allpoints wrote:

a short video about Georg Cantor that may have some relevance here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eXifzGOfDA

the whole BBC show is also on youtube if this intrigues you...

Quick observations about this, larger response to your trenchant questions above it later.

1) Very interesting. The design for parsing out the infinity of a circle looks so much like the Hindu symbol for the same idea. (India gave us much of our mathematics but don't accuse me of supporting that religion, only remarking on the similarity.)

it's been around for a while, and religions have a habit of co-opting things...
Cantor however, formalized much about ∞s that no one did before him

F=ma was a big step forward from F=mv

no, i didn't post it to support my conclusion that much of what you have argued is essentially GoG based

i just thought you would find it interesting and informative - i know i did

here's something a little closer to one of your questions that you may find quite a bit more interesting: http://www.quantum-relativity.org/Relat … hanics.htm

enjoy!

a short video about Georg Cantor that may have some relevance here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eXifzGOfDA

the whole BBC show is also on youtube if this intrigues you...

Quick observations about this, larger response to your trenchant questions above it later.

1) Very interesting. The design for parsing out the infinity of a circle looks so much like the Hindu symbol for the same idea. (India gave us much of our mathematics but don't accuse me of supporting that religion, only remarking on the similarity.)

2) Newton was what we would call today a religious nut, whose primary goal was explaining the catastrophes of the Bible via scientific forms. (Again, not validating religion, just noting the similarity with Cantor.)

3) I suppose this is to support a god in the gaps thing. I may be wrong, but it also implies that one might possibly go insane when a materialistic, rational mind (in spite of religious constructs) tries to explain paradox. I have no religious constructs, but I admit I might be insane. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eXifzGOfDA

the whole BBC show is also on youtube if this intrigues you...

allpoints wrote:

cybert wrote:

This is a blustery screed. You fall once again on the fallacy of trying to define your opponent with terms you know. You are only talking to yourself. Would you like to calm down and try again?

some propositions are binary cyb

you can either address the central point, or not

either way is an answer

This is a much better answer, so please be patient and hear me out before you jump to response...

Indeed, you are completely correct, many if not most ideas, outside cultural questions, are binary. So by default, they require no debate. For instance ANY creation myth vs. Darwinian science. They are mutually exclusive, Darwin always wins. God vs. science is a dated concept, because science always wins. Where classical science fails in its process of discovering answers thru the scientific method is on certain crucial margins. For instance, classical science leaves us with two mutually exclusive questions regarding light:

Is it either A) a particle, or B) a wave?

Unfortunately, classical science gives us the following, Yes, it is a particle. Yes it is a wave, No, it is both or neither. Classical science has left us with either a binary where either both are true or we are asking the wrong question altogether. So how do we find an answer when all attempts lead us to A) more questions or B) we are asking the wrong question?

One physicist described the question as possibly like asking the political affiliation of a tuna sandwich, or is the number 5 married? Yet all modes of classical science present the same question: Is light a wave or a particle? The answer is always, yes, no, maybe, I don't know.

You say the question of paradox only applies to the microcosm, well the particle/wave question is one even the Greeks debated and you can see the paradox with an experiment you can do using some slatted cardboard and a flashlight in your livingroom.

Science tells us this: on certain paradoxical questions, reality is dependent on the observer. You are an observer, I am an observer, therefore your answer is as valid and rational as mine. This implies dualism, but I would remove the question of "eternal" or "soul." Neither my perception nor yours are eternal. But science insists upon the observer's perception, therefore it is perfectly reasonable that both you and I are both rationalists but arriving at different conclusions, yours more toward the material, mine more toward the paradoxical. They are not mutually exclusive.

Which one is right? Yes, no, maybe, I don't know...

thanks, cyb, for such a good answer

i'm left to wonder though, why pull the ripcord of spirituality when the answers of science aren't satisfactory? why do you think Zen, an approach which holds a 'Buddha Consciousness', is a valid approach to answering paradoxes?
sure, the double slit experiment reveals profound paradoxes, and Buddha is a "Way Of Enlightenment", but that little metaphor seems way too cheesy, and throwing things off on metaphysics seems just about as unsatisfactory to me

i don't want to sound too sanguine here, but hard questions do get solved by non supra-empirical methods Grisha Perleman's recent solution to the Poincare Conjecture using Hamilton's Ricci flow is a fine example
(i also have to admire how Perleman did it for himself, and turned down the Fields Medal and its million dollar prize and all the notoriety that goes with it....)

but my point is, why hold a paradox as a ding an sich? it sees a little suspect to a strong skeptic like myself to abandon empiric methods and revert to faith in a 700 year old mind game with a lot of empiric holes when we know there's always gonna be a bleeding edge or a wall out there

cybert wrote:

This is a blustery screed. You fall once again on the fallacy of trying to define your opponent with terms you know. You are only talking to yourself. Would you like to calm down and try again?

some propositions are binary cyb

you can either address the central point, or not

either way is an answer

This is a much better answer, so please be patient and hear me out before you jump to response...

Indeed, you are completely correct, many if not most ideas, outside cultural questions, are binary. So by default, they require no debate. For instance ANY creation myth vs. Darwinian science. They are mutually exclusive, Darwin always wins. God vs. science is a dated concept, because science always wins. Where classical science fails in its process of discovering answers thru the scientific method is on certain crucial margins. For instance, classical science leaves us with two mutually exclusive questions regarding light:

Is it either A) a particle, or B) a wave?

Unfortunately, classical science gives us the following, Yes, it is a particle. Yes it is a wave, No, it is both or neither. Classical science has left us with either a binary where either both are true or we are asking the wrong question altogether. So how do we find an answer when all attempts lead us to A) more questions or B) we are asking the wrong question?

One physicist described the question as possibly like asking the political affiliation of a tuna sandwich, or is the number 5 married? Yet all modes of classical science present the same question: Is light a wave or a particle? The answer is always, yes, no, maybe, I don't know.

You say the question of paradox only applies to the microcosm, well the particle/wave question is one even the Greeks debated and you can see the paradox with an experiment you can do using some slatted cardboard and a flashlight in your livingroom.

Science tells us this: on certain paradoxical questions, reality is dependent on the observer. You are an observer, I am an observer, therefore your answer is as valid and rational as mine. This implies dualism, but I would remove the question of "eternal" or "soul." Neither my perception nor yours are eternal. But science insists upon the observer's perception, therefore it is perfectly reasonable that both you and I are both rationalists but arriving at different conclusions, yours more toward the material, mine more toward the paradoxical. They are not mutually exclusive.

Which one is right? Yes, no, maybe, I don't know...

This is a blustery screed. You fall once again on the fallacy of trying to define your opponent with terms you know. You are only talking to yourself. Would you like to calm down and try again?

some propositions are binary cyb

you can either address the central point, or not

either way is an answer

so now cybert, you have a few options here:

you can continue to respond to my taunts with uncompelling jeers of your own and attempt to sidestep my questions, which answers them anyway

you can pick up your marbles and go home

you can realize you are a theist with a long line of bullshit to hide the fact that you seek to hang your hang your hat on "Greater Powers" while you employ arguments from apologetics* and talk about "Truth" and "Certainty" as if they were necessary

*you may not know "atheism is religion" and "atheism is evidence without meaning" and  others are arguments from apologetics, but they are quite old and equally flawed
kind of like "Faith"...

This is a blustery screed. You fall once again on the fallacy of trying to define your opponent with terms you know. You are only talking to yourself. Would you like to calm down and try again?

you can continue to respond to my taunts with uncompelling jeers of your own and attempt to sidestep my questions, which answers them anyway

you can pick up your marbles and go home

you can realize you are a theist with a long line of bullshit to hide the fact that you seek to hang your hang your hat on "Greater Powers" while you employ arguments from apologetics* and talk about "Truth" and "Certainty" as if they were necessary

*you may not know "atheism is religion" and "atheism is evidence without meaning" and  others are arguments from apologetics, but they are quite old and equally flawed
kind of like "Faith"...

allpoints wrote:

you took that opportunity to further your stellar poledancing career as a knobgobbling asshat, but i've come to expect you to gloat and strut like your little sister with a fresh porn contract, so that type of buttsore douchenozzlery rolls off me like buffalo spooge off your mom's glass eye...

Sorry that you feel this empty pretentious twaddle is of any relevance at all.

still learning Zen, huh? well, at least now you know what a decent ad hom looks like

coming from Mr Hyperventilation, that's high compliment
thank you!

i think your cliché reveals a touch of the same egotism that makes Kanye so popular...

but then again, anything other than rapt attention and reverence to your profound homiletics is taken as evidence of treason anyway, so what of it?

"If you think you got it, then you don't "get it". If you think you don't "get it", then you probably don't. Got it?"

"Truth", now there's a theory-laden term...used by someone who is quite confident he is in possession of 'it' (the capital T is a dead giveaway)

quite a religious mindset you have there
perhaps this is what has fueled your intolerance to any competing POVs, which you must represent as such strawmen?

BTW, is German your first language? your reliance on capitalization throughout a sentence is very Auf deutsch, but it comes across as Loud and Needlessly Emphatic to an American ear
please spare us the shower of spittle, and state your thoughts calmly
emotionality impresses the speaker much more than the listener, and belies much of your Zensprechen

now it becomes clear why you feel at liberty to make blanket rejections of religions, atheism, Western philosophy, the scientific method, etc: you are in possession of a lofty vantage point from which you you can casually and effortlessly descry all the flaws of the little people

never mind that you apparently haven't read much of Western philosophy and think my use of names like Russell constitutes shallow name dropping because for you a name is all it is, your Dunning-Kruger eyrie gives you the intellectual authority to dismiss all other weltanschauungen out of hand

there is an English word for this: callow

and your callowness gives you your fine "Command over the mysteries of the universe", and the ability to feel superior to things you don't know about
viz:

it is more than a tad ironic (paradoxical?) that you seek this flaw in others through strawmen of their positions...

this is apparently one of the principle benefits of Zen thought: the ability to soar above mere representational thinking and be at peace with nihilism because 'Hey, life is just glamor anyway; something to be overcome'

=Platonic dualism with a bunch of mindyoga to give it a little core strength to the calm confidence of superiority

not that it came from Plato, but it arrives at the same place through a roughly parallel road

i think a better question is, "Can you show me the math?"
cuz i don't think that operator obtains as a Hilbert space vector...

^^^ aside from the callow jeer at me and your paradoxical irony of certainty, that's probably your best work so far in this thread

cheers! can you hear the sound of one hand clapping for you?

you took that opportunity to further your stellar poledancing career as a knobgobbling asshat, but i've come to expect you to gloat and strut like your little sister with a fresh porn contract, so that type of buttsore douchenozzlery rolls off me like buffalo spooge off your mom's glass eye...

Sorry that you feel this empty pretentious twaddle is of any relevance at all. It's not even good writing.

Well, I was talking about science but imma let you finish.

No, I'm pretty sure you don't.

But you seem so irrational all the time, well for 3 pages anyway. You continually have to reshape what I say into a Name of a Great Philosopher or Religion, PLUS! more New-and-Improved Glib Condescension from a guy, who clearly has read a bunch of books and naively thinks ALL TRUTH is in them. They are just ideas, not conclusions. What truth I can see here is that you are totally insecure about the idea that maybe all that stuff you read doesn't give you the command over the mysteries of the universe you had hoped for and, like a parishioner confronted with doubt, you become unhinged at any challenge to your comfortable world rather than risk losing your religion.

For my own personal view, I find doubt to be more common than certainty. That's why I don't think much of religion, conspiracy theories or philosophy; too much certainty backed up with either unreason or subjective reason. Science at least has objective proofs, which lead to objective paradox, which leads back to doubt. In the instant before each instant, every possibility in the universe exists at once as a probability before collapsing in the one. The question is why. I don't know. I will never know. But the closest I ever came to answering it, though, was when I "solved" a Zen koan. You probably think that is a religious experience...you would...

Incidentally, Bertie R. was a total ignorant on the origins of Christianity... He just presumed because he hated the Religion, he was an expert on it. That's kind of an atheist thing, though.

observer X is standing next to a railroad track when a train comes by he records Z sound pressure emitted by the train. 30 seconds later, observer Y, who is 10 Km away from observer X and the track, records a much lower sound pressure emitted from the same train apparently, the same sound source varies in intensity according to the frame of the observer, no?

I see you are totally out of your depth because that is not even close. The sound pressure at observer X and observer Y is totally independent of either observer or the device they use to record it. That is simple classical science. In quantum mechanics the nature of the phenomena is NOT independent of the observer but dependent on it. Sort of like the sound pressure measurement you get depends on the way you tried to record it.

good call on that one cybert
i can't believe i left the word "source" in that sentence in the process of erroneously mixing terms from "sound pressure" to "sound intensity"...

my bads

of course, you took that opportunity to further your stellar poledancing career as a knobgobbling asshat, but i've come to expect you to gloat and strut like your little sister with a fresh porn contract, so that type of buttsore douchenozzlery rolls off me like buffalo spooge off your mom's glass eye...

back to philosophy:

why do you quack with so much glee on the strange world of quantum physics? oh yeah, "Does this mean that any religious god-concept exists? No. Does this mean there is paradox? Yes. Quite a few physicists like to call this paradox, God. I preffer to call it Zen, which is more philosophy than religion."

i think i get it now

the old god-concepts entail way too many contradictions to hold, but you aren't a silly atheist

and science understands it can't simultaneously observe/measure the position and momentum of a boson or a fermion and a whole host of other new real or imagined particles that keep cropping up
because the behavior and rules of the very small and very high energy are demonstrably very very different from what we are accustomed to in our medium/big world; so different, in fact, that the harder we try to unify the small and large fields with a single set of rules, the further we seem to get from doing it

and certainty (whatever that nonscientific term means) goes out the quantum window when physicists attempt to replicate observations

and so therefore induction and deduction, the foundations of deterministic science, seem to break down in a way analogous to to how a star seems to disappear when you look at it hard enough...

...and that because science has revealed a remit wherein our macro laws apparently don't apply...

and so rationality and logic compel us to allow for the possibility of other domains and perhaps even universes that are similarly fucked up from our 4D POV...

am i getting warmer, Professor Zeno?

so instead of the tired old concept "God of the Gaps",  it's now "Zen of the Paradoxes™" which relies on modal logic and the anthropic argument to allow for "The Possibility"?

i thought i covered that on P. 1 when i declared that i agreed with Bertrand Russell and all the other agnostics in "that there's really no way to know for sure"?

and so if you are gonna assign a religion to me, it wouldn't be atheism, or even materialism - it would be rationalism

the old "Misuse of Heisenberg" ploy straight from apologetics?

LOL! Apologetics? Trying to sound smart or set up another strawman? Who can tell? You've lapsed into incoherence.

Ah, there's the strawman. Yeah, see, i didn't apply it to macro events, you did. I simply demonstrated intractable, scientifically proven paradox, which you have not even attempted to address. You do know the difference between classical and quantum mechanics, don't you..? Because I was very clear about their differences. You seemed to confuse them. No, I don't think you do know the difference. You have shown a good deal of ignorance in this area.

Oh... you got it from a book! Another one. Would you mind explaining to me what you are pretending I'm saying that you are pretending this book answers? Hmmm? Because unless that book can deny paradox in quantum mechanics, then it has no answer for what I've said.

You concluded "therefore God," repeatedly. It's starting to sound screechy and desperate. It is your one constant strawman because you are completely ill-equipped to deal with a situation where some book full of someone else's words can be used to answer an argument that your opponent hasn't made.

Why don't you give it another try? This time with your own arguments responding to what I actually said, k? Just once, use your own mind, because this was one of your most pathetic displays...

allpoints wrote:

cybert wrote:

I'm not interested in the question of creation, I'm interested in paradox. What happens when 2+2 yields a different answer every time?

it doesn't

Dodging the point by being literal? Okay, I'll play along. Every time you run an experiment to observe whether light is particle or wave, the answer comes out different depending on how you observe it. Heisenberg Uncertainty states to observe a phenomenon is to alter it. It is as if every time you ran 2+2, you got a different result depending upon whether you used a chalkboard or a calculator. To deny paradox is to deny science. Paradox is not a gap, it is a scientific reality.

allpoints wrote:

cybert wrote:

How is the scientific conclusion "it depends on the observer" scientific?

still don't quite understand what you are talking about...

I know you don't. It remains, the answer to the scientifically tested question "Is light a particle or a wave?" is the scientifically tested answer: "it depends on the observer and the means of observing it." Science blows apart.

allpoints wrote:

observer X is standing next to a railroad track when a train comes by he records Z sound pressure emitted by the train. 30 seconds later, observer Y, who is 10 Km away from observer X and the track, records a much lower sound pressure emitted from the same train apparently, the same sound source varies in intensity according to the frame of the observer, no?

I see you are totally out of your depth because that is not even close. The sound pressure at observer X and observer Y is totally independent of either observer or the device they use to record it. That is simple classical science. In quantum mechanics the nature of the phenomena is NOT independent of the observer but dependent on it. Sort of like the sound pressure measurement you get depends on the way you tried to record it.

Let's try something different.
In classical mechanics, can the same object be in two different places at the same time? No.
In quantum mechanics, can the same particle be in two different places at the same time? Yes.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C005775/O … ticle.html

allpoints wrote:

cybert wrote:

Here is a paradox: If God really existed it would be necessary to abolish him; if God really existed it would be impossible to abolish him.

and if a frog had wings....and if God had an effect, there wouldn't be any atheists to laff at the irrelevant circles people contrive to support the yin/yang of Dualism...

Nobody's laffing at quantum physicists. (or talking about dualism here.) Don't be so angry, it's just science.

allpoints wrote:

cybert wrote:

The universe may have up to 11 dimensions by the latest theories. But there are no certainties, only more questions. Your dry old philosophers and prophets are not even close. Sorry to ruin your religion, but at this point the scientific method is blown apart. It is a scientific fact.

science works

Well, here it falls apart.

allpoints wrote:

and relying on scientific facts to refute science is like trying to lift yourself off the ground by your own ear

That is a pretty good analogy for what seems to be going on. I didn't refute science. Current physics simply suggests that it has hit its limits in a sea of quantum paradox

allpoints wrote:

which is probably why you wish to rely on conjecture that hasn't been demonstrated to cohere with reality in order to refute demonstrated science that doesn't fit your narrative of Duality

If you think that quantum mechanics is conjecture that hasn't been demonstrated to cohere with reality, you are pretty ignorant.

allpoints wrote:

your point still seems to reduce to: "Look, here's a paradox! Therefore Science and it's old bearded father Philosophy are flawed. Therefore Zen Dualism"

First, it is a mass of paradox, second, science and philosophy and religion and zen are flawed in their ability to deal with it, third, you keep bringing up dualism, not me.
Your only point seems to be to try to set me up like a strawman so you can knock me down and look like you know what you are talking about.

the old "Misuse of Heisenberg" ploy straight from apologetics?

HUP is about particle position/movement and applies to measurement of particles much smaller than a proton
to apply HUP to macro events is egregiously flawed - i can observe and measure my refrigerator just fine without perturbing it

this is just you running standard plays from the Apologist's Handbook (the Mackay Coulson Polanyi edition)

once again, your points reduce to "Quantum fluctuations (HUP, QTuns, whatever) exist, therefore God"="Paradoxes exist, therefore God"="science shows Gaps in human knowledge exist, therefore God"

Atheism is based on the faith that no deity exists. Theism is based on the faith that a Deity exists. Agnosticism makes logical sense for the arguments for and against God's existence are equivalent. Theoretical physics have stated that the weight of hydrogen had to be perfect for the Universe to have come into existence. Most theoretical physicists are agnostics and some are theists. The few that are atheists are small indeed.

For The Record:

theism and atheism are positions on belief in a God - whether or not He exists
gnosticism and agnosticism are positions on our ability to know anything about a God
these are two different things

look up the root words

gnossos=knowedge
theos=god

the Greek prefix "A" or "An" usually means 'without', or 'sans' (amoral, asymptote, abiogenesis, etc)

you can do the math...

most atheists are agnostics, and most agnostics are atheists

but i'm sure you know better Jack, being a theist...

---------

is conviction and belief based on evidence the same thing as faith in God?
to me, this amounts to an equivocation fallacy

---------

at what point in the Scientific Method is it appropriate to say, "Goddidit"?

cybert wrote:

I'm not interested in the question of creation, I'm interested in paradox. What happens when 2+2 yields a different answer every time?

it doesn't

Dodging the point by being literal? Okay, I'll play along. Every time you run an experiment to observe whether light is particle or wave, the answer comes out different depending on how you observe it. Heisenberg Uncertainty states to observe a phenomenon is to alter it. It is as if every time you ran 2+2, you got a different result depending upon whether you used a chalkboard or a calculator. To deny paradox is to deny science. Paradox is not a gap, it is a scientific reality.

I know you don't. It remains, the answer to the scientifically tested question "Is light a particle or a wave?" is the scientifically tested answer: "it depends on the observer and the means of observing it." Science blows apart.

I see you are totally out of your depth because that is not even close. The sound pressure at observer X and observer Y is totally independent of either observer or the device they use to record it. That is simple classical science. In quantum mechanics the nature of the phenomena is NOT independent of the observer but dependent on it. Sort of like the sound pressure measurement you get depends on the way you tried to record it.

Let's try something different.
In classical mechanics, can the same object be in two different places at the same time? No.
In quantum mechanics, can the same particle be in two different places at the same time? Yes.

http://library.thinkquest.org/C005775/O … ticle.html

Nobody's laffing at quantum physicists. (or talking about dualism here.) Don't be so angry, it's just science.

Well, here it falls apart.

That is a pretty good analogy for what seems to be going on. I didn't refute science. Current physics simply suggests that it has hit its limits in a sea of quantum paradox

If you think that quantum mechanics is conjecture that hasn't been demonstrated to cohere with reality, you are pretty ignorant.

First, it is a mass of paradox, second, science and philosophy and religion and zen are flawed in their ability to deal with it, third, you keep bringing up dualism, not me.
Your only point seems to be to try to set me up like a strawman so you can knock me down and look like you know what you are talking about.