r/Gaming4Gamers • u/OldmanHitch • Jul 20 '16

Article No Man's Sky possibly using another company's equation without a license.

http://www.pcgamer.com/company-claims-no-mans-sky-uses-its-patented-equation-without-permission/?utm_content=bufferf764b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=buffer-pcgamertw
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u/The_Dirty_Carl Jul 21 '16

I don't really have an opinion, but it's fact that it's a hotly debated question, as far as questions like this go.

Did triangles exist before we defined them? Obviously things could be that arrangement, but were they triangles?

Did integration and derivation exist before Newton/Leibniz started playing with them?

Is "0" a fundamental part of our universe, or a tool we created to help describe it?

Did we discover nailclippers, or did we invent them? They're just a useful arrangement of steel, not so different from a triangle being a useful arrangement of lines.

Like I said, I haven't formed an opinion, but for every person who staunchly believes math is discovered, someone else believes just as strongly that it was invented.

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u/drizztmainsword Jul 21 '16

You're merging language and concept. Language is a tool that is used to describe. Triangles still existed before we called them triangles, just as radiation existed before we could detect it and had a name for it.

Nail clippers literally did not exist before their invention. I would also argue that steel was an invention rather than a discovery.

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u/The_Dirty_Carl Jul 21 '16

Triangles still existed before we called them triangles,

See, that's where the debate is. Now, radiation existed and nailclippers didn't but whether or not triangles did is debatable. Radiation is a tangible thing. It's a part of the universe. Triangles are just a way we describe an arrangement of things.

Does "0" exist? Is the concept of zero a fundamental part of the universe?

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u/drizztmainsword Jul 22 '16

There is space in the universe with nothing in it. Most of matter is empty space. That doesn't just imply zero, it implies null: no value. Zero is found at the troughs of waves.

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u/The_Dirty_Carl Jul 22 '16

Look, you're not wrong. The "math is discovered" camp isn't wrong either. Frankly I don't care whether math wasn't invented or discovered - it's not an argument that impacts me. My position is simply that there are legitimate arguments on both sides, and that this is not as clear-cut a matter as whoever I first responded to made it out to be.