The feeling of understanding based upon math alone without a complete picture of how the mathematics maps to reality is an illusion.
A computer understands nothing at all while being perfect at math. Mathematical ability in an autistic savant is often fantastic and it is unified with their mental disability. It’s important to note that Autism is extreme maleness of the brain when we look at the profile of sexual dimorphism. Each of the features that make a brain more masculine are emphasized and often to extremity.
People who excel at math and computers are often on the autistic spectrum and are extremely often diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. This is not a coincidence, it’s a proclivity. This is partially why I often think spectrum “disorders” shouldn’t be called disorders. They are a natural bent that grants additional abilities that are often commensurate with the disabilities. If we look at this relativistically, and imagine if most people were on the spectrum, then we might call what we normally refer to as neurotypical people “disabled.” We have a habit of either focusing on a superior ability or upon a disability instead of recognizing their connection. This is where we run into problems.
There is a fundamental male disability that goes along with mathematical proficiency and it’s a deficiency in actual understanding.
This is a crucial cultural problem that is unrecognized and not properly dealt with. That deficiency in understanding, however, comes from an over-separation of concepts that is required for precision but therefore also leads to a disability with analogy. There is a reduction in creativity as well.
We who are both male and more on the spectrum often cannot grasp complex concepts as well as other subjects (defensively calling them nonsense, word-salad, etc) This is especially true of multi-layered information and communication that more socially adept people are proficient with. The inherent ambiguity falls too far to the “noise” side of our perfect low-risk signal-to-noise ratio we are comfortable with. We/they often call the actual conveyance of real understanding “hand-waving” because of the belief that the term “understanding” is a reference to the same feeling of satisfaction and dopamine one gets from regurgitating facts or organizing shelves or engaging in other obsessive repetitive or formulaic behaviors.
This “feeling of truth” can be granted by accessing any one of their stored “facts.” This feeling is stimulated regardless of the origin of said beliefs which they do not recognize as beliefs. It can be religion or science and the feeling of faux understanding granted to them by dopamine is the same.
Solution of mathematical formulas is especially rewarding for dopamine dominant systems because it is literally an obsessive repetitive and formulaic activity.
This is the reason why pedants mistake mathematics for truth instead of as a useful tool that can be used terribly wrong. This is why they miss the absolute requirement of proper meta-theoretical connections between concepts in the use and application of mathematics.
They mistake the replicablilty and internal consistency as proof of truthfulness or accuracy when those traits are factually unrelated to the applicability of said math to reality nor are they a measure of how well said model represents actual reality.
Math itself does behave like a machine and reality does behave like a machine as well. This mechanics is hinted at in the first calculators made of knots or beads like an abacus but the reason why math is so absurdly useful for modeling reality becomes fully evident in the first computers ever made, Babbage’s difference and analytical engines which where entirely made of gears.
This similarity, however, often causes the pedantic mind to collapse the representation and the thing represented into one single entity. This habit of simplification is usually useful for many cognitive tasks but also goes terribly wrong upon encountering exceptions.
Unfortunately, Dirac was the first pedant to truly start to destroy the ability for physics to progress by amplifying a bad habit within his community.
“I learned to distrust all physical concepts as the basis for a theory. Instead one should put one's trust in a mathematical scheme, even if the scheme does not appear at first sight to be connected with physics. One should concentrate on getting interesting mathematics.” - Paul Dirac
He’s helped justify a mental vulnerability as strength among a group of people with a common mental bent and common cognitive vulnerability. This is a typical social/group behavior to repeat and amplify appealing excuses for frailties each individual within the group has in common.
We should accept our trade-offs and choose to shore them up instead of engaging in self-delusion about our false perfection. One cannot be a Olympic heavy-lifter and a world class marathon runner simultaneously. Some strengths are inseparable from the weakness they create.
Strength creates weakness and the strength of perfection in precision, memorization, and separation of concepts, is a weakness in the ability for analog multi-layered processing. Our AI have the same cognitive weakness those who are attempting to create the AI have.
Abilities useful to the process required for advancing good science, often become the primary barrier to it’s progress and this is the reason for Thomas Kuhn’s cycle of scientific revolution. Eventually those who play a little looser with the rules and are a bit more creative are required to understand and see how the forest fits together instead of being blinded by the individual trees. (often younger generations)
This crucial ability to understand is the last thing left that raises human intellect over computer intellect. Thankfully mathematicians and physicists do have this ability so long as they do not denigrate it and delude themselves.
We can access our superior human intellectual abilities so long as we don’t allow others to influence us to deny the existence of our weaknesses.
Scientists and mathematicians are too venerated in one way and too shamed in another. The attack on nerds only slightly abated in recent years but amplified on other fronts. The star genius phenomena is absurd.
These social pressures lead them to constantly amplify the strength and hide the weakness from themselves instead of accepting the prices we all pay for our balances.
- That’s why there is a culture of shut-up-and-calculate that stagnated physics.
- That’s why we are in model crisis across physics.
- That’s why physicists and mathematicians still think math has meaning without requiring the connection it has to reality be part of the picture.
We gave up our human mental superiority over computers because it’s the one way we are valued when those around us degrade our value in social circles.
"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality." - Nikola Tesla (July, 1934)