Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them] @ Tomorrow_Farewell @hexbear.net

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1 yr. ago

Yeah they very much ignored the sanctions

They didn't, and I'm not sure why you keep claiming this. In particular, PRC's banks are often mentioned as refusing to work with Russia because of the sanctions.

If you genuinely can't see the difference between NATO trade with Russia and China there's really no point continuing this discussion

What I am trying to understand is what you meant when you said that the PRC didn't just sit this one out. So far, you have only mentioned trade that was already happening instead of being some sort of special measure done to support Russia in the war, and which the PRC has also been conducting with NATO (and the PRC seems to have mostly been trading with NATO). This trade also most likely benefits the PRC much more, as Russia is a semi-peripheral state that relies on exporting natural resources (rather than manufacturing and using or exporting finished goods).
If your claim to the PRC supposedly taking an active part in this war was by doing what it was already doing (trading with Russia on better terms than NATO's), then it's fair to conclude that the PRC opted to stand by and let things happen (especially considering that it did let its companies refuse to deal with Russia on the basis of the sanctions). Considering that the PRC trades more with NATO than with Russia, by your logic we could conclude that the PRC has been helping NATO this whole time - including in the context of this war.

The PRC did not ignore the sanctions. Some of the trade did get shut down because of the sanctions.
On the other hand, NATO didn't completely stop trading with Russia. Does that mean that NATO also contributed to the war effort against itself and should be thanked for that?

'But how will they afford college???'

It is curious that the Chinese state is willing to pursue many forms of macroeconomic policy but seems to avoid some of the more basic socialist policies like working rights and wages.
Is this some neoliberal erosion of imagination and class struggle in the CPC or is there some justification from their part? Is that justification one that holds up to scrutiny?

This is a natural consequence of private property and the profit motive's presence in an economy.

Hell, if homes are 'for living, not for speculation', then the PRC should do what the USSR (and, I'm pretty sure, pre-liberalisation PRC) did - provide guaranteed housing. That is, however, not possible unless and until the PRC adopts planned economy again.

They helped stabilize Russian economy, replaced sanctioned goods, and gave access to a lot of tech such as drones and chips that are necessary for modern military production

What special measures did the PRC take in the case of this war? Or are you talking about standard trade between Russia and the PRC that was already taking place?

EDIT: In case you were simply referring to trade, then it can also be said that the PRC contributed to NATO's effort by trading with them.
To my knowledge, the PRC didn't do anything special here, as the PRC didn't even ignore the sanctions.

China wasn't engaged in Ukraine directly either, but certainly wouldn't say they just stood by this whole time either.

How did the PRC contribute?

The RFK meatsuit lost its pilot.

Israel and Russia have been throwing around a lot more bombs than America

You are demonstrating a complete lack of ability to research things you decide to talk about.

50,000-rouble – the equivalent of £200,000 today

How did they calculate this? This seems completely off.

EDIT:
Some quick searches indicate that, after converting from the Soviet ruble to British pound in 1941, and then accounting for inflation, we get the figure of around 58 059 000 pounds - greater by two orders of magnitude.

Why did he get out of the hole?

But if India is fascist so is America, Italy, Poland (new regime), the Netherlands (under Wilders), etc.

They are. They literally can't stop engaging in colonialist atrocities.

Edit:

The BJP is not making comments to annex other nations, tightening the rule of law, passing discriminatory policies

Are you sure about that?

Waowls

Why are you bringing up "America" (by which you actually mean The U.S.) as if I somehow brought it up in this comment chain?

Western ‘technofeudalism’

No, no, they should keep this up.

I've had at least two pure mathematics majors people argue strenuously with me that statistics, being applied mathematics, isn't really math, but that isn't really my point here.

That was extremely silly of them for a bunch of reasons, in addition to calling (applied) mathematics not mathematics:

• What is considered applied mathematics and what is considered pure mathematics is arbitrary cultural stuff and varies from community to community.
• Applied math is not fundamentally different from pure math, and relevant fields - regardless of whichever branches a particular culture considers to be 'applied' and not 'pure' - are studied the same way (in the relevant in this context sense) and with the same standards of rigour.

This is especially amusing to me - a person who has studied as both an applied mathematician and as a pure mathematician, - as some of my classmates from all of the relevant groups specialised in the field of probability theory and statistics.

Statistics is math that is derived from empirical observations

It isn't.
You can use statistics for empirical studies, but it itself is not studied empirically.

Without that actual data, statistics as pure mathematics is completely meaningless to the engineering process

Just as arithmetic, just as geometry, just as logic, just as stuff like control theory, wavelet theory, theories of differential and integral equations, vector field theory, theory of switch functions (not sure what the English name of that one is, actually), etc.
What you are probably confused about is that relevant fields can be used for models used by engineers, physicists, chemists, biologists, medical professionals, etc., and then jump to the conclusion that they must be studied empirically.

I'm saying there is a materialist dialectic that proceeds between the empirical, physical, observations made, and how math is then used to then depict, formulate and transform those observations into more empirical measurements, which then continues to transform those depictions

Okay? But how are engineers going to do their job without both the knowledge discovered by mathematicians and without other people's discoveries made using said knowledge? How would transistors come to be developed without relevant understanding of math, for example?

Quite often these days the math precedes the observation, but particularly before the advent of electronic computers it wasn't uncommon for the observation to precede the mathematics. For example, you absolutely cannot have transistors without the Fournier transformation, but you also cannot have transistors without the observed phenomenon and concept of electrical conductivity (or more usually talked about resistance), which was not originally conceptualized mathematically at all, though is now.

Firstly, that example does not actually show 'observation preceding the mathematics'.
Secondly, that example doesn't actually show how that development could be done without math. The fact that it also required empirical study and did not come about from pure reason is irrelevant if you are trying to claim that development and manufacture of devices that allowed the person I was initially responding to to make their comments could realistically be done without math.

Math is not dealing with literal objects

It is.
For example, again, mathematicians study such objects as numbers, functions, sets, propositions, transforms (and their invariants).

For example, 1+1=2 doesn't have to reference any kind of object at all in order to be self-contained, logical and true

Not sure what you are trying to say there.
The expression '1+1 = 2' refers to the proposition that some object referred to with the expression '1+1' (as we know, that is - in the standard context - a real number that is the successor of 1 in terms of Peano axioms) is the same object as the one referred to with the expression '2'. We could go into more detail here, but there are plenty of objects being referred to here.
What does 'self-contained' mean in this context? What does it have to do with references to any objects? What does it have to do with the rest of this conversation?
What does 'logical' mean? That the relevant expression refers to a proposition (which contradicts your claim that no objects are being referenced)? I genuinely do not know what the word is supposed to mean (other than 'not stupid' in a colloquial sense, which is not really applicable here).

This can be explicitly shown in things like statistics, where you have a mathematically logical statement that is 'people in the U.S. have on average 1.5 children'. A nonsense statement if taken purely empirically, but the idea of how an average is mathematically created can make it logically sound, however it is also completely meaningless to us if that average wasn't generated from real data.

I genuinely can't tell what you mean by 'taken purely empirically' without completely changing these two sentences to the point of the loss of any relevance to the conversation. Would you mind rephrasing that?
But also, not only is that not meaningless if it is not 'generated from real data', as that expression does have a meaning that I'm fairly confident is commonly understood, and that understanding of that meaning is not dependent on whether or not it is based on 'real data' (the data may be false, or it might not even exist to begin with) and whether or not one is presented with that data.
But also, not sure how this is supposed to be an argument against any of what I have said to begin with.

It is conceptualized mathematically now, but it didn't start as that, it didn't start as a formula, it came from some other ideas like 'lets make a more durable iron' and through our physical interaction with it has come to a point of conceptualized mathematics,...

Again, I am not sure how this is supposed to be an argument against me claiming that relevant stuff was discovered/developed using knowledge about the objects that are studied in mathematics-as-an-academic-field.
Do you think that I claimed that engineering or physics, or other relevant fields do not engage in empirical studies? If so, then I'm pretty sure that I can even quote myself saying the opposite in this thread.

Scientists and their benefactors wouldn't build the Hadron collider if just knowing the math was the answer

I never claimed that all that engineering and other relevant fields involve is just mathematics. What I did claim is that they all do use mathematics (not to the exclusion of empirical studies and knowledge developed through those).

but I am also arguing that mathematics likely isn't the end-all be-all understanding of accurate conceptualization

If by that you just mean that knowledge about objects that are studied in math-as-an-academic-field is not sufficient for stuff like engineering, physics, chemistry, etc., then I don't think you have been contradicted here by anybody - not by me, at least.

Hexbear is taking too long introducing the emotes.

our democracy

Says the USian province with multiple hereditary ruling positions and which - as all of NATO - is reliant on having (neo-)colonies the people of which are denied any sort of input on how NATO de facto rules them.

I just completey disagree with your statement that math isn't dealing in abatractions and isnt rooted in the material world

Some quick counter-examples:

• Real numbers are not abstractions, are not material objects, and are not dependent on the material stuff.
• Functions are not abstractions, are not material objects, and are not dependent on the material stuff.
• Linear (and other transforms).
• Sets.
• Topologies.

I imagine, but the items in math that we hold in our head or express on paper and manipulate are abstractions

Relevant objects do not - generally - abstract anything. They can do so in models, but that is not a given, and mathematicians do study relevant objects outside of contexts of models.

And the dialectical aspect means that the material world and the abstractions we make have a never ending dialogue with each other

Define 'dialogue'.
Relevant objects obviously do not engage in conversations with each other, so you must be using that word in a meaning other than colloquial. I do not have a good guess for what you actually mean by that word in this context. (And yes, I'm aware that people who use the word 'dialectic' like to describe it using the word 'dialogue', but one reason why I steer clear of using the word 'dialectic' is that I am yet to find actual definitions of the term.)

But they are always derivative of the material world

They quite obviously are not. No matter what different properties material stuff could have (including things merely being in other locations than they are 'currently' (strictly speaking, there is no global 'currently', though this is, admittedly, a tangent)), no non-self-contradictory systems of axioms would suddenly become self-contradictory and vice versa, and the like.

Even when you think you are dealing with a purely abatract ideal

Not sure what you mean by a 'purely abstract ideal'. Relevant objects are not generally abstractions, and how do you even distinguish their 'purity'? Between a function, a complex number, a tensor, a fundamental group, a homology group, an equivalence class of knots with respect to isotopy, a Lebesgue Integral, the C¹⁰([0, 1]) class of smooth functions, which ones are 'purely abstract ideals'?

its still expressed in consciousness

An expression of an object is not the same as that object itself, so this isn't really relevant.

and manipulated via symbols

They aren't 'manipulated'. You get representations of different things, but you do not actually change any of the relevant objects.