h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I heard the rest of it. Enhhh!

The radio show has no futher info. The guest is in Tibet with rich clients, I assume, teaching all about Tibettan prayer chimes. His staff doesn't care.

INSCOM doesn't appear to want to converse with the civilians.

So, I put in a freedom of information act request with the NSA.

Who knows?



Barton

Dear Barton...

I'm back. Please go immediately to my personal space and read my new frount page 'About Playboy Reporter' very carefully.
After you have read it there are two external links you will need to investigate. By clicking on the name 'Chris Langan' you
will be taken to a short profile of that fellow. This profile establishes Chris's credentials. By clicking on the 'Absolute Truth' link you will be taken to the revelant essay by Chris Langan on this topic. I think you need to read this essay very carefully and adjust your
world-view accordingly.

After that you will also need to read my journal entry 'The story the Theatre Prof, The Multiple Personality, and the Playboy'

Yours,
'The Lump' known as Playboy

I'm glad you're back.

I will, of course, check out those links and articles.

Look for a response, if one is called for, on your page.

Barton

I have to believe that someone will rescue this thread from where it was left dangling last night. However, that person is not going to be me, at 2:30am (and probably not for at least 36 hours. Sorry about that!

I will come back and salvage, although I am optimistic that someone will post non-personal challenges before then. And by that time, I may have figured out something witty to say...

x x Fenny (fatigued)

Fenny

This thread is not dead and I am not gone.

I'd love to see whatever you might choose to post here. What Playboy Reporter posted does not constitute a contribution to this thread since all he wanted was to point to an article offline that might be interesting to tackle if there was someone online to competant to present the argument.

Having read the argument I can say that it attempts to put forward the idea that there must be absolute truth and in order to prove that the author makes some interesting definitions and presents some logical tautologies which he admits and brags are tuatologies and states that these tautologies prove that there must be absolute truth because otherwise they would not be tautologies. His language is persuasive but his logic is flawed. I invite you to view the referenced article and analyze it yourself. If you are taken with the idea then we can consider it together. Since I feel the concept does not work, particularly in the way it is presented and with the assumptions behind it

We would probably need to consider the library paradox here, an illustration of Gödel's incompleteness theorem, which might be fun to take up anyway since it does apply to the search for any kind of truth.

Barton

i thought i should bring this up just because this is under the subject of religion
in the case of christianity 1+1+1=1 ie. father+son+holy spirit=god
although they are sepperate they also the same. 3 in 1. ive never fully understood it but i guess thats where faith comes in. you have to believe without proof. or absolute truth.
i have always thought that there must be something that is definite. that there is no possibility of it not being true. but after reading this, i realized that there is no such thing as impossible. just highly unlikely. we all have accepted that the world is round and we revolve around the sun. and that is most likely true. but there is still a tiny possibility that it isnt. maybe its just a big consperisy, or maybe god is just playing a trick on us. no one knows for sure. but when u thik about it, who really cares? what difference is it going to make if you acually do know that the world is really a cube? or the sun doesnt relly exist? or maybe 1+1=42! maybe that really is the question of the answer to life the universe and everything!! what difference does it make to u??
ur born, you die and in between you reside on earth for a while. and who knows, maybe ull find a cure for cancer, or ull save the starving children in third world countries, or maybe ull accomplish nothing at all. in the end it wont make much of a difference
wow i jumped around alot
sorry about that, i just had to get it all out.

So, having just jumped around a lot, you are now officially a philosopher.

Would you like a reaction to your philosophy as it appears to realate to the death of Truth? Or, perhaps, you want to amplify your thoughts into something more coherent. Or, perhaps, you just want to know the way to the nearest pub.

I can discuss the Trinity in pseudo-mathematic terminology but ultimately I think your assesment of the whole thing as a mystery that requires and demands faith is correct. I do not discuss faith here, it's too easy to offend many people.

Welcome.

Barton

Just because I promised to return - and I feel more awake than I did when I last posted here! Please accept any apologies for my references to Postings from pages back. I have a lot of catching up to do!

The Postings about Black Holes reminded me of a theoretical mess I became entangled with some years ago. If you hold a mirror up to the Earth (assuming a big enough mirror) you could see the present. If you begin to move the mirror away from the Earth, you still see the present until the mirror is out of sight. But if you could accelerate the mirror (assuming it could travel faster than light) you could investigate the past. In the first second it will reflect the 'now'; in the second second, it will reflect the image of the 'now' which left Earth a second ago; in other words, as it travels away from us at faster-than-light, it will reflect images from increasingly earlier times.

The explanation seemed clear to me, but doesn't take into account the factors that 1/ no one could ever get a mirror that big into space, let alone transport it at faster-than-light travel; and 2/ the reflections from the mirror, if the theory did stand up in practice, could never be seen by us, as they'd have to reach the observers on Earth. Not to mention point 3, which rewords the riddle for its own purpose: If an image reflects the past in a vacuum, and there's nobody there to see, does the reflection show?

I thought I could carry on posting here, eternally, but I'm off until tomorrow...

x x Fenny

The issue about using the speed of light to see the past is most easily illustrated by the fact that the light by which we observe the nearest star to Earth left that star somewhat less than four years ago. In the same sense, light from stars farther away takes that much longer to reach us.

If we were to construct a focusing mirror (a telescope) large enough we could expect to collect enough light to be able to resolve details of what was happening around that star so long ago (if we discount distortion introduced by interstellar gasses and such.)

The interesting point is that that time which was so long ago is actually our present. If someone were to look back at us from that distant location at the same moment that we were looking at hir, they would not see us because they would be looking into our past.

When Einstein first published his papers on relativity, it was said that simultaneity was meaningless in a relative universe.

Later, quantum mechanics suggested that simultaneity was was a normal part of the way things had to work.

More recently, Stephen Hawking published a paper that stated, in essence, that in a universe that permitted such a thing as black holes and quantum uncertainty that absolutely nothing could be declared to be impossible and he was not speaking in hyperbole. He was describing precisely what his math told him. Literally anything is possible and there are no laws of the universe that cannot be broken.

Math and physics seem to suggest that at the center of black hole there is no way to predict what laws, if any, will apply. Hawking showed that contrary to earlier thinking things do, in fact must, come out of black holes. Hawking, himself, said that those things could be simple particles or complete leatherbound ten volume works of your favorite poet including verses s/he hasn't finished yet or even another copy of you. There is no way to say which or when or how often. That's just the way things are.

Add to that the liklihood, right now, that our whole universe *is*, in fact, at the center of a huge black hole, where there is no way to predict what can happen, and you may begin to understand just what scientists are saying when they say that what we think is reality may just be a temporary, local condition with no guarantee that it has always been what we think it is today or that it will be tomorrow.

The ability to KNOW based on anything we think we know does not follow. This undermines the entire basic belief structure behind science.

There are likely not any scientists out there who will expect the Sun to rise from another horizon (and that includes Northern and Southern) tomorrow because, as far as we know, they haven't done so any time in the past. (Though there is this story about the Sun standing still in the sky for a real long time ) The believe that everything will go on as it has gone on, at least, since science starting keeping track.

The difference is that, now, the scientist who thinks must realize that s/he believes these things because s/he has *faith* that things will continue as they have, *not* because of any necessary quality of the universe.

Jerry Pournelle, the famed hard SF writer, has said, after hearing Hawking lecture on this subject, that if we can have faith in the universe, it is not so great a step to having faith that there is purpose to the universe. Yet he made it seem, that for him, this last step was still beyond his ability to take.

My point here is tied up with the necessary paradox that if we can know nothing definite about the universe, isn't what we know now something definite?

If this is a real paradox then it indicates that there is something very wrong with logic, because we cannot use logic to disprove something about the world. Logic is a construct of man and man is a product of the universe. Let us keep the horse firmly before the cart.

If there is something wrong with logic itself and not with postulates and assumptions to which we apply logic, then how can we trust anything derived from logic?

Doesn't the thinking behind math derive from logic?

Didn't Hawking use math to prove his statement?

But, doesn't that prove that Hawking was right?

To me a paradox is not a proof or a disproof. It is an indication that something is wrong with the system. In this case the most logical place to look for the problem is in the fact that the paradox is based on a non-mathematical restatement of a mathematical proof.

That is to say that either, we have a translation error or there is no way to say what has been said without using the math that proves it. These may sound the same but the first condition might be correctable, the second is not.

If the first is true, then there is some hope that someone will find a way to describe what Hawking is saying in such a way that we can understand it fully. If the second is true then only if we learn to use the math can we understand.

If we can understand, then we should be able to explain it. (This is one of things I consider to be a fundamental proof of understanding) Yet, if it is only understandable through math, then what is the difference between that and Truths that are only understandable if one has 'seen the light'?

Those of us who have not 'seen the light' must either reject the 'vision' or must take it on faith. (Well, that does ignore the few who are frantically trying to find a way to 'see the light' or learn the math, as the case may be.)

Since I have never been a great mathematician, I have always been a faith holder in the realm of science. Sure, I learned a few of the simple scientist tricks (like getting eggs into and out of milk bottles) and how to punch buttons on the Holy Calculator (to twelve 'significant' figures) but I have always simply chosen to accept the faith that answers more questions. (Thank you Saint Ockham)

I have never been an Orthodox Scientist though, so I am not particularly troubled by the idea that anything could happen. That is part of the reason why I started this thread on the Death of Truth.

I really have nothing more to say right now, so I'll stop.

Barton

I can't type much or for long (that's can't as in "not able while at work", as well as "never going to be as prolific as you" ) but I have a small question to prompt you further. Apologies if it's not very relevant!

When you say "to punch buttons on the Holy Calculator (to twelve 'significant' figures)" - what do you mean? I understood the idea of the egg into the milkbottle (would you burn a match underneath, to suck it in?) and I also am neither physicist nor chemist and so a layman looking at the universe with interest. I won't give the universe a capital initial, but now is not the time to examine my beliefs, which I imagine I'll explain later!

x x Fenny (abbreviatedly)

I was in a Philo class, 101 no less a few years back, and they were describing the thoughts of Descartes. The one in particular had to do with the concept of how do we really know that we are here? How do we know that we exist at all? This would seem to be a pretty fundamental truth because most of us, as wet behind the ears freshman were not ready to accept the fact that maybe we really didn't exist. They went through his argument, namely what would you use to define your exisitence? Sensory perception? Well what about vertigo then? This kind of thinking spins off into all kinds of areas, like what would you define as reality? and how could you be sure that what you are experiencing is the same as me? The way they explained this to me was with a question, right at the begining of the class, what if you were a brain in vat, and you were stimulated in such a way that you thought you really and truly were existing? How would you know any different?

I was reminded of this when I was reading Barton's piece there when he said,"The difference is that, now, the scientist who thinks must realize that s/he believes these things because s/he has *faith* that things will continue as they have, *not* because of any necessary quality of the universe."

I particularly liked your idea that logic must have something wrong with it fundamentally if we ever come across a paradox. It seems we all fall back on our own personal faiths quite a bit, and I've found the pursuit of logical thinking quite tedious sometimes. I mean, was Spock all that fun to be around? But, rather than being a blithering irrational cretin I at least make the effort. That said, I find quite a few logical ideas that really conflict with my own personal convictions. Sometimes a paradox, sometimes just a paradox with my own personal thinking. I guess what I'm really trying to say is that the line between logic and convictions is so fine sometimes, it is easy to be misled, and the cart sometimes winds up in front of the horse.

As always Barton, you've challenged a conviction of mine. Thus the sermon. I thank you, as you've unwittingly (perhaps wittingly?) been a source of many different lines of thinking that I normally wouldn't have thought of on my own, or even challenged my convictions.

Thnx

Fenny,

Without wasting words here, you have the right idea about the milk bottle. (There is a thread in Peer Reveiew on Boiled Eggs where I actually discussed that process)

The "Holy Calculator (to twelve 'significant' figures)" is the scientific equivalent of a what a cross is to a Christian in the sense that it stands for the faith that all things may be analyzed, studied, and understood.

The "'significant'" is just a passing reference to the imposibility of achieving that sort of accuracy from initial meaurements in the real world, which will not be that precise. People who are trained to do calculations are warned to remember that the significance of their results is limited by the least accurate factor in their calculations. (Instead of resolving calculations to 12, 64, 128 or even more places. Calculator technology should have provided a mode that automatically restricts the accuracy of the result based on the number of places in the input data; the rules for these matters are very straight forward. But, instead, the calculator manufacurers brag that their calculations are accurate to last place in twelve displayed digits (or howevever many), which likely is true because the calculator is compensating for its own inacuracy with internal rounding mechanisms that you can't see.

Here's a simple test. Get out your caclulator -- I don't care how much it cost. (RPN users, you know how to cope.) Divide 1 by 3 and your display will read 0.33333333333 or something similar. In your head, you can mutliply this value times 3 and get 0.99999999999. Now using the calculator press the 'times' button then the '3' button then 'equal.'

On most modern calculators the result in the display reads '1' or perhaps '1.00000000000.' At this point either the previous display lied or the calculator must be wrong. Or, both.

If the display currently reads 0.99999999999 or the equivalent with fewer '9's, then your calculator isn't lying to you on the display but it still can't divide 1 by 3

Now press the 'minus' button then the '1' button then 'equals.'

No matter what result you have at this point you should be aware that your caclulator is deliberately misleading you into believing that the figures you read are actually the figures it uses to calculate. The results it reports are not the results it uses. Of course, there are perfectly sound reasons why it does what it does, but most of us don't understand them.

This problem is akin to having asked someone what the time is and having been told the time to the minute, second, and hundredth of a second; more detail then you need. Then that person tells you that s/he hasn't set the watch for a couple of months and the watch runs a bit fast every month because it wasn't fully calibrated when it was made. And, after all that, it ends up that all you really wanted to know was if it was past 5:00 PM yet.

Lucien,

It was witting only in the sense that I was hoping to stir peoples minds a bit. I have no idea what things I have stirred, but hopefully the source and center of these stirrings are the thoughts about the things I have mentioned. I may use your 'sermon' here later.

Thank you both

Barton

Barton - Thanks for the calculator explanation (the real one, I'd more or less worked out the relevance of "Holy" beside "twelve" but this isn't a faith thread.) You can get a similar and amusing effect by playing with a well-known manufacturer's spreadsheet.

Type in to the first two cells "1.49", then use an ADD function to determine that the sum of the top two cells is "1.98". Now format the three cells to give 0 decimal places. The result, rather amusingly, is 1 + 1 = 3.

Thank you...

x x Fenny (for fun)

Barton

I wrote the entry that made Barton return an eight-character response! Do I get to be on the Front Page?

Fenny

No

B