you need to just submit to it for the good of others. And by the way, if you don't submit you are a horrible person."

As a minority I find this sentence especially creepy.

I also absolutely hate the concept of "the greater good".

[zelticgar]

Sacrificing for "the greater good" can make sense in some instances but it does not scale very well, especially if you were to try to create a single world order by definition you could never really get to the point where greater good could ever be defined. 

[Happy Ent]

1 hour ago, Jo498 said:

I am not really sure I understand what you are talking about. Note that many mathematicians and philosophers still defend Platonism, so the impact of Goedel's incompleteness theorem seems quite limited.

I think that is my point. Somebody like Scot has, in many threads over the years, displayed an honest eagerness to understand how mathematicians reason about capital-T Truth. This always fills me with mixed emotions. The most long-lived misunderstanding about scientists is that we should care about the Truth. We don’t. Even mathematicians hardly do, even though they (or maybe I should say “we”) care about Truth more than most. (A position in which we are mistaken, I believe.)

1 hour ago, Jo498 said:

And what the hell is that sub-discussion doing in a sophomoric thread on a World State?

Well, I can reduce most any discussion to a Popperwank. But from “Let’s think about the Perfect State” it’s anything but a stretch. People who care about how to build a perfect society probably also care about Truth. It’s the same illness. (They also worry about the technological singularity and obsess about the AI control problem. There: another tangent for us to go off in.)

—

If I can’t Popperthread the discussion. I’ll Bakkerthread it.

[Happy Ent]

BTW Jo498, Scot’s original question was if Popper himself had anything to say about the Completeness Theorems. Would you happen to know this?

[House Balstroko]

7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

You're still ignoring my question:

If Quebec decides to stay francophone and not to recognize the WS, its officials, refuses to pay WS taxes, and organizes its own government seperate from the WS what does the WS do?

If it remains independent then it has every right to do so. Of course it will not be paying taxes to the WS as it does not belong to it.

To further elaborate on some of my previous points, if we ever reach a state where different societies agree on establishing a WS it will likely be the result of a long buildup. First we would get EU like organisations popping up in different regions of the world. These already exist to a certain extent (NAFTA, ASEAN and MERCOSUR), but they are nowhere near as integrated as the EU. Imagine if all those bodies slowly congregate into single entities, then we may reach a state with only a few nations. I believe the final merger into the WS would occur at that point.

I'm definitely not suggesting that a fractured world of nearly 200 countries suddenly turn into the WS. It would have to be a gradual process.

[House Balstroko]

8 hours ago, polishgenius said:

I'm curious about the mechanics of this. Forcible repopulation and redistribution of wealth? Perhaps a bit of extreme terraforming thrown in?

Not necessarily a forcible process. It's about giving people around the world the option to relocate anywhere they wish without the hassle of dealing with immigration or being restricted by it. 

[House Balstroko]

16 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

 

You are contradicting yourself here. All people can never be equally represented if you do not allow their languages in public discourse. Choice of language is a powerful symbol of representation in public.

 

How am I contradicting myself here? I'm suggesting that every language has the right to be chosen , then casting my vote for English. It's just an individual vote.

16 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

Even if there were to be a vote on what language should be used in public discourse, as you are saying would be most democratic - which language do you think would win? The one with the most speakers of it as their first language. The sheer number would win over any rational thought. And all the other languages would be disadvantaged.

That is how representative democracy works is it not? Now, you could argue that it undermines my point of all languages having a shot, but I disagree. If every language  has a right to be chosen then it remains democratic. Even if only 5 people choose to vote for one, knowing that they had a chance is what matters. The important thing is that they have the right to vote for their chosen language and not be excluded. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

Are we selecting an international language via FPP or run-off voting?

If the former, you're very likely to end up with Mandarin as the international language.

[Little Scribe of Naath]

There's simply no way you can force learning a language on populations who do not require the language. People learn languages by necessity more than anything.

If you choose a language based on democratic vote, Mandarin will indeed be the winner, good luck trying to get the rest of the world to learn it.

 

[House Balstroko]

1 hour ago, Little Scribe of Naath said:

There's simply no way you can force learning a language on populations who do not require the language. People learn languages by necessity more than anything.

If you choose a language based on democratic vote, Mandarin will indeed be the winner, good luck trying to get the rest of the world to learn it.

 

 I think English has a good chance of winning in a popular vote because it has a larger global presence then Mandarin. In many former British colonies, English is treated like a second language. Mandarin does have a larger domestic presence.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, House Balstroko said:

 I think English has a good chance of winning in a popular vote because it has a larger global presence then Mandarin. In many former British colonies, English is treated like a second language. Mandarin does have a larger domestic presence.

Mandarin has the Plurality globally.

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Mandarin has the Plurality globally.

Exactly. So if it were one person, one vote, with a plurality winning*, we would be having an international language that is only spoken in one part of the world. Hooray for democracy!

I rather get the impression the OP would be less keen on this World State thing if it meant he had to learn Mandarin to politically engage with his government, or lived under a regime with less than progressive views of gender equality, or the host of other things that global democracy might force on him.

*English or Spanish might be competitive in a run-off. Especially the latter - I really could imagine people voting tactically to stop English.

[baxus]

Why on Earth would I want to speak to my family in English, Mandarin or any language other than our own?

And why would I want to hear everyone speaking the same language everywhere I go?

Different cultures are what's fun and interesting about this planet.

I hope never to see this "single country in the world" thing, especially with political situation in powerful countries - US elections, Brexit, Putin, the whole mess in China...

[sologdin]

maybe something less ambitious than one language--something like standardized weights & measures.  that's appropriately & grandly alexandrian in scope.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

16 minutes ago, sologdin said:

maybe something less ambitious than one language--something like standardized weights & measures.  that's appropriately & grandly alexandrian in scope.

As long as Stones are the standard measure for weight I'll be satisfied.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

How would democracy even work in a situation like this. I think the assumption is that everything is standardised. But how do you standardise opinions? You will always have people who believe different things. Seems to me what the OP is advocating is a totalitarian state based on modern liberal values.. a bit like New Labour in the UK! 

Basically you can't just force people to believe in something or change their views on things unless you are Stalin.