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Try to count trees from the perspective of the sun, or from the perspective of an electron.

Trees are made up of billions of atoms, in extremely differing configurations, which can only be appreciated by machinery that is able to abstract it into the concept of a tree. To the rest of the universe it's just a bunch of atoms, with no clearly defined boundary.

So, counting is not necessarily a fundamental thing either. At least, according to how I like to interpret things :)




Excellent points. I think we are viewing "fundamental" differently. Instead of fundamental to the universe, I see counting as fundamental to the usefulness of math, which in itself is just an abstraction of the real world. (Whole Plato's cave thing)




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