Einsteins last years with Godel were ignored for 50 years, UNTIL NOW! We still stand at the frontier

Originally posted by ModuliReality doesn't care about your hangups or misunderstandings.

My new rule in this science forum is to give at least one chance for a person who replies to anything I say with an ad hom or argument from authority a final chance; to either admit you were wrong, in which case I will speak to you in future and gain great respect for you as a person who admits he's sometimes wrong, or for you re-engage in the discussion that elucidated such a personally demeaning implication on my comprehension of the issue at hand, giving you a chance to explain in a scientifically reasoned way to make your point.

Your choice.

reply to post by Moduli


Can you explain with what instruments we measure something to be "infinity"?

All of my training has showed these to be "placeholders" for mathematical equations, not measurements.

I think we would all be very interested to know what measuring stick has the "infinity" gradation on it :-)

reply to post by Moduli


Damn. Of all the users I have seen on ATS, you come out swinging with more vitriol and intellectual snobbishness than any other. Congrats on your, um....achievement.

nm

Thank you OP.

That for me was fascinating reading and reinforces my own ideas about the world around us and the intuitive entities that inhabit this world.

You have inspired me to do some further research.

Originally posted by Moduli
Yes, all of the things I said. E.g., the conductivity of a superconductor is measured to be equal to infinity.

Sorry for above comment, I only read the last line of your previous post somehow

Conductivity is quantifiable as its core. There is a finite number of values you can determine by the charge of each electron in the system. Its a relative thing. Your idea of infinity in this case it the electrons reaching the speed of light as the resistivity drops to nearly zero. Something they do every day in a vacuum.

Originally posted by ZeuZZ
My new rule in this science forum ...

My old rule is to laugh at people who ignore explicit examples of things they claim are impossible. You claim infinities aren't real things, I give examples of scientist measuring things, and your response is that you refuse to believe them.

Originally posted by HunkaHunka
Can you explain with what instruments we measure something to be "infinity"?

The same ones we use to measure finite things. There's really no difference between infinity and any other number. It's just that things are usually arranged, for convenience, to have values in the neighborhood of zero, and not in the neighborhood of infinity.

The reason is of course that it's very easy to tell small numbers apart, but logarithmically hard to tell large numbers apart. (It also of course takes more data to store big ones than small ones!)

So usually things are arranged to take place in neighborhoods of zero, formally using the homeomorphism between the intervals [0, a) and [0, infinity), where a < infinity. And the number a usually sets some characteristic scale, or is a choice of units, etc.

As an explicit example of this, velocity is defined so values are on the interval [0, c), where c is the speed of light. Rapidity (which is not usually used in the same context) is identical to velocity, but takes values on the range [0, infinity).

Sometimes it is convenient not to, such as when quantities are reciprocally related, and one of them can be in a neighborhood of zero, or when it's useful to test if something is "very large" instead of "very small."

All of my training has showed these to be "placeholders" for mathematical equations, not measurements.

All digits in numbers are placeholders, so that's why it feels like one!

reply to post by Moduli


More to the theme...


Zero Sum

reply to post by Moduli


Can you give a specific example and instrument used to measure infinity?

I want you to show me the finite measuring stick that has 0 at one end and infinity at the other.

Originally posted by HunkaHunka
reply to post by Moduli

 

Can you give a specific example and instrument used to measure infinity?

Yes, for example, the one I've mentioned three times in three posts in this thread.

edit: www.amazon.com...=sr_1_5?s=automotive&ie=UTF8&qid=1341726687&sr=1-5&keywords=digital+ ammeter

OP this was one of the most interesting threads I've ever read on ATS. Superb job, this is what ATS should be. This place has gone so far down hill lately but your thread just kicked it up several levels in one fell swoop. I appreciate the effort and research that must have went into this... but quite frankly, I think this discussion is focusing on infinity too much and the more important concepts - limits of logic and the nature of uncertainty - are being ignored.

I can however, give you some examples of things that are infinite. Space and time. We have never found an edge to the Universe and the newest research and measurements indicates the Universe is in fact infinite. Time is also clearly infinite, to state the history and future of reality is confined to one finite amount of time is completely irrational and illogical on all levels... I hope you can see why. However, I could always be wrong...

Originally posted by Moduli

Yes, for example, the one I've mentioned three times in three posts in this thread.

edit: www.amazon.com...=sr_1_5?s=automotive&ie=UTF8&qid=1341726687&sr=1-5&keywords=digital+ ammeter

edit on 8-7-2012 by Moduli because: (no reason given)

Hmm good form in a way But that is using a limited part of the EM spectrum. Is it creating an electric discharge to test for volatges? If so thats a bit different and quatifiable, even if it does release some frequencies of the EM spectrum.

EM fields and continuums like that are technically infinite, though, if you ignore the wave/particle duality aspect and presume its a wave.



See the little green line? Thats all you can see of the universe, and since the scale is logarithmic that green line in reality would be about the size of a hair

Roughly the visible region is 300 nm to 650nm. Which is about 0.000000000000001% of the EM specrum you see as visible light Crazy world.

The actual electromagnetic spectrum goes off as far as you want in both directions but its hard to be sure when we get to such limits - there are electromagnetic waves with wavelengths as small as you want, and others as large as you want in a sense.

So really, the paradox is that we see 0% when considered a wave.

First: Many thanks to OP.

At high school I was baffled by role of math in our life. Science seemed too far detached from from personal perception. Slowly I realized that it is not problem of science but problem of bad science - specifically positivistic approach to science. Positivism is mindset of second half of 19th century, was bit undermined by quantum mechanics and developments in mathematics, but still survive especially among non-scientists.

Positivism somehow project mathematics INTO universe. Equations and functions are real properties or even essence of things and events. In my opinion logic is faculty of live which is in fact projected ONTO universe. For me is mathematics only 100% inter-subjective language. It is perfect way how to describe some sorts of phenomena in better way than "natural" language offer. But other sorts of phenomena are out of the field of mathematics and are more effectively described through other types of languages. Analogy from mathematics itself: it is easier and much more elegant to grasp surface of sphere by non-euclidean set of axioms. It is similar with "joy" which is better "described" in actual performance of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" than by plain musical notation - mathematical description. If you will try to describe joy by biochemical means, you will fail miserably even more - those processes are not joy, only some physical manifestations of joy.

Similar (if not essentially same) problem as Cantor and Godel occupied mind of other logician of that time: Edmund Husserl. He later took philosophical approach and developed method of inquiry called phenomenology. His task was to establish solid base of philosophy by "hunting down" (thanks Mr. Zizek) "subject" - in psychological terms "conscious self". He failed for reasons described in almost same year by Godel.

Great thread.

Sounds a lot like Werner Heisenberg's The Uncertainty Principle.

AAC

Gödel also was wrestling with some finding means of knowledge which are not based on experience and on mathematical reasoning but on some sort of intuition. The frustration for Gödel was getting anyone to understand him.

reply to post by ZeuZZ


I think that I can help.
You see, "5" is not just a number , but also a word: FIVE.
So then, take the phrase: "One,Three,Five,Seven, Nine"" and anagram it.
One of the anagrams is:"See "non-even five" therein"
That is to say that there are five non-even (odd) numbers in the phrase.
And also that the number "five" itself can be seen in the group of words.
Yep, this takes it to a whole new level...............................

reply to post by ZeuZZ


There exists a society—far more advanced than our technologically and morally—which has rejected two-value logic not only in the abstract but also on the level of everyday thought. For the members of that society, it would be unthinkable to insist on the flawless nature of any ideology. They create and develop theories but would never insist that any one of them—or even all of them together—could ever explain the workings of the real world. The society has demonstrated scientifically the existence of what we would call the soul. Some extracts from the material:

“We deny the Earth principle of non-contradiction (as stated by Aristotle) according to which a statement can only be true or false.

“Such a line of reasoning requires that we also refuse the principle you name contradiction. In all cases we respect what you call the principle of identity.

“For normal activities of everyday life, this artificial, bipolar or bivalent principle, is valid and useful (you do not either make relativistic corrections on the mass of goods when making simple purchases). But when we wish to speculate about transcendent values, or when we try to study concepts which you would call gnostic, ontological, physical, biological, theological... this principle is completely inadequate. How can we expose the metaphysical basis of our language to you if our "respective "languages are based on contradictory logical principles?

“"Things ", the objects of my mental processes "are" probably not as I perceive them, nor as I include them in a process through a complex rationalizing mechanism. Causal relations are relations "within me " processed according to an order laid out by such mechanisms. A plant is grasped by "me " with characteristics which represent its real "attributes." "My" sensory impression which arrives at the level of the conscious is undoubtedly an illusion due to external factors. Thus the color will be the psychological impression of an electromagnetic stimulation and the concept of mass in my conscience is very far from being able to identify with the physical function which generates it. Up to now, such ideas follow the thought of the theorists of the Earth.

“But, even if "beings "(things) masked themselves as they reached our Me, and even if we could not know how they really are, would their essence "external to me" be constant? I can be unaware of how a molecule of camphor which stimulates my sense of smell causing a conscious feeling "is" exactly, but each time I perceive such a smell, can I be sure that it is only an attribute of camphor, and not an illusion or a hallucination? Expressed differently: Even if I did not know how the universe "is" exactly; is it "there", dynamic or static, changing or constant, generating ideas which are reflected in my consciousness without my "ME "being able to change its essence, its own "BEING "? Our answer is no.

“We, the beings of Ummo, with a definite neurocortical and mental structure (you people of the Earth, we of the planet Ummo and all similar beings in the universe) can never attain the truth, the essence of the universe, not because such a universe"does not exist "or because there is a barrier preventing us, but because in thinking of a being, we modify its essence (a coarse comparison will illustrate what we mean): when a physicist of your planet claims to observe a micrometallographic test-tube to note its optical properties, he causes a deterioration in the process by using light for the observation. This is an insurmountable obstacle since the observation itself alters the true nature of what is being observed. Something similar occurs with the being: that it "is" from the moment it is not thought of and that the idea of it is not in my mind.

“As soon as we, thinking beings, reach towards the thing, it neither no longer [ IS] nor [ IS NO LONGER ] (here your logic does not allow us an to adequately express this concept).

“When it comes to analysing the properties of space, the normal postulates of mathematical logic, which is familiar to you and to us besides, are not useful to us. As you know, formal logic accepts the criterion you name "law of of non-contradiction" (according to which any proposal is necessarily true or false). In our mathematics of physical space this postulate must be rejected. One then has recourse to a type of multivalent logic that our specialists call Logical Tetravalent Mathematics according to which any proposal can adopt four values indifferently:
- AIOOYAA (TRUE - CORRECT)
- AIOOYEEDOO (FALSE, ABSURD)
- AIOOYA AMMIE (can be translated: True outside the Universe, i.e. outside of conventionally understood dimensions)
- AIOOYAU (untranslatable in Earth language).”

Source:
- www.ummo-sciences.org...
- www.ummo-sciences.org...

Excellent work Zuess.

This is part 1 of the documentary "Dangerous Knowledge", it's about this very subject.

reply to post by ZeuZZ

Thanks for reading

No indeed, thank you for writing this.

Been through once and going to crunch each part again, and probably again as more thoughts keep coming to mind. I have traveled (more like stumbled) through this story before in other forms and forums, and still find the power of these great minds intoxicating and more thrilling than any sport event, extravaganza or whatever. Your presentation and collation of the information is excellent and clear.

Just want to pick up on a few points for now

Yes, one realises sooner or later that the only certainty is uncertainty. Indeed this hole is neither square nor round so either peg works equally well, or poorly. It is up to us to learn how to work in an environment of uncertainty**. I wonder how much time and brain-power Einstein "wasted" pursuing the wrong result and how much he could have contributed had he adopted a more probabilistic viewpoint.

Peculiar as Gödel was his genius was undimmed.

probably helped him, being peculiar. As I have stated before:

If you are wondering by now; yes! Like Alonso Quijana, I too find it is useful to “lay(s) down the melancholy burden of sanity.”

Sanity (and pedantic logic) can be a burden to free thought. Indeed, Gödel fought a battle with reason, logic and maths and probably found refuge in a touch of madness. Faced with concepts like Turing’s Halting Problem, kind of like a dog chasing its tail, when is there ever resolution of any question? Enormously frustrating unless we accept a degree of uncertainty as part of the result.

and

Gödel was trying to show what one might call mathematical intuition of the kind we see in the brains of Synesthesia Savants such as Daniel Tammet in current times,

Is it not encouraging that the two conditions, Autism and Synesthesia, are being viewed by many in a different light now as these conditions are getting explored in more depth? I have always been of the opinion that perhaps they can even be gifts rather that afflictions if used to their best advantage, with the full acceptance that we do not all have to be the same and fit into the "accepted" social straight-jacket.

That specific aspect of intuitive thinking (probably free of logic and mathematics) is difficult to imagine. How the mind must relate patterns and other who knows whats, to reveal an answer that emerges instantly .....????? Truly stunning and what an insight into the power of the brain that we could develop only IF....

Thank you for the opportunity to further explore this really interesting subject.

** logos for my various endeavours always include a circle, an enso, that is never closed - so as to signal that there is always an opportunity to exclude or include ...... Do you know people who enjoy movies that have no clearcut ending and leave lots of loose strings lying around? Not many of them around - both the people and films I mean.

Originally posted by Moduli

Originally posted by HunkaHunka
reply to post by Moduli

 

Can you give a specific example and instrument used to measure infinity?

Yes, for example, the one I've mentioned three times in three posts in this thread.

edit: www.amazon.com...=sr_1_5?s=automotive&ie=UTF8&qid=1341726687&sr=1-5&keywords=digital+ ammeter

edit on 8-7-2012 by Moduli because: (no reason given)

That's a seriously cool looking multi-meter. I rarely deal with electonics anymore but I am tempted to buy one of those and take something apart!

Isn't the problem that in order to prove something you always have to go one level up? One level up in abstraction that is. I believe Einstein also said something to that extent.

So as long was we can go one level up (because we still understand what we're doing and we have enough computing power), what Gödel has stated isn't that bad?