Xah Talk Show 2026-03-03 Ep773. Geometry, curves. What's most important math. Worthless metaphysics. How to learn.
timestamp
- do math come first or world come first? usefulness of metaphysics
- https://youtu.be/oHW53xlJa1s?t=32m21s
- how do you learn new stuff, video, book, or?
- https://youtu.be/oHW53xlJa1s?t=54m36s
Video Summary (Generated by AI, Edited by Human.)
This video is a coding session and random chat with Xah Lee, who is working on his website, specifically on a visual dictionary of special plane curves (0:35). He mentions that his website hasn't been updated recently due to technical issues (1:34).
Key topics covered in the video:
- Do math come first or world come first? Usefulness of metaphysics (32:21)
- How do you learn new stuff, video, book, or? (54:36)
- Wolfram Language (0:10): Xah Lee frequently uses and codes in Wolfram Language, offering tutorials and hundreds of related videos on YouTube (2:11). He also explains that he is rewriting his old Wolfram Language packages from 1995 to be more accessible, allowing users to directly copy and paste code rather than installing packages (47:02).
- Asteroid Animation (1:05): He discusses ongoing work on an asteroid animation and other related geometric concepts like rolling a circle around another circle (3:53).
- Parallel Curves and Evolutes (5:35): He delves into the mathematical concepts of parallel curves, explaining how they are generated from normal lines of a given curve (6:39). He also touches upon evolutes, which are the centers of curvature circles (8:47).
- Trammel of Archimedes and Ellipsograph (12:31): Xah Lee explains how this mechanism can generate an ellipse and discusses its historical use, noting that it's also known as an ellipsograph (14:11).
- GeoGebra Software (21:02): He expresses frustration with GeoGebra, a plane geometry software that switched from open source to closed source, rendering many of his old files unusable offline (22:58).
- Learning in the IT Field (54:11): Xah Lee shares his views on learning new information, particularly in IT. He prefers reading over watching videos, finding it more efficient for in-depth understanding (56:30). He also highlights the significant role of AI in his learning process, stating that it often provides quick and accurate answers to esoteric questions that are difficult to find through traditional web searches (59:20). He has also stopped reading physical books since around 2005, preferring encyclopedic online resources and now AI for quick information retrieval (1:05:04).
- what was trammel of Archimedes used for
- wasn't there any mechnical usage such as in windmill or such
- https://x.com/i/grok/share/0dc4ce2f00754574b42cb95c0e716b31
Does the world obey the rules of mathematics or is mathematics just a tool that explains the world?
- meta physics.