Why is math the language of reality

I think I'm going to make a slight change in the approach I have regarding writing my articles here, simply because it seems I have more international friends than Romanian ones - and that slight change is the fact that I will be writing my articles in English from now on.

That being said, what's up with today's subject? Why talk about mathematics?

Well, there are several factors at hand in this. But the most important one is that during the last period of my life I have grown tired of hearing "bullshit". What is "bullshit"? "Bullshit" is the manipulation of so-called "reality" based on non-scientific thoughts. One thing I will admit, from a philosophical standpoint, is that indeed, reality IS a collection of subjective experiences that are being realized under the control of actual, "real" objective physical phenomena. So yes, there is room for subjective interpretation of the objective reality, but there is no room for debating the existence of the objective reality to begin with.

Everything must be based on this objective reality, which means the physical reality - if one wants to either describe what is actually real or if one wants to base a subjective view on what is actually real.

Back to the bullshit - the thing that drives me crazy the most is stupidity. We all have our certain degrees of stupidity, nobody is spared from it, but stupidity at its highest dimension is basically frightening. To me, at least. Stupidity is the worst form of human uselessness and failure. So, in order not to be useless and a failure, you must not be stupid. Something to abide by, don't you agree?

This stupidity is the "resource" that is being drawn upon in order for some people to manipulate other people. Since there are more stupid people than intelligent people (a pretty disturbing, but true, thought) - you get the society that we have today - a few very rich people and a lot of poor people. Coincidence? I think not! Is the level of intelligence the lone factor in today's society? Of course it isn't. Of course there are a ton of factors at play in what generates the society that we currently live in. Of course there are geopolitical factors, cultural factors, pure luck or bad luck (whatever that means) - and so on and so forth. But intelligence and the lackthereof, and the manipulation of bullshit are very, very important factors.

So where am I going with this? Well, when I say "bullshit" (or BS, for short) - I mean how some people take advantage of the lack of education of the vast majority of the population to pull BS moves on it. And here I'm referring to religion, spirituality, voodoo, and the like.

I'm tired of all these people that completely forgo the actual science and then, by the same token, completely manipulate the uniformed with BS stuff, especially "religious and spiritual". There is NO proof of any such thing existing. I am personally not interested in "contradicting" religion or spirituality (although one has to define the word "spirituality" in order to agree or disagree with it in the first place) - what I am interested is the truth, whatever that truth is. And when I say "truth" I mean the objective truth.

The fact that we live in our subjective interpretation of the objective truth has no bearing in what the objective truth is. The ability to have our subjective reality is a great "human power", it is maybe the essence of freedom. Everybody should be allowed to their own subjective reality, providing they don't harm other people experiencing that. Furthermore, subjective truth can be altered chemically/electrically through drugs that alter the state of the nervous system. The subjective reality changes (what we perceive from our sensory systems), but it changes because of objective factors (actual chemical or electrical signals affecting the neurons).

This can be experienced directly in an open-brain surgery. You can stimulate certain areas of the brain that will generate these subjective experiences. The same can be said about visions - alterations in the oxygenation levels of the brain generate certain states in which someone has "a vision" - this was the case with haunted houses with faulty exhaustion devices for the stoves: carbon monoxide, which has 200 times the binding power of oxygen to hemoglobin, was being breath in and it messed up with the brain, providing a "haunted house" experience. Once the exhaustion system for the stove was fixed, the house was no longer haunted.

So these subjective experiences (I can give you countless more) are manifestations of the brain under the influence of actual objective factors (chemicals, electric signals etc). It is extremely important to understand this before we partake in any conclusions about reality whatsoever.

But regardless of our subjectivity, what we call "objective truth" must be something that we can all agree with. For example, we can all agree that gravity exists. There is no debate if it exists or not. If you live on the 10th floor and you jump out the window, you will fall down and die. You don't have to generate a debate and "believe" in gravity - it's observable and testable, with let's say... "consistent results".

THAT is what objective reality is - it is independent of our subjective "interpretation" of it. For example, I could start a new religion called "The Church of Gravity" and tell all my followers that our God is almighty Gravity and Gravity is what created the Universe (as it could've actually done, ironically enough, considering that both General Relativity and Inflationary Cosmology predict mathematically that there is such a thing as repulsive gravity, something that might've created the Big Bang itself - but that's a whole other story). In this new religion I founded I could say all kinds of stuff about Gravity, my God, but only one thing would be testable and observable - its physical effects. I could go on with all the BS in the world about my God, but only the objective truth would be "truth". My subjective "truth" - the fact that I believe ("believe" is a very important word, and has no place in a scientific setting) that Gravity made Adam and Eve, and how Gravity set for "us" so called "rules" by which to live upon - all that - would be just a purely subjective, out-of nowhere BS that has no bearing with reality.

Based on all this - you have to understand that what objective truth is - is something that we can all observe, make predictions test and retest, and theorize on, postulate something, test that something and find out it's "consistently true". THAT is what reality is. THAT is what is not BS.

And finally arriving to mathematics - for hundreds of years, for whatever reason, mathematics has been a tremendous tool in describing reality. Not only does it match so well with physics, which is the science of describing objective reality (meaning, non-philosophical reality) - but mathematics has a very solid ground in being EXACT. Math describes patterns, in a repeatable, non-failable way, and it appears that so far the only limitation of mathematics in describing the objective world has been our own understanding of mathematics, and not a limitation of math itself. It could be that math has its limitation in describing objective reality, but so far is doing a pretty damn nice job.

So you can make an argument that "hey, maybe there's a better way of describing reality than math". "Maybe math is not everything". "Maybe there's more than mathematics in describing the world, even if math works". These are all perfectly reasonable concerns and viewpoints, and I can agree with the possibility of them being true. But so far, math has been proven, again and again, a tremendously efficient tool in describing the objective reality.

In fact, let me allow Brian Greene to say a few short words about this:





Also, let me also allow Richard Dawkins "explain" why you should "trust" (and "trust" is a really silly term here) the scientific method:



Answer: because it works.

In science, there is no belief. There is plausibility and fact. How plausible is what our observations, tests, postulates, theories and verifications indicate, based on our current understanding and information available, that this or that is objectively true? That is what science is. And if additional information arrives that contradicts in a more solid way, in a more plausible way, what was previously understood, then this new FACT will take place of the obsolete, wrong understanding.

The quest for truth is not a one time, single event, like religion makes it appear like. It's a series of approximations of truth, each one, with more additional information, being closer and closer to whatever the absolute, objective truth is really all about.

THAT is the difference between science and religion. In science you observe, test, re-test, postulate, re-test, theorize something, in religion you blindingly believe in something that is not observable, not testable, not consistent, not "postulateable", not "theorizable", not nothing.

Religion and God in itself are a self-defeating argument: the argument that God exists and has always existed is the same argument that can be made about the Universe, except for the fact that the Universe actually exists :)

Not only you cannot test in any way such a construct, but in fact you can make all kinds of arguments in favor of the Universe being created from nothing, and that maybe (and I say the word "maybe" because there isn't enough available information) that process is going on right now with other Universes.

And mathematics is able to describe all these possible paths to the absolute objective truth, with only our understanding of math, apparently, being the limiting factor in finding what the truth is. Yes, we must be careful on what mathematical path we take in trying to describe reality - there is such a thing as "false mathematical descriptions of reality" (meaning, descriptions that are possible but that have no correspondence in the actual world - they could be true in other universes, but they are not true in this one). And that's what science is all about - combining intelligent manipulations of math with the correct information the right path, and adjusting as more information becomes available.

As far as subjective truth is concerned - it's interesting, but the fact that the Universe doesn't appear to have any meaning, it has no teleological construct - is, instead of being depressing, a very empowering and liberating fact - it just means that you're allowed to make your own meaning. You have no other limitations than what the physical, objective truth is limiting you to. Other than that - it's just a subjective, philosophical, sociological, societal limitation (of which religion plays a tremendous role, telling you what "good and bad" is based on subjective opinions of others, and making you feel guilty of stuff you shouldn't feel guilty at all about, providing that you have a mind capable enough of analyzing the actions that are viewed as "bad" in religion X or Y). The same religious doctrine has limited the liberties of millions of people (billions and billions over the course of humanity) based on nothing but humanly constructed LIES - from social segregation, to "legitimate rape", to homosexual discrimination, to women being abused in all kinds of ways because "they're lesser than a man", to kings being set as "chosen by God", to heresy, to crusades, to wars, to terrorist attacks, to the inquisition and finally, to the actual attack of education itself. Because it's education that makes the difference in what our human condition will finally be, and how our society will eventually look like. The less educated someone is, the more likely that someone is to believe in BS and to be manipulated by the few.

So how do we decide, as a society, what is "good" and what is "bad"? First, I would like to say that if you need a "book" like the Bible or Quran or whatever else to tell you what "good" and "bad" is, or what is moral, then you simply are not moral. If that is what guides your life, then you simply can't be moral. If you need to be "afraid of God" to be moral, then you're not only "not moral", you're IMORAL. Second, the way you get to what is good and what is bad is through philosophy and rational thinking. We, as a society, provided that we start from the correct premises (we really want to get to the best possible outcome) - we can think, rationalize, work together in establishing what "right" is, what "wrong" is, what is "good" and what is "bad". Because all these terms are, again, subjective. This is where philosophy comes in and replaces the physical, objective truth.

Also, there's a tendency for the uneducated, or uninformed, to use the "God of the gaps argument". Allow Neil DeGrasse Tyson to explain:



So until a better way comes about in describing the nature of reality - mathematics will do. Why? Because it works.

In the end, some more wise words from Neil DeGrasse Tyson: