{"id":205,"date":"2004-12-20T20:38:24","date_gmt":"2004-12-21T01:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/server97.snhdns.com\/~ravik\/wp\/?p=205"},"modified":"2004-12-20T20:38:24","modified_gmt":"2004-12-21T01:38:24","slug":"2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200412\/2-2\/","title":{"rendered":"2 + 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When we solve a mathematical problem, the foremost thing to check is do we have the proper mathematical tools (theorems etc.)? If we are solving a differential equation, do we know enough theorems and lemmas and procedures for  differential equations?<\/p>\n<p>One can go a level deeper.<br \/>\nDo we have the proper mental tools to solve the mathematical\/scientific problems we face? Turns out, we don&#8217;t.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThe recent spate of philosophy posts reminded me of an essay by Steven Pinker, where he argued that  our mind was not at all adapted to the pondering of complicated questions about the world, the universe and other philosophical\/scientific arguments.<br \/>\nApparently the evolution of our large brains was all about figuring out out how other organisms would behave. So that you get enough resources in a resource-starved environment or something. Metaphorically speaking, pondering upon complicated philosophy is akin to taking a tool originally designed to cut leaves, and using it as an industrial lathe. Some might find this humbling. Yet others might find it invigorating &#8211; given how powerful our brains are, imagine how powerful a tool <i>designed<\/i> for higher functions might be!!<br \/>\nNonetheless, one has to feel for our poor brain, instead of the 2 + 2 it was meant for, one tortures it with 7 * 6!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When we solve a mathematical problem, the foremost thing to check is do we have the proper mathematical tools (theorems etc.)? If we are solving a differential equation, do we know enough theorems and lemmas and procedures for differential equations? One can go a level deeper. Do we have the proper mental tools to solve [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}