Greek philosophy on one, Asian philosophy on zero

Some philosophical comments by @davidlhawk on a post on LinkedIn:

KK wrote:

I was reading the book ‘Zero to One’ by Peter Thiel today and contemplated on the fact that a significant part of what we know about businesses today is shaped by reactions to past mistakes.

@davidlhawk wrote:

Friends: You might suspend your patriotism to the Greeks and return to the prior beauty of the Asians by forgetting about 1, and stick with 0. Moving on to 1 is a basic solution encouraged by Aristotle and thus defines the serious limits of human thinking, especially in computer science, and ultimate in AI.

It might be best to dwell on the unknown power of zero for deeper understanding of human limits, and human challenges, as the leaders of astrophysics now do. Einstein and Hawking advice in this regard seems to have been pretty good. Advice: Dump Aristotle.

“…zero from its birth as an Eastern philosophical concept to its struggle for acceptance in Europe and its apotheosis as the mystery of a black hole.” (Seife, Charles, “Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea,” Viking: New York, 2000. from the cover)

Of course if you really are into the managerial evil allowed/encouraged by the strategic in human thinking then its best to skip zero and move up, or down. One is only the beginning of the dishonest hierarchy of knowing nothing to get to know-where. The successes of the small-fingered leader, Donald, illustrates this approach to life as not knowing.

Just an idea. You can forget about it if its irritating.

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Nice! This is a powerful heuristic. I love it. I’ve been reading “The Way of Zen” by Alan Watts and this clicks in a similar way.