Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
Le 13-mars-07, à 18:55, Brent Meeker a écrit : Of course this is assuming that QM (which was discovered by applying reductionist methods) is the correct EXACT theory - which is extremely doubtful given its incompatibility with general relativity. All right. But note that both String Theory and Loop Gravity (the main attempt to marry QM and GR) keep the quantum theory and changes the GR. Note that the most weird aspect of the quantum have been verified, and also that comp only predicts large feature of that weirdness. (Note that QM should be completely false for coming back to aristotle, making QM an approximation makes its weirdness more weird). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
Le 14-mars-07, à 04:42, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : On 3/13/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You could say that a hydrogen atom cannot be reduced to an electron + proton because it exhibits behaviour not exhibited in any of its components; Nor by any juxtaposition of its components in case of some prior entanglement. In that case I can expect some bits of information from looking only the electron, and some bits from looking only the proton, but an observation of the whole atom would makes those bits not genuine. It is weird but the quantum facts confirms this QM prediction. Quantum weirdness is an observed fact. We assume that it is, somehow, an intrinsic property of subatomic particles; but perhaps there is a hidden factor or as yet undiscovered theory which may explain it further. That would be equivalent to adding hidden variables. But then they have to be non local (just to address the facts, not just the theory). Of course if the hidden factor is given by the many worlds or comp, then such non local effects has to be retrospectively expected. But then we have to forget the idea that substance (decomposable reality) exists, but numbers. You could get a neutron at high enough energies, I suppose, but I don't think that is what you mean. Is it possible to bring a proton and an electron appropriately together and have them just sit there next to each other? Locally yes. In QM this is given by a tensor product of the corresponding states. But it is an exceptional state. With comp it is open if such physical state acn ever be prepared, even locally. There is no sense to say an atom is part of the UD. It is part of the necessary discourse of self-observing machine. Recall comp makes physics branch of machine's psychology/theology. Isn't that the *ultimate* reduction of everything? Given that a theology rarely eliminates subjects/person, I don't see in what reasonable sense this would be a reduction. Not really because the knot is a topological object. Its identity is defined by the class of equivalence for some topological transformation from your 3D description. If you put the knot in your pocket so that it changes its 3D shape (but is not broken) then it conserve its knot identity which is only locally equivalent with the 3D shape. To see the global equivalence will be tricky, and there is no algorithm telling for sure you can identify a knot from a 3D description. People can look here for a cute knot table: http://www.math.utoronto.ca/~drorbn/KAtlas/Knots/index.html I was thinking of a physical knot, which is not the same as the Platonic ideal, even if there is no such thing as a separate physical reality. I don't know what you mean by a physical knots. In any case the identity of a knots (mathematical, physical) rely in its topology, not in such or such cartesian picture, even the concrete knots I put in my pocket. The knots looses its identity if it is cut. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 14-mars-07, à 04:42, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : On 3/13/07, *Bruno Marchal* [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You could say that a hydrogen atom cannot be reduced to an electron + proton because it exhibits behaviour not exhibited in any of its components; Nor by any juxtaposition of its components in case of some prior entanglement. In that case I can expect some bits of information from looking only the electron, and some bits from looking only the proton, but an observation of the whole atom would makes those bits not genuine. It is weird but the quantum facts confirms this QM prediction. Quantum weirdness is an observed fact. We assume that it is, somehow, an intrinsic property of subatomic particles; but perhaps there is a hidden factor or as yet undiscovered theory which may explain it further. That would be equivalent to adding hidden variables. But then they have to be non local (just to address the facts, not just the theory). Of course if the hidden factor is given by the many worlds or comp, then such non local effects has to be retrospectively expected. But then we have to forget the idea that substance (decomposable reality) exists, but numbers. If you admit non-local hidden variables then you can have a theory like Bohmian quantum mechanics in which randomness is all epistemological, like statistical mechanics, and there is no place for multiple-worlds. You could get a neutron at high enough energies, I suppose, but I don't think that is what you mean. Is it possible to bring a proton and an electron appropriately together and have them just sit there next to each other? Locally yes. I'm not sure what you mean by locally. Since they have opposite charge they will be attracted by photon exchanges and will fall into some hydrogen atom state by emission of photons. Brent Meeker In QM this is given by a tensor product of the corresponding states. But it is an exceptional state. With comp it is open if such physical state acn ever be prepared, even locally. There is no sense to say an atom is part of the UD. It is part of the necessary discourse of self-observing machine. Recall comp makes physics branch of machine's psychology/theology. Isn't that the *ultimate* reduction of everything? Given that a theology rarely eliminates subjects/person, I don't see in what reasonable sense this would be a reduction. Not really because the knot is a topological object. Its identity is defined by the class of equivalence for some topological transformation from your 3D description. If you put the knot in your pocket so that it changes its 3D shape (but is not broken) then it conserve its knot identity which is only locally equivalent with the 3D shape. To see the global equivalence will be tricky, and there is no algorithm telling for sure you can identify a knot from a 3D description. People can look here for a cute knot table: http://www.math.utoronto.ca/~drorbn/KAtlas/Knots/index.html I was thinking of a physical knot, which is not the same as the Platonic ideal, even if there is no such thing as a separate physical reality. I don't know what you mean by a physical knots. A remark only a mathematician could make ;-) I think Bruno just means a knot is defined by the topology of its embedding in space - not by its material or its coordinates; as a triangle is defined by having three sides, not any particular size, orientation, or material. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
Bruno and Brent: Are we back at the Aris-total i.e. the sum considered more than its (material-only!) components? Complexity of an assemblage includes more than what a reductionist 'component-analysis' can verify. Qualia, functions, even out-of-boundary effects are active in identifying an item. It is in our many centuries old explanatory ways to say a proton and an electron make a H-atom and vice versa. First off: hydrogen (gas) is not the assemblage of H-atoms, it is an observational item that - when destructed in certain ways - results in other observables resembling H-atoms or even protons and electrons (if you have the means to look at them - not in an n-th deduction and its calculations). Same with 'other' atoms - molecules, singularly or in bunch. Reduced to a 2-D sketch. Nice game, I spent 50 years producing such (macromolecules that is) and 'studied'/applied them. Of course none of the destruction-result carries the proper charactersitics of the original ensemble. And NO proper 'observation' does exist. It is the explanatory attempt for a world(part?) - not understood, just regarded as a model of whatever our epistemic enrichment has provided to THAT time. This is the 'reducing': to visualize this part as the total and utter the Aristotelian maxim. One can not extrapolate 'total ensemble' characteristics from studying the so called parts we discovered so far. We can think only within our already acquired knowledge. John M - Original Message - From: Brent Meeker To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 2:30 PM Subject: Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question. Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 14-mars-07, à 04:42, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : On 3/13/07, *Bruno Marchal* [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You could say that a hydrogen atom cannot be reduced to an electron + proton because it exhibits behaviour not exhibited in any of its components; Nor by any juxtaposition of its components in case of some prior entanglement. In that case I can expect some bits of information from looking only the electron, and some bits from looking only the proton, but an observation of the whole atom would makes those bits not genuine. It is weird but the quantum facts confirms this QM prediction. Quantum weirdness is an observed fact. We assume that it is, somehow, an intrinsic property of subatomic particles; but perhaps there is a hidden factor or as yet undiscovered theory which may explain it further. That would be equivalent to adding hidden variables. But then they have to be non local (just to address the facts, not just the theory). Of course if the hidden factor is given by the many worlds or comp, then such non local effects has to be retrospectively expected. But then we have to forget the idea that substance (decomposable reality) exists, but numbers. If you admit non-local hidden variables then you can have a theory like Bohmian quantum mechanics in which randomness is all epistemological, like statistical mechanics, and there is no place for multiple-worlds. You could get a neutron at high enough energies, I suppose, but I don't think that is what you mean. Is it possible to bring a proton and an electron appropriately together and have them just sit there next to each other? Locally yes. I'm not sure what you mean by locally. Since they have opposite charge they will be attracted by photon exchanges and will fall into some hydrogen atom state by emission of photons. Brent Meeker In QM this is given by a tensor product of the corresponding states. But it is an exceptional state. With comp it is open if such physical state acn ever be prepared, even locally. There is no sense to say an atom is part of the UD. It is part of the necessary discourse of self-observing machine. Recall comp makes physics branch of machine's psychology/theology. Isn't that the *ultimate* reduction of everything? Given that a theology rarely eliminates subjects/person, I don't see in what reasonable sense this would be a reduction. Not really because the knot is a topological object. Its identity is defined by the class of equivalence for some topological transformation from your 3D description. If you put the knot in your pocket so that it changes its 3D shape (but is not broken) then it conserve its knot identity which is only locally equivalent with the 3D shape. To see the global equivalence will be tricky, and there is no algorithm telling for sure you can identify a knot from a 3D description. People can look here for a cute knot table:
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
John M wrote: Bruno and Brent: Are we back at the Aris-total i.e. the sum considered more than its (material-only!) components? Complexity of an assemblage includes more than what a reductionist 'component-analysis' can verify. But components are only part of a reductionist model - it also includes the interactions of the components, e.g how an electron interacts with a proton. To identify scientific reductionism with 'component-analysis' is a straw man. No one is satisfied with a reductionist model that just names components - the model must be able to go the other way and synthesize the behavior of the thing modeled. Modeling a hydrogen atom as an electron interacting via photons with a proton is a successful model because it predicts behavoir of the hydrogen atom, e.g. it EM spectrum, its stability, the heat capacity of an H2 gas. Qualia, functions, even out-of-boundary effects are active in identifying an item. It is in our many centuries old explanatory ways to say a proton and an electron make a H-atom and vice versa. First off: hydrogen (gas) is not the assemblage of H-atoms, it is an observational item that - when destructed in certain ways - results in other observables resembling H-atoms or even protons and electrons (if you have the means to look at them - not in an n-th deduction and its calculations). How small does n have to be? Does n=0 correspond to seeing photons? Same with 'other' atoms - molecules, singularly or in bunch. Reduced to a 2-D sketch. Nice game, I spent 50 years producing such (macromolecules that is) and 'studied'/applied them. Of course none of the destruction-result carries the proper charactersitics of the original ensemble. And NO proper 'observation' does exist. What's a proper observation? and why does its non-existence matter? It is the explanatory attempt for a world(part?) - not understood, just regarded as a model of whatever our epistemic enrichment has provided to THAT time. This is the 'reducing': to visualize this part as the total and utter the Aristotelian maxim. One can not extrapolate 'total ensemble' characteristics from studying the so called parts we discovered so far. We can think only within our already acquired knowledge. Then how can we ever acquire additional knowledge? The whole point of models like particles is to extrapolate beyond what we can observed. When such extrapolations agree with further observations we put greater credence in them. When the credence is great enough we start taking the model to be known - at least until we find a problem with it. This is nothing esoteric, it's the way we learn what tables and chairs are as well as protons and electrons. Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
On 3/16/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't know what you mean by a physical knots. In any case the identity of a knots (mathematical, physical) rely in its topology, not in such or such cartesian picture, even the concrete knots I put in my pocket. The knots looses its identity if it is cut. There are related examples, like letters of the alphabet, which survive even non-topological transformations and defy any algorithmic specification. Nevertheless, any particular concrete example of a knotted string or letter on a page is completely captured by a physical description. There is no special knottiness or letterness ingredient that needs to be added to ensure that they are knots or letters. Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
Le 12-mars-07, à 12:37, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : OK, but it seems that we are using reductionism differently. Perhaps. I am not so sure. You could say that a hydrogen atom cannot be reduced to an electron + proton because it exhibits behaviour not exhibited in any of its components; Nor by any juxtaposition of its components in case of some prior entanglement. In that case I can expect some bits of information from looking only the electron, and some bits from looking only the proton, but an observation of the whole atom would makes those bits not genuine. It is weird but the quantum facts confirms this QM prediction. or you could say that it can be reduced to an electron + proton because these two components appropriately juxtaposed are necessary and sufficient to give rise to the hydrogen atom. In general this is not the case. And if the atom is just a part of UD*, well, that's just another, more impressive reduction. But just comp, without the quantum, makes it implausible that an atom can be individuated so much that it makes sense to say it is just a part of the UD. And QM confirms this too. To compute the EXACT (all decimal) position of an electron in an hydrogen atom, soon or later you have to take into account of white rabbit path, where the electron will, for going from position x to the position y you are computing, follow the path x too earth, reacts locally and transforms itself into a white rabbit running for the democrat election in the US, loose the election and come back to y. Same with the UD, the object atom of hydrogen is only defined relatively to an infinity of first person plural expectation dependong on the WHOLE UD*. There is no sense to say an atom is part of the UD. It is part of the necessary discourse of self-observing machine. Recall comp makes physics branch of machine's psychology/theology. As for knots, can't any particular physical knot be described in a 3D coordinate system? This is similar to describing a particular physical circle or triangle. Not really because the knot is a topological object. Its identity is defined by the class of equivalence for some topological transformation from your 3D description. If you put the knot in your pocket so that it changes its 3D shape (but is not broken) then it conserve its knot identity which is only locally equivalent with the 3D shape. To see the global equivalence will be tricky, and there is no algorithm telling for sure you can identify a knot from a 3D description. People can look here for a cute knot table: http://www.math.utoronto.ca/~drorbn/KAtlas/Knots/index.html Only if God issues everyone with immaterial souls at birth, so that reproducing the material or functional structure of the brain fails to reproduce consciousness, would I say that reductionism does not work... OK, but then you identify reductionism with comp. I identify reductionism with the idea that something is entirely explainable in some finitary theory. From this I can explain that comp can be used to refute all reductionist theory of both matter and mind (and their relation). I am aware it is a subtle point, but if you understand the Universal Dovetailer Argument (UDA) from step 1 to 8, in the version: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm then you should, I think, understand that the idea that there is anything made of something, although locally true and useful for many practical purpose, is just wrong, globally. Even with just comp, but this is also entailed by the quantum empirical facts (even with the many-worlds view: if not they would not interfere). People can ask if they are not yet convinced by this. I have refer this by saying that if comp is true, physics is a branch of bio-psycho-theo-logy. matter emerges (logico-arithmetically, not temporally) from mind and number. You can attach a mind to a body, like children does with dolls, but you cannot attach a body to a mind, you can and must attach an infinity of relative bodies to a mind. relative bodies are only defined by infinity of arithmetical relationships, not by sub-bodies. (I know this contradicts Aristotle notion of Matter, but see Plotinus for old platonist reasons, a priori independent of comp and QM, to already suspect that Aristotle was wrong). unless you add the soul as an element in the reduction. Of course, but *that* would make any explanation a reductionism. Bruno Stathis Papaioannou On 3/12/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 11-mars-07, à 17:56, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Reductionism means breaking something up into simpler parts to explain it. What's wrong with that? Because, assuming comp, neither matter nor mind (including perception) can be break up into simpler parts to be explained. That is what UDA is all about. First person expection (both on mind and matter) are already global notion
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 12-mars-07, à 12:37, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : OK, but it seems that we are using reductionism differently. Perhaps. I am not so sure. You could say that a hydrogen atom cannot be reduced to an electron + proton because it exhibits behaviour not exhibited in any of its components; Nor by any juxtaposition of its components in case of some prior entanglement. In that case I can expect some bits of information from looking only the electron, and some bits from looking only the proton, but an observation of the whole atom would makes those bits not genuine. It is weird but the quantum facts confirms this QM prediction. Not only that, but QM admits of negative information, so some of the information you get from observing the parts may be cancelled out in a more comprehensive measurement. or you could say that it can be reduced to an electron + proton because these two components appropriately juxtaposed are necessary and sufficient to give rise to the hydrogen atom. In general this is not the case. And if the atom is just a part of UD*, well, that's just another, more impressive reduction. But just comp, without the quantum, makes it implausible that an atom can be individuated so much that it makes sense to say it is just a part of the UD. And QM confirms this too. To compute the EXACT (all decimal) position of an electron in an hydrogen atom, soon or later you have to take into account of white rabbit path, where the electron will, for going from position x to the position y you are computing, follow the path x too earth, reacts locally and transforms itself into a white rabbit running for the democrat election in the US, loose the election and come back to y. Of course this is assuming that QM (which was discovered by applying reductionist methods) is the correct EXACT theory - which is extremely doubtful given its incompatibility with general relativity. Brent Meeker Same with the UD, the object atom of hydrogen is only defined relatively to an infinity of first person plural expectation dependong on the WHOLE UD*. There is no sense to say an atom is part of the UD. It is part of the necessary discourse of self-observing machine. Recall comp makes physics branch of machine's psychology/theology. As for knots, can't any particular physical knot be described in a 3D coordinate system? This is similar to describing a particular physical circle or triangle. Not really because the knot is a topological object. Its identity is defined by the class of equivalence for some topological transformation from your 3D description. If you put the knot in your pocket so that it changes its 3D shape (but is not broken) then it conserve its knot identity which is only locally equivalent with the 3D shape. To see the global equivalence will be tricky, and there is no algorithm telling for sure you can identify a knot from a 3D description. People can look here for a cute knot table: http://www.math.utoronto.ca/~drorbn/KAtlas/Knots/index.html Only if God issues everyone with immaterial souls at birth, so that reproducing the material or functional structure of the brain fails to reproduce consciousness, would I say that reductionism does not work... OK, but then you identify reductionism with comp. I identify reductionism with the idea that something is entirely explainable in some finitary theory. From this I can explain that comp can be used to refute all reductionist theory of both matter and mind (and their relation). I am aware it is a subtle point, but if you understand the Universal Dovetailer Argument (UDA) from step 1 to 8, in the version: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm then you should, I think, understand that the idea that there is anything made of something, although locally true and useful for many practical purpose, is just wrong, globally. Even with just comp, but this is also entailed by the quantum empirical facts (even with the many-worlds view: if not they would not interfere). People can ask if they are not yet convinced by this. I have refer this by saying that if comp is true, physics is a branch of bio-psycho-theo-logy. matter emerges (logico-arithmetically, not temporally) from mind and number. You can attach a mind to a body, like children does with dolls, but you cannot attach a body to a mind, you can and must attach an infinity of relative bodies to a mind. relative bodies are only defined by infinity of arithmetical relationships, not by sub-bodies. (I know this contradicts Aristotle notion of Matter, but see Plotinus for old platonist reasons, a priori independent of comp and QM, to already suspect that Aristotle was wrong). unless you add the soul as an
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
Le 11-mars-07, à 17:56, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Reductionism means breaking something up into simpler parts to explain it. What's wrong with that? Because, assuming comp, neither matter nor mind (including perception) can be break up into simpler parts to be explained. That is what UDA is all about. First person expection (both on mind and matter) are already global notion relying on the whole UD*. And empirical physics, currently quantum mechanics, confirms that indeed, we cannot explain matter by breaking it into parts. That is what violation of bell's inequality or more generally quantum information is all about. This has been my first confirmation of comp by nature: non-locality is the easiest consequence of comp. A good (and actually very deep) analogy is provided by the structure of knots (see the table of knots: http://www.math.utoronto.ca/~drorbn/KAtlas/Knots/index.html A knot is closed in its mathematical definition (unlike shoe tangle). You cannot break a knot in smaller parts, so that the whole structure is explained by the parts. Knots, like many topological structure, contains irreductible global information. The same for the notion of computations (and indeed those notions have deep relationship, see the following two impressive papers: http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/work/samson.abramsky/tambook.pdf http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0606114 I know that Derek Parfit call comp the reductionist view. this is a very misleading use of vocabulary. Comp is the simplest destroyer of any reductionist attempt to understand anything, not just humans. Bruno On 3/12/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 10-mars-07, à 18:42, John M a écrit : I don't deny the usefulness of science (even if it is reductionist) ... How could science be reductionist? Science is the art of making hypotheses enough clear so as to make them doubtable and eventually testable. No scientist will ever say there is a primitive physical universe or an ultimate God, or anything like that. All theories are hypothetical, including grandmother's one when asserting that the sun will rise tomorrow. The roots of our confidence in such or such theories are complex matter. Don't confuse science with the human approximation of it. Something quite interesting per se, also, but which develops itself. Lobian approximations of it are also rich of surprise, about oneself. Science or better, the scientific attitude, invites us to listen to what the machine can say and dream of, nowadays. How could such an invitation be reductionist? I would say science is modesty. It is what makes faith necessary and possible. With comp, when science or reason grows polynomially (in a trip from G to G* for example), then faith has to grow super-exponentially. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
OK, but it seems that we are using reductionism differently. You could say that a hydrogen atom cannot be reduced to an electron + proton because it exhibits behaviour not exhibited in any of its components; or you could say that it can be reduced to an electron + proton because these two components appropriately juxtaposed are necessary and sufficient to give rise to the hydrogen atom. And if the atom is just a part of UD*, well, that's just another, more impressive reduction. As for knots, can't any particular physical knot be described in a 3D coordinate system? This is similar to describing a particular physical circle or triangle. Only if God issues everyone with immaterial souls at birth, so that reproducing the material or functional structure of the brain fails to reproduce consciousness, would I say that reductionism does not work... unless you add the soul as an element in the reduction. Stathis Papaioannou On 3/12/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 11-mars-07, à 17:56, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Reductionism means breaking something up into simpler parts to explain it. What's wrong with that? Because, assuming comp, neither matter nor mind (including perception) can be break up into simpler parts to be explained. That is what UDA is all about. First person expection (both on mind and matter) are already global notion relying on the whole UD*. And empirical physics, currently quantum mechanics, confirms that indeed, we cannot explain matter by breaking it into parts. That is what violation of bell's inequality or more generally quantum information is all about. This has been my first confirmation of comp by nature: non-locality is the easiest consequence of comp. A good (and actually very deep) analogy is provided by the structure of knots (see the table of knots: http://www.math.utoronto.ca/~drorbn/KAtlas/Knots/index.html A knot is closed in its mathematical definition (unlike shoe tangle). You cannot break a knot in smaller parts, so that the whole structure is explained by the parts. Knots, like many topological structure, contains irreductible global information. The same for the notion of computations (and indeed those notions have deep relationship, see the following two impressive papers: http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/work/samson.abramsky/tambook.pdf http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0606114 I know that Derek Parfit call comp the reductionist view. this is a very misleading use of vocabulary. Comp is the simplest destroyer of any reductionist attempt to understand anything, not just humans. Bruno On 3/12/07, Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le 10-mars-07, à 18:42, John M a écrit : I don't deny the usefulness of science (even if it is reductionist) ... How could science be reductionist? Science is the art of making hypotheses enough clear so as to make them doubtable and eventually testable. No scientist will ever say there is a primitive physical universe or an ultimate God, or anything like that. All theories are hypothetical, including grandmother's one when asserting that the sun will rise tomorrow. The roots of our confidence in such or such theories are complex matter. Don't confuse science with the human approximation of it. Something quite interesting per se, also, but which develops itself. Lobian approximations of it are also rich of surprise, about oneself. Science or better, the scientific attitude, invites us to listen to what the machine can say and dream of, nowadays. How could such an invitation be reductionist? I would say science is modesty. It is what makes faith necessary and possible. With comp, when science or reason grows polynomially (in a trip from G to G* for example), then faith has to grow super-exponentially. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
On 3/11/07, Mark Peaty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: SP: ' ... it could take a long time to get there ... ' MP: But is that according to the time frame of the laughing devil who threw me in there and who remains safely out of reach of acceleration-induced time dilation, or my wailing ghost which/who's mind and sensoria will be ever more wonderfully concentrated on 'what it is like to be' a piece of spaghetti, unable to see anything except *the destination*? I'm not the best person on this list to answser, but I think the tidal forces as you pass the event horizon of a very massive black hole would not be enough to destroy you, since tidal forces are proportional to M/r^3 while the Schwarzschild radius is proportional to M. Tidal forces will increase as you approach the singularity, which is inevitable once you pass the event horizon, but the time for this to happen is proportional to M. This refers to your time frame: for the devil who threw you in, it would appear that you never reach the event horizon. Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
Le 10-mars-07, à 18:42, John M a écrit : I don't deny the usefulness of science (even if it is reductionist) ... How could science be reductionist? Science is the art of making hypotheses enough clear so as to make them doubtable and eventually testable. No scientist will ever say there is a primitive physical universe or an ultimate God, or anything like that. All theories are hypothetical, including grandmother's one when asserting that the sun will rise tomorrow. The roots of our confidence in such or such theories are complex matter. Don't confuse science with the human approximation of it. Something quite interesting per se, also, but which develops itself. Lobian approximations of it are also rich of surprise, about oneself. Science or better, the scientific attitude, invites us to listen to what the machine can say and dream of, nowadays. How could such an invitation be reductionist? I would say science is modesty. It is what makes faith necessary and possible. With comp, when science or reason grows polynomially (in a trip from G to G* for example), then faith has to grow super-exponentially. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
Bruno, please read my italic comments between your lines. Thanks for Stathis to rush to my rescue (reductionsm), Stathis wrote: Reductionism means breaking something up into simpler parts to explain it. What's wrong with that? I will try to write my own version, a bit (not much) different. John - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2007 10:45 AM Subject: Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question. Le 10-mars-07, à 18:42, John M a écrit : I don't deny the usefulness of science (even if it is reductionist) ... How could science be reductionist? Science is the art of making hypotheses enough clear so as to make them doubtable and eventually testable. My take on reductionist is to 'reduce' the observation to a boundary-enclosed model as our choice. It is a necessity for us, because we are not capable to encompass the totality and all its ramifications into our mind's work at once. Reduced (reductionist ) view is the way how humanity gathered our knowledge of the world. (Probably other animals do the same thing at their mind-level). What I see here - and thank you, Bruno, for it, - you are using a more advanced view of science than what I referred to as the conventional - historic, topically fragmented sciences of old. Where e.g. physics is based on the 'primitive' physical (material) worldview and biology is what Darwin visualized. Reductionist sciences established our technology. You use it, I use it. We just start to 'think' beyond it. * No scientist will ever say there is a primitive physical universe or an ultimate God, or anything like that. All theories are hypothetical, including grandmother's one when asserting that the sun will rise tomorrow. The roots of our confidence in such or such theories are complex matter. I wish we had more of your scientists. Academia as a general establishment is not so advanced yet. Don't confuse science with the human approximation of it. Something quite interesting per se, also, but which develops itself. Lobian approximations of it are also rich of surprise, about oneself. Now this is exactly what I mean. I would like to read a definition of 'science' as you formulate it. Then again: how many 'scientists' have ever heard of a Lobian m? We are living here (list) in a vacuum and I was talking non-vacuum. * Science or better, the scientific attitude, invites us to listen to what the machine can say and dream of, nowadays. How could such an invitation be reductionist? Here we go again: is the 'machine' superhuman? does it tell us things beyond our comprehension? How? We (Loeb etc.) invented and outlined it and its functionality. How can it be beyond those limits? * I would say science is modesty. It is what makes faith necessary and possible. Faith in what? Not in 'hearsay', not in Alice-land, not in (really) reduced models of age-old worldviews. The 'supernatural' is a cop-out for the modesty to say: I know not . * With comp, when science or reason grows polynomially (in a trip from G to G* for example), then faith has to grow super-exponentially. I hope you have (Mark's) PLAIN ENGLISH TRANSLATION to that in non-mathematico lingo. * Bruno regards John http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
On 3/10/07, John Mikes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
i ENVY YOU, guys, to know so much about BHs to speak of a singularity.
I would not go further than according to what is said about them, they
may
wash off whatever got into and turn into - sort of - a singularity.
Galaxies, whatever, fall into those hypothetical BHs and who knows how
much
Dark Matter (the assumed), we just don't know - it all may be neatly
stuffed
in and escape from the habitual description of the 'singularity' as an
indiscernible
structural view, - or - as seemingly you assume: they homogenize (paste?)
it all into a - well - singularity-content.
Whoever KNOWS more about singularities, BHs, Dark Matter, should
speak up - please: NO assumptions ('it got to be's) or deductions of such!
We don't know. We only guess on the basis of our best evidence and theories.
Stathis Papaioannou
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Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
Cher Quentin,
let me paraphrase (big):
so someone had an assumption: BH. OK, everybody has the right to fantasize.
Especially if it sounds helpful.Then
some mathematically loaded minds calculated within this assumption with
quantities taken from other assumptions (pardon me: quantizing within other
models in science).
Then someone takes the results for real and examines if it gives infinity - a
good game in the assumed topic.
Then Olala: there it is. So: call it singularity. What? the 3+th level of an
assumption, already taken as a fact in science.
Careful analysis can show similar 'evolution' of other fiction into scientific
facts.
I don't deny the usefulness of science (even if it is reductionist) I happily
use the results and even DID contribute to it, but when it comes to
understanding - or at least evaluate reasonability, I use Occam's COMB to
remove the added conclusions upon assumptions.
No hard feelings, it is MY opinion, and I am absolutely no missionary.
John M
- Original Message -
From: Quentin Anciaux
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 6:03 PM
Subject: Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb
question.
Hi John,
Singularity is just a name that means that the solutions of the equations
describing the BH gives infinity... It's what is a singularity. Does
the infinity is real (we must still be in accordance about what it means)
is another question, but accepting GR as a true approximation of reality,
singularity existence is a real question.
Quentin
On Friday 09 March 2007 23:37:49 John Mikes wrote:
i ENVY YOU, guys, to know so much about BHs to speak of a singularity.
I would not go further than according to what is said about them, they may
wash off whatever got into and turn into - sort of - a singularity.
Galaxies, whatever, fall into those hypothetical BHs and who knows how much
Dark Matter (the assumed), we just don't know - it all may be neatly
stuffed
in and escape from the habitual description of the 'singularity' as an
indiscernible
structural view, - or - as seemingly you assume: they homogenize (paste?)
it all into a - well - singularity-content.
Whoever KNOWS more about singularities, BHs, Dark Matter, should
speak up - please: NO assumptions ('it got to be's) or deductions of such!
John M
On 3/8/07, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On 3/9/07, Mark Peaty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
MP: Two thoughts come to my suspicious mind.
1/ [Not far from the post-Freudian speculation :-] ... Attendance
within the event horizon of a common or garden galactic variety black
hole would seem to incorporate a one-way ticket *to* the singularity,
would it not?
Yes, but it could take a very long time to get there in a massive enough
black hole.
Stathis Papaioannou
--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
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Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
John M: Cher Quentin, let me paraphrase (big): so someone had an assumption: BH. OK, everybody has the right to fantasize. Especially if it sounds helpful. Well, the basic assumption was more broad than that: it was that general relativity is a trustworthy theory of gravity. There's plenty of evidence that supports various predictions of GR which differ from Newtonian gravity, like the precession of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit, the gravitational lensing of light near stars and galaxies, and gravitational time dilation which can be measured at different altitudes on Earth (and it also needs to be taken into account when programming the clocks on board the orbiting GPS satellites). One of GR's predictions is that a sufficiently large collapsing star will form a black hole (another is that the universe must be either expanding or contracting, which lead to the Big Bang theory once redshift was observed). Black holes were theorized for a while, then in the last two decades they found observational evidence for a large number of likely black holes with telescopes. Most physicists believe general relativity's predictions will cease to be accurate at the Planck scale of very short distances and times and very high energy densities, and that at these scales it will need to be replaced by a quantum theory of gravity. So although they are fairly confident that GR is correct about large collapsing stars forming a black hole with an event horizon and a size proportional to its mass (given by the 'Swarzschild radius'), they think that the prediction of a singularity of infinite density at the center could be wrong, and that we'll need a theory of quantum gravity to understand what's really going on there. Jesse _ The average US Credit Score is 675. The cost to see yours: $0 by Experian. http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=660600bcd=EMAILFOOTERAVERAGE --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
Dear Jesse, thanks for the cool and objective words. I take it back (not what I said: I mean the topic) further. Our edifice of physical science is a wonderful mental construct, balanced by applied math, all on quantities fitting the reduced models of historical observations from the hand-ax on. Explanations grew out from all consecutive levels of our epistemic enrichment and served as indisputable basis for later explanations (even if they 'corrected' them, like the more than a dozen entropies and still counting). Assumptions make good basis for thousands of level in consecutive build-up we still use 'atoms', 'molecules' 'gravity' 'electricity', 'photon' etc. etc. as our basis. Then comes your judgement that one theory in this building looks finer than another. The learned (brainwashed) scientist-mind finds them as natural as fish the nonexistence of water. The huge amount of knowledge blocks any naive (elementary) scrutiny of the basics. I do not argue with your learned examples; within the system matches are found especially quantitative ones, visualizing our select domain and scale-restrictions. 'Observational evidence' is a belief in our up-to-date instrumental readings explained INTO the theoretical faith as evidence. Wilson found the background radiation because he had readings they were fitable and he new about the idea of such possibility in view of the Big Bang (- assumption - as we believe it today in our present cosmology). Eric Lerner's book (90s?) presented some doubts (The Big Bang Never Was (title approximate) -) I added some more upon my feeble thinking. How many ethers and phlogista do we still have? We got rid of elan vitale - but did we really? I do not start a crusade against conventional science and understand the reluctance of the practitioners to accept the endangerment of their wisdom. Reductionist thinking (science) is the only one our mind is capable of exercising (mine included), but I feel it is time to take a breath and a wider view to elevate from the age-old concepts to the acceptance of something else, without paradoxes, givens, axioms, in interconnection of them all and ready for a change. Human science went through changes over the millennia, even fundamental ones at times, there are more to come. I remember the time when tachyon-observation was denied as false, because they seemed FTL and this was prohibited. Theory over observed. I do not claim that 'my views' are the call for a future, I did not invent them, just picked up changing views (not so few on this list) and opened my mind to let them in. Since I was not committed to the 'old' I had no problem. I allow myself to be wrong and argue cautiously: you may be right, I may be wrong, but I have to see that in a view broader than the conventional physical teaching. I don't believe today my own 'macromolecules' I made and got patented, they are good within the old theory. I saw 'effects' and applied the 'wisdom' to explain them without scrutiny. They worked. Not perfectly, as all we have has flaws (e.g. airplanes fall out from the sky, medicines fail, buildings collapse, etc.,) but we are very confident in our science. Well, I am not without scrutiny. I love assumptions: they push forward our advancement. Just do not allow them to become facts and basis for many levels of consecutive conclusions without a grain of salt. Your expressions (Most physicists believe, they are fairly confident, or: general relativity is a trustworthy theory of gravity and I do not go into 'gravity'. nor into the words of curvature of spacetime) are carefully chosen. Religious people talk more straightforward in their religious argumentation. Excuse my lengthy reply, I enjoyed your argument. Regards John M On 3/10/07, Jesse Mazer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: John M: Cher Quentin, let me paraphrase (big): so someone had an assumption: BH. OK, everybody has the right to fantasize. Especially if it sounds helpful. Well, the basic assumption was more broad than that: it was that general relativity is a trustworthy theory of gravity. There's plenty of evidence that supports various predictions of GR which differ from Newtonian gravity, like the precession of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit, the gravitational lensing of light near stars and galaxies, and gravitational time dilation which can be measured at different altitudes on Earth (and it also needs to be taken into account when programming the clocks on board the orbiting GPS satellites). One of GR's predictions is that a sufficiently large collapsing star will form a black hole (another is that the universe must be either expanding or contracting, which lead to the Big Bang theory once redshift was observed). Black holes were theorized for a while, then in the last two decades they found observational evidence for a large number of likely black holes with telescopes. Most physicists believe general relativity's predictions will cease to be
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
SP: ' ... it could take a long time to get there ... ' MP: But is that according to the time frame of the laughing devil who threw me in there and who remains safely out of reach of acceleration-induced time dilation, or my wailing ghost which/who's mind and sensoria will be ever more wonderfully concentrated on 'what it is like to be' a piece of spaghetti, unable to see anything except *the destination*? Regards Mark Peaty CDES [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 3/9/07, *Mark Peaty* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MP: Two thoughts come to my suspicious mind. 1/ [Not far from the post-Freudian speculation :-] ... Attendance within the event horizon of a common or garden galactic variety black hole would seem to incorporate a one-way ticket *to* the singularity, would it not? Yes, but it could take a very long time to get there in a massive enough black hole. Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
i ENVY YOU, guys, to know so much about BHs to speak of a singularity.
I would not go further than according to what is said about them, they may
wash off whatever got into and turn into - sort of - a singularity.
Galaxies, whatever, fall into those hypothetical BHs and who knows how much
Dark Matter (the assumed), we just don't know - it all may be neatly
stuffed
in and escape from the habitual description of the 'singularity' as an
indiscernible
structural view, - or - as seemingly you assume: they homogenize (paste?)
it all into a - well - singularity-content.
Whoever KNOWS more about singularities, BHs, Dark Matter, should
speak up - please: NO assumptions ('it got to be's) or deductions of such!
John M
On 3/8/07, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On 3/9/07, Mark Peaty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
MP: Two thoughts come to my suspicious mind.
1/ [Not far from the post-Freudian speculation :-] ... Attendance
within the event horizon of a common or garden galactic variety black
hole would seem to incorporate a one-way ticket *to* the singularity,
would it not?
Yes, but it could take a very long time to get there in a massive enough
black hole.
Stathis Papaioannou
--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
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Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
Hi John,
Singularity is just a name that means that the solutions of the equations
describing the BH gives infinity... It's what is a singularity. Does
the infinity is real (we must still be in accordance about what it means)
is another question, but accepting GR as a true approximation of reality,
singularity existence is a real question.
Quentin
On Friday 09 March 2007 23:37:49 John Mikes wrote:
i ENVY YOU, guys, to know so much about BHs to speak of a singularity.
I would not go further than according to what is said about them, they may
wash off whatever got into and turn into - sort of - a singularity.
Galaxies, whatever, fall into those hypothetical BHs and who knows how much
Dark Matter (the assumed), we just don't know - it all may be neatly
stuffed
in and escape from the habitual description of the 'singularity' as an
indiscernible
structural view, - or - as seemingly you assume: they homogenize (paste?)
it all into a - well - singularity-content.
Whoever KNOWS more about singularities, BHs, Dark Matter, should
speak up - please: NO assumptions ('it got to be's) or deductions of such!
John M
On 3/8/07, Stathis Papaioannou [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On 3/9/07, Mark Peaty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
MP: Two thoughts come to my suspicious mind.
1/ [Not far from the post-Freudian speculation :-] ... Attendance
within the event horizon of a common or garden galactic variety black
hole would seem to incorporate a one-way ticket *to* the singularity,
would it not?
Yes, but it could take a very long time to get there in a massive enough
black hole.
Stathis Papaioannou
--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Everything List group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com
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Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
SP:' You wouldn't necessarily be squashed if you were inside the event horizon of a black hole provided that it was massive enough. Being inside the event horizon is not the same as being inside the singularity.' MP: Two thoughts come to my suspicious mind. 1/ [Not far from the post-Freudian speculation :-] ... Attendance within the event horizon of a common or garden galactic variety black hole would seem to incorporate a one-way ticket *to* the singularity, would it not? 2/ I once heard someone on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National Science Show [on every Saturday after the midday news] describing our universe in these terms. His point was that whatever we might think about what was 'beyond' the bounds of 'our' universe, nothing from here can escape to 'there'. As I understand it this is in line with Einstein's concept of the universe being closed in upon itself, the key cause of which is gravity, the curvature of space-time. MP: Going off at a tangent, I have a question which is quite possibly a dumb question that just needs to be asked because it CAN be asked. Preamble: The expansion of the universe, characterised by the Hubble Constant I believe, is usually explained non-mathematically by analogy with the stretching of the surface of a balloon as the balloon is inflated. The balloon surface is stretched uniformly, pretty much, by its having everywhere the same tensile strength and elasticity and by the force which causes the deformation being applied equally all over because it is the averaged effect of all the gas particles within the contained volume. That much makes sense, and the overall effect is to cause point locations on the surface of the balloon to recede from one another at a rate which is proportional at any given moment to the distance between the points, measured along the surface. Question: Would it be mathematically equivalent, or significantly different, to consider the measured change in size and in distances as a uniform *contraction* of the metric, ie the measuring system, rather than an expansion of the location, so to speak. In particular, why is it not feasible to consider the Big Bang and subsequent Inflationary epoch as being in effect a collapse? Regards Mark Peaty CDES [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.arach.net.au/~mpeaty/ Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 3/8/07, *Mark Peaty* [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: NB: I hope that my imaginary destination in your speculation of possible post mortem exploits for my erstwhile sceptical soul is not a post-Freudian slip. I know that many of my contributions to this and other lists have lacked the erudite succinctness of those with greater talents; failure of concentration [AKA 'ADD'] has been a characteristic of life for me, but I think that 'awaking' to the innards of a black whole would do more than wonderfully concentrate the mind: concentration itself would become the major problem even for a ghost! =-O You wouldn't necessarily be squashed if you were inside the event horizon of a black hole provided that it was massive enough. Being inside the event horizon is not the same as being inside the singularity. Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Evidence for the simulation argument - and Thanks and a dumb question.
On 3/9/07, Mark Peaty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: MP: Two thoughts come to my suspicious mind. 1/ [Not far from the post-Freudian speculation :-] ... Attendance within the event horizon of a common or garden galactic variety black hole would seem to incorporate a one-way ticket *to* the singularity, would it not? Yes, but it could take a very long time to get there in a massive enough black hole. Stathis Papaioannou --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
