tar

Zillah, OK, figured it out. My tri ruler is marked out in divisions per inch (10,20,30,40,50,60). Your ruler is marked out in ratio to a meter. The 1:25 took 1000mm and divided it by 25 to show the one meter mark at 13.33 millimeters. The 1:75 scale takes a 1000mm and divides it by 75 and puts the 1 meter mark at 40 mm and the half meter mark at 20 mm. Since an inch is about 25.4mm, the meter mark on the 1:25 scale should land around 1/2 inch (13.3mm) and the .5 meter mark on 1:75 to land a little to the right of 3/4 of an inch. In terms of why the subdivisions from there are the way they are, listen to Strange. Regards, TAR

Zillah, I could be wrong, but I think your confusion is in trying to have both scales work on the same map. They will not. because each scale is used uniquely to mark out only one map. Like the treasure map in Goonies, do you march out in kid paces or pirate paces. A pirate will take less paces to travel a mile than a child. Regards, TAR

Thread, There is another way, that reality exists in the large grey area between random chance and sure thing. When one considers a system, or an entity, or an event, one defines a subset of reality, and usually only certain descriptive characteristics of the event. Like when you consider flipping a coin and only having two possible ways it will wind up settling, one does not record where the coin landed, or whether you caught it and flipped your hand over and placed the coin on the back of your other hand and whether or not you missed the coin and it fell to the ground and showed a head or tail "that did not count". That is, the particular arrangement we are attempting to find the odds of, is a very closely considered system, entity or event, where the rest of the world around the thing, in space and time, could be, and always is in a new arrangement, every nanosecond. That is, in the strictest definition of all of reality, it NEVER repeats itself. It can't because you can't wind everything back to the moment of the big bang and do it again, and see how it turns out the second time. For instance, let's say I am counting heads, while it is 9:41 on Sunday the 20th of August,2017. Once it is 9:42, fulfilling one of the conditions becomes impossible. Never again will the conditions be right, to flip a head at 9:41 on Sunday the 20th of August. So one of the ways you can define anything as impossible, is to require conditions that will never line up again in the same pattern because of the nature of space and time. Here the odds are not very small, they are actually non existent. You would have to posit alternate universes, or multiple universes which are, for all intents and purposes, not available for study and recording repeating conditions. And one of the ways you can define something as a sure thing, is to limit your time frame, and limit your special area, and loosen you allowance for small difference that of course had to happen between the first measurement, and the next. So I can consider the railway bridge being in the same place tomorrow, as a sure thing, even though the Earth has turned on its axis, the Earth has proceeded around the Sun and the Sun has proceeded around the center of the Milky Way and the Milky Way has proceeded toward the great attractor, to where, in actuality, it is NEVER possible that the bridge be exactly in the same position in the universe as it was when I was on my way home from work...ever again, and the universe, every component of it, will never be in that exact orientation, as it was on my way home from work when I went under the bridge, ever again. So the chance event has some many consistently repeatable aspects to it, and the sure thing is nothing of the sort, depending on how you define stuff, and the reason for your argument. Leaving of course, that large grey area between for us to live our lives in. Regards, TAR Thread, And yet another way to consider that reality exists in a large grey area between two things, is to consider that we each have an analog model of the entire universe, built in the large grey matter area between our ears. Regards, TAR

cladking, Right, I don't think the color of the colored pencil sticking out of the furthest coffee cup of the two next to my computer at about the 7 o'clock position in the cup, looking at it from above could be predicted from the first principles extant in the moments after big bang. That is, even if you had complete information of all the particles and positions and momentums, I don't think the color of the pencil I am looking at would be forced, at that point. There is random stuff that would have to happen on the way to even have an Earth, and life on Earth and pencil manufacturers and pigments and cones in human eyes and such. I don't think the plan was there, the universe had to play itself out, to this point to see what would develop, what would emerge from all the entities and patterns that the universe has put together, interacted and destroyed in the last 13.8 billion years. So yes, it is impossible to know what the universe is going to do next, just based on current information...but some things, like bridges, stick around for 100 years, and if you pass it on the way home, you can predict pretty well that it will be there on the way to work, tomorrow. Seems we have to keep an open mind, to things emerging when components are put together in ways they have not been put together before in, that result in the combination having characteristics not present in any of the components. Once this kind of thing is allowed, then knowing beforehand, what the characteristics are going to be is not only hard, but actually impossible. because the universe has not yet done the experiment, the first time, so you don't know the results of the experiment yet. You just have to do the experiment. Now afterward, you can make the same combination again, and expect similar results, but beforehand, you don't have enough information, because such information does not exist in any mind, in any pictures, in any memory or any recording, because the combination has not yet been tried. Regards, TAR

a thought just crossed my mind, a question I had about reality suddenly resurfaced so I think it somehow pertinent, or at least interesting to think about Isn't it interesting that "this moment" is the same moment for all of us. That we all have the same now, give or take a moment (2 or 3 seconds.) THAT can't be an accident.

cladking, I think Studiot is correct in admonishing me to not argue against someone backing up my point, so I would like to carefully parse the aspects of what you say, not to argue against your conclusions but to make distinctions within your logic, of points that I take mild exception to, in terms of how you make sub conclusions, or perhaps I would like to make distinctions to turn the discourse in the direction of finding the things that make something likely, instead of proving how unlikely a thing is to become the thing accidently. What I mean is the argument for random accidental coming together of quarks, into the library of congress would take the power of powers of powers of 100 zeros to arrive at the odds. So pure accident does not work, unless you posit a zillion universes to turn out a zillion different ways, and you are back at the beginning. So, the question is then, so if there is a plan, then who made the plan, who decided on what the cosmological constant was going to be. The answer to some is God, but then who planned for such a powerful being to be, does God have a creator or what. Was God always, so is it not the same to consider that existence was always....that is, the point that inflated into our universe was a point where? A point when? A point of what nature and capability, what constituents, what possibilities? Was the universe contained within the point, like our pattern is contained within the egg and sperm in chains of DNA and such? Or were there just 1s and 0s that started arranging themselves into various patterns, and what were the 1s made of and what were the zeros made of? The answer, to my mind, and to the thread title is that reality is in that large grey area between what considering the universe dumb would dictate, and considering the universe smart would dictate. And in an interesting twist of logic, I have determined that whatever I personally am capable of the universe has to be capable of, and more. This fact does not require there be a God, but it requires we be very much of and in the universe, in the sense that what we do is what the universe is capable of doing. Thus in logic and probability, I need not explain every step, every book in the library of congress in terms of how often quarks would come accidently together to form the patterns of ink and sheets of paper, I can start with some monks copying a text in the basement of a monastery and the odds slim down nicely. So I totally agree that the present unfolds based on what happened in the past, but the likelihood of the universe being what it is is not uncalculably small...it is actually quite likely that the Sun will rise tomorrow in the East. We don't have to start from the big bang each time we calculate the next moment. We can start from this moment. Regards, TAR

studiot, you are right again, the water will sometimes run up the board, if capillary action is a possibility or if the board is being spun around on carnival ride or with a stiff wind blowing to force the water uphill...so not a sure thing, but still to the sure thing end of the spectrum, with the things that could make it not a sure thing, sure things themselves pure random possibility, that acts like magic, like the possibility of Alexander the Great's Army marching out of your left breast pocket, need not have a probability assigned, because it is impossible. Not improbable. Impossible. The army is dead and buried and your pocket too small. Reality relies on itself to do the next thing. That is, you need the current arrangement to evolve/modify/morph/move into the next arrangement. A particle has to make the trip between A and B at less than or at the speed of light. It cannot blink out of existence over there, and pop back into existence over here. Once it has made the trip, its path between A and B cannot be longer than the distance light could have traveled the path. That cuts down the possible arrangements that the universe can take in the next 10 minutes for instance. A groknoid looking at cladking's cloud on planet Distant can not draw us a picture and fax it over, and have us know the shape in the next 10 minutes. Regards, TAR well wait, there is information storage and transport and cloud engineering possible, so it is possible that the groknoid could have designed a cloud shape three years ago, sent us a fax and informed us that he would be creating the cloud today

cladking, If a thing is easy to predict, then I would put that thing, still in the grey area, but toward the sure thing end of the spectrum. If its hard to predict then you don't have enough information, or the thing has plenty of random aspects to it that are not controllable or repeatable in the exact same manner. I like using the shape of a wisp of smoke in a nearly still room, instead of the cloud on a distant planet, because you can't see the cloud developing on the distant planet, while you can watch the wisp of smoke curl and stretch in the air. Just making a puff of air in the direction of the wisp causes some activity in the motion of the air, that is noticeable in the pattern and shape the wisp takes. Take the tree, falling in the woods, in terms of whether it makes a sound or not, if there is no one there to hear it. Does the planet where you need to know the shape of the cloud, before it forms, have any inhabitants? Is it important to know what shape and pattern every wisp of smoke has taken in the history of the world, what all the patterns were a minute ago, now and in a minute? Next year? I am not sure, for point of focus consciousnesses such as us, that such prescience is at all helpful. Not even possible actually, given the speed of light, and the number of brain cells we have, and the way our senses work, an7d we compare the world we see with the world we saw before, to recognize a change. Reality unfolds in exactly one way, but that is only in retrospect. What comes next is what the universe is currently engaged in arranging. The future has an unlimited number of ways to unfold, but that means exactly that the universe does not have only one way to unfold. It does not unfold against all odds, but in the sense that there are too many permutations that branch off each permutation to forecast which of many possible patterns the place will take, but at each permutation possibilities are added and possibilities are subtracted. But water will run down hill every time you pour it on a slanted board. Predictable because there are plenty of things the universe does every time the same arrangement happens. Repeating stuff. From the orbit of electrons, to the orbit of the Earth. Regards, TAR I threw out (recycled) a stack of yellow pad papers I had that had a brief note about every call I took on a third level technical hotline for 6 or seven years of my life. I used to say, on particularly stressful days, that in 100 years nobody will know or care, what happened here today. Wisps of smoke, the shape of each mean something when they are happening, but keeping a record of the place is not required in order for the place to do the next thing it is going to do. History never repeats itself exactly, but it often rhymes.

studiot. Don't mean to be argumentative. Just want to make sure that nobody is leaning all the way to accident, since I think the universe is a lot more dependable than that would allow. Regards, TAR

cladking, But it does not unfold in entirely unpredictable ways. It unfolds within the error bands. Most of the time within two or three standard deviations. Once in a while you get the black swan event, but after all it is still a swan. It is not a grocktoid. Regards, TAR During our last deep recession it looked like stocks would fall to zero... except they got so low people could not help but buy them, 60 dollar banks at 5 dollars and such. The world, reality is something like game theory. People always make their best move. Reality always does the thing that fits, that works that responds to all the inputs. Water always runs downhill and such. There are sure things all over the place. Sure the chaos in the stream of water at the top of the water slide can cause harmonic motions left and right that by the time the rider gets down the course he is thrown out of a course designed to never have a rider thrown out, but most riders...nearly all riders stay in the chute. In the grey area between random occurrence and sure thing, where we spend all our time.

studiot, So I imagine the limit state analysis on the nuking of NYC would have to include levels of operation of various statewide and countrywide infrastructure in the aftermath, combined with the critical or non-critical nature of the program you were working on. But it seems to me that one could just as easily make your plan, assuming there will be no nuke, and play it by ear once something on that scale would actually happen. Like if there was no internet, your programmers shouldn't be working on an internet based program to keep your copier fleet up and running and economical, they should be working with the civil defense authorities to get the internet back up. But if the program you were working on was an early warning system for nuclear attack, then the priorities would be different and you probably should have a plan to shift the development to an unaffected, operational, team. But the nuking of NYC would not be a result of a random chaotic happening, that could not be avoided. It would be the result of letting somebody that wants to nuke NYC acquire the ability to do so...and such. Not random. More along the line of sure thing. Like if we were to nuke China and Russia and Iran and North Korea on the same afternoon, it would not be a sure thing that tomorrow morning in New Jersey would happen on schedule in the way I expect it to....but to the thread title, the nuking of NYC is not a random thing like the decay of an element. The failure of a bridge is not due to random occurrences, usually, but due to the steady degrading of the materials that hold it up. That the materials will decay is a sure thing, and part of reality that can be reliably counted on. Regards, TAR And the possibilities before the nuke go off are different than the possibilities after. It is like talking about whether there is life on another planet and calling people that see UFOs crazy, before there is a space ship on the White House lawn, or after. After, everybody would instantly accept the existence of life on other planets, and start thinking about what they want, and are we stronger or weaker than they are, and is it in a best interest to fight or make concessions and such. So the situation dictates the possibilities going forward. My wife and I are planning to sell our house in NJ and move to Virginia. What house we live in now does not need to be in a good school district or near employment. The possibilities are the same, but what house we live in is partially dictated by who has to live in it and what my wife and I plan to do in it and who we plan to host from time to time and such. Meaning that you can flip a coin a hundred times and it will always come up heads, or tails and once in a great while might come up an land on its edge, but it will never come up the Queen of Hearts, for that you need a deck of cards, (or a coin with a Queen of Hearts as the head,) Reality provides a starting point, from which events can occur. Life on Earth developed to fit the Earth. Life on the surface breaths oxygen and is carbon based. Life at the bottom of the sea near a volcanic vent is sulphur based. The possibilities are somewhat framed by what already is established. Regards, TAR

studiot, And probability of, is a statement that requires there be a probability of not. To this, the definition of failure of the bridge has to be defined. If a rail falls over, has the bridge failed. If a chunk of cements falls off the roof of the tunnel and crushes a car, but a train can still pass above, has the bridge failed? In my brief, 2 year stint as a software tester, project management was a thing I studied, and risk analysis was one of the components. Never was quite sure how one was supposed to figure the nuclear destruction of New York City, into the development plan. (such would have put the completion of the project rather far on the back burner) Regards, TAR

Studiot, So perhaps the relationship between random, chaotic behavior and sure thing is when a sequence, a cause and effect relationship is established because the component constituents are still present for another cycle to occur. A crystal grows in a certain pattern, a certain shape, because the element is present and binds to its neighbor in a repeated fashion, not random but just the one way that works the best. Two and two is four every time, it does not randomly add up to 5 every once in a while. Take the geometry of dense packing. If items of a similar size collect in the same area, they arrange themselves according to their neighbor. Gas molecules fill a volume, liquid molecules fill their container and create a level surface, solid balls stack themselves in square and hexagonal patterns. If you put a penny on the table and surround it with as many pennies as you can, with each of the new pennies touching the first, you cannot get more than six to touch (all pennies laying flat on the table), and when you have six surrounding the center one, all six touch their neighbors in the same equilateral triangle and a hexagonal pattern develops where you can build out around each new penny as if it was the first, so that each has six around it. Not random. Always a sure thing. You can try it, I can try it, it always works the same, reality always fits with itself, it always "works" according to the same principles, the same rules the same laws of physics, and this creates the large grey area between random chaos and the Mandelbrot fractal nature of reality, where a pattern repeats on larger and larger scale, because it fits, because it works, because that is the arrangement that works out in a similar fashion every time, regardless of which penny you place next to which, in whatever random order or speed. The bridge stands because the concrete and steel have been put together in a manner that satisfies the component molecules' need to arrange themselves any differently. A mountain stands because the component crystal structures are frozen in place, not anxious to change their pattern, their arrangement. And the Earth keeps falling around the Sun, again and again, and this is a sure thing, not random, because the forces involved have fallen into a pattern, which has no current reason to vary in any random way. Regards, TAR Relationships for example are not random, they define themselves. Many people have a mother and father and grandmother and grandfather and sister and brother and aunt and uncle and second cousin. As soon as their is a child, there is a father...the relationships develop the same, even if the people involved don't know each other, or live in the same area. Reality fits together and works out the same to where random occurrence falls into the same patterns because the relationships define a new entity which then also falls into a relationship with other entities on the same scale.

Lord Antares, I am not in agreement, because of the isotropic principle. Even another race similar to ours, but with better senses and memory and far advanced in technology and such would only be able to witness the place a photon at a time, same as we do. That is they would have to be alive on a grander scale than us, to know what the universe is doing someplace where they are not, and I am not sure what that would look like, or be like. Like if you were god and knew everything, what would that be like, just everything at once, there would be no distinction between things, no cause and effect, no sense of space, no sense of time...it would be sort of like unity, no self, because you would be everything. Does not seem workable to me. I don't believe in god, and have reasoned long ago against there being a race that evolved from the universe that would be better than the place, or capable of building a computer that would be able to compute the position and momentum of every quark. How about the quarks you would need to operate the computer? In a sense the universe is already making manifest every combination that it has so far tried, so recording this and playing it back makes no sense. Would be redundant, and no creature, that evolved in the place, would be able to contain the whole shebang. So no, there is not a race to which the universe would not be immense and long lived, way beyond their ability to witness it all at once in any other manner than we witness it all at once, with close stuff reporting immediately and far away stuff reporting with a lag, and really far away stuff not able to report at all. Regards, TAR studiot, It crumbles or breaks or gets torn down and replaced. But it lasted very many electron orbits, as something a human is able to see every day in the same sure thing manner. Regards, TAR

cladking, what I want to be correct about is that reality is a large grey area between random occurrence and reliable repeating sure things which so far seems to be an unchallenged, unremarkable, agreed to claim Regards, TAR So if so many things are possible within that random cubic meter of matter, why does the railway bridge stay a railway bridge for 100 years?

yeah 100 zeros

the laws of physic remain, while a google of combinations of entities make up our reality on a day to day basis

Lord Antares, Not exactly. There is a twist in your logic where I veer. When you say "if we did know" you are assuming a godlike stance where all the stuff coming in to the Earth, all the photons, all the cosmic rays, all the gravity waves, are already known. My understanding of humans as point of focus entities and my understanding of the place as not having done yet what it is going to do next, forbids a human, and to my mind, every point in the universe, from experiencing the place all at once, except in the "old news" way we do experience it. Therefore in my understanding of the place, everything is currently out of reach...until it gets here. The star we see pulsing is pulsing now, but it is on its 1,000,000,000th pulse and we see its 9,999,456,983th pulse. What its 9,999,456,999th pulse is going to look like, is mysterious to us, except in the fact that because we experienced and timed and measured 9,999,456,982 and it was similar to the prior pulse 9,999,456,981 and this looked a lot like how 9,999,456,983 is looking we can rightly predict that this particular star is going to have a pulse 9,999,456,984 that bears some resemblance to the prior pulse, and foretells how, sort of 9,999,456,985 is going to look. So we cannot be god, and the universe gets to us exactly at the pace, the speed of light, the speed of comets, the speed of asteroids, the speed of solar wind, that it gets to us, and the getting to us is actually an occurrence in an of itself, the photon gets focused on the back of our eye and rods and cones respond to its impulse, and we witness that part of the universe where years ago an electron fell into a lower orbit around its nucleus and emitted a photon.... So yes, if we knew the flight of every photon in the universe we could calculate what looking in any direction at anytime is going to look like...but we don't know, and the way the universe looks and acts, is BECAUSE it does things the way it does them, and things are separated by space and time in the exact manner that they are, which does not change much from moment to moment. Everything changes constantly, but there are elements, big things, like the Earth and the Sun, that do not change much within a human lifetime, and it is our timescale that matters to us, and it is our position in time and space that matters to us, and it is the arrival of the rest of the place at our location that we witness. Regards, TAR The laws of physics are partially put together based on the congruence we see, the match we see between what the universe did yesterday compared to what it is doing today. The things that change we take as motion or growth or decay or whatever, the things that stay the same we consider invariant "rules" that the universe follows. You walk in one direction on a sphere and you wind up back where you started after traveling the circumference...Every time. Not random.

there must be some warning signs for things like that as there would be a sign if the cosmos were about to blow... and anyway as far as we know most of the universe could have already blown...we would not know about what happened to a neighbor galaxy for a million years

Would we not have an inkling if the Sun was about to explode?

cladking, The nature of reality is for it to be here tomorrow, regardless of what we think of it, or how intact the Earth might be or whether the Sun will be shining the same. Something of the Earth will survive any occurrence, and the Sun cannot physically burn all its fuel by tomorrow. Reality is pretty solid stuff. Pretty far from random chance. Regards, TAR

Lord Antares, I get your point, but we don't have anything but ignorant observers to keep an eye on the place. That given, everything is actually mysterious to us. Regards, TAR

Cladking, I did not think about the device arriving, so you are right, I can't claim 100%, but I had thought about the asteroid, and we have been tracking all the big ones that would do significant damage to the planet, and there are none schedule to interfere between today and tomorrow. That is the basis of my claim, that we would see the punch coming, so we would know when it was possible that tomorrow would not come, and since we don't see an asteroid ruining tomorrow, we can take that 1 in a billion thing off the list. Not the list for ever, but the list for tomorrow. Same perhaps for the device coming from a distant star system to turn off the Sun. It would have to be huge, and would have to be traveling at less than the speed of light, and may or may not be cloaked. so we would either see it coming, or see a big shadow approaching, or see the orbit of Pluto thrown Soff by the devices gravity. or something. Things that huge usually can't sneak up on a solar system, I would think. So my question would be, if you have a way that the Earth , or a particular place on the Earth, away from the pole tilted toward the Sun and not experiencing a night tonight, could possibly not experience a night, followed by a day, in the appropriate manner dictated by its latitude, this night, and this day's tomorrow...then with 8 billion people looking, with today's technology and equipment, that "way" would be noticed approaching, and we would have more than 24 hour notice. Since we have not received the warning, I claim there is no big enough event possible, to disturb my claim. Except for a cosmic blast coming at us at the speed of light. And even a normal cosmic blast would not turn off the Sun, and even if the oceans were vaporized, the planet would still turn and even if there were nobody left alive, up above the clouds the Sun would continue to shine on half the spinning globe. The point being, you don't have an infinite number of events that can occur. Only the events that fit the place can happen. There is no magic available, it has to add up and be consistent with all the other stuff the universe does. It has to follow the laws of physics, it maybe can do stuff we were not expecting, but it can't do impossible things. Your mind can have it do impossible things, but the waking world, does not operate on a whim. Everything has to fit together. So perhaps in your mind, you can imagine an infinite number of outcomes, if you jump( without a device to prevent your splattering), out of a 10 story window unto an empty street, but I think reality will only provide you with one outcome. Regards, TAR And a civilization on another star system would have to have evolved over time to their state of capability and size and to acquire the knowledge and reason to snuff out our Sun. They only have had the same 13.8 billion years we have had, using the same elements created in approximately the same amount of generations of stars and such. That is, if such a group were so close, they developed within "our" environment and we might have noticed their activity, before the day they decided to snuff out our Sun. My claim is that New Jersey, U.S.A., Earth, Solar System, Milkyway Galaxy will experience the morning of 8/15/2017. Absolutely no question about it. (check back in 45 minutes for confirmation of my claim)

Occasionally. Some have said it is random and undirected. Others have said it must have been put into motion by a programmer. It appears to be something in between an accident and a plan. Regards, TAR

There is, in my estimation a 100% chance that the Sun will rise tomorrow. I may die, it might be cloudy, there could be nuclear winter, a meteor bound to split the Earth could be on its way, but the only thing that could stop the Earth from turning away from the Sun tonight, and toward the Sun again tomorrow is some Cosmic burst that would be so powerful and violent as to blow the Earth or Sun to bits, in which case we would not be around to notice I was wrong, as the definition of tomorrow would be moot. and the burst would have arrived at the speed of light, with no warning and brought the turning of Earth, or the integrity of the Earth immediately to a halt. So no big meteor is on its way, and we currently, today, do not have the technology to halt the spins already in progress. Like a ball on its way to the center field bleachers, there are things that could happen to change its course, but as the electronic sensors that judge the distance the ball traveled based on the exit velocity and angle off the bat, the distance is known to a high degree of certainty right off the bat. So reality is not completely random nor is it completely deterministic. There are long term entities which stand against the wind and rain and cosmic winds and the small scale forces, to where the flightlyness of an electron around its nucleus where one cannot assess both the position and momentum at any moment, becomes a sure thing, in that the electron will stay with the nucleus, 'till a replacement arrives...well not all the time, and ions form, and atoms randomly decay and such, but in general, as haphazard as the arrangement seems at the atomic level, there is something well enough established in the silicon and calcium and oxygen atoms and such that exist in the railway overpass that has been there every day since it was built a hundred years ago to suggest that the random actions of the electrons are not going to cause the overpass to disappear overnight. Any entity in the universe is in the presence of every other entity. A match I lit when I was 13 and I held to the sky on a dark night sent out photons that are currently 50 lyrs from where the Earth was, that night. Should one of those photons hit a sensor, or an atom 50 lys from here, it would not be a random event. Some lifeform on Earth, caused it. Regards, TAR