I have a PhD in STEM. I started believing in my late 20s in graduate school. Readings that were influential included: accounts of high profile scientists who were also believers (e.g., Freeman Dyson), Tolstoy's "Confession", poets like William Blake and thinkers like Simone Weil, philosophers like Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard, and apologetics from C.S. Lewis and GK Chesterton.
My motivation to read any of this was downstream of some other internal feeling that I couldn't shake and slowly began to gnaw at me in my 20s -- that what I could sense around me (or sense at all) couldn't be all that "is". I suppose one way to phrase this is that I became increasingly disturbed by my inability to answer fundamental "where?" or "why?" questions (e.g., "why did the Big Bang happen?", "where is the singularity?", etc.). The standard retorts that some things are simply mysteries didn't satisfy me. Instead I started to suspect that much of what I thought was "territory" was actually just various "maps" that people have created in their minds to help navigate the territory. Around this time I stumbled onto Immanuel Kant's antinomies and realized that many people had thought along these lines in the past. Once I was on this trail, I've never strayed.
> Fun example from a friend: his family were extremely direct but his girlfriend’s family was very indirect. As a young naive guy he was having dinner with his girlfriend’s family and her father asked: “is there any salt” and my friend looked up at the glass salt shaker and said “yes” and continued with his meal.
Are we supposed to side with your friend here? The fact that he couldn't infer that the father might want some salt is, at best, very shortsighted and pedantic. It's roughly equivalent to a teacher responding to "Can I go to the washroom?" with "I don't know, can you?" -- except in this case it's not said in jest.
Yeah the quote assumes you're riding without speed limits. In a typical commute, it does get easier once your cardiovascular ability exceeds the upper speed limit given the route.
“ Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.”
- Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
Because we all sold out to the man. Culturally, we have chosen the lavish life promised under the man's umbrella, to doing the work of trying to go our own way. We now reap what we've sown.
“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart
until, in our own despair, against our will,
comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
- Aeschylus
Great piece, though I do wish there was some more discussion about the Book of Job, in which God Himself makes a deal with the 'accuser' (Satan). The parallels with later 'deal with the devil' stories are numerous. I think it's particularly interesting to note that in Job, 'Satan' must still get permission from God to torment Job, and that, arguably, Job's final redemption rests on God coming down and speaking directly to him.
I like many of the poets you listed. In terms of 20th century folks, I also enjoy Khalil Gibran [0], Dylan Thomas [1], Sylvia Plath [2], ee cummings [3], and Leonard Cohen [4].
To be very explicit, if |x| = |y| = 1, we have |x - y|^2 = |x|^2 - 2xy + |y|^2 = 2 - 2xy = 2 - 2* cos(th). So they are not identical but minimizing the Euclidian distance of two unit vectors is the same as maximizing the cosine similarity.
I read it on a recommendation from readers of McCarthy's last works "The Passenger" and "Stella Maris". Loved it! I've picked up Lebatut's latest, 'The MANIAC' and I'm not enjoying it as much (though, I will note that the first chapter is riveting).
Yes, apologies -- using the term 'construct' muddied the point as sqrt(2) is a 'constructible' number as you point out. The term 'real' is what's at issue here and I am arguing for a distinction between a 'map-like' real and a 'territory-like' real, the latter of which has some sort of spatiotemporal grounding.
> There are some numbers that are not, and perhaps these can truly be said to not exist.
So then we have a real issue because the vast majority of the real line is composed of these uncomputable numbers which you've suggested don't exist.
My motivation to read any of this was downstream of some other internal feeling that I couldn't shake and slowly began to gnaw at me in my 20s -- that what I could sense around me (or sense at all) couldn't be all that "is". I suppose one way to phrase this is that I became increasingly disturbed by my inability to answer fundamental "where?" or "why?" questions (e.g., "why did the Big Bang happen?", "where is the singularity?", etc.). The standard retorts that some things are simply mysteries didn't satisfy me. Instead I started to suspect that much of what I thought was "territory" was actually just various "maps" that people have created in their minds to help navigate the territory. Around this time I stumbled onto Immanuel Kant's antinomies and realized that many people had thought along these lines in the past. Once I was on this trail, I've never strayed.