theprof00 said: hehe no, it was a writing class where we talked about nietzsche and some other writers. But i think where you are going with this is that in existentialism; Find your own path. correct? maybe i should fix it? my point is, if you take a class on something that you have no idea where to even begin, then just accept what you hear and go from there. EDIT: now that i think about it, taking something for granted is like the opposite of existentialism.... o well. In science, just believe what you are told, until you know it all. Then feel free to question stuff.

Oh I wasn't trying to correct you. I was just thinking to myself, "Damn, am I in the wrong school?" I wish I had classes on existentialism.

The "find your own path" line is pretty vague and can be a blanket term for either existentialism or Satanism, with its whole "Left Hand Path" ideas.

But yeah, it's totally right.

It's basically summed up as "Existence precedes essence." Therefore you exist without an essence. Now if you're a nihilist (a pussy), you think nothing matters and you abandon everything and go nuts. An existentialist is burdened but at the same time enlightened by their freedom, but does not become afraid, and creates their own essence (aka giving their life its own meaning, aka 'finding their own path').

When you look into the abyss of meaninglessness, you can laugh or you can cry. Sometimes you can do both. But afterwards, you keep on living. And then everything's much more exciting (imho).


Philosophy and quantum physics are way crazier than imaginary numbers and dividing by zero. Then you even get the wackos who want to combine philosophy and quantum physics. Good stuff.

Quantum physics are crazy fun. Largely because they make almost no sense to somebody who only has a background in conventional physics.

Rath said: Gnizmo said: Lem_Nx said: Rath said: Wait, how do you divide by zero?     Limits, baby :D Pretty much this. You look at the numbers as they get closer and closer to 0 and see where it converges and assume that must be what the number actually is at that point. This is one of the basic ideas behind derivatives. Its not division by zero, its division close to zero. There is a fundamental difference between dividing between an infinitely small number and division by zero. Thats the reason why you always have to express it with limit notation (lim x-> 0 of 1/x is infinity) rather than 1/x is infinity.

There's always L^Hospital's rule (I don't care that I spelled it wrong).  It kind of lets you divide by 0 in very specific circumstances (lets you calculate certain limts that would equal 0/0 and some other ones).

 

@Rubang
good read, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Yeah the class was a lot of fun, and my teacher was amazing. We had a bunch of college kids and half of them couldn't understand the concepts at all. they were like "Whateverrrr"!!! very drole. You could hear Nietzsche rolling over in his grave by these "my mom does my laundry" types.
What I love about existentialism is the endless journey bit of it. I am a struggler at heart, and that message of fighting till the last breath resonates with me a lot.
It was an advanced writing class, and maybe you should see if your school has a couple with emphasis' on existentialism. I had an assignment where I had to write in the same prose style as some author which was really fun.
I then wrote an essay about what truth was, and listed every single archetypal example by writing :"or ___________" on every line.
at the bottom of the page I wrote "or not" teacher flipped out. she was really impressed and needless to say, so was I.

Nihilists are the biggest bunch of babies. I had a nihilistic roommate but that's a story for another time :P

EDIT: i also wrote about robots alot. that was fun.

i am not imaginary.

that's what you think

twesterm said: Rath said: Gnizmo said: Lem_Nx said: Rath said: Wait, how do you divide by zero?     Limits, baby :D Pretty much this. You look at the numbers as they get closer and closer to 0 and see where it converges and assume that must be what the number actually is at that point. This is one of the basic ideas behind derivatives. Its not division by zero, its division close to zero. There is a fundamental difference between dividing between an infinitely small number and division by zero. Thats the reason why you always have to express it with limit notation (lim x-> 0 of 1/x is infinity) rather than 1/x is infinity. There's always L^Hospital's rule (I don't care that I spelled it wrong).  It kind of lets you divide by 0 in very specific circumstances (lets you calculate certain limts that would equal 0/0 and some other ones).

But once again only limits, L'Hopitals only lets you find the limit of a function when the limit of the denominator and numerator are both zero (or both infinity) - it doesn't actually let you divide by zero.

I think there are special and obscure cases where you can divide by zero - just not standard mathematics (I think it can be done in abstract algebra?).

 

@theprof,

I actually got lucky pretty young and studied a bit of existentialism in a high school AP Composition and Literature class. We had one short unit on Sartre and Camus, and I told the class "Oh, this is brilliant. That's what you call it. I didn't know there was a name for how I felt," and my teacher (a huge Christian as it turned out later) tried to tell me that it was impossible to be an existentialist, because it's a self-defeating philosophy. You can't believe in nothing and believe in existentialism at the same time. The entire class agreed with her (Catholic school groupthink). They didn't differentiate between existentialism and nihilism, but I can't blame them, they hadn't studied nihilism yet.

I like to explain it like this:

Existentialists believe in themselves... if they feel like it.

Since then I've only taken one basic philosophy course and haven't taken any more writing courses (but I might take screenwriting if I can get in) but I've read up on Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Camus, and Sartre. I looooove me some Sartre. I haven't had time to get into Kierkegaard yet though.

Imaginary numbers are as real as electrons. Electrons are a convenient analogy that we use to help our minds understand the world. Electrons do not exist, because there is no such thing as a 'particle' or 'wave', merely a collection of numbers that interact according to equations. Quantum theory has shown conclusively that we cannot treat electrons as real particles or the maths wouldn't work out. However, thinking of them as particles is a device that can help us to understand the world.

In the same way, imaginary or complex numbers do not exist. However, clearly some physical processes rely on these constructs to happen. Therefore, we act as if they do exist for the purposes of not having to understand what it means, just like electrons.

So, imaginary/complex numbers do not exist, but neither do electrons. Anyone is free to temporarily treat either of them as real to make it easier to understand how the world works.

vlad321 said: They are not called as widely as you think imaginary numbers, it's called a complex number. Obviously too complex for you.

Quoted for comical value :)