Re: MGA revisited paper + supervenience
On Sat, Oct 25, 2014 at 12:17:34AM -0400, John Clark wrote: On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 7:19 PM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: Bruno's argument shows that they must be a part of the phenomenal (experienced) world if COMP is true. OK then comp is false. And now that we know that comp is false what's the point of talking about it anymore? So you know for certainty that the arrival times of electrons in a Geiger counter from a beta decay source is computable. How? Although I don't know it for certain I strongly suspect that beta decay is not computable, I think it's random; but I think it could provide at best a few dozen digits not a infinite number of digits that the Real Numbers require. But never mind, if you want it to be true then comp is true, or if you prefer it to be false then comp is false. I won't fight you over it because I don't give a damn about comp one way or the other. If you sample the Geiger counter every second, and ask the question has an electron triggered the counter in the previous second, one gets a sequence of zeros and ones, that is bounded only by the length of time we're prepared to continue performing this operation. This is not a few dozen digits at best that you claim. The sequence is, as you concur, likely to be not computable, and COMP predicts that such sequences should exist phenomenally. If beta decay arrival times proved to be computable, as (for example) Juergen Schmidhuber suggests, it would actually be a serious blow to COMP, though not quite fatal as we may find some other sequence in nature that is random. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: CTM and the UDA (again!)
On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 10:53:08PM -0700, meekerdb wrote: On 10/24/2014 6:53 PM, Russell Standish wrote: On Fri, Oct 24, 2014 at 10:35:36AM -0700, meekerdb wrote: So are you simply assuming there is a winner, i.e. that the relevant statistics exist in the limit? Even if they do, it's not clear that they exist for our experience which is not in the limit. It seems that you are assuming something like The probability of a number being even is 1/2. This was Jean Delahaye's argument. For physical probabilities (Born rule and all that), it suffices to assume that in a situation where 1 bit of information is generated (eg the WM duplication thought experiment), then whether that bit is 0 or 1 has equal probability (ie relative probability of 1/2). But we're trying to define probability without assuming physics. If you actually assume physics then there's no reason so suppose W=M=1/2. It could well be W=0.5001 and M=0.4999. If W=0.5001 and M=0.4999, seeing Washington will give us 0.999711.. bits of information. Seeing Moscow gives us 1.00028... bits of information. Cheers -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: MGA revisited paper + supervenience
On Sat, Oct 25, 2014 at 2:41 AM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: If you sample the Geiger counter every second, and ask the question has an electron triggered the counter in the previous second, one gets a sequence of zeros and ones, that is bounded only by the length of time we're prepared to continue performing this operation. This is not a few dozen digits at best that you claim. Yes, if you used a arbitrarily large number of electrons you could get a arbitrarily large number of digits, and you could do the same thing with a arbitrarily large number of dice. But if physics works by Real Numbers why can't we do the same thing with just one fundamental particle like one electron? Again I'm not claiming to have a answer I'm just asking a question. The sequence is, as you concur, likely to be not computable If it's not computable it doesn't follow that non-computable numbers must be causing the electrons to do what they do, nothing at all may be causing it to do what it does. After all, there is no law of logic that demands every event have a cause. and COMP predicts that [...] I don't care what COMP predicts, I don't know what it means and even though Bruno invented the word I don't believe he does either. If beta decay arrival times proved to be computable, as (for example) Juergen Schmidhuber suggests, If beta decay is computable then all bets are off. But is it? I would be much more impressed by claims that everything in Quantum Mechanics is computable if somebody would just compute something. it would actually be a serious blow to COMP, If you say so, but I don't care if COMP is dealt a serious blow or not. John K Clark -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?
I find this quite surprising too and wonder if Brent could weigh in as I'm out of my league on that stuff. Terren On Oct 25, 2014 12:23 AM, Peter Sas peterjacco...@gmail.com wrote: Wow... That's quite shocking! I see I have to be much more careful in taking over what the pop science writers say... Unfortunately, physics is a subject where the text books tend to carry more weight than the popular presentations. The text books show that the claims about the zero net energy of the universe made by people such as Hawking and Krauss in popular presentations are wrong. The interesting question is why undoubtedly clever people such as Krauss and Hawking would make such fallacious claims. I suppose simplification can sometimes be indistinguishable from over-simplification -- or else people become more susceptible to brain farts as they get older. Bruce So what gives? I wish you physicists would make up your mind ;) Perhaps it has to do with the fact that most physicists just calculate (not that there is anything wrong with that, of course, math is the key to modern science). But when it comes to explaining what these calculations mean, things get tricky, and you find physicists claiming different things. Perhaps this (positive energy vs. negative energy) could be one of those things? Peter The idea that the positive mass-energy of the universe is balanced by the negative energy of gravitation is quite common in the popular science literature -- the idea is that one can then get zero total energy and explain a universe coming from nothing. The trouble with this idea is that it is flatly contradicted by general relativity. There are two main points here. First, in the cosmological models of GR, energy is not generally conserved. Energy conservation on the large scale depends on the existence of a time-like Killing vector field, and no such field exists in the general non-static spacetime, such as an expanding universe. The question of the total energy of the universe simply has no answer -- no such total energy can be defined so it has no value -- zero or anything else. The second point is that GR is based on the idea that energy, of whatever form, is a source term for gravity. The equations of GR have the geometry of spacetime depending solely on the stress-energy tensor containing all mass, energy, stress, pressure and other physical terms. There is no term for negative gravitational energy in this tensor. Negative gravitational energy does not affect the geodesics of the spacetime, it does not affect the orbits of distant satellites, for instance. So, in a very real sense, it does not exist. It can be described only by what is commonly called a pseudo-tensor. That is, a quantity that does not transform as a tensor under coordinate transformations. One can always find a frame in which so-called negative gravitational energy vanishes, so it is not physical. Hope this helps clear up a few confusions. Bruce -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: CTM and the UDA (again!)
On Wed, Jul 23, 2014 at 12:49 PM, Jesse Mazer laserma...@gmail.com wrote: Had some trouble following your post (in part because I don't know all the acronyms), It's very simple, just look them up on Google or Wikipedia: Comp = give something away for free UDA = Universal Dance Association CTM = Chuckle To Myself COR = Church Of Resurrection FAPP = Filtered Air Positive Pressure UD = University of Delaware Hope this helps. John K Clark -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Fwd: The Span of Infinity
May be of interest to the group. Later today. Brent Original Message The Span of Infinity Saturday, October 25, 2014 2:30-4:30 pm http://www.helixcenter.org/roundtables/the-span-of-infinity/ This is a panel discussion taking place this afternoon in NYC (so I assume the time is Eastern) streamed live on YouTube (see link). - pt -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?
Bruce is a very good physicist and he's right. John Baez has a good discussion of the point on his blog. Brent On 10/25/2014 7:51 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: I find this quite surprising too and wonder if Brent could weigh in as I'm out of my league on that stuff. Terren On Oct 25, 2014 12:23 AM, Peter Sas peterjacco...@gmail.com mailto:peterjacco...@gmail.com wrote: Wow... That's quite shocking! I see I have to be much more careful in taking over what the pop science writers say... Unfortunately, physics is a subject where the text books tend to carry more weight than the popular presentations. The text books show that the claims about the zero net energy of the universe made by people such as Hawking and Krauss in popular presentations are wrong. The interesting question is why undoubtedly clever people such as Krauss and Hawking would make such fallacious claims. I suppose simplification can sometimes be indistinguishable from over-simplification -- or else people become more susceptible to brain farts as they get older. Bruce So what gives? I wish you physicists would make up your mind ;) Perhaps it has to do with the fact that most physicists just calculate (not that there is anything wrong with that, of course, math is the key to modern science). But when it comes to explaining what these calculations mean, things get tricky, and you find physicists claiming different things. Perhaps this (positive energy vs. negative energy) could be one of those things? Peter The idea that the positive mass-energy of the universe is balanced by the negative energy of gravitation is quite common in the popular science literature -- the idea is that one can then get zero total energy and explain a universe coming from nothing. The trouble with this idea is that it is flatly contradicted by general relativity. There are two main points here. First, in the cosmological models of GR, energy is not generally conserved. Energy conservation on the large scale depends on the existence of a time-like Killing vector field, and no such field exists in the general non-static spacetime, such as an expanding universe. The question of the total energy of the universe simply has no answer -- no such total energy can be defined so it has no value -- zero or anything else. The second point is that GR is based on the idea that energy, of whatever form, is a source term for gravity. The equations of GR have the geometry of spacetime depending solely on the stress-energy tensor containing all mass, energy, stress, pressure and other physical terms. There is no term for negative gravitational energy in this tensor. Negative gravitational energy does not affect the geodesics of the spacetime, it does not affect the orbits of distant satellites, for instance. So, in a very real sense, it does not exist. It can be described only by what is commonly called a pseudo-tensor. That is, a quantity that does not transform as a tensor under coordinate transformations. One can always find a frame in which so-called negative gravitational energy vanishes, so it is not physical. Hope this helps clear up a few confusions. Bruce -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails
Re: Are We Really Conscious? (NYT Article today)
On 21 October 2014 17:58, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 20 Oct 2014, at 00:56, David Nyman wrote: On 19 October 2014 17:48, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 19 Oct 2014, at 15:26, David Nyman wrote: On 19 October 2014 02:10, Stathis Papaioannou stath...@gmail.com wrote: Whether I find it satisfactory or not is a different question. The point I was making is that people who find it satisfactory express this belief idea by claiming that consciousness does not exist. Assuming that you don't, in fact, find it satisfactory, I'd be interested in your reasons. Given the assumption of the exhaustive adequacy of physical reduction, Graziano would appear to be quite correct in his assessment that the idea of any left over phenomenon, after correlation of conscious states with the relevant physical processes, is physically incoherent. On the same assumptions, we clearly cannot cite any *judgement* to the contrary as evidence of any such supernumerary phenomenon, as any such judgement must likewise be nomologically entailed by physical law. If so, what reason can you cite for believing that there is any such thing? Very good question, of course: the hard question. Note that up to some point, we can eliminate consciousness to, in appearance. Yes, because what is empirically available is restricted (by definition) to the physics of appearance. (I need to be technical on this, but I might try to translate latter, or to simplify, or to criticize) Actually I was thinking about something else, like reducing the mind body problem to the body problem, like in the UDA, and then extracting physics from that problem (by finding the right statistic on the relative personal diaries). This might have made sense, if the quantum logics were appearing in the S4Grz1, Z 1or X1 logics, and forgetting all about the S4Grz1*, Z1*, and X1* star. (I can argue this would have lead to solipsism (no first person plural discourse) and to a Quantum mechanics with collapse, in fact superposition would not be contagious to the *conscious* observer. This would have led to a QM with a consciousness reducing the wave packet, but only in the diaries, and that could be taken as an illusion in some coherent way. It is avery funny theory: it is a non-collapse QM, where consciousness describe itself as the collapser of the wave. There is no collapse, only because that consciousness does not exist! (Not sure it makes sense for a non zombie tough!) If QM appears only at S4Grz1the idea above would make some more sense, but still hard to swallow for any non-zombie entity). The reason here is that S4Grz1 = S4Grz1* But now the qualia and quanta appear at the star pov (Z1*, X1*, S4Grz1*), and all the differences between S4Grz, Z, and X (and the comp one S4Grz1, X1, Z1) come from the G/G* splitting, so the true non justifiable invites itself in the picture, keeping the many nuances brought by those different logics). In fact I revive some of your old critics of comp, like it can be considered as eliminating consciousness too, because it might make logical sense, in case physics did not appear exclusively in the star logic. A good thing, because it makes Everett-QM confirming the sharing of the histories by many people. This is better than Albert-Loewer theory, which get multi-solipsist. The default assumption, as Graziano succinctly notes, is that the details of this apparent physical mechanism (at least in some ideal form) exhaust both the ontological and the epistemological catalogues. Only with actual infinite magic in the details. I guess you saw this, then formally it is even clearer, but a bit of this could have been the case, if physics appear in the non star logics. Not sure the computation can interfere in that setting. We get all isolated in such setting, from each others. Consequently, in this sense, appeals to the putative existence of anything over and above such an exhaustive account must be physically incoherent. If one takes a sufficiently hard line (and I do!) it becomes apparent that this mode of explanation gobbles up competitors like some inexorable flesh-eating microbe. Anything meta-physical (such as computation, under these assumptions) merely degenerates, under observation, into one or another physical approximation. Yes, and even physics is no more clear, because the theories use explicitly arithmetical relations. Indeed in string theory you need to believe that some infinite sum of all natural numbers is equal to -1/12, independently of you, to get the right mass of the photon! Then computation is a notion which exists even more as it does not need any axiom of infinity, and the existent computations are provably existent, even already in RA. No need of induction axiom. In fact, for a logician, to believe in the physical laws, together with the belief that they apply here and now, is equivalent with a *very*
Re: MGA revisited paper + supervenience
On 26 Oct 2014, at 1:28 am, John Clark johnkcl...@gmail.com wrote: If you say so, but I don't care if COMP is dealt a serious blow or not. John K Clark You must care you bloody blowhard because you daily go to considerable lengths to show just how important it is to you. It’s rather amusing to see someone write that that they don’t care about what they clearly care about. Talk about self-referentially incorrect. Kim -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: The Span of Infinity
Sent from AOL Mobile Mail Brent, I am quite familiar with Eric Steinhardt Paterson University, NJ. He deals philosophically as a philosopher does, with the idea of immortality, and identity. I believe I'm not incorrect when I say he believes multiple versions of yourself naturally occurring. However, in a comment to another philosopher named Schwitzgebel, in California, Steinhardt stated that he believed that each individual clone or person, is in their own world line and thus information does not transfer from one individual, one state of the universe, to another. Thus, a branch, from universe 1A, cannot be the same person as Brent, from universe 2A. the other three academic luminaries that were pictured in the link, I have no information about. Rightly or wrongly, I believe that if we ever get the existential thing under control, or to a point where we think differently about it it will certainly change how we live and view ourselves and our societies. This is a goal worth pursuing. -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: EveryThing everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Oct 25, 2014 10:55 AM Subject: Fwd: The Span of Infinity div id=AOLMsgPart_2_83831593-7b82-4f30-809a-215560d19d92 div bgcolor=#FF text=#00 class=aolReplacedBody May be of interest to the group. Later today. Brent div class=aolmail_moz-forward-container Original Message div dir=ltr h2 class=aolmail_entry-title style=box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Source-Sans-Pro, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.1; color: rgb(117, 118, 119); font-size: 20px;The Span of Infinity/h2 div style=box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(117, 118, 119); font-family: Source-Sans-Pro, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 15.2380952835083px; Saturday, October 25, 2014 br style=box-sizing: border-box; 2:30-4:30 pm a class=aolmail_moz-txt-link-freetext target=_blank href=http://www.helixcenter.org/roundtables/the-span-of-infinity/;http://www.helixcenter.org/roundtables/the-span-of-infinity//a This is a panel discussion taking place this afternoon in NYC (so I assume the time is Eastern) streamed live on YouTube (see link). - pt /div /div p/p -- 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 a target=_blank href=mailto:everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com;everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com/a. To post to this group, send email to a target=_blank href=mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com;everything-list@googlegroups.com/a. Visit this group at a target=_blank href=http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list;http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/a. For more options, visit a target=_blank href=https://groups.google.com/d/optout;https://groups.google.com/d/optout/a. /div /div /div -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?
Sent from AOL Mobile Mail I like Larry Krauss despite his attacks on Frank Tipler, because Larry Krauss also concedes the possibility of faster than light travel. No which among us, are going to turn down Star Trek? -Original Message- From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Sat, Oct 25, 2014 11:01 AM Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics? div id=AOLMsgPart_2_f2754c43-430e-42e0-9df2-602e590f37dd div bgcolor=#FF text=#00 class=aolReplacedBody div class=aolmail_moz-cite-prefix Bruce is a very good physicist and he's right. John Baez has a good discussion of the point on his blog. Brent On 10/25/2014 7:51 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: blockquote cite=about:blank p dir=ltrI find this quite surprising too and wonder if Brent could weigh in as I'm out of my league on that stuff./p p dir=ltrTerren/p div class=aolmail_gmail_quote On Oct 25, 2014 12:23 AM, Peter Sas a target=_blank href=mailto:peterjacco...@gmail.com;peterjacco...@gmail.com/a wrote: blockquote class=aolmail_gmail_quote style=margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex div dir=ltr Wow... That's quite shocking! I see I have to be much more careful in taking over what the pop science writers say... Unfortunately, physics is a subject where the text books tend to carry blockquote class=aolmail_gmail_quote style=margin:0;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex more weight than the popular presentations. The text books show that the claims about the zero net energy of the universe made by people such as Hawking and Krauss in popular presentations are wrong. The interesting question is why undoubtedly clever people such as Krauss and Hawking would make such fallacious claims. I suppose simplification can sometimes be indistinguishable from over-simplification -- or else people become more susceptible to brain farts as they get older. Bruce So what gives? I wish you physicists would make up your mind ;) Perhaps it has to do with the fact that most physicists just calculate (not that there is anything wrong with that, of course, math is the key to modern science). But when it comes to explaining what these calculations mean, things get tricky, and you find physicists claiming different things. Perhaps this (positive energy vs. negative energy) could be one of those things? Peter The idea that the positive mass-energy of the universe is balanced by the negative energy of gravitation is quite common in the popular science literature -- the idea is that one can then get zero total energy and explain a universe coming from nothing. The trouble with this idea is that it is flatly contradicted by general relativity. There are two main points here. First, in the cosmological models of GR, energy is not generally conserved. Energy conservation on the large scale depends on the existence of a time-like Killing vector field, and no such field exists in the general non-static spacetime, such as an expanding universe. The question of the total energy of the universe simply has no answer -- no such total energy can be defined so it has no value -- zero or anything else. The second point is that GR is based on the idea that energy, of whatever form, is a source term for gravity. The equations of GR have the geometry of spacetime depending solely on the stress-energy tensor containing all mass, energy, stress, pressure and other physical terms. There is no term for negative gravitational energy in this tensor. Negative gravitational energy does not affect the geodesics of the spacetime, it does not affect the orbits of distant satellites, for instance. So, in a very real sense, it does not exist. It can be described only by what is commonly called a pseudo-tensor. That is, a quantity that does not transform as a tensor under coordinate transformations. One can always find a frame in which so-called negative gravitational energy vanishes, so it is not physical. Hope this helps clear up a few confusions. Bruce /blockquote /div -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To
Re: MGA revisited paper + supervenience
On Sat, Oct 25, 2014 at 10:28:40AM -0400, John Clark wrote: On Sat, Oct 25, 2014 at 2:41 AM, Russell Standish li...@hpcoders.com.au wrote: If you sample the Geiger counter every second, and ask the question has an electron triggered the counter in the previous second, one gets a sequence of zeros and ones, that is bounded only by the length of time we're prepared to continue performing this operation. This is not a few dozen digits at best that you claim. Yes, if you used a arbitrarily large number of electrons you could get a arbitrarily large number of digits, and you could do the same thing with a arbitrarily large number of dice. But if physics works by Real Numbers why can't we do the same thing with just one fundamental particle like one electron? Again I'm not claiming to have a answer I'm just asking a question. Assuming that position lies on a continuum, and assuming that our technological prowess shows no bounds to how accurate we can measure something, then yes, we could continuing measuring the same particle with continuously improved measuring devices, and obtain a noncomputable sequence. But what I proposed with the Geiger counter is easier to do, and sufficient for the point. The sequence is, as you concur, likely to be not computable If it's not computable it doesn't follow that non-computable numbers must be causing the electrons to do what they do, nothing at all may be causing it to do what it does. After all, there is no law of logic that demands every event have a cause. I don't know where you're going with that ramble. -- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?
I am with you that generally Krauss does a good job of popularizations of cosmology and so on. He is generally quite careful and accurate in his book A Universe from Nothing, except on page 166, where he says There is one universe in which the total energy is definitely and precisely zero It is a closed universe... This is just simply incorrect. The total mass energy of a closed universe is not definable because there is no reference point outside such a universe from which one can measure the total enclosed energy. Krauss's argument by analogy with the total charge in the universe fails because he appears to have overlooked the simple fact that in a closed universe, light cannot go right round and back to the starting point before the universe re-contracts to zero size. This is a simple GR calculation in the geometry of a closed universe. See the text by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler (MTW, the 'Bible' of general relativists!) Bruce spudboy100 via Everything List wrote: Sent from AOL Mobile Mail I like Larry Krauss despite his attacks on Frank Tipler, because Larry Krauss also concedes the possibility of faster than light travel. No which among us, are going to turn down Star Trek? From: meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net Bruce is a very good physicist and he's right. John Baez has a good discussion of the point on his blog. Brent On 10/25/2014 7:51 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: I find this quite surprising too and wonder if Brent could weigh in as I'm out of my league on that stuff. Terren On Oct 25, 2014 12:23 AM, Peter Sas peterjacco...@gmail.com mailto:peterjacco...@gmail.com wrote: Wow... That's quite shocking! I see I have to be much more careful in taking over what the pop science writers say... Unfortunately, physics is a subject where the text books tend to carry more weight than the popular presentations. The text books show that the claims about the zero net energy of the universe made by people such as Hawking and Krauss in popular presentations are wrong. The interesting question is why undoubtedly clever people such as Krauss and Hawking would make such fallacious claims. I suppose simplification can sometimes be indistinguishable from over-simplification -- or else people become more susceptible to brain farts as they get older. Bruce -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
