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Ben Passant's avatar

As much as I appreciate your thoughts on SIA, posts like these are the real reason I don't need dollar bills to have fun tonight.

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Sectionalism Archive's avatar

Problem with prime Platonism is that it gives some special undeserved status to multiplication. It makes more sense to believe only 1 exists, since only 1 is needed to construct the naturals (via Peano arithmetic), and everything follows from there. And this is sort of, well, just actual Platonism. In fact, *actual* platonists were essentially saying that the number 1 — THE One, was the only independent being, even outside of numbers. It’s basically just Pythagoreanism with ornaments

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William Klett's avatar

By this logic, a chair does not exist; only it’s micro-constituents do (atoms etc.) I think we have to recognize that entities (whether they are numbers or actual things) are separate from how we describe them. So the concept of the number four exists and we can describe it as 2+2 or 4. The entity of a chair exists and we can describe it as a chair or in terms of atoms. Language and numbers are not the actual stuff we are discussing.

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Bentham's Bulldog's avatar

What day is it today?

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William Klett's avatar

I’m wanna see what trap I fall into by answering this. It is Monday

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Bentham's Bulldog's avatar

What day of what month?

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Bentham's Bulldog's avatar

Of April?

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William Klett's avatar

fuck me

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Tibarn's avatar

If it can make you feel any better, I was going to object to this post too just now. But you saved me from looking like an April Fool's fool, as well as some time.

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Sectionalism Archive's avatar

A chair exists but it is contingent on its parts. The only non-contingent existential is the monad, the simplest thing. And arguable there is a level above that of a thing that generates existence but itself neither exists nor is nonexistent

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Bentham's Bulldog's avatar

This was an April fools joke!

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Sectionalism Archive's avatar

Erm… What the sigma?

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Bentham's Bulldog's avatar

huh?

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Sectionalism Archive's avatar

You know, like, what the sigma? Like, what the heck? Like the squidward meme? Nevermind.

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Ape in the coat's avatar

> So my view is that 1—exists. 2—exists. 3—exists. 4, however, doesn’t exist, nor does 6, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, or any other composite number.

I don't know, you say that a whole infinity of prime numbers exists. But infinity is not a prime number. Seems like a contradiction.

I think we can do with only 0 and 9. That would be only 0.(9)+0.(9) numbers which we can perfectly expressed through 0 and 9.

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Bentham's Bulldog's avatar

What day is it today?

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Ape in the coat's avatar

I thought it was clear that I'm also in on the joke :-)

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