On 1/22/2015 1:30 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 3:25 PM, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 1/22/2015 3:30 AM, Jason Resch wrote:On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 7:00 PM, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On 1/21/2015 3:46 PM, LizR wrote:On 18 January 2015 at 18:27, Jason Resch <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Do you believe that *one and only one* of the following statements is true? the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 0 the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 1 the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 2 the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 3 the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 4 the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 5 the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 6 the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 7 the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 8 the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 9 Either you answer yes, or no to that question. If you answer yes, I don't see how you can escape mathematical realism.Confusing "real" and "true" again. If something has objective properties which can be said to be either true or false, which can be discovered independently and agreed upon by different individuals who never communicated with each other, in what manner is that exploration any different from exploration of our physical universe? I believe if something has objective properties which can be discovered independently and agreed upon by different individuals who never communicated with each other then the thing to which we ascribe those objective properties is for all intents and purposes real.They must have communicated, at least indirectly, otherwise they won't have any common language and won't be able to understand one another. Who says they need to? An alien race might find the first binary digits of Pi to be: ``/``/````////// While in our notation, it appears as: 0010010000111111Same alternating sequence, with different symbols, I'd say we both discovered the same object, even if we have different names for it.
How will they know they are computing the same thing? induction on digits? But, ex hypothesi they will never get around to comparing the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi.
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