Infinite shots

[E. von Hoegh]

Ah, but there's the point. There wasn't any stuff, or non-stuff, surrounding the not yet point.

What didn't exist was the surrounding. It's not that there wasn't anything there. It's that there wasn't any there to have nothing in it.


MB

Yes. Thank you for understanding that very important part of the BB theory.

 

[Dali]

No need to argue. The universe will go on the same regardless of how we define it.

It does not prevent to be rational.

 

[Diapositivo]

It does not prevent to be rational.

I don't think you are more rational than all those philosophers of the middle ages trying to demonstrate the existence of God by pure logic*. Logic, just like mathematics, is entirely inside the mind of the man. Whatever theory that is only demonstrated only "mathematically" or "logically" is just self-sustaining interesting reasoning but no science.

I'm still with Galileo. No empirical demonstration, no science. The cimento (test, trial) gives the demonstration that the theory was good. Never the theory itself.

The idea, for instance, that before the big bang there was no space to be there is just a negation in words of the problem the mind has (and cannot solve). If the big bang is an explosion of matter, that matter will explode into some space which has to have been there to receive that matter. Besides, big-bang theories normally as far as I know talk about a pulsating universe, with infinitely repeated big-bang-expansion-contraction-big-bang cycles!

Saying that it is energy, or mass, (or energy-mass if you prefer) that creates space contravenes what our mind thinks when we think of mass, energy, or space. This negation is as far as I know performed either as pure imagined concept or, in the case of some other theories, with advanced mathematical "demonstrations". But yet again, no cimento, no science. Only theory with maybe a very intelligent and elegant layout.

According to the imperfect infinitesimal calculus of the ancient Greeks Achilles would "never" reach the turtle. The logic mistake in the reasoning is easily shown, first of all, by noticing in real life that Achilles does reach the turtle. If the reasoning could be performed by some creatures in a world where there is no Achilles and no turtle, so to say, to prove it wrong, the brilliant mathematical construction might go on being right in the mathematical mind of the mathematical theorizers. Mathematics is not empirical evidence. Human brain can fail. Mathematics is a creation of the mind. Pushing it to its boundaries might give incorrect results.

In the beautiful work Life of Galileo Bertolt Brecht shows us Galileo while trying to convince two Dominican friars to look inside his telescope, to see the "Medicean planets". The Dominican friars, I go by memory, answer that they are not interested in looking inside the telescope until they don't have an acceptable theory first that may justify them looking into it. The instrument might have defects but the human mind when properly used cannot fail, that is. Such is the presumptuousness of the human mind.

* Failing miserably but often becoming "saints" in the process.

PS I still don't get which are the two notions that I go on mixing.

 

[cliveh]

I don't think you are more rational than all those philosophers of the middle ages trying to demonstrate the existence of God by pure logic*. Logic, just like mathematics, is entirely inside the mind of the man. Whatever theory that is only demonstrated only "mathematically" or "logically" is just self-sustaining interesting reasoning but no science.

I'm still with Galileo. No empirical demonstration, no science. The cimento (test, trial) gives the demonstration that the theory was good. Never the theory itself.

The idea, for instance, that before the big bang there was no space to be there is just a negation in words of the problem the mind has (and cannot solve). If the big bang is an explosion of matter, that matter will explode into some space which has to have been there to receive that matter. Besides, big-bang theories normally as far as I know talk about a pulsating universe, with infinitely repeated big-bang-expansion-contraction-big-bang cycles!

Saying that it is energy, or mass, (or energy-mass if you prefer) that creates space contravenes what our mind thinks when we think of mass, energy, or space. This negation is as far as I know performed either as pure imagined concept or, in the case of some other theories, with advanced mathematical "demonstrations". But yet again, no cimento, no science. Only theory with maybe a very intelligent and elegant layout.

According to the imperfect infinitesimal calculus of the ancient Greeks Achilles would "never" reach the turtle. The logic mistake in the reasoning is easily shown, first of all, by noticing in real life that Achilles does reach the turtle. If the reasoning could be performed by some creatures in a world where there is no Achilles and no turtle, so to say, to prove it wrong, the brilliant mathematical construction might go on being right in the mathematical mind of the mathematical theorizers. Mathematics is not empirical evidence. Human brain can fail. Mathematics is a creation of the mind. Pushing it to its boundaries might give incorrect results.

In the beautiful work Life of Galileo Bertolt Brecht shows us Galileo while trying to convince two Dominican friars to look inside his telescope, to see the "Medicean planets". The Dominican, I go by memory, answer that they are not interested in looking inside the telescope until they don't have an acceptable theory first that may justify them looking into it. The instrument might have defects but the human mind when properly used cannot fail, that is. Such is the presumptuousness of the human mind.

* Failing miserably but often becoming "saints" in the process.

Galileo was a great thinker, but Isaac Newton was on another planet in terms of human creative thought and scientific progression.

 

[Dali]

Honestly, think whatever you want, I don't care.

When someone mistakes infinity with "no limit" (different wording = different meaning, isn't it?), it says it all.

Now about experiment. I am sure you know what gravity is. Show me gravity! You can't. The only thing you can do is to experiment that a stone falls on the ground each time you drop it. that's all you can conclude from your experiment; when I drop a stone, it falls on the ground. And then you will build a theory to explain why and how the stone falls each time you drop it.

It is exactly (at a different scale) what happens with the universe. Observations and then theoriy to try to explain the observation. You don't buy it? Fine, but don't tell us than mathematicians and astrophysicists are intellectually dishonest and not men of science because they work on theories. Rant over!

 

[batwister]

I don't think you are more rational than all those philosophers of the middle ages trying to demonstrate the existence of God by pure logic*. Logic, just like mathematics, is entirely inside the mind of the man. Whatever theory that is only demonstrated only "mathematically" or "logically" is just self-sustaining interesting reasoning but no science.

Sounds like modern Atheism. Just angry logic.

...I'm agnostic by the way.

 

[lxdude]

After reading you guys, I think I'm just going to go out tonight and drink the thread title.

 

[batwister]

After reading you guys, I think I'm just going to go out tonight and drink the thread title.

"If you gave a monkey infinite shots would he eventually write 'Fairytale in New York'."

 

[NedL]

... Logic, just like mathematics, is entirely inside the mind of the man. Whatever theory that is only demonstrated only "mathematically" or "logically" is just self-sustaining interesting reasoning but no science.

This has been debated endlessly,and certainly there are many people who share your opinion. I do not entirely agree with you: I think the discrete and arithmetical part of mathematics reflects the discrete nature of reality. In as much as the universe consists of separate and differentiated parts, there are truths contained in the natural numbers that reflect truths about reality.

Anyway, reading this made me want to quote something humorous from a book I happen to be reading ( fiction ):

"Mathematics is the only valid portrait of reality. Everything else is delusional."​

 

[lxdude]

"If you gave a monkey infinite shots would he eventually write 'Fairytale in New York'."

I don't know, but he would eventually soil himself.

 

[michaelbsc]

Perhaps this will become the Infinite Thread.

We already had the Deleted thread. Did that port over when the server changed?

 

[Stephanie Brim]

After reading you guys, I think I'm just going to go out tonight and drink the thread title.

I have Woodchuck. It makes forum reading SO much better.

 

[michaelbsc]

...If the big bang is an explosion of matter, that matter will explode into some space which has to have been there to receive that matter.
[...]
If the reasoning could be performed by some creatures in a world where there is no Achilles and no turtle, so to say, to prove it wrong, the brilliant mathematical construction might go on being right in the mathematical mind of the mathematical theorizers...

It's turtles all the way down.

 

[lxdude]

I have Woodchuck. It makes forum reading SO much better.

So does Wild Turkey.

 

[litody]

This has been debated endlessly,and certainly there are many people who share your opinion. I do not entirely agree with you: I think the discrete and arithmetical part of mathematics reflects the discrete nature of reality. In as much as the universe consists of separate and differentiated parts, there are truths contained in the natural numbers that reflect truths about reality.

Anyway, reading this made me want to quote something humorous from a book I happen to be reading ( fiction ):

"Mathematics is the only valid portrait of reality. Everything else is delusional."​

My favorite is from the nobel prize winner Konrad Lorenz

"Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing”
Konrad Lorenz

 

[Steve Smith]

What didn't exist was the surrounding. It's not that there wasn't anything there. It's that there wasn't any there to have nothing in it.

Something I tried to do as a child was to imagine nothing existing... not even a space for the nothingness to be in. I don't think our minds are capable of doing it.


Steve.

 

[litody]

Is time infinite? If it is then why are we not there already?
And theories of entropy say we'll cool to zero degrees kelvin and the universe will be in total darkness. The monkeys will be stuffed unless they know how to use a flash and the OP didn't give them one, thereby making it impossible for them to produce an image at infinity.

 

[Diapositivo]

Honestly, think whatever you want, I don't care.

When someone mistakes infinity with "no limit" (different wording = different meaning, isn't it?), it says it all.

Now about experiment. I am sure you know what gravity is. Show me gravity! You can't. The only thing you can do is to experiment that a stone falls on the ground each time you drop it. that's all you can conclude from your experiment; when I drop a stone, it falls on the ground. And then you will build a theory to explain why and how the stone falls each time you drop it.

It is exactly (at a different scale) what happens with the universe. Observations and then theoriy to try to explain the observation. You don't buy it? Fine, but don't tell us than mathematicians and astrophysicists are intellectually dishonest and not men of science because they work on theories. Rant over!

Honestly, I care about what you think, but I don't grasp it exactly.

First, the difference, when talking about space, between "infinite space" and "space without limits". In my mind and I do believe in common parlance they are the same concept. I personally cannot conceive a "limit" to the universe so made that there is nothing "after" or "beyond" that limit. Not even, that is, the concept of "being empty". My mind - and I guess yours, really - cannot conceive such a thing. A sphere to me can always be inscribed in a cube. You think "a sphere" because you imagine its dimensional limits and somewhere something in which those dimensional limits exist.

Regarding gravity, of course it was observed by man since he was a monkey, with or without a Leica. Everybody observe that they fall. "Gravity" litterally means "being heavy". Weight is something that men, and animals, experience and know very well without need to go to University, or Elementary school for that matter.


@ cliveh

Galileo gave us the law of gravity stating "weight" being the product of mass x speed of "fall", and showed us that "speed of fall" is independent from mass, and has uniform acceleration of 9.8 m/s*s. This equation is the base of the science known as ballistic and in general his equation is somehow everywhere in our scientific world. He naturally gave many other important contributions to mankind, stating various laws about motion, inertia, motion quantity and other concept which I forgot since long but that are at the base of our technology.

I would certainly not debate about the relative merits of Galilei and Newton. Newton was born just after Galilei died. Newton built upon what Galilei built. They are a giant on the shoulders of another giant. Newton gave us the laws of attraction of masses in the general case. Galilei gave us the law of attraction of masses when one mass (the Earth) is so hugely superior to the other mass (the "grave", and object with a weight) the the mass of the latter is negligible. Newton gave a generalization of Galilei laws, the law of reciprocal attraction of two masses (planets, stars). They are both giants and I don't see how can one think about ranking them. Newton, I am sure, would have never thought of himself as "better" than Galilei, and Einstein (or whoever) would never think of himself as "better" than Newton.

As Leonardo da Vinci said, "a poor disciple is he who doesn't overcome his master". The disciple "starts" by having all the knowledge of his master. It is his duty to add to that.

Both Newton and Galilei gave convincing repeatable demonstrations of their equations. Their scientific discoveries form the base of all our technological progress of the last centuries.

Most of those last century's hypothesis about the universe are, on the other hand, as far as I know, resting entirely on mathematics. We have plenty of astronomical theories that do not have, possibly do not seek by evident impossibility to seek, an empirical test. They can be legitimately called "theories" or "hypothesis". Possibly brilliant and genial ones. But being confined in the realm of the hypothesis, I would not use the indicative mode of any language to express their thesis. Indicative is the mode of certitude.

 

[Diapositivo]

Is time infinite? If it is then why are we not there already?

Because it takes time! Because it is time, and thus it is non-compressible by definition. You can't travel through time. You can't squeeze or zip or distill or bulk it. You cannot go backward in time by solving some mathematical equations (as Stephen Hawking says, showing that one can be a genius and still talk nonsense).

 

[litody]

so giving the monkeys an infinite amount of time to take their photos is a flawed concept.

 

[michaelbsc]

Something I tried to do as a child was to imagine nothing existing... not even a space for the nothingness to be in. I don't think our minds are capable of doing it.

I don't think our minds are capable of it either.

 

[Vaughn]

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." Niels Bohr

"Atoms are not things." Werner Heisenberg

"You are not thinking. You are merely being logical." Niels Bohr to Albert Einstein

 

[lxdude]

I have Woodchuck. It makes forum reading SO much better.

Q.: How much Woodchuck would Stephanie chuck if Stephanie chucked her Woodchuck?


A.#1: Depends on how much is in cider.

A.#2: A lot if she's Brimful.