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Comment by MockObject | Hacker News Reader

The way to express "cosine squared" in words, without including "cosine" or "squared", would be a lesson in cosines and a lesson in squaring. So you're correct, but why is this point useful?

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using your example only, those are words which mean something geometrically and relationally. they are functions for numerical computation of those relationships. they dont describe physical systems that we're all talking about originally. if you show me some QM math about some experiment I will tell you what it means. why is everyone so confused about this? that's one thing here i cant understand easily. it's amazing. first they say we cant use words at all. then they say theyre hardly explainable with words. my mistake earlier was not simply retorting with the question of what % the things are explainable with words and not. mind blowing.

Because, interpreted strictly, what you're insisting is trivially true. Obviously anything can be explained with words. However, sometimes the volume of words required would make the explanation incredibly tedious, and words aren't the most appropriate language.

English/natural language isn't a privileged mode. It's one of many, including math, musical notation, computer code, and chess notation. We use the best language for the context, and who cares that laborious translations are available to others? I could be typing ascii codes in binary, instead of letters right now, but so what?

i stopped reading after your first paragraph. you are doing nothing but insisting on your opinion. language and concepts are compressable and often easily abstracted. just give us an example of something that requires me to talk to you only in math expressions instead of concepts in english and maybe i'll concede the point but i said many times now i already have been proven right by the single example of the plain english description of a nonzero amount of the principle behind something otherwise called "the most complicated concept". that must amount to a supposedly inordinate quantity of complexity described plainly. qed. the real question is why we are having so much trouble agreeing. take care

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