On 10/06/2010 12:52 AM, Levi Pearson wrote: > And whether something > is "real" or not in some philosophical sense has almost no bearing on > whether that thing is useful or even calculable. > Well put.
While I find the discussion about what is "real" intriguing, after some time I finally give up and laugh and remember what little I understand of Godel's Incompleteness theorem, essentially that a comprehensive definition of a system can't be gathered while constrained to the that same system. I eventually end up at your conclusion that even though I can't explain everything perfectly, my accepted definitions of them are useful and meaningful to me. I don't know how time operates fundamentally, but I can measure it consistently and reliably; and it is useful enough to me to know that from my frame of reference time passes by far too quickly, and sometimes not fast enough. And to return to a slightly more on topic and flame-able subject, spending too much time worrying about the reality or dimensionality of time is akin to using a graphics only screen saver that consumes 80% CPU (it is nice to look at and pass the time but wastes a lot of energy not getting anything done). Paul /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
