Is mathematics invented or discovered?

 I was not trained as a mathematician so perhaps I should keep this to myself but I am going to answer in one word: YES. By that I mean that I think some of math is invented and some of it is discovered*. I suppose that one might first think about what mathematics is. Again, as a non expert my view has been that mathematics is: 1. A science of patterns. 2. A language. 3. A game. When I use mathematics to talk about patterns I see in nature I have discovered things about those patterns. Perhaps I describe mechanics using Newton's laws of motion and then discover recurrence phenomena. If, on the other hand, I am creative and extrapolate I may be able to create mathematics that has no parallel in the natural world. In that case I have invented something, perhaps new concepts** that I will later use in my languages.

* Wikipedia says most philosophers of mathematics believe that mathematics is discovered rather than invented.

** One of the longterm goals of A.s.a. H. is to invent new and useful concepts with which to think (new or old thoughts).

Python vs C

 I have not quantified the differences but for a couple of my A.I. robotics experiments Python proved to be too slow and I had to switch over to C.

A.s.a. hardware upgrade

 In the last week I have built up a new computer system with a clock speed of 5-6 GHz, 14 cores, 64 GB of RAM, 2 TB of internal SSD, and many TB of external memory. I did an A.s.a. H. extrapolation/creativity experiment to try it out.

Co-intelligences and disembodied A.I.s

 In my post of 25 August 2024 I describe how machinery augments my biological intelligence. Conversely, biological senses and intelligence can be used to supplement/augment a computer system. For example, we can replace one or more (all?) of the lowest layer elements of the concept hierarchy* in my post of 4 September 2024 with human input. If the lowest layer is completely replaced with human supplied inputs we then have a disembodied A.I. (This may or may not be desirable.)

* as well as some preprocessing, like the ANNs in my 4 September post.

dia de los muertos

A year ago for the day of the dead I listed a number of ways in which we might be immortal but I forgot to mention cloning (perhaps in combination with life logging across generations).

2024 US election

It should be impossible for Donald Trump to be elected US president. The fact that it isn't is proof once again that the human value system is inadequate. It is not necessary to "align" A.I. s' values with human values. It isn't even desirable.

Space "race"

Large projects must be broken up into pieces and the work distributed among many cooperating specialists. For these specialists to coordinate with one another there have to be schedules.

Work can be done either too fast or too slowly. Attempts to work fast push up costs and lower safety. The death on the first soviet manned Soyuz flight is an example. Work can also be done too slowly. The fixed overhead that must be covered year after year is one issue. Low launch rate also unfavorably impacts worker skill levels.

But it seems to me that the U.S. has no need to "race" at the current moment.

If the soviets had been first to land a crew vehicle on the moon that might well have led to a stronger American post-apollo effort. Similarly, today, if the Chinese land a crew on the moon before the U.S. that might lead to a stronger U.S. program going forward.

I also think that the payback from space telescopes and other unmanned space assets has exceeded that of the manned programs. Crew should only be included when they are actually needed for the mission. Also, see my blog of 3 November 2010.