and some credit for the nukes

and breeding like rabbits

I wish De Finetti was the first because that would have let more people approach probability like him but I fear Laplace was the first.

I chalk those before Laplace up as just applied combinatorics but I might be wrong about that.

unfortunately it was the french who taught us, as Piedmont was basically french and we took in a lot of heavy dishes that route (+ some silly Austrian stuff from the other side of northern Italy).

nowadays what was the "poor guys food" is what has become known as Italian food (pizza, dry pasta which existed as a main dish only in a few central -southern regions, carbonara which we invented with American food rations in Rome and so on) around the world but that's another topic

next to laplace is lagrange

Same guy I already mentioned - Cardano. He also stole the solution to the cubic, which now bears his name (from another Italian), and inadvertently discovered complex numbers while applying the cubic formula.

Cardano's work on probability predates Laplace by 200+ years. It might be "just" applied combinatorics, but it's still probability theory.

Not sure how to translate numeri silvestri (what he called complex numbers when he stumbled upon them) but something like "wild forest numbers"

Ye i know; project Gutenberg has a nice bibliographic study on him, it's interesting to note Cardano didnt put the book on gambling in the list of his math books

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1960...-h/19600-h.htm

Here you get a very detailed analysis of his gambling book , it's up to you to decide if it had enough probability theory expressed to be considered a seminal work on it, or if it was rather some genius bunch of insights without much guidance and structure about a topic that fascinated him (my feeling is the latter)

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...QCKbGn1xsCvDyo

have you read it?

it's a new york times bestselling book written by a black man who thinks rich white liberals are setting back race relations.

I'd argue that a lot of what we now consider different fields of mathematics started off as a curiosity for some mathematician, who essentially created the field by contributing what you have called a genius bunch of insights. I know for example that as recently as last century most mathematicians didn't treat fractals too seriously and looked at Mandelbrot as a bit of a clown, but they ended up becoming a central feature in what we now know as chaos theory, and the Mandelbrot set is now an iconic image in popular culture.

Incidentally, my avatar is of the Julia set, which is a fractal closely related to the Mandelbrot set. Also, Julia didn't have a nose.

because of all of my pro Trump posts?

Just get some new material when someone says they lean a certain way.

you may want to retire the IF YOU LEAN ANYMORE RIGHT YOUD BE HORIZONTAL. it's a tad repetitive.

go ahead, get the last word in.

It's hard to remember all the lines you've used when you have as many zinger as I do.

Jungle numbers?

It looks like Italian has a word similar to the English word for jungle and not cognate with the Spanish and Portuguese "selva" which is "jungle" in those two.

We have giungla for jungla, selva though is what Dante says at the beginning of the divina commedia (mi ritrovai per una selva oscura).

Selva is the root for selvatic, rare spelling for sylvatic (linked to wood, or feral vs domesticated for animals).

Selvatico in Italian means wild

What A load of bolzano

From a theory standpoint combinatorics is probably the most interesting part. The rest is just studying measure spaces of volume 1.

You don't think people who don't own any property can be happy and live productive lives? Why should it matter to them who owns the property they rent?

Just curious about this - how would you feel about a society which is completely capitalist, protects private property, etc, is similar to the current US system except in two ways. There are no taxes (on anyone living), and there is no inheritance. The government is funded by proceeds of the estates of people who have died.
I'm going to guess that you think that would be a terrible system, but why wouldn't it be perfectly fair? I would love that system - I would get the good things I like about the government without ever paying taxes! Why should I care what happens to my stuff after I die? I honestly currently have no idea what will happen to my stuff (or my money) after I die, and I couldn't care less about it. I think productive people who run businesses and become rich are great, but I see no reason why anyone should be rich just because their ancestors were good at making money.

It wouldn't work in practice though, people would get around it by gifting their stuff to their family and friends, or selling it for a dollar or something.

No i think the abolition of private property rights in full always automatically leads to the abolition of all other kinds of freedom.

The reason being that you need a truly totalitarian state to enforce the abolition of property rights, and that only happens if many other freedoms don't exist at all.

As for your proposal to move all fiscal revenue to inheritance, it has a lot of huge problems, practical ones before moral.

If you aren't taxed in life but are taxed at death, how do you deal with gifts while alive? Because people will give to their children (or other people they care about) in life if there are no other taxes, dodging a lot of that tax. If instead you can't give to children or people you care about while alive, you are removing one of the most important property rights, which is to be able to benefit whomever you care about with it.

You also need to abolition foundations and everything close to that in order for that tax to work.

Then there is the much more basic and practical series of real life problems like, one spouse only works, he dies, the non working one now co owns his house with the state? How do you deal with that, the state gets rent from the widow?

You are basically going to destroy the possibility of a person to care for his current dependants. Adult children with disability, non working spouses, minor children.

Then there is the issue of non listed companies. You want the state to own them? Or to auction them off even if the timing isn't right and they just lost their key man? A father can't prepare his son to take over in the family business, the state takes it all away? Do you realize how much value would get destroyed that way?

Even small inheritance tax generate vigorous attempts to elude them which change behavior, so you should fully expect a whole industry dedicated uniquely to avoid paying that tax if you implement it. Instead of accountants and the like you get hundreds of thousands of professional spending all their working life to help people plan ahead of inheritance tax. How do you think that's going to work out?

Basically when you think of a new tax (or a very much higher rate on an existing one), always think in terms of people who will dedicate their whole career to make it as hard as possible for that tax to be collected.

Another option, which would require the state to change laws dramatically, would simply be for you to buy insurance with all your savings. An insurance doesn't need to have a high payout, you are 81, you buy a lump sum life insurance with beneficiaries your wife and your children, for the same amount of the lump sum + accrued interest - expenses.

How do you deal with that? Make life insurance illegal? Make life insurance illegal over age of x? Tax it? So we are back at "non only inheritance is taxed".

And this is what I thought about in 5 min brainstorming it, now think 500k people working 2000 hours per year with that as their only career goal

Yeah, I'm sure lots of people would try to get around it, but there could be laws to prevent most of that, and if some got away with it, the government would still have more than enough money to function.

If you forbid gifts when alive you are very much in true totalitarian territory. You have to police families militarily to avoid that from happening. You have to abolish cash, gold, diamond ownership.

Remember you don't have other taxes so there is no income statement and so on.

You also have to abolish gifts to ANYONE not only relatives, otherwise you can swap with other rich people (I give your kid 50m if you give my kid 50m).

A society where it is fully illegal to donate anything, owning anything valuable which isn't tracked is fully illegal, is a really totalitarian society.

I don't get why you think any government would be needed to "enforce" the lack of property rights.

You've pointed out how you think the state is needed to enforce property rights. But this would be the opposite, no rights. You don't need a government to enforce laws that don't exist.

Regarding my proposal of no inheritance, of course I understand there would be a lot of practical problems to work out, but there is lots of stuff that is done now to collect taxes and to do some other things, and they are (mostly) worked out. I disagree with most of your objections but don't have time for a lengthy rebuttal right now.

The only thing I will say now is that there are already laws about giving gifts in the US. Gifts of more than a certain amount per year are taxed, even if the gifts are made to family members. Totalitarianism is not needed to enforce those laws.

I mostly was curious if you thought inheritance was important to a capitalist system. I believe it is not, and I also believe that most of the objections that people who dislike the current capitalist system could be easily alleviated by the abolition of inheritance. I think that generational wealth is the main reason for inequality of lifestyles in the US.

Btw, I was mostly meaning land/business capital inheritance, not necessity other possessions. Even under Marxism I believe ownership of personal possessions are allowed.
And property, along with the proceeds from sale of property, already are extensively tracked in the US, again without a totalitarian government being necessary.

Do you know the concept of the black market, which is usually what allows communist countries to survive?

A proper abolition of property rights would include an abolition of black markets.

I think the state is needed to enforce property rights because it's cheaper than private police and works better, but private police is what you get if the state doesn't protect property rights, unless the state ACTIVELY doesn't want property right, IE the state sends armed people to the land you consider yours to take it.

Otherwise if I have resources I invest a part of them to get military protection from private militias.

The state isn't the only way to get property rights working

It seems very hard to believe that lizard people are faking school shootings but you manage somehow.

Seems hard to believe that 26 people could be shot and they're all just instantly declared dead and no trauma helicopters are called and all the paramedics held back...but you believe that.

Warlords and stuff. Now that we've that solved