Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Gregory Ewing]

Marko Rauhamaa wrote:

It is actually quite interesting how the brain forms an accurate idea of
a straight line and, say, a circle. Whenever you get a new pair of
glasses, the brain needs a recalibration and manages to do it within a
week.


I had an interesting experience in that area a few years
ago. One of the entries in the PyWeek[1] game programming
competition was a platform game set on the inside of a
circular world. You saw a small part of the world at
a time side-on, with the ground curving up slightly
to the left and right.

After playing for a while, my brain must have trained
itself to see the curved ground as straight, because
when I looked away, all horizontal straight lines
looked like they were curved *downwards* slightly!

[1] A competition for Python-based games, so getting
a bit closer to being back on-topic.

--
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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Random832]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2016, at 15:31, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
> Light follows geodesics, not straight lines.

What is a straight line on a curved space if not a geodesic? That was
actually what I was getting at.
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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Steve D'Aprano]

On Fri, 16 Sep 2016 05:19 am, Random832 wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 15, 2016, at 15:06, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
>> No, the horizon would still be horizontal. It merely wouldn't *look*
>> horizontal, an optical illusion.
> 
> I guess that depends on your definition of what a horizon is - and what
> a straight line is, if not the path followed by a beam of light.

Light follows geodesics, not straight lines.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Geodesic.html

Hmmm... actually that suggests that an infinite flat earth is *not* a
Newtonian black hole, as I suggested, since light in Newtonian physics
travels in straight lines. So it would be an unusual kind of relativistic
black hole.

(A Newtonian black hole is just a star or planet sufficiently big that the
escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. Hmmm again... what is
the escape velocity of an infinite plane with gravitational acceleration of
1 gee?)



-- 
Steve
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.

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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Ethan Furman]

On 09/15/2016 12:19 PM, Random832 wrote:

On Thu, Sep 15, 2016, at 15:06, Steve D'Aprano wrote:



No, the horizon would still be horizontal. It merely wouldn't *look*
horizontal, an optical illusion.


I guess that depends on your definition of what a horizon is - and what
a straight line is, if not the path followed by a beam of light.


Beams of light can be bent by both matter and gravity.

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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Marko Rauhamaa]

Random832 :

> On Thu, Sep 15, 2016, at 15:06, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
>> No, the horizon would still be horizontal. It merely wouldn't *look*
>> horizontal, an optical illusion.
>
> I guess that depends on your definition of what a horizon is - and
> what a straight line is, if not the path followed by a beam of light.

It is actually quite interesting how the brain forms an accurate idea of
a straight line and, say, a circle. Whenever you get a new pair of
glasses, the brain needs a recalibration and manages to do it within a
week.

I don't think it has anything with "the path followed by a beam of
light."


Marko
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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Random832]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2016, at 15:06, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
> No, the horizon would still be horizontal. It merely wouldn't *look*
> horizontal, an optical illusion.

I guess that depends on your definition of what a horizon is - and what
a straight line is, if not the path followed by a beam of light.
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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Steve D'Aprano]

On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 04:02 pm, Random832 wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 14, 2016, at 23:12, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
>> Yes it does. Even an infinitely large flat plane has a horizon almost
>> identical to the actual horizon.
> 
> Your link actually doesn't support the latter claim, it goes into some
> detail on why it wouldn't if it were infinitely large due to
> gravitational effects on light.

No, the horizon would still be horizontal. It merely wouldn't *look*
horizontal, an optical illusion.

And even there, I have my doubts. In a universe where at least one
infinitely large flat planet existed, gravity would clearly have to be
significantly different from our universe's gravity, lest the universe be
destroyed.

In the scenario given by the article, the flat earth is acting as a
Newtonian black hole: light cannot escape the planet. In addition, anything
that came into range of the flat earth's gravity -- which would be
*everything* in the universe -- would experience a 1 gee force[1] towards
the earth, no matter how far away it was. There would be a steady rain of
meteors, comets and even stars onto the planet.

The planet would also be gravitationally unstable in the horizontal
direction. Consider a single atom somewhere in the flat plane. It is
gravitationally pulled by an infinite number of other atoms in one
direction, say to the left, balanced by an infinite number in the opposite
direction, to the right. But those infinite forces will only be in balance
if the body of the planet is utterly, perfectly, 100% uniform. Any tiny
variation in density will lead to an inbalance in one direction or another,
which will increase the variations in density and hence increasing the
preferential gravitational force.

For a normal planet, the gravitational forces are typically smaller than the
electromagnet repulsion of atoms to each other, and so there's a limit to
how densely packed the planet will be. But in an infinitely large planet,
the forces can increase without limit, leading to the planet either
collapsing into a relativistic black hole (it's already a Newtonian black
hole!) or being torn apart. Or both.

In any case, even if the earth is flat, it's not infinitely big. We know
that because some stars dip below the horizon. Unless there are convenient
tunnels for them to travel through...


Personally, I'm more fond of the Hollow Earth theory. The earth is a sphere,
but it's a hollow sphere, and we're on the inside...

:-)




[1] Yes I know gee is a unit of acceleration, not force. Someone else can do
the dimensional analysis, there's a limit to how much care I'm going to put
into counter-factual physics like infinitely large flat planets.


-- 
Steve
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.

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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 4:41 AM, Steve D'Aprano
 wrote:
>> Kanvas?
>
> Oh vorry about that, that'v a villy mivtake. I obsiouvly meant to type
> Kansav.

We're not in Kanvas any more, Toto!

ChrisA
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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Steve D'Aprano]

On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 11:45 pm, Grant Edwards wrote:

> On 2016-09-15, Steve D'Aprano  wrote:
>> On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 06:19 am, breamore...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>>> It is so blantantly obvious that the world is not flat I find this
>>> discussion flabbergasting.
>>
>> You wouldn't say that if you lived in Kanvas, or the west coast of
>> Ireland.
>>
>> I'm told that a few years ago somebody accidentally dumped a trailer load
>> of soil by the side of the road in Kanvas, and within a day some
>> enterprising entrepreneur had set up a thriving roadside business
>> offering mountain-climbing tours to the locals.
> 
> Kanvas?

Oh vorry about that, that'v a villy mivtake. I obsiouvly meant to type
Kansav.



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Vteve

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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Grant Edwards]

On 2016-09-15, Steve D'Aprano  wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 06:19 am, breamore...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> It is so blantantly obvious that the world is not flat I find this
>> discussion flabbergasting.
>
> You wouldn't say that if you lived in Kanvas, or the west coast of Ireland.
>
> I'm told that a few years ago somebody accidentally dumped a trailer load of
> soil by the side of the road in Kanvas, and within a day some enterprising
> entrepreneur had set up a thriving roadside business offering
> mountain-climbing tours to the locals.

Kanvas?

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! Why don't you ever
  at   enter any CONTESTS,
  gmail.comMarvin??  Don't you know
   your own ZIPCODE?

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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Gregory Ewing]

Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:


And then there is Pratchett's Discworld... which is both flat and round
(just not spherical)


And it has a horizon -- if you go far enough you fall
off the edge.

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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[alister]

On Wed, 14 Sep 2016 18:04:26 -0700, Chris Kaynor wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 1:19 PM,  wrote:
> 
>> It is so blantantly obvious that the world is not flat I find this
>> discussion flabbergasting.  Anybody who has tried to take any form of
>> vehicle up, or probably more dangerously down, any form of hill knows
>> that.  As for the raving lunatics who make their living by riding up
>> and down these http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-37348004, well
>> need I say more?
>>
>>
> Going up or down a mountain does not prove the world is round by itself,

No but it does demonstrate that it is not flat (@ a bare minimum it 
undulates)

Not flat != round





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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Dale Marvin via Python-list]

On 9/14/16 5:40 PM, Steve D'Aprano wrote:


If you're going to criticise Asimov, don't criticise him for wrongly
thinking that people in the Middle Ages believed in a flat earth. There's
no evidence of that in his essay.



I didn't mean to criticize Asimov, but the History Professors, one in 
particular seemed to make it his life's purpose to say bad things about 
religion/bible etc.


I should have known better than to get into such an off-topic quagmire.

Dale

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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Random832]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016, at 23:12, Steve D'Aprano wrote:
> Yes it does. Even an infinitely large flat plane has a horizon almost
> identical to the actual horizon.

Your link actually doesn't support the latter claim, it goes into some
detail on why it wouldn't if it were infinitely large due to
gravitational effects on light.

Of course, the fact that the horizon is a short [in comparison to the
size of the known world] distance away *is* evidence for a round Earth.
It might "look the same", but it would contain features all the way up
to potentially the edge (anything not obstructed by subjectively taller
objects in front of it), it certainly wouldn't make sense not to see the
opposing landmass across an ocean.

> http://www.askamathematician.com/2012/08/q-if-earth-was-flat-would-there-be-the-horizon-if-so-what-would-it-look-like-if-the-earth-was-flat-and-had-infinite-area-would-that-change-the-answer/
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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Steve D'Aprano]

On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 11:44 am, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

> On Thursday, September 15, 2016 at 1:26:49 PM UTC+12, Chris Kaynor wrote:
>> If you find somebody determined to not trust evidence such as the blue
>> marble photos, it can be quite hard to prove that the world is not flat.
> 
> A flat world doesn’t have a horizon.


Yes it does. Even an infinitely large flat plane has a horizon almost
identical to the actual horizon.

http://www.askamathematician.com/2012/08/q-if-earth-was-flat-would-there-be-the-horizon-if-so-what-would-it-look-like-if-the-earth-was-flat-and-had-infinite-area-would-that-change-the-answer/

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=385334



In fact, Flat Earthers consider the flat horizon evidence for a flat Earth:

http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2015/01/flat-earth-horizon.html


Relevant:

https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/flat/flateart.htm





(To answer my rhetorical question in the subject header: yes, apparently we
can.)



-- 
Steve
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.

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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Lawrence D’Oliveiro]

On Thursday, September 15, 2016 at 1:26:49 PM UTC+12, Chris Kaynor wrote:
> If you find somebody determined to not trust evidence such as the blue
> marble photos, it can be quite hard to prove that the world is not flat.

A flat world doesn’t have a horizon.
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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Chris Kaynor]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 1:19 PM,  wrote:

> It is so blantantly obvious that the world is not flat I find this
> discussion flabbergasting.  Anybody who has tried to take any form of
> vehicle up, or probably more dangerously down, any form of hill knows
> that.  As for the raving lunatics who make their living by riding up and
> down these http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-37348004, well need I
> say more?
>

Going up or down a mountain does not prove the world is round by itself, no
matter how twisted the road might be. Take for example most 3D game worlds,
which are generally simulated using a flat-world for ease, but still
simulate gravity (and sometimes even the horizon) just fine.

If you find somebody determined to not trust evidence such as the blue
marble photos, it can be quite hard to prove that the world is not flat.
The major issue comes from the fact that, at a human scale, the difference
between a flat world and and Earth is very small - you don't need to take
into account the curve of the earth for almost any buildings.

With that in mind, I'm not sure what evidence you claim is "blatantly
obvious". By far the two simplest evidence is traveling around the Earth
(not particularly easy, especially even 100 years ago) and watching the
stars move. Both could be explained by other methods, but those would be
vastly more complicated to explain the observed behavior (look at the
Earth-centric universe models).

Chris
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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Steve D'Aprano]

On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 06:19 am, breamore...@gmail.com wrote:

> It is so blantantly obvious that the world is not flat I find this
> discussion flabbergasting.

You wouldn't say that if you lived in Kanvas, or the west coast of Ireland.

I'm told that a few years ago somebody accidentally dumped a trailer load of
soil by the side of the road in Kanvas, and within a day some enterprising
entrepreneur had set up a thriving roadside business offering
mountain-climbing tours to the locals.




-- 
Steve
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.

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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Steve D'Aprano]

On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 03:43 am, Dale Marvin wrote:

> On 9/14/16 12:20 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> On Wednesday 14 September 2016 16:54, Rustom Mody wrote:
>>
>>> everything we know will be negated in 5-50-500 years
>>
>> I'm pretty sure that in 5, 50, 500 or even 5000 years, the sun will still
>> rise in the east, water will be wet, fire will burn, dogs will have
>> mammary glands and frogs[1] won't, and the square root of 100 will still
>> be 10.
>>
>> Isaac Asimov once wrote:
>>
>> When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people
>> thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think
>> that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the
>> earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put
>> together.
> 
>> http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
>>
>> [1] Assuming that there are any frogs left by then.
>>
> 
> Funny, Asimov's professors must have taught him the same false history
> that I was taught at college. There's much evidence that medieval
> scholars did not believe the earth was flat.

I don't see Asimov referring to medieval scholars. The medieval period is
roughly around 1000 CE or thereabouts. Asimov talks about people believing
in a flat earth "In the early days of civilization" and goes on to discuss
how Greeks such as Aristotle (350 BCE) had evidence for a spherical earth.
He doesn't mention the medieval period at all.

If you're going to criticise Asimov, don't criticise him for wrongly
thinking that people in the Middle Ages believed in a flat earth. There's
no evidence of that in his essay.

Rather, criticise him for over-simplifying how quickly and universally the
idea of the spherical earth took over. Asimov jumps from Eratosthenes
(about a century after Aristotle, so around 250 BCE) to Newton (17th
century) with nary a mention of how long, slow and difficult it was for the
flat earth cosmology to be discarded. Regardless of what a few ivory-tower
Greek philosophers thought, in the early centuries CE many people still
believed the world was flat.

While it is true that by the Middle Ages educated scholars in Europe almost
certainly believed in a spherical world, not all people were educated
scholars. We have no idea what the average peasant tilling the fields would
have believed, although given the influence of Christianity and the
remnants of ancient Hebrew cosmology (flat earth) in the Bible, it is far
more likely that the average uneducated person believed in a flat earth.
But we don't really know for sure.

And there is more to the world than just Europe. In China, belief in a flat
earth cosmology was virtually unchallenged until the 17th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth




-- 
Steve
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.

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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[breamoreboy]

On Wednesday, September 14, 2016 at 9:00:04 PM UTC+1, MRAB wrote:
> On 2016-09-14 18:43, Dale Marvin via Python-list wrote:
> > On 9/14/16 12:20 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> >> On Wednesday 14 September 2016 16:54, Rustom Mody wrote:
> >>
> >>> everything we know will be negated in 5-50-500 years
> >>
> >> I'm pretty sure that in 5, 50, 500 or even 5000 years, the sun will still 
> >> rise
> >> in the east, water will be wet, fire will burn, dogs will have mammary 
> >> glands
> >> and frogs[1] won't, and the square root of 100 will still be 10.
> >>
> >> Isaac Asimov once wrote:
> >>
> >> When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people
> >> thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that
> >> thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth
> >> is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
> >
> >> http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
> >>
> >> [1] Assuming that there are any frogs left by then.
> >>
> >
> > Funny, Asimov's professors must have taught him the same false history
> > that I was taught at college. There's much evidence that medieval
> > scholars did not believe the earth was flat.
> >
> > 
> >
> Where does it say that he thought that _medieval_ scholars did not 
> believe the earth was flat?

It is so blantantly obvious that the world is not flat I find this discussion 
flabbergasting.  Anybody who has tried to take any form of vehicle up, or 
probably more dangerously down, any form of hill knows that.  As for the raving 
lunatics who make their living by riding up and down these 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-37348004, well need I say more?

Kindest regards.

Mark Lawrence.
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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[MRAB]

On 2016-09-14 18:43, Dale Marvin via Python-list wrote:

On 9/14/16 12:20 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

On Wednesday 14 September 2016 16:54, Rustom Mody wrote:


everything we know will be negated in 5-50-500 years


I'm pretty sure that in 5, 50, 500 or even 5000 years, the sun will still rise
in the east, water will be wet, fire will burn, dogs will have mammary glands
and frogs[1] won't, and the square root of 100 will still be 10.

Isaac Asimov once wrote:

When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people
thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that
thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth
is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.



http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

[1] Assuming that there are any frogs left by then.



Funny, Asimov's professors must have taught him the same false history
that I was taught at college. There's much evidence that medieval
scholars did not believe the earth was flat.



Where does it say that he thought that _medieval_ scholars did not 
believe the earth was flat?

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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Dale Marvin via Python-list]

On 9/14/16 12:20 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

On Wednesday 14 September 2016 16:54, Rustom Mody wrote:


everything we know will be negated in 5-50-500 years


I'm pretty sure that in 5, 50, 500 or even 5000 years, the sun will still rise
in the east, water will be wet, fire will burn, dogs will have mammary glands
and frogs[1] won't, and the square root of 100 will still be 10.

Isaac Asimov once wrote:

When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people
thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that
thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth
is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.



http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

[1] Assuming that there are any frogs left by then.



Funny, Asimov's professors must have taught him the same false history 
that I was taught at college. There's much evidence that medieval 
scholars did not believe the earth was flat.




Dale
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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Lawrence D’Oliveiro]

On Wednesday, September 14, 2016 at 6:54:39 PM UTC+12, Rustom Mody wrote:
> Yet we remain cocksure of our assumtions inspite of the repeated data
> that everything we know will be negated in 5-50-500 years

Let’s see, 500 years ago, people knew
* That the world is round, and how to measure its radius to within a third of a 
percent of the modern value
* That the square root of 2 cannot be represented as an exact ratio of two 
integers
* That objects float in water because their density is lower than that of water
* That the optimum shape for a load-bearing arch is a catenary
* That blood in the human body has to take the long way round--through the 
lungs--to get from one side of the heart to the other
* That Roman numerals are a stupid way to do calculations.

Have any of these been disproved yet? I’m not up with all these “there is no 
objective reality, everything is relative” ideas as yet...
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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wednesday 14 September 2016 16:54, Rustom Mody wrote:

> everything we know will be negated in 5-50-500 years


I'm pretty sure that in 5, 50, 500 or even 5000 years, the sun will still rise 
in the east, water will be wet, fire will burn, dogs will have mammary glands 
and frogs[1] won't, and the square root of 100 will still be 10.

Isaac Asimov once wrote:

When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people
thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that
thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth
is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.



http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm





[1] Assuming that there are any frogs left by then.

-- 
Steven
git gets easier once you get the basic idea that branches are homeomorphic 
endofunctors mapping submanifolds of a Hilbert space.

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Re: Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Rustom Mody]

On Wednesday, September 14, 2016 at 10:52:48 AM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> (Unlike *our* divine revelation, which is clearly the truth, the whole truth, 
> and nothing but the truth, *their* divine revolution is illusion, error and 
> lies. All of the gods are myth and superstition, except for the One True God 
> that conveniently has revealed himself to us rather than our enemies, who are 
> pagans and heretics the lot of them.)

The piquant situation of being human is that 20/20 vision is always available
— at least as hindsight.

The bible more of less describes the world as a few hundred kms east/west
of Eden.
By most modern accounts this is wrong.
So were the authors fools?
Would you or I have done better?

Newton painstakingly calculated the age of the universe to be
about 6000 years BC by counting biblical generations.
Questions similar to the above

Amerigo Vespucci asked if the wondrous animals he saw in the new world
were on Noah's ark.
Was he a religious nut?
Was he even specially religious?
Or just functioning under the pervasive assumptions of his age?


These seem like rhetorical questions.
Yet we remain cocksure of our assumtions inspite of the repeated data
that everything we know will be negated in 5-50-500 years

Lord Kelvin said that physics was a closed project -- everything had been
discovered.. Just a few universal constants needed to be measured to increased
accuracy
This was before relativity, quantum physics, stellar spectroscopy etc etc

And then Max Planck discovered (the precursors to) quantum physics
And he remained a staunch classicist his whole life
Wishing and believing that vile genie he had unwittingly unleashed would somehow
or other be re-bottled

And Knuth wept that the CS that he largely created is historicized
in a different sense than he envisaged:
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of-donald-knuth/abstract

My dear gpa to the end of his life would say:
“You guys can keep believing and worshipping who you like
For me the greatest is Socrates who said: ‘The one thing of which I am
100% certain is that I do not know.’ ”
-- 
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Oh gods can we get any more off-topic *wink* [was Re: [Python-ideas] Inconsistencies]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Monday 12 September 2016 12:26, Chris Angelico wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 12:04 PM, Lawrence D’Oliveiro
>  wrote:
>> On Monday, September 12, 2016 at 1:11:39 PM UTC+12, Chris Angelico wrote:
>>> I have some _extremely_ strong views about absolutes (they come from the
>>> Creator of the Universe) ...
>>
>> By “Universe” do you mean “everything that exists”? So if the Creator
>> exists, then the Creator, too, must be part of the Universe.
>>
>> So whoever created the Universe also created the Creator...
> 
> No, God isn't part of the universe, any more than an author is part of
> his novel.

Tell that to Dante Alighieri.

Some more recent examples include Stephen King and Philip K Dick.

But in any case, a novel is not "everything that exists", unlike the universe. 
The maker of a sandwich is not part of the sandwich, but the universe has the 
boot-strap problem that the maker of the universe has to be part of the 
universe as well.

In any case, even if we *define* the "the universe" in a more limited fashion 
("just this solar system", "just this galaxy", "just the visible part of the 
universe", "the entire multi-verse except for the bit the maker lives in") and 
so exclude the maker, that doesn't imply anything else about the maker. We 
don't even know whether it is necessarily sentient, let alone someone/something 
benevolent that we should be taking moral absolutes from.

Perhaps our universe is a mere side-effect or by-product of some purely 
unconscious action: our universe is the pearl to some interdimensional oyster. 
Maybe we're a simulation in a computer, run by the inter-dimensional equivalent 
of Sheldon from "Big Bang Theory". The idea that the maker of the universe is 
necessarily benevolent AND competent isn't obviously true: if it were, life 
would probably be much easier and more pleasant. On the other hand, the 
evidence doesn't support the idea that the maker of the universe is *actively* 
malevolent either -- unless It, or They, simply haven't noticed us yet. Perhaps 
the gods do slumber in R'lyeh.

But for the sake of the argument, let's agree that the universe needs a maker, 
but the maker doesn't. What follows logically from those (presumably) facts?

We don't know if the maker is necessarily sentient; even if the maker is 
sentient, we don't know if it is aware of us; even if the maker is aware of us, 
we don't know if it is benevolent or malevolent or merely indifferent; even if 
benevolent, we don't know if it is benevolent towards individuals, personally, 
rather than towards creation overall; even if personal, we don't know what it 
is capable of doing (I can create a sandwich, but that doesn't mean I can stop 
it from growing old and stale and eventually rotting); even if capable, we 
don't know if it is motivated to do anything for us; even if motivated, we 
don't know if the maker is comprehensible to the human mind; even if 
comprehensible, we don't know if our ideas of what the maker must be like are 
correct.

There is an awfully long leap from the reality of "the universe exists" to any 
of the of Atum/Ptah/El/Coatlicue/Ranginui/Vishnu/Yahweh/Pangu/Waheguru etc., 
regardless of which one you pick.

(Unlike *our* divine revelation, which is clearly the truth, the whole truth, 
and nothing but the truth, *their* divine revolution is illusion, error and 
lies. All of the gods are myth and superstition, except for the One True God 
that conveniently has revealed himself to us rather than our enemies, who are 
pagans and heretics the lot of them.)




-- 
Steven
git gets easier once you get the basic idea that branches are homeomorphic 
endofunctors mapping submanifolds of a Hilbert space.

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