On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 4:24 PM, Richard Ruquist <[email protected]> wrote: > Mathematics itself seems rather magical. > For instance the sum 1+2+3+4+5.....infinity = -1/12 > > And according to Scott Aaronson's new book > when string theorists estimate the mass of a photon > they get two components: one being 1/12 > and the other being that sum, so the mass is zero, > thanks to Ramanujan > > If that sum is cutoff at some very large number but less than infinity, > does anyone know the value of the summation.?
Hi Richard, Ok, but in that case physics is deterministic, just hard to compute. How do we then deal with the fact that two photons under the precise same conditions can follow two different paths (except for some hidden variable we don't know about)? I'm not a physicist and way over my head here, so this is not a rhetorical question. > > On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 10:15 AM, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> > wrote: >> >> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 3:30 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:35 AM, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> >> > wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >> On Thursday, April 11, 2013 3:29:51 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: >> >>> >> >>> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> >> >>>> > If matter is deterministic, how could it behave in a random way? >> >>> >> >>> >> >>> It couldn't. >> >> >> >> >> >> Are you saying then that matter is random, or that it is neither random >> >> nor >> >> deterministic? >> > >> > Matter behaves randomly, but probability theory allows us to make >> > predictions about random events. >> >> In my view, randomness = magic. >> The MWI and Comp are the only theories I've seen so far that do not >> require magic to explain observed randomness. >> >> > >> > -- >> > Stathis Papaioannou >> > >> > -- >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> > Groups "Everything List" group. >> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >> > an email to [email protected]. >> > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> > Visit this group at >> > http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. >> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> > >> > >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. >> >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
