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15 Dec 2005 12:15:27 UTC
Topic 190378
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Welcome to the Einstein Cafe, Have a drink some food and great conversations! Boys please lift the seat!
All is free here so no tipping!
If you need an Avatar, I'll create one for you!
Captain.Avatar-[at]-Gmail.com
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Thank you Captain! That was very prompt!
Welcome to the Einstein Cafe everybody. Where we await Chipper's explanation of the non-existence of time and giant butterflies.
Bit to early for alcohol, so I'll have a coffee to start.
Physics is for gurls!
Good Morning, Es99, Captain
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Good Morning, Es99, Captain Avatar!
Think I'll just draw a cuppa and get a little wakie-wakie.
microcraft
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" - MLK
Well, it's almost bed time
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Well, it's almost bed time for me on the other side of the world, so I'll take a nice hot cup of camomille (oh god I can't spell) tea.
Kathryn
Kathryn :o)
Einstein@Home Moderator
Hi, all! Yes,
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Hi, all!
Yes, explanations... Is that what I said I had? :) I have questions, about solutions, about maths, and especially about science and the philosophy of methodological materialism that defines, guides and constrains it.
I look at some of the math for QED and see that the function to describe an electron is a complex number waveform. Sure, I can square that and get the probability for it's location in spacetime, but does the electron exist any more than there is a solution for finding the square root of minus one? Is the electron real? Technically, the sqrt(-1) is not real...
I look at the some of the math for GR and see that anything with a velocity greater than the speed of light also gains a complex number, but in this case the interpretation is that it doesn't happen.
I make a post intending to elicit positive responses, which is to say the intent to offend did not exist. And yet, an offense manifested, if only briefly. How did it become real? Can it be said that any maths regarding social interaction must necessarily bear a strong resemblance to the maths of QED?
Bigger butterflies, Es99. I don't recall the original context, but to me, "Here's to bigger butterflies" ~ "Here's to progress". Very nice theme, BTW, for a first gif. :)
Ahh, I begin to see where you
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Ahh, I begin to see where you are coming from.
All waves can be decribed using complex numbers, does that mean that the complex part exists in a way that we cannot perceive? The math describes a model of the universe that works up to a point. Mathematics is a human construct that is limited by the minds that created it. It can help with our understanding of the universe, but it is not the universe. How can we even know if we have explained something when we can only collect data though our own limited senses and model it using a tool that we ourselves created?
As to the offence supposedly committed. Who can say why the offendee felt offended? We can only guess at motives. If those thus offended cannot explain the nature of the offence, has an offence really been committed, or is it just the probability of an offence? With no collapse of the 'offence' wavefunction we cannot assign an particular Eigenvalue to such and offence.
In other words, I wouldn't worry about it. :-)
More tea anyone?
Physics is for gurls!
Could anyone point me to the
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Could anyone point me to the exit door? I feel....funny, and the walls are doing wierd things.
Tea? When did we change from coffee to tea? I can't..remember, maybe.
What kind of tea? Es99, have you been playing at silly chemistry games again? Never mind, I think I'll just go. Whoa whoa whoa, just a minute. A flash of cosmic insight, revelation, it's, it's....ah (sigh) gone now, from whence it came. Now what was I doing?
microcraft
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice" - MLK
Oh goodness me! I'm so
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Oh goodness me! I'm so sorry, I was trying to make Camomile tea as suggested by Kathryn and I must have taken the wrong tin down from the shelf.
You'd better go ask Alice what the doormouse said...
Physics is for gurls!
RE: You'd better go ask
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....It's strange, isn't it. You stand in the middle of a library and go aaaaagghhhh' and everyone just stares at you. But you do the same thing on an aeroplane, and everyone joins in......
I think that's what he said..
RE: Mathematics is a human
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What about the essence of maths? In another corner of the universe somewhere, we (most of us) have no trouble believing that the speed of light is the same there as it is here. What about the value of pi? Would an ET civilization there have a different name for pi? Most likely they would, but would they have a different value for pi? Ppshaw, tut tut tut, not hardly. :) Indeed, pi is abstract, unaffected by anything material, including strong gravitational fields, and even BH singularities can't touch pi. How can light possibly be a yardstick near such a region? Maths has no problem: the BH has a limit to its material grip that exists as a sphere, a sphere with special radius, the Schwarzschild radius. Hence the limit to the grip can't be fully known without knowing the value of pi, by whatever name. Does this mean that spacetime time is necessarily material, that it is curved so in a gravitational field?
Neither does human consciousness in any way affect the value pi, or the essence of what it is. So the point I'm trying to make is that if anything should manifest in nature that's material, then the essence of length, breadth, depth, and motion shall exist with it in a simultaneous and inextricable fashion, such that it will not exist but by the constraints of the essence of maths (not our expression or use of what we understand maths to be). Where did that come from? :) Am I the only one who sees an eternal, unchanging nature to (the essence of) maths?
C'mon, Michael! I think it's realistic to expect, along with many other intelligent folk, that the solution to scientific problems usually has an elegance to it, e.g., E = mc^2. Have a look at Intuitionism when you have a moment...
I'm implementing this into my pre-post checklist, anyway, just to be on the safe side. :)
Considering the spelling in
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Considering the spelling in the title I'm wondering exactly what you're trying to do here to the patrons, CA.
me-[at]-rescam.org