On Sunday, September 1, 2019 at 6:26:17 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 31 Aug 2019, at 16:01, Philip Thrift <[email protected] <javascript:>>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Saturday, August 31, 2019 at 8:18:22 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 28 Aug 2019, at 07:14, Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 11:12:58 PM UTC-5, Alan Grayson wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 10:01:19 PM UTC-6, Philip Thrift wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tuesday, August 27, 2019 at 5:55:36 PM UTC-5, Bruce wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I came across a good article that is apposite to the discussion in
>>>>> this thread. Arnold Neumaier has an article on virtual particles at:
>>>>>
>>>>> https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/vacuum-fluctuation-myth/
>>>>>
>>>>> where he looks at the origin of much of the common mythology
>>>>> surrounding the idea of vacuum fluctuations and virtual particles. People
>>>>> should read this and take the lessons to heart -- all of this mythology
>>>>> arose from well-meaning, but ultimately mis-guided, attempts to explain
>>>>> the
>>>>> mysteries of quantum mechanics to lay people. The result was enduring
>>>>> confusion, that now affects even professional physicists.
>>>>>
>>>>> Bruce
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Very interesting fellow. Interesting article. I was intrigued reading
>>>> the link there to his biography of himself being math to applied math
>>>> ending up in computing and dabbling in physics. Sounded like me!
>>>>
>>>> Then
>>>>
>>>> Two years after my Ph.D., my formerly atheistic world view changed and
>>>> I became a Christian. I got convinced that there is a very powerful God
>>>> <http://www.mat.univie.ac.at/~neum/sciandf/eng/arms.html> who created
>>>> the Universe, who controls what appears to us as chance, and who is
>>>> interested in each of us individually. I understood (with Galilei, and
>>>> later Newton and Maxwell) that God had written the book of nature in the
>>>> language of mathematics. As a result of these insights, one of my life
>>>> goals became to understand all the important applications of mathematics
>>>> in
>>>> other fields of science, engineering, and ordinary life. It is a challenge
>>>> that keeps me learning all my life.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/interview-mathematician-physicist-arnold-neumaier/
>>>>
>>>> @philipthrift
>>>>
>>>
>>> Are you suggesting, maybe tongue in cheek, that his analysis of virtual
>>> particles is suspect because he believes in a very powerful God? Do you
>>> believe in such a God? AG
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I've always been an atheistic materialist. I don't know if his "denial"
>> of virtual particles is influenced by his theology or not, but this I know:
>>
>> *One physicist says there are Xs. Another physicist says there are no Xs.
>> One or both is BSing. Probably both.*
>>
>>
>>
>> I agree that one or both could be wrong. But why insinuate that they are
>> BSing?
>>
>> Also, sometimes, two different theories assert the same thing, but in
>> different ways, and that can include the “assumed basic ontology”.
>> Mechanism illustrates this completely, as you can take any terms of any
>> Turing-complete, without induction, without changing any conclusion about
>> the “same” reality.
>>
>> It is more the relations between the “objects” that counts. In fact,
>> eventually it is the relations between the relations which counts, which
>> imply the necessity for the mind to invoke the infinite, even if we do not
>> “reify” it into the ontology (like with the class of all sets is not a set,
>> or that Plotinus Number of the Numbers is not a number, etc.).
>>
>> Reality is independent of the theories. Different theories can handle
>> well different aspect of Reality. Sometimes they can handle well the same
>> aspect of Reality, yet in a completely different way, and this usually
>> announce fertile marriage between the theories. (Examples in mathematics
>> exist between braids and spin statistics, or group and particles theory, of
>> topology and algebra, etc).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> The luxury (or fun) of math and even applied math is it doesn't matter if
>> whether you think of the entities of a theory being fictional or not.
>>
>>
>> OK.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> It is useful or it isn't. (In pure math, useful doesn't quite matter as
>> in applied math.)
>>
>>
>>
>> For someone open to the idea that Reality might be Mathematical, if not
>> Arithmetical, if not sigma_1 arithmetical only, the distinction between
>> applied and pure mathematics makes no more much sense fundamentally.
>>
>> It becomes a bit like the difference between artificial and natural, once
>> you embed the researcher in the Reality that it researches. So that
>> difference is also natural, and indeed almost unavoidable when the
>> universal machine develops a big ego, and feel different.
>>
>> Monism favours that embedding of the “subject” into the “object”. QM
>> without collapse is essentially QM + the axiom asserting that the
>> physicists obeys to the physical laws. Similarly, with Digital Mechanism,
>> Gödel’s work is an embedding of the mathematician in the mathematical
>> reality.
>>
>> Bruno
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> I just mean when a scientist is BSing in the *Feyerabend *sense: It's
> when existences or nonexistences of entities of a theory are written or
> spoken about as being reality with the conviction of the Westminster
> Catechisms.
>
> I've decided that in the matter vs. math debate, to conclude that there is
> no debate, if one just says that a study of math is just a study of
> matter, and nothing more.
>
>
>
> This will only obscure the difference between math and physics. But those
> science does not study the same things. Mathematics studies abstract
> relations, which are out of the category of space, time, and physical
> things. Physics is a theory of observable predictions.
>
> With mechanism, physics becomes a very special branch of machine theology,
> which is itself a very special branch of mathematical logic (itself a very
> special branch of mathematics).
>
>
>
>
> https://twitter.com/philipthrift/status/1167548170714386433
>
> ..
> Jussi Jylkkä @JylkkaJussi
>
> It’s partly terminology, why couldn’t it be that pain is a mathematical
> structure. If mathematical things are concrete, then how can we be sure
> what those things are really like?
>
>
>
> In mathematics (as opposed to metaphysics and theology) we don’t care on
> the nature of things. We only reason from axioms that we share on some
> intuition that we have. Nobody knows, or even try to know, what is a
> number, or what is a set, but we do agree on some of their properties.
>
> When interested in the nature of things, we still have to accept primary
> things and primary laws between those things to account of the “other
> things”.
>
> Physics studies the physical reality.
> Math studies the mathematical reality.
> Metaphysics/theology studies the nature of Reality, and tackle the
> fundamental question “Is Reality Mathematical, or Physical, or theological
> or mental, etc.” and this without deciding the answer in advance, and
> trying to get observable consequences, so that the metaphysics can be
> improved/refuted.
>
> It is a just a bad habit that we use dogma in metaphysics (since long).
>
> The truth is that we don’t know, but there too we can build theories and
> test them.
>
> Somehow, since QM’s foundational problem, physics begin to handle
> metaphysical question, and to have to decide (even if momentarily) on some
> philosophical principles, like Mechanism (cf Everett) or non Mechanism (cf
> Bohr, von Neumann, Wigner, etc.).
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
>
Even if mathematical physics only ranges over a subset of mathematics
https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-deconstructed-standard-model-equation
but mathematics by itself can range over all mathematical-fictional worlds,
it is still (so far, until AIs take their place) only human brains that
have fabricated those worlds (in writing!).
@philipthrift
--
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 view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/fef78245-5b9d-4666-8816-91c3d0e69ae7%40googlegroups.com.
