dschiptsov

Not everything which could be described with a set of equations necessarily exist as a physical phenomena. Most of abstractions have no existence outside peoples heads, except those verified by scientific method, which means multiple independent replicable experiments which exactly the same results.

Unverified assumptions are called beliefs. Followers of some set of beliefs and dogmas together is called a sect.

From the philosophical point of view, strictly speaking, this is a non-science. When people trying to "prove" an abstract theory (a product of imagination instead of a product of a process of reduction) they perform not scientific tests, but complicated simulations. Any simulation, by definition, cannot prove anything about existence or non-existence of a simulated model, not even validity of the model. What could be concluded is only that the simulation matches the model. Or not.

This performing of a simulation instead of controlled observations is the essence of modern bad science, be it in economics, "medicine" or whatever is based on a sophisticated models based on abstractions.

Simulation prove nothing. Observations do.

   s/Science/Sect/

Similarly, mindfulness (awareness) and concentration (focusing) meditation techniques in general will make one better at variety of tasks, while specialized training, lets say, math tricks, will only affect specialized areas of the brain.

The training of a musician requires a lot of listening to the classical music, not just trying to play "mechanically" . All this is known for ages by Greeks and by Indians.

Consider the similar negation of an abstract concept - non-zero.

  Multiple, mostly in Asia
  Yes
  Yes, only to Sweden.
  ML, AI, Data "science", old school sysadmin, DBA, etc.
  https://karma-engineering.com/lab/wiki/TitleIndex

What the best political philosophy gave us is the another concept - the equality of rights and liberties. Equality before the law. This means than no person could be discriminated, based on gender, racial, cultural or religious context.

There is no such thing as social or economic equality. This bullshit has been oversold to us by political demagogues and populists (as opposed to political philosophers).

Society means inequality. It means hierarchy. It is based on inequality, it is driven by inequality no matter what disconnected from reality pseudo-intellectuals would tell us.

Biology has precedence over physiology, psychology and sociology. Social inequality comes from genetic and economic inequality. Without the first there will be no human species, because there will be no evolution. Without the second there will be no human civilization, which is based upon trade and capital - resource allocation.

Competition for everything, not just survival and reproduction, but also social status is a part of reality of any complex ecosystem, including human societies. Capitalism is a "natural" system of resource allocation, based on partial rationality, greed and so-called human nature (which in turn is based on biological markers, psychological traits and social heuristics) that promotes competition (and also restricting monopolies and regulating markers) which is based on inequality, has inequality as its driving force.

Not a single attempt to go against physics, biology, against the laws of ecosystems (sociology) and so-called human nature would ever succeed, no matter what utopia naive human mind will produce and promote. Every single utopia that violates any single environmental constraint will fail. It happened with communism, it will happen with socialism. Economics is very real - as real as one of the main forces of natural selection (species has to balance their energy spending according to the constraints of the environment - this is what economy is).

Inequality is here and always will be, like beauty and ugliness, intelligence and stupidity, success and failure.

So, the seers of Upanishads and non-lamaist sects of Buddhism (Hinayana), being seekers after truth with emphasis on seeing things as they are have described most significant principles of philosophy of the mind and moral philosophy something about 6 century BC, if we consider philosophy of the Buddha as culmination of that epoch.

There is the famous two volume work by Radhakrishnan which gives obviously a Hindu centered overview of the philosophy of Indian civilization. All the fundamental ideas are there, including the notion that all phenomena are devoid of any absolute essence, are mere appearances to the senses of different aspects of what they call the whole - Brahman.

Some later Buddhist sects have rejected the notion of Brahman and maintain that the real nature of all phenomena is void.

To put it simple - Hindus got the fundamental principles right few thousand years before West.

You mean homogeneous files and pipes - only text, only numbers, etc - that kind of nonsense? Static typing falls apart with heterogeneous containers.

Or you are just putting that static typing everywhere because it is so cool - typescript, huh huh?

Actually, what Sartre called existentialism is the Asian way of life, at least in societies influenced by the original Hindu philosophy (Upanishads) and its Buddhist derivatives and finally the Gita.

It must be a webscale realtime, or at least reactive realtime..

Ayn Rand was a student of the classic Greek philosophy, nothing wrong with her.

Monads make no sense in a non-lazy language.

http://karma-engineering.com/lab/wiki/Monads2

Knowing where to stop in a heuristic-guided search is the most difficult part. In my opinion one should stop after realizing that the subject becomes too abstract and too academic and cease to be a tool of clarification.

Let's say that it has something to do with the pragmatism of Ayn Rand, Quality of Robert Pirsig, and to the general scientific method of removing bullshit, dogmas and nonsense in order to let the truth standing.

https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.001/abelson-sussm...

Timeless classic. And nostalgic diving back into 80s. And MIT Scheme on a monochrome monitor with a clicky keyboard.

Set theory is, probably, the most fundamental. Everything could be defined as a set or as a function.

Lambda calculus, obviously.

Some combinators. Basics of linear algebra.

No category theory and other bullshit is needed. Sets will do.

It is actually very important skill to avoid wasting time in disconnected from reality obscure academic bullshit, be it philosophy, physics or math. Do not follow other people's hallucinations. Have your own.)

As a rule of thumb - you need just enough math to understand The Wizards Lectures and SICP.

Again, the substitution model, sets (for notion of types and basic collecttions) and high order functions (the "domain and range" mantra) is enough.

For algorithms the notion of being bound by some function and orders of growth.

With the blind subjects, perhaps, this activity (dealing with abstractions) has been registered as a distinct (due to lack of sensory input), while in the control group it is drowned in the noise of normally functioning visual cortex.

So, it is interesting but inconclusive. Also fMRI can't be used as a method of discovery, because it is based on very approximate statistical models. Something is going on there. Well, there always something is going on.