Posted: Aug 20, 2017 8:34 pm
Exactly. And exactly.
The idea must have quite a hold - he teaches this to his students, he says. I suspect that a few of the students will have thought or said something like, "the distinction between the coordinates and the vectors they address is mildly interesting, and is all well and good... and yes we have to agree on a coordinate system to represent the vector as numbers... but can we just skip over how this somehow requires free will, and you just focus on teaching us the linear algebra, professor?"
The idea must have quite a hold - he teaches this to his students, he says. I suspect that a few of the students will have thought or said something like, "the distinction between the coordinates and the vectors they address is mildly interesting, and is all well and good... and yes we have to agree on a coordinate system to represent the vector as numbers... but can we just skip over how this somehow requires free will, and you just focus on teaching us the linear algebra, professor?"