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Author Topic: Dawkins, Pinker, Ramachandran, Dennett, and more...
King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
Except the situations aren't parallel. He's not trying to force you to do anything other than not kill people. You'd be trying to force him not merely to avoid infringing on others' lives, but to give up his beliefs entirely.

Right. I'm beginning to wonder if people are reading my posts? Am I really so unclear? Here's what I said about this:

quote:
At the moment, your position is the socially tolerated one, and I am therefore the aggressor, the one who has to initiate violence to get his way,(...) I acknowledge this asymmetry between our positions, but no other (...) If society had instead been built to my specifications, you would be the one considering violence to overthrow the current order
Again, a contingent accident of history, that his and not my view is currently fashionable, does not a compelling moral argument make.
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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
quote:
If evidence is not important, what besides violence can move someone's position?
Why is it a presumption that we must, except in certain very extreme cases where people are forcefully moving others' positions (such as by killing)?
Presumably you would like to move my position as expressed in this thread, or else why are you arguing? And if I had the power to reach out through my computer screen and turn your heart off, so that it was very important to un-convince me of my dangerous opinions before I did so, would you not consider using your own turn-the-heart-off button before I did?
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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by Chris Bridges:
quote:
All your outrage is wasted on me, because I already feel its exact mirror image: How dare you hold this disgusting, immoral, relativistic belief?
Not quite. It would never occur to me to threaten violence at you to force you to think my way.
Well, no, but then again you don't need to: If I attempt to take overt action on this, why, the entire military force of the global hegemon will spring into action to stop me! (Admittedly Obama would probably not need to use nukes just for me, but still, they exist if he needs them.) I invite you once again to consider the opposite scenario where my position is the state-enforced one; you have already stated your willingness to fight to overthrow that regime.

quote:
At the moment, your position is the socially tolerated one, and I am therefore the aggressor, the one who has to initiate violence to get his way, and consequently is restrained by tactical considerations
No, you don't. You really, really don't. You have the power of your words, you have time, you presumably have facts on your side, you presumably have others who think as you do. Keep working to convince people and maybe you'll end up with a place you can tolerate. [/QUOTE]

Well, you have your druthers then: Here I am talking to you. Again, I invite you to consider the contrast between someone opposed to gay marriage on the grounds that it is bad for straight marriages, and someone who just opposes it, evidence be damned. What are you going to do about the latter? Wait for him to die of old age? (A passive-aggressive use of violence if ever there was one.) What about his equally obnoxious kids? Perhaps you'll just accept the ongoing harm to gays, as the price of tolerance? Easy for you to say, happily married heterosexual that you are!

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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
Oh, I see. Well, there isn't anything complicated about it: You have expressed opinions which I find intolerable, and which make you rather more dangerous than the average nuclear bomb. For my own safety, I feel obliged to get you first. No steps, as such; hence my confusion.

quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
At the moment, your position is the socially tolerated one, and I am therefore the aggressor, the one who has to initiate violence to get his way, and consequently is restrained by tactical considerations.

You're that crazy rambling guy who gives ammunition to the theists who say stuff like "the atheists would send us all off to concentration camps if they ended up in charge"
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King of Men
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Oh well. Giving fair warning makes it more sporting. And anyway, you always have that good old fallback, "There's some crazy people in any movement."

Edit to add: Also, I object to 'rambling'. I feel I'm really rather concise.

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Amanecer
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quote:
Oh, I see. Well, there isn't anything complicated about it: You have expressed opinions which I find intolerable, and which make you rather more dangerous than the average nuclear bomb. For my own safety, I feel obliged to get you first. No steps, as such; hence my confusion.
KOM, I agree with you on the high importance of evidence. But I find your evidence for Chris being "more dangerous than the average nuclear bomb" far inferior to Chris' evidence that his wife feels enriched by her religion without becoming a threat to anybody. She can point to concrete things like a community, a sense of purpose, and comfort that she has received in the past and the lack of negative effects those have had on others. From my perspective, you can point to nothing about Chris that even remotely approaches the same standard of evidence. I think that your belief is based more on emotion than on evidence.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
Oh well. Giving fair warning makes it more sporting. And anyway, you always have that good old fallback, "There's some crazy people in any movement."

So you are pretty comfortable admitting that you pretty much want to do these things. That if you would have the power, you would essentially operate on and act on the principle that people who are as religious as chris should be systematically annihilated.
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fugu13
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No, it is not the only asymmetry, and it is not the one I brought up. Try paying attention to what I posted (and what you posted). I said if you were in power, you would kill him, whereas you said that, if you were in power like him, he would be the one advocating violence.

Or are you now saying that if your aggressive atheist stances were dominant you would not kill off those holding theist stances (with whatever qualifications you desire), in opposition to your repeated statements that you believe they should all be killed? After all, those who are open to people believing things for no reason are currently in power, but they aren't about to kill off people who don't believe in God -- as you have repeatedly said you would if you had the power to. It is not merely an asymmetry of who is in power.

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Chris Bridges
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quote:
If I attempt to take overt action on this, why, the entire military force of the global hegemon will spring into action to stop me!
I think it more likely you'd be arrested by local police or, worst case scenario, dropped by a SWAT team. And I'd be saddened to hear about it.
quote:
Again, I invite you to consider the contrast between someone opposed to gay marriage on the grounds that it is bad for straight marriages, and someone who just opposes it, evidence be damned. What are you going to do about the latter? Wait for him to die of old age? (A passive-aggressive use of violence if ever there was one.) What about his equally obnoxious kids? Perhaps you'll just accept the ongoing harm to gays, as the price of tolerance? Easy for you to say, happily married heterosexual that you are!
Or work towards the acceptance - or at least tolerance - of gay marriage to speed along what is already happening. In the last ten, the last five years incredible strides have been taken toward gay marriage, and demographics suggest it's only a matter of time. I would argue that the legalization of gay marriage through attrition and cultural change would be more lasting than the forced legalization of gay marriage through overt violence.
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fugu13
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Out of curiosity, do you include people who believe in an absolute morality among those you would visit death upon?
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Chris Bridges
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quote:
That if you would have the power, you would essentially operate on and act on the principle that people who are as religious as chris should be systematically annihilated.
A correction: he seems to be operating on the principle that people who are as tolerant of religious people as me should be systemically annihilated. My crime is not deciding conclusively.
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TomDavidson
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Heck, I have decided conclusively, and yet remain married to a woman who has not decided conclusively and finds comfort in squishy notions of God. As far as I can tell, despite the fact that I agree with KoM on the issue itself, he seems to think that my ability to accept a little bit of harmless squishiness makes me the enemy.

Fundamentalism is regrettable in any philosophy.

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King of Men
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quote:
I think it more likely you'd be arrested by local police or, worst case scenario, dropped by a SWAT team. And I'd be saddened to hear about it.
Right, those are part of the military forces in question. Nobody says they have to use the entire Army all at once. The point is, unless I can scale up to supervillain status and actually be capable of taking on the entire army, up to and including the nukes, I'll get squashed.

quote:
Out of curiosity, do you include people who believe in an absolute morality among those you would visit death upon?
Not for that belief, in itself; it depends on whether they think evidence is required for their belief.

quote:
Or work towards the acceptance - or at least tolerance - of gay marriage to speed along what is already happening. In the last ten, the last five years incredible strides have been taken toward gay marriage, and demographics suggest it's only a matter of time. I would argue that the legalization of gay marriage through attrition and cultural change would be more lasting than the forced legalization of gay marriage through overt violence.
And if there were no such demographic trend, what would you do? And in particular, how will you "work towards acceptance" with someone who has said that the evidence isn't important? How can you convince such a person? Plain brainwashing?

quote:
I said if you were in power, you would kill him, whereas you said that, if you were in power like him, he would be the one advocating violence.
Ok, that is an asymmetry. I'll bite that bullet; the correct moral position is not under any obligation to act the same way as incorrect ones do.

quote:
But I find your evidence for Chris being "more dangerous than the average nuclear bomb" far inferior to Chris' evidence that his wife feels enriched by her religion without becoming a threat to anybody.
That's ok; we also disagree on whether or not there is evidence for the claims of Judaism. Your evaluation of evidence, honestly, carries very little weight with me.
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rivka
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???

Ah!

Amanecer =! Armoth

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King of Men
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Oh, oops.
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TomDavidson
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quote:
I'll bite that bullet; the correct moral position is not under any obligation to act the same way as incorrect ones do.
I think you would be very hard-pressed to create a sound justification for claiming that the "correct" moral position requires killing people for their beliefs.
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King of Men
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Why? Any number of moral codes have claimed this to be true. Just because you, personally, disagree does not mean you are right.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
Why?

Try. He'll find all the holes in it, and there will be holes. Guaranteed.
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Chris Bridges
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quote:
And if there were no such demographic trend, what would you do? And in particular, how will you "work towards acceptance" with someone who has said that the evidence isn't important? How can you convince such a person? Plain brainwashing?
Again you ignore evidence to focus on what-ifs. A massive cultural change that exists in reality and is doing exactly what you claim cannot be done is too awkward to deal with, so instead let's play pretend and talk about what we would do if your position wasn't being weakened.

You can't cite anything I have done, based on my beliefs, that would prove your point other than merely existing. You can only weave tales of what might happen, so you decide -- in effect, you choose to believe without evidence of any kind -- that those what-ifs are enough to convict me.

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King of Men
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Nonetheless, I am interested in knowing what you would do in my hypothetical scenario. There does not seem to be any obvious evidence that the number of non-evidentiarists is declining, so the method of waiting them out has little appeal to me.

quote:
Try. He'll find all the holes in it, and there will be holes. Guaranteed.
Very well; I assert as an axiom that those who do not accept evidence as primary must be killed.
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Parkour
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That's an assertion of your claim, not a sound justification for that claim.

I could be walking into this blind. Is King of Men trolling the forum, or is he actually this unglued?

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Chris Bridges
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No, I don't particularly feel like playing your game where you continue to posit hypotheticals until I am forced into the answer you want to hear. A quick skim back through this thread reveals that to be your preference, and I don't feel like being sidetracked just now.

You have condemned me for a crime I might commit, without any evidence that I ever will. You chose an example which, in reality, is happening exactly the way you seem to believe it cannot. You apparently assume that every theist believes exactly the same thing in the same degree, and that by being a theist they therefore would not be swayed by evidence for any argument at all, when what's happening across the country proves that is plainly not the truth.

The only things you have proved to me is that you prejudge entire classes of people and that rather than accepting evidence as primary yourself and accepting that there are theists who do not act as you insist they must you'd rather believe in the straw men you create.

Edited to add: Oh, and that you have no problem killing anyone who doesn't think the way you do, even though that would marginalize you and weaken your arguments by associating them with a nutjob.

[ August 07, 2009, 10:39 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]

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King of Men
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Ok, ok, you've convinced me. I won't have you shot for failing to live up to my standards of morality, even if I get the chance. Nonetheless, I continue to assert that you are sinning: To permit beliefs without evidence in any area, even one that rarely interacts with one's actual behaviour (perhaps especially such an area - it allows the habit to fester and grow, uncorrected by real data), is a moral failure; is in fact evil.
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Tarrsk
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
Fundamentalism is regrettable in any philosophy.

Words that you'd think we would have learned to live by, by now.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
Very well; I assert as an axiom that those who do not accept evidence as primary must be killed.

and the sound justification is where exactly?
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Amanecer
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quote:
That's ok; we also disagree on whether or not there is evidence for the claims of Judaism.
Not that I think it will make any impact on you, but I'm an atheist.
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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
Very well; I assert as an axiom that those who do not accept evidence as primary must be killed.

and the sound justification is where exactly?
Tell you what, why don't you try the opposite trick without at some point resorting to axiom? Or alternatively, pick a hole, as you said you would.
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King of Men
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quote:
Originally posted by Amanecer:
quote:
That's ok; we also disagree on whether or not there is evidence for the claims of Judaism.
Not that I think it will make any impact on you, but I'm an atheist.
Right, I had you confused with Armoth. That does give your assessment of the evidence greater weight, but as noted above, I've already given up on shooting people for being non-evidentiarists.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
Very well; I assert as an axiom that those who do not accept evidence as primary must be killed.

and the sound justification is where exactly?
Tell you what, why don't you try the opposite trick without at some point resorting to axiom? Or alternatively, pick a hole, as you said you would.
Thank you for making it evident that you can't take up the challenge.
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fugu13
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The hole is that you said you believed things based on evidence. If it is an axiom, it is something you believe regardless of evidence. Thus making you, by your standards, evil.
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MightyCow
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quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
The hole is that you said you believed things based on evidence. If it is an axiom, it is something you believe regardless of evidence. Thus making you, by your standards, evil.

I would venture to guess that the evidence is borne out by the application of the axiom.

Further, there's nothing inherently evil with believing in some starting premises, if the evidence of their use shows that they are indeed correct. "a+b=b+a" is both axiomatic, and can be easily shown to be true in all cases, thus providing its own evidence.

If evidence were to show an axiom is incorrect, it would cease to be an axiom.

[ August 09, 2009, 05:17 AM: Message edited by: MightyCow ]

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Parkour
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quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
Originally posted by King of Men:
Very well; I assert as an axiom that those who do not accept evidence as primary must be killed.

and the sound justification is where exactly?
Tell you what, why don't you try the opposite trick without at some point resorting to axiom? Or alternatively, pick a hole, as you said you would.
Fail.
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fugu13
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MC: that's not the meaning of the word axiom. If it is an axiom, it is an assumption from which other things are derived, not a derived thing. By his own arguments, he is not allowed to make assumptions absent evidence. So he cannot fall back on an axiom when questioned about what the sound justification for his beliefs is without being hypocritical.

edit: and A+B=B+A isn't axiomatic at all under most any system of mathematics; indeed, it isn't true under many definitions of addition. It is a derived truth in certain systems where addition is defined. If you think it is an axiom, you should reassess your definition. Further, mathematical axioms are different from axioms about reality -- they are a set of conventions on which structures are built, but have no special priority over structures built on other conventions (indeed, there are many different, often mutually exclusive, sets of mathematical axioms).

[ August 09, 2009, 11:13 AM: Message edited by: fugu13 ]

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Raymond Arnold
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I *think* King of Men may have been attempting to showcase the ridiculousness of relying on a ludicrous axiom without evidence. However, the point is diluted a bit by the fact that an axiom such as "X people must be killed" and "I have a comforting belief in a God that's sufficiently vague as to be indisprovable" have wildly different effects on the world.

There are plenty of people who can rationalize their attempts at murder, and there are plenty of people with irrational beliefs that are harmless. I do think that rationality is better than irrationality, but the main thing with people who have the "vague comforting God" belief is that if you remove that from them, without replacing it with something else that is comforting in a similar way, you have deliberately weakened their quality of life. Part of the reason I gave up on arguing with a Christian friend of mine (we both liked arguing so obnoxiousness wasn't too big an issue) was that his whole life was wrapped up in his religion to the point where if I did successfully remove it he'd fall apart, and I while I take comfort in the fact that the universe does not have a purpose and we are free to find meaning however we want, that's not a philosophy that would be satisfying to him.

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King of Men
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I have been quite careful to distinguish moral and factual beliefs. Moral beliefs at some point boil down to primate instinct, or axiom, or something else un-provable.
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Tresopax
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quote:
I have been quite careful to distinguish moral and factual beliefs. Moral beliefs at some point boil down to primate instinct, or axiom, or something else un-provable.
"Factual" beliefs also at some point boil down to axioms or something else un-provable.
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King of Men
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I disagree, as you well know.
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Tresopax
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Okay, but what's your evidence for your disagreement? Can you prove that all "Factual" beliefs can be proven without relying on any axiom or un-provable thing?
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Raymond Arnold
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Factual beliefs tend to rely on axioms such as "my senses are reasonably accurate," which, even if false, would make the navigating the world completely impossible if we didn't assume.
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MightyCow
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quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
edit: and A+B=B+A isn't axiomatic at all under most any system of mathematics; indeed, it isn't true under many definitions of addition. It is a derived truth in certain systems where addition is defined.

I stopped at college Calc, so I don't claim to be a math expert by any means. Now you have me curious though - what are some examples in which A+B=/=B+A, and from which axioms is it derived?

This is what I was going for.

http://legacy.lclark.edu/~istavrov/advcalc-Sept2-axiomsofreals.pdf

I couldn't remember the exact name (commutative law) so I checked around to make sure I wasn't completely full of hot air.

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King of Men
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I can't offhand think of a case where addition, that is, "whatever operation the mathematicians decide to denote by +", does not commute. I think that as a rule of thumb, they only use the + symbol for operations which do commute; if they find themselves looking at something which doesn't, they're more inclined to use *, or perhaps the plus-in-a-circle that I can't easily get on this forum. This is only an impression from outside the field, though.

In matrix multiplication AB!=BA in general. And that comes right from the definition of matrix multiplication; you can see it yourself by populating two 2x2 matrices with some randomly picked integers (small ones!) and multiplying by hand.

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natural_mystic
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A more geometrical example of non-commutative addition:

In R^2 i.e. the Cartesian plane it's obvious that if you go up by 3 then across by 2 it is the same as going across by 2 and then up by 3 i.e. the operation of adding "paths" commutes. However, as you move from Euclidean space to a manifold and generalize the notion of paths appropriately this commutativity does not in general hold.

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fugu13
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Yes, commutativity of addition is the most common by far, just not the rule. However, it is most commonly not axiomatic, but derived.
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Mucus
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String concatenation is the first common example using '+' that comes to my mind that is non-commutative. I may have to ponder to think of a second common one.
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King of Men
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I think it would be hard to make it axiomatic; once you've defined a particular operation, how does it make sense to say "Also, for all [A, B], A+B=B+A"? Either there's a counterexample or there isn't. Would you just throw out the counterexamples as not proper additions? That would likely lead to throwing out closure as well. ; at most, you might be unable to prove it either way, and say "Well, what happens if we assume commutation?" I can see where you might prove interesting things about the set for which a given operation does commute, although intuitively I would expect such sets to be small (possibly even measure zero) compared to the sets on which an operation is well defined.
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fugu13
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If you take a look at MC's link, that's one way to define addition via axioms that include a commutativity axiom. You'll see that derivation if you take a good real analysis class.
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natural_mystic
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Right; once a concrete operation has been given its commutativity is derived. A lot of math has been done assuming that the law of composition of a group is commutative (therefore using '+' to represent said operation) without actually specifying said operation. This approach has great utility for generality of result.

To KoM's last point - the 'center' of a group is the set of elements which commute with all elements of a group; and it is an object of interest in group theory.

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Tresopax
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quote:
Factual beliefs tend to rely on axioms such as "my senses are reasonably accurate," which, even if false, would make the navigating the world completely impossible if we didn't assume.
That still means that factual beliefs are based on unprovable axioms.

It should also be noted that many factual beliefs are complicated enough that they require far more questionable axioms than "my senses are reasonably accurate". For instance, you can't simply observe with your senses that George Washington was our first president - that factual belief requires axioms that allow you trust things you have heard from other people and/or speculate based on historical artifacts. And then there's far more complicated factual beliefs like "Investing in stocks will bring me more money in the long run than investing in bonds", or "My friend is lying to me when he says he likes his mother-in-law", or "Health care is inefficient in America"...

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MightyCow
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quote:
Originally posted by fugu13:
If you take a look at MC's link, that's one way to define addition via axioms that include a commutativity axiom. You'll see that derivation if you take a good real analysis class.

If you aren't willing to agree that an axiom is actually an axiom, I don't think you're ever going to be satisfied in this discussion.
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Raymond Arnold
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quote:
It should also be noted that many factual beliefs are complicated enough that they require far more questionable axioms than "my senses are reasonably accurate". For instance, you can't simply observe with your senses that George Washington was our first president - that factual belief requires axioms that allow you trust things you have heard from other people and/or speculate based on historical artifacts. And then there's far more complicated factual beliefs like "Investing in stocks will bring me more money in the long run than investing in bonds", or "My friend is lying to me when he says he likes his mother-in-law", or "Health care is inefficient in America"...
None of those are axioms, they are all judgements based on experience, which rests on the axiom of "my senses are reasonably accurate." Which is far more agreed upon than "God exists."
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