Kim Reece @kimreece@mathstodon.xyz

In reply to https://twitter.com/CreeepyJoe/status/1277342260133167106 I threaded a bit of what math is like in my head. Of course, the trick of it is, math /is/ magic, so there's no conversion necessary.

----

The lay folk were taught 'magic' in school, everyone had to learn it. But what they were taught was only patterns of symbols on a page. It looked exactly like magic .. without the magic in it.

Some few of them would realize what the symbols described, and in realizing it speak their true meaning with intent. Those symbols would then become so deeply a part of them that it would be hard to express their interaction with the world without invoking it.

They would see links and connections and patterns all around them, in everything these symbols described.

The difference in what this permitted them to do wouldn't be so obvious with the early symbols, but when somehow they passed exams without seeming to memorize it would become clear they had what was mistaken for a talent.

It wasn't talent, it was just that they had invoked the magic behind the symbols and taken it into themselves. Slowly as they became magicians, the world described by these symbols they acquired would fill in.

It become not just a bag of tricks, but a landscape of inter-relations and places and machines that operate on them to transform them into other things. The symbolic representations on the page were often, at that level, not even accurate any more.

Just a hopeful indication trying to drag the reader into this beautiful, powerful landscape and describe the machinery of it. New symbols could be made, and new machinery with the old ones; or the landscape explored.

But the magic had a certain fragility -- one symbol out of place and you could fall through into an abyss of confusion.

So magicians often spent a lot of their time moving, not in broad direct strokes, but in cautious circuitous patterns focused on making sure the ground was solid beneath them.

It took a lot of courage to take large steps, which more often than not landed one in the drink, but the great achievements such as new symbols that expand the entire possible landscape and its potential power...

Those always require daring to make large steps; then creating the circuitous landscape of detail to keep them from vanishing again back into the fog.

Actually performing magic, its actual practical mechanism? You'd just move ordinary things into an arrangement with a surprisingly thorough effect. But that arrangement would be determined by the patterns and mechanisms unseen, except to the magicians.

----

The hidden part here of course is that I meant it utterly literally .. a landscape, complete with topologies and metrics; algorithmic mechanisms and proof technique machinery. Tangible objects so abstract that they aren't possible to readily describe. Yet I assert, they are tangible.

it really upsets me that anyone can view IQ measures with any sort of validity and that it still has a presence in the world

it’s rooted in eugenics and is/has been utilized in basically every *ist form possible

"This is military grade"
-what does that even mean
-aircraft carriers are running Win98 so clearly lots of things are "military grade"
-If the US government said eating plutonium was bad I would Google it just to be super sure

"Some furry gave us 5 stars on their blog"
-A clear indicator of quality
-Furries make the internet go, an authority on technology
-Furries typically aren't feds
-I trust anyone 4chan hates
-idk they're fuzzy or something

The desire to pair-program a thesis so I quit wasting time on dead ends...

I finished grading early.

Tonight I will...

I put the impossible antifa svg up again on the internets after it was requested. Link lasts 7 days.

Released under WTFPL
https://send.tresorit.com/a#-unWTdSiwl3wRecmcSVNEQ

#SVG #Antifa #Antifascist #Anarchist

@nikita postdoc, teaching, or anything at all that would hire me in Europe, preferably Germany but I'm flexible.

generic openings for Japanology or linguistics are fine, but my experience is with the Japanese language, its writing system, dialects, historical linguistics, tonology, database/archival/analysis of fieldwork data, computational and statistical methods with Python/R. my contract ends in March and by then I will have my PhD.

thanks much! 🙏