Silk Road forums
Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: euler2718 on January 30, 2012, 07:53 am
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I can just tell there are probably a lot of very intelligent people here on Silk Road. The encryption systems used to keep us all safe on this system involves a lot of mathematics as well. As a mathematician, I was wondering how many other people on here are interested in mathematics/computer science and if anybody would like to have some random intelligent conversation. As I'm brand new to this forum I guess this is also somewhat of an introduction thread for myself. So, hi everybody :).
I know there's gotta be a ton of nerds on here, don't be shy.
-Euler
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I'm not a mathematician, but I can certainly appreciate your username :) . Will you solve differential equations for BTC? ;)
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Sounds like a copper to me. :o
Hahaha welcome! How experienced in computer science are you? Any security background you can enlighten us with, master of numbers?
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Not very experienced in computer science, mainly just good at programming in C/C++, but I have a great understanding of the concepts behind it.
As for differential equations for BTC, that would make me a very happy man. lolol
How did you know I was a cop? O.o
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Welcome euler, I'm interested in your signature.
Enlighten me on how "Mathematics is the language of thought", that's a really interesting quote. I would think that symbols (i.e. pictures representing words and concepts) are the language of thought, but I'd like to see what you think.
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Comp Sci and EE major here myself. I guess I am in a field where its more discrete math, than anything else, constantly working with graphs etc. I generally find Math or Applied math boring, unless its Laplace or z-transforms which is used in the control systems aspect on my EE side.
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euler2718 with your psychedelic <3 and your language of the mind, you shall be right at home in the new Psychonaut's sub-forum.
Actually it doesn't exist yet, so feel free to stop by cast a vote: --> http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=10543.0
I envisage it will house discussions of mind, arts, science, existence, consciousness, trip reports, drugs, meditation, physiology, psychology, philosophy... you name it.. everything except for politics.
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Hi Euler! I'm pretty interested in these things as well and have cs/math background, so i'd enjoy some random conversations :)
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Well I guess I should have made my sig. more clear. When I say mathematics I don't exactly mean the symbols that we mathematicians (and the general public) use, but more the actual place in our minds that these symbols point to (I came up with it as a fleeting thought). As many of us have probably discovered there is a huge difference between what we experience as our own personal reality, and the inter-subjectivity that we make a combined effort to try and understand through each other. I'm kind of rambling on here, but hey this isn't a term paper it's a website of drug dealers so cut me some slack lol.
I find it very interesting that although a lot of stupid people partake in illegal drug consumption, just as many intelligent people do as well. (And in the case of psychedelic substances, almost certainly a higher percentage).
I'm trying to figure out this forum thing also, because I'm having trouble efficiently quoting people which makes conversing a little difficult. I'm not a huge forums guy.
But, to powerbuddy: I find applied mathematics to be somewhat boring personally, but I love pure mathematics. It seems to me most of the time in academia that when someone tries to apply some sort of mathematical model to a topic that they are really constraining themselves when thinking about the thing it is trying to model. A lot of people seem to forget that the model is only there to serve a practical purpose and not actually take the place of the object it is referring to. Of course math is absolutely necessary to apply to things or else we wouldn't even have Silk Road here. I just like to let others apply the mathematics that I enjoy thinking about, because it allows me to go deeper into my own mind than if I got stuck on having to always find an application for it.
Random topic for somebody to think/talk about: Fourier Series (Convergent Sum of Sequences of Trigonometric Functions) and their immense applications.
-Euler
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Mathematics is certainly important in every day life, but I would argue that symbols are what we think through and make sense of the mess of sensations we receive every second. We don't necessarily visualize these symbols in our heads while thinking but I guess there is a sort of subconscious "sight" that allows us to organize everything. For example, when I think of "computer", I "see" several symbols that represent this object, such as a monitor and a keyboard etc.
Moving on, I've been really getting into some H.P. Lovecraft recently. In one of his works of fiction he speaks of a mathematician who is so advanced that he can teleport himself to other dimensions by looking at a corner of a room, crossing his eyes, and seeing non-euclidian geometry lol.
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Mathematics created a whole lot of problems for me and not in a good way. I wouldn't go so far as to say it destroyed my life, but it certainly did some serious damage.
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I'd be interested to hear what kind of problems mathematics caused you..
-Euler
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^ me too. never heard a story based on that before.
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euler2718 with your psychedelic <3 and your language of the mind, you shall be right at home in the new Psychonaut's sub-forum.
Actually it doesn't exist yet, so feel free to stop by cast a vote: --> http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=10543.0
I envisage it will house discussions of mind, arts, science, existence, consciousness, trip reports, drugs, meditation, physiology, psychology, philosophy... you name it.. everything except for politics.
Isn't it sort of impossible to discuss those things without getting political?
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Haha good call. The intention is not to...
...Depends if by "getting political" you mean the same thing as "talking about politics".
In a psychonaut forum you typically wont see any threads with 'Obama' or 'Ron Paul' in their titles :/
You might see new legislation stuff though, if it relates to investigations of the mind, such as "all psychedelics now legal in 52 states"....
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Hey Euler, I'm actually a computer programmer myself. I haven't had any formal training, but I've been doing it as a hobby of sorts for upwards of 12 years, now. I've studied all sorts of different languages (C, C++, Haskell, Prolog, Java, Javascript, Shell, PHP, etc.) and have done lots of system administration with linux, including my own server that I built.
I also find math to be extremely interesting. I actually really like to investigate math when I'm tripping; there's some sort of extra sense of beauty that can be found when everything actually makes sense, moreso than the beauty that you would have found normally.
Here's an idea I had recently, related to the earlier discussion: you know how we have those math symbols that are condensed versions of words or longer processes or concepts? The whole purpose of these symbols is to make the math more concise, more effective; we've gone off into greek letters and all sorts of things to create this language. But I was thinking recently, what if we expanded this conciseness to account for differences in colors for the symbols? For example, green sigma is different than blue sigma, on the simplest level. Our mathematical language could instantly by 5 times as concise, just by introducing the concept of 5 different colors for every symbol. Sure, some colorblind people would be disappointed, but do take a moment to think about that. I can't explain why it intrigues me so much, but I really do like that idea. It's a tordemon original. =]
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I think tordemon has an interesting idea. Wouldn't cost the earth to have each kiddo setup with a set of 5 colored pens.
Application could be based on different algebraic operations to be carried out. e.g. if X is to be made the subject, it is purple etc.
Colors could then provide contextual information, such as the sequence of algebraic operations required to simplify an expression.
However I don't think it will happen. Math is the worst subject taught/understood in schools and universities by a country mile. I estimate 10% of the class understand university level mathematics, with at least 50% cheating and the other 40% memorizing patterns for exams without any true understanding of what the fuck is going on. In a sense of pretending to understand information, 90% of the class were cheating.
This by the way, is from first hand experience at one of the best universities in the world. I can only imagine what is going on in the lower ranked universities. I grew disillusioned with all that bullshit and I refused to compromise. In the end, that meant I had to leave. We had modules which were taking up literally 10x more study-time than others, and it seemed everybody was memorizing and faking it to get ahead in those modules. I mean, I had one of the highest G.P.As in the country and I couldn't cover the material in the time allotted, so it seemed kind of strange that folks partying all night long were strolling ahead with percentages in the highest decile.
It's like this. Mathematics was being used as a hazing tool to eliminate students who either wouldn't cheat, or didn't already have a first class understanding of the material before them. Ironically, for university level mathematics to be used in my particular field of expertise is noticeable by the rarity of the occurrence. So; I call that hazing.
I'll sell heroin on the silk road before I lie to myself by pretending I understand something I don't, or cheating. Lying to other people is one thing, but lying to yourself is fucking stupidity. That is why I feel disenfranchised. Mathematics is sour for me. My ROI from university is $0.00 because of this bullshit. But by god I will have my revenge.
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But I was thinking recently, what if we expanded this conciseness to account for differences in colors for the symbols? For example, green sigma is different than blue sigma, on the simplest level. Our mathematical language could instantly by 5 times as concise, just by introducing the concept of 5 different colors for every symbol.
I thought of something similar, but related to programming languages. I'm not a programmer, so this idea could be stupid: on top of all commands and classes, they could be put in different colors, which indicate different "areas" of execution and permissions to interact with each other. For an example: green can be modified by purple, red can't be modified and only executed alone, yellow can be executed together with green and yellow, blue redirects to another color, etc. This could solve some problems in objective programming, for example the circle/ellipse problem. I thought that these colors are directly implemented into the cpu commands, but I don't know how many of the 64bits are already used.
but more the actual place in our minds that these symbols point to
@Euler
I agree with you on your opinion that mathematics are the language of the thoughts, but I would express it on a different way. Languages express something we have in our mind. Math is just a special type of language, which expresses logic processes and correlations. Like you said "the place in our minds that these symbols point to", that's why I think math isn't the language of the mind but an expression of it.
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I don't like math, my day job involves lots of DSP and I generally hate my job so there. :-)
However, I think it's very important to know math, especially for people in the online drug scene. All the technologies we use to protect ourselves are rooted in cryptographic primitives which are based not on faith, but the truth and beauty of mathematics. All the new research I read (typically written by people who study anonymity, traffic analysis, or financial network intelligence in an academic setting) is written with a working knowledge of cryptography, mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering, etc. in mind. How are we supposed to have good security practices unless we understand the tools we use?
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I like making up my own shit for solving problems like Isaac Newton did. No...no...no...Im not talking about such complexities as the Newt was capacle of and I dont get to help my neice with her algebra, although we end up with the same conclusions, im talking know the swing of an arc and calculating percetages to make predictions where others will guess...and guess...and guess.
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I don't like math, my day job involves lots of DSP and I generally hate my job so there. :-)
However, I think it's very important to know math, especially for people in the online drug scene. All the technologies we use to protect ourselves are rooted in cryptographic primitives which are based not on faith, but the truth and beauty of mathematics. All the new research I read (typically written by people who study anonymity, traffic analysis, or financial network intelligence in an academic setting) is written with a working knowledge of cryptography, mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering, etc. in mind. How are we supposed to have good security practices unless we understand the tools we use?
I completely agree. Mathematics is not for everybody, but is definitely important for our society to operate at the level it is now, and indispensable for Silk Road obviously.
I'd like to respond to all of these posts, but I've been too busy doing other things :P. Continue this without me though, I'm not necessary for the intelligent conversation to take place among those that have the time and place. I love this place so far :D.
-euler
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If one of you can effectively explain S-Boxes and IP, at a laymans level, in relation to DES and AES I'd be more than happy to throw a BTC your way.
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@Euler
I agree with you on your opinion that mathematics are the language of the thoughts, but I would express it on a different way. Languages express something we have in our mind. Math is just a special type of language, which expresses logic processes and correlations. Like you said "the place in our minds that these symbols point to", that's why I think math isn't the language of the mind but an expression of it.
I totally agree, I should revise it. It is a language that describes this logical part of our mind, so it is a form of human expression. I love psychedelics because they show people that deep deep down we are all so similar and we all have a lot more in common that it appears on the surface. Mathematics exists in all of us in some form and the "language" of mathematics is just what mathematicians use to express this logical part of our minds.
-euler
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I'm a math major as it happens so this thread is relevant to my interests.
My original intention upon going to college was to become a cryptanalyst, unfortunately cryptography in the computer age is not what it used to be, today cryptanalysis relies more on computational power instead of mathematical acumen (although developing codes is still heavily mathematical). Cryptography today is pretty much a dead science, most of the coding algorithms are very simple to understand (requiring only knowledge of abstract algebra), but absolutely impossible to crack (unless you feel like waiting next to your supercomputer for the next 50000 years).
Undergraduate level math has been watered down significantly in my opinion, though there are still some old timer professors on faculty who keep you on your toes. I definitely understand what pine says about the state of undergraduate mathematics education but I think that applies to high-level learning in general. Today colleges have become factories, students have become cogs, and profit has replaced the public good as the end all of universities. I read somewhere that as late as the 1960's the average IQ of an undergrad in the United States was 117, and that today its 105, thanks to liberal do-gooders who believe everyone has the "right" to a college degree, the worth of a college degree has become devalued to the point of almost being worthless and colleges are filled with people who either don't want to be there, or can't cut it without either cheating, significant grade inflation or watered-down curricula.
Back to math, I'm currently doing research on Hilbert's 3rd problem, which has the reputation of being the "easiest" of Hilbert's 23 problems (I hope to start researching the more challenging 7th problem in a few months). Like most problems in number theory and geometry the premise of the problem is easy to explain to a mathematical novice. The question asks whether a polyhedron (a three-dimensional straight-lined object) can be decomposed into pieces which can be rearranged to form a polyhedron of equal volume? It turns out the answer to this question is no, and that a tetrahedron can not be cut to pieces in order to form a cube of equal volume. Interestingly in two dimensions, a polygon (a two-dimensional straight lined object) can be cut into pieces in order to form any other polygon of equal area. If anyone's interested I can give a really elegant pictorial proof of this (known as the Wallace-Bolyai-Gerwein theorem) which should be understood by anybody with a knowledge of high school geometry.
Anyway this is a fun thread, stoners discussing math always makes for an interesting premise. Perhaps an acid user could lend us his impression of the video of a sphere being turned inside out while on a trip?
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If anyone's interested I can give a really elegant pictorial proof of this (known as the Wallace-Bolyai-Gerwein theorem) which should be understood by anybody with a knowledge of high school geometry.
Yeah that would be nice.
Something that I find really amazing is the Riemann zeta function. The thing that blew my mind was that the special function with natural numbers converges to pi^n/6, which is a hint that the zeta function and the Riemann hypothesis are only the tip of the iceberg of a fundamental theory about mathematics. Back to eulers statement: if math is an expression of the human mind, then this fundamental theory also addresses to the mind and how it understands reality.
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If anyone's interested I can give a really elegant pictorial proof of this (known as the Wallace-Bolyai-Gerwein theorem) which should be understood by anybody with a knowledge of high school geometry.
Yeah that would be nice.
Something that I find really amazing is the Riemann zeta function. The thing that blew my mind was that the special function with natural numbers converges to pi^n/6, which is a hint that the zeta function and the Riemann hypothesis are only the tip of the iceberg of a fundamental theory about mathematics. Back to eulers statement: if math is an expression of the human mind, then this fundamental theory also addresses to the mind and how it understands reality.
All right so I thought I'd be able to do this pretty easily with paint, big mistake, really time consuming to draw anything that way, especially when trying to be accurate. Thankfully I had a book I've been using laying around that explains it pretty well and has nice figures so I scanned it with my printer (I wasn't able to attach it even though it was well below the size constraint, here's a url I uploaded it to: http://s16.postimage.org/4e8hc587p/Math.jpg). I don't provide a figure for every step so if you need to convince yourself draw it out, I'm going to try to write as little as possible
Definition S~T if S can be cut into pieces and decomposed into T
Lemma 1: A~B and B~C then A~C, take the union of the elements of the B formed from pieces of A and the B formed from pieces of C, you'll get a B with more pieces which can be used to form both A and C, thus A~C.
Lemma 2: A triangle can be decomposed into a rectangle. (see the first image of the picture, this pretty much explains itself, if you want to be rigorous you could show d(e,m)=d(m,center) and angles eam mcd are equal, now you can use trigonometry to show that other sides and angles are equal).
Lemma 3: A rectangle can be decomposed into another rectangle. There are two cases the first case is the second figure, using trigonometry we can show triangles amf and pgc are identitical, and that mng and fbc are identical. For the second case we split the vertical rectangle into pieces with the same height as the horizontal rectangle, and move them to the horizontal rectangle piece by piece. (if the long hypotenuse intersects with the intersection of the two rectangles we use case one, otherwise case two).
Now for the fun part, we know that any polygon can be decomposed into triangles (this can be proven by induction), so for Polygon A turn those triangles into rectangles and turn those rectangles into rectangles that have the same base and stack these rectangles on top of each other, for polygon B do the same such that the rectangles have the same base as the resulting rectangle from the first part. Since A ~ R and R ~ B, A ~ B, by lemma 1.
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If anyone's interested I can give a really elegant pictorial proof of this (known as the Wallace-Bolyai-Gerwein theorem) which should be understood by anybody with a knowledge of high school geometry.
Yeah that would be nice.
Something that I find really amazing is the Riemann zeta function. The thing that blew my mind was that the special function with natural numbers converges to pi^n/6, which is a hint that the zeta function and the Riemann hypothesis are only the tip of the iceberg of a fundamental theory about mathematics. Back to eulers statement: if math is an expression of the human mind, then this fundamental theory also addresses to the mind and how it understands reality.
The Riemann zeta function is cool and everything but check this shit out:
http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/RamanujansFormulaForPi.html
And how exactly did Ramanujan come to this conclusion? It just came to him out of the blue! In fact Ramanujan just made up hundreds of formulas like this with no reasoning, many of which are still unproven to this day. And you thought LSD was mindblowing!
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If anyone's interested I can give a really elegant pictorial proof of this (known as the Wallace-Bolyai-Gerwein theorem) which should be understood by anybody with a knowledge of high school geometry.
Yeah that would be nice.
Something that I find really amazing is the Riemann zeta function. The thing that blew my mind was that the special function with natural numbers converges to pi^n/6, which is a hint that the zeta function and the Riemann hypothesis are only the tip of the iceberg of a fundamental theory about mathematics. Back to eulers statement: if math is an expression of the human mind, then this fundamental theory also addresses to the mind and how it understands reality.
I believe you are speaking about the Riemann zeta function evaluated at 2 being exactly Pi^2/6 (also the solution to the Basel Problem), which was first proven by Leonhard Euler, albeit not rigorously until a few years later.
I think it's absolutely incredible that the non-trivial zeros of the complex Riemann zeta function all lie along the (1/2 + s*i) line and that they follow some sort of randomness associated with the randomness of the prime numbers. This kind of deep connection is the reason why I love mathematics, and none of it is speculative. As long as you agree with the axioms of a certain mathematical argument than you cannot argue about the truth or falsity of a theorem if it is proven rigorously. The Riemann Hypothesis shall be resolved eventually I am sure, just as everything else in this world reaches a resolution. In due time...
-euler
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@euler
Yes, I was speaking of that :)
It's nice to see that there are other people with similar opinions on math and the mind. Most people see math somehow opposed to the sentience of beings, but they don't understand that it's one of the purest expression of sentience.
This kind of deep connection is the reason why I love mathematics, and none of it is speculative. As long as you agree with the axioms of a certain mathematical argument than you cannot argue about the truth or falsity of a theorem if it is proven rigorously.
In context with your statement above, what do you think about Goedels incompleteness theorem and how does it affect your view on mathematics?
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This kind of deep connection is the reason why I love mathematics, and none of it is speculative. As long as you agree with the axioms of a certain mathematical argument than you cannot argue about the truth or falsity of a theorem if it is proven rigorously.
In context with your statement above, what do you think about Goedels incompleteness theorem and how does it affect your view on mathematics?
When searching for the foundations of mathematics as Goedel was doing, I think people are being too "nit-picky" in the sense that they are looking for the ONE AND ONLY TRUTH that is mathematics. Goedel arrived at a somewhat dissapointing, but also freeing conclusion. I think what mathematics and the foundation of mathematics comes down to is more of a philosophy. A sort of existentialist philosophy, that the words we use to describe the math, is in fact what makes it a reality in our mind. In a sense, it cannot be complete in a more philosophical sense (in my mind) because however you view the world is the thing that the world becomes. It comes down to consciousness. If I think the world is a miserable place with no hope for happiness in the future, then this is what the world is to me even if it is not that way for others. (THIS IS AN EXAMPLE; I ACTUALLY LOVE THIS WORLD ^_^) The incompleteness theory simply expresses this idea in a mathematically logical sense. You cannot prove your view of the world is correct within your own worldview. It's as if a natural bias prevents this. This "bias" becomes less opinion and more fact if you work within mathematical logic. Anybody following me?
-euler