md65536

Hm, I think there's something wrong there but I don't know what it is. It might be that -- I think -- geometry comes from some axioms that are themselves based on the physical world. It might have something to do with naive set theory and/or some proof that mathematics cannot be derived purely logically. At its base there must be some assumptions. Or, perhaps on the other end of the spectrum, is Godel's incompleteness theorem, which I think shows that mathematics (or any other axiomatic system) can't completely consistently describe itself... or something. I have only a vague grasp of this. I'd need to research this further but I probably won't. But I think... neither can you start with something derived, nor can you derive everything you know. Pi is the maxium normalized angle between two vectors (in 2d and 3d Euclidean space and maybe other spaces). Tau (2pi) is maybe the maximum normalized value for radians (in Euclidean space I guess). 1 is the maximum value for sin(theta) which in turn is the ratio of y to length of a unit vector rotated around the origin, ie 1 is the maximum y value of a unit vector.

I don't think it's fair to treat this thread or its participants, or even their references, as representative of philosophy. At the very least, Feynman hadn't even the chance to read any of this supporting evidence when he declared that philosophy is bullshit.

And here we lead up to the climactic moment where you finally wow and silence your critics by not just showing that it could be clarified, but that it actually is clarified! And you prove the ontological consideration's correctness. (The crowd awaits in utter silence save the sound of anticipatory gasps and unimpressed crickets.)

SI defines some dimensionless quantities like "Plane angle" with a unit of radians. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_quantities Radians are defined geometrically. So yes, it's possible to end up with some kind of unit, but I don't think it's possible to end up with the units that have dimension, like the ones you mention. I suppose that deriving physical units from pure numbers might perhaps result in a Theory of Everything??? See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensionless

I'm not a mathematician and I don't know how to do this, but... Perhaps the fact that e^z can be defined as the limit of (1 + z/N)^N as N approaches infinity[1] provides a way of solving it. With z=-1/2, you get [math] \frac{1}{\sqrt{e}} = \lim_{n -> \infty} (1 - \frac{1}{2n})^n[/math]. Then if you pick apart why e can be defined that way, it might give you the answer. References: [1] under animated gif at http://en.wikipedia....er%27s_identity

Yes, and maybe also the meaning of existence when it comes to ideas etc. Also the meaning of observation of ideas... if you don't look for a "metric" but it affects what you measure, can it be said to be observed? Remember, the idea is that if what you experience is no different given the assumption that the thing exists, than given the assumption that it doesn't exist (Ie. no observable difference), then can you still say that it exists? --- However, I think my premise is wrong. My premise is that the existence of something can only be determined through measurement -- its existence must make some measurable difference. However I think instead that I must concede this: Claim: If something is proven to have a physical existence, that proof must rely on something other than observation. The "proof" of this claim relies on an acceptance of Descartes' reasoning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_ergo_sum Descartes concluded that the only thing that can be truly determined through experience is the existence of the experiencer. Therefore if existence of a thing is to be determined by the observation of the thing, it remains to be shown that anything exists at all! If nothing exists at all, then no observation can prove that something exists. Therefore it cannot be concluded from observation alone that anything exists (it could all be illusory). Luckily, I haven't claimed whether or not anything exists... I'll stay away from that one. Without an answer to that, I can't say that observation alone can prove that something exists. Therefore if there is some other way of proving that something exists, it does not rely solely on observation.

But how do you know? What is the evidence, and is that evidence based on indirect measurements? Wait a minute, I think I've got off the track I meant to be on. My intention was to discuss whether something that hasn't been measured by any observer can meaningfully be said to exist. I'm not talking about whether something exist that hasn't been measured by a particular observer (the question of whether existence is universal, or whether what exists for one differs from what exists for another -- and related topics like parallel universes and all that -- would be something for another thread). So I think we could treat objects that "we know [are] out there we just haven't seen it yet" that would have been observed by others (for example by any matter that interacts with the diamond planet, including gravitationally) as measured. My argument is basically, 1) If it has some property that can be measured, such that there are at least two different values that the measurement can take, then the measurement must have some effect on reality. Otherwise, if there is only one possible value or if there is no difference between a reality where it was measured and the same reality except that it wasn't measured, then nothing has been measured. That is, if no information is acquired, nothing has been observed. 2) If it hasn't been observed/measured, then no information about it has been acquired, so there is no discernible difference to reality that could be caused by it. Otherwise, the discernible difference would constitute a measurement. The bare minimum of measurable properties might be the property of whether or not it exists[edit] whether or not it has anything measurable at all. What I'm wondering is, is there anything for which this doesn't apply? An equivalent question might be, is there anything that we can know about, without it making any difference to reality? If we can say "There must be a diamond planet" or "There must be a Higgs boson", is that because its existence leaves some mark or signature on reality, that wouldn't be there if the thing didn't exist? Or is it possible to purely theoretically deduce the existence of something, when there would be no measurable difference to reality or our experience of reality whether or not it even exists? Or if I haven't quite got around to being comprehendable yet, let me try putting it a different way. Say there is something that may or may not exist. Further suppose that reality is experienced exactly the same whether it exists or not. Then one cannot determine from experience alone whether that thing exists. The question is: Is there any way besides experience, that something can be proven to exist? If so, it could not be experimentally confirmed, because the results of the experiment would be the same whether it exists or not. So what could we possibly know about anything that exists independent of its observation? If we suppose that there is something that exists independent of its effects on reality, what's stopping us from supposing that the universe is completely filled with all kinds of things that exist with no effect on reality? Edit: I'm wondering if there is any example of a thing whose existence is both proven, and has no measurable consequence. I conjecture that there is no such thing. A problem for me is that I suspect that it is impossible to prove that there can be no such thing, because... One could always suppose that NOTHING exists, and everything is the product of imagination or hallucination or whatever, and then all measurements would also be imaginary... and yet there might be STILL no difference in the experiencing of this imaginary universe relative to an actual universe with real existence. Therefore it would be impossible to prove from experience alone that anything physically exists. Therefore any definition of physical existence that can separate "true physical reality" from a possible illusion of reality, must be independent of experience. No completely reliable experiential evidence of such a reality would be possible, unless there is some kind of observation that could not be unreal (imaginary, illusory, faked, computer simulated, or whatever). Sure? I think that we should discuss things in the most general sense, so not limiting ourselves to things that have a physical presence or mass or whatever. The property of a dreamed axe murderer existing or not might be simply "was it dreamed of?", and the memory of it would be an effect of the measurement of the dream of the axe murderer. Anyway this idea's very different from what I'm wondering. With this idea, we have something we could claim has been measured and we're wondering whether or not it exists. In other examples, we're wonder about something we could claim exists, whether or not it's been measured.

I was using the words measure and observe essentially interchangeably. To observe something, you are measuring some aspect of it. I disagree that something must be real to be measured, but maybe you're right. Couldn't something illusory be measured? Or would the measured aspects of an illusion be considered "real" aspects of it? Are there any examples of what a "real and unmeasured/unobserved" thing might be? A theorized thing might satisfy the criteria, but that wouldn't be considered "real", only theorized to be real. I suppose that something that remained unobserved until today, could be deduced to have existed yesterday, even though it was still unobserved.

This is a spinoff of another thread that I don't want to derail as it appears to be thisclose to being amicably resolved. What does it mean for something to exist without an observer? Does this mean that it remains unobserved, ie. unmeasured? Clearly, observation should include indirect observations, so that any measurement that is derived from other measurements would be considered "observed". So then, if something remains unmeasured, can we say that its measure has no possible bearing on what we observe? If it has a bearing, or if it has a deducible effect on reality, can't that be considered a measurement of the thing's existence? Then, if you can speak of the existence of something that has no bearing on what is observed, can't you also equally validly speak of the existence of other things too? Then, the existence of something that hasn't been measured implies the existence of anything and everything that hasn't been measured. (However, this maybe can't be used to deduce a contradiction, because deducing the existence of something impossible only proves that the impossible thing doesn't exist, not that all deducible unmeasurable things don't exist.) Therefore anything that's possible, exists. The alternative is that no unmeasured aspect of anything, can be said to have a real existence. I do advocate that the existence of anything depends on an observer. Is my reasoning unreasonable?

Yes, perpetual energy should be possible, but not if you get power from it. If you lift a weight, say up a hill, you give it potential energy. If you keep it there (constantly resisting the force of gravity), there is nothing that I know of that says that that potential energy can't last forever. The weight stationary on the hill provides a constant force but no work. To "harness" energy one usually means to use it ("work"). You can get work from the weight, say by letting it move lower, but now it is lower and has less potential energy. So you can have potential energy, but not after you're used it. Once you eat your cake, you no longer have your cake.

Is your plan to replace your appetite with nausea, by viewing gross images when you're hungry? (This is what I thought you meant.) Or to view gross imagery when you have a craving specifically for sweet things? Or to associate sweet things with gross imagery by eating sugar while viewing nauseating imagery? I'm not sure which (if any) would work. I wonder if the second option could make things worse, so that when you overeat sugar you not only appease your appetite, but you get rid of the feeling you've associated with the imagery. If the point is to eat less sugar, and not so much to experiment with it, why not look up other people's solutions instead of inventing one? Google "psychology of overeating" or "sugar addiction" and there should be lots of links with info and advice. A lot of work must have been done in this area because the issue applies to most of us.

Trying to create negative associations involving all food sounds like a bad idea. You might also unintentionally create some specific negative associations, like if there's music in the videos you might start feeling sick when you hear some of the old Ludwig van.

Everything, or anything (math, predictions, intuitive explanations etc), comes down to whether or not a new theory improves on old theories in some way. Your "improvement" starts with the claim that existing theories fail because light can't propagate through "empty space". I don't think anyone/science agrees with you on that. You might start by showing or proving that this is true. To avoid getting stuck on a wrong path (and missing some correct ones), I'd suggest always being open to the idea that what you're trying to prove might be wrong. Since I think it is, I believe you'll be able to convince yourself that light can propagate through a vacuum, a lot easier than you'll convince everyone else that it can't. But that's okay, because figuring out that certain paths are wrong is part of knowing that you're still on the right path. You'll probably have to really understand how other theories allow light propagation through a vacuum, in order to try to find a flaw with the idea. Another strategy would be to design and carry out an experiment to prove the existence of U1s (with some prediction your theory makes that is different from existing theories). If you're wrong, and your only goal is to prove yourself right, you have an infinite amount of work in front of you.

Perhaps you should brush up on how owl defines "sphere". Personally, I define sphere as "a perfectly round three dimensional thingy including the middle part". You'll notice that in your link, it says that "In mathematics, a careful distinction is made between the sphere [...] and the ball". We were talking about geometry here, not mathematics. It's common sense that a sphere has to have a middle part. You seem to be forgetting that we're in the philosophy forum. We're not "in" mathematics. owl was clearly talking about the Philosophy of Geometry. While you were busy failing Philosophy of Geometry, owl was probably teaching it.

Well don't worry too much. It seems the best way to get a lot of attention around here is to keep repeating a set of incorrect statements while avoiding seeming like you're purposefully breaking the rules. I don't see many people getting a lot of positive attention. There are thousands of topics in the speculation forum. Most people who post likely think their idea is more important or right or interesting than the others. I don't think many people read expecting to actually find the next revolution in science here. I'm not an expert; I'm a crackpot. I'm here just as a diversion from my own revolutionary theories. Chances are, if an idea is good it will take a LOT of work to develop it. If it's a good and simple idea, chances are it will take a lot of work to present it in a convincing enough way that people can see that it's worth reading just by a paper's abstract, and that it's demonstrably correct by the paper. (If it's a good and simple and obvious idea, chances are it's been thought of before.) What makes me sad is realizing the sheer amount of work involved to get to the point where you've proven your claims and can easily show it, but it seems to be necessary. I don't know of anyone who's succeeded yet, here in the speculations forum. I haven't read the links much. I disagree with Tegmark's postulate though. I think that math is invented (not intrinsic) as a description of what we observe in reality. But we can also invent abstract math that doesn't need to correspond to anything real. It might even be possible to somehow create some math that specifically contradicts the notion of "real". It's an interesting idea though.

I'm very much not convinced that this has anything to do with electron mass. What makes you think it has anything to do with electron mass? Is it just that the values coincide? How does an electron's mass result in the data you're getting? Well that's the thing: If the data are "true" but the statement they make is unknown or even meaningless, it's not the same as a true statement. To me the data say "There are some curious results relating to the number 1823." Maybe they say more. I think more would require much more analysis. If you wrote a paper I'd suggest calling it a "curious result" and being clear that you don't know why you get the results, rather than saying that you interpret it as electron mass, or that you've derived the whole of physics. http://www.ar-tiste.com/feynman-on-honesty.html That's only enough for me to be curious to the point that there's a chance (a small one... sorry) I might one day run the program and try to figure out the results (ie. part of analysis). I don't know enough about QM and electrons, but others here will likely be even less curious, just due to the sheer volume of work that's already out there, in which are made specific statements that are backed up straightforwardly with evidence and logic. To accept conclusions, one expects at least that the analysis has been done. But since I don't know much, it's possible that there's some interesting and new correlation here and I'm just not seeing it.

Why should it obey quantum mechanics? It's made up particles, why can't it have made up interactions? U1 particles are not observed or a consequence of observations. They do not need to correspond to what is actually observed. Do string theory strings obey quantum mechanics? Strings correspond to what is observed (unlike U1 particles, as far as I can tell) and thus corresponds to QM, but QM doesn't dictate or predict the behavior of strings. I think that U1 particles, like strings, are outside the domain of QM. That said, knowerastronomy seems to be implying that the particles behave as macroscopic matter would, and that makes even less sense. Is that the meaning of your question -- that if the U1 particles are claimed to behave like known particles behave, they'd have to also behave as QM says they would behave? That seems fair. This belief that you know what you're talking about more than anyone who disagrees with you, is a delusion. If you keep feeding delusions you'll go insane. I would suggest that starting right now, stop with the animosity and start asking some questions that you're prepared to accept the answers to. This will stop building the feeling of "it's me against the world". Klaynos represents science fairly, and if not then others will say so (I for one am in agreement). If someone sees some value in your theory they'll say so.

If you read the Mermin paper linked above, it might give you some insights. I think also applicable is the notion of cargo-cult science. http://en.wikipedia....go_cult_science The analogy to cargo cults is especially relevant in cases like your theory. In one fascinating example, "Cargo cult activity in the Pacific region increased significantly during and immediately after World War II, when the residents of these regions observed the Japanese and American combatants bringing in large amounts of material. When the war ended, the military bases closed and the flow of goods and materials ceased. In an attempt to attract further deliveries of goods, followers of the cults engaged in ritualistic practices such as building crude imitation landing strips, aircraft and radio equipment, and mimicking the behavior that they had observed of the military personnel operating them." [http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Cargo_cult] Imagine a tribeperson who doesn't speak Japanese or English, sitting at mock radio equipment and mimicking Japanese or English words. They may get the words right, but they wouldn't know the meaning. They would be like magic words. If you do cargo cult science, then you can do the same with math. You can do some math, and without understanding the meaning, if it works out it might seem like magic. Then it's a short mental leap to thinking that this magic math that somehow fits reality, IS reality. Anyway my point is not that the math does or doesn't have meaning (or whether it is somehow illusory), just that understanding the meaning is important. I don't have a lot of experience, but my experience is that most of the understanding comes from picking apart the math and understanding what it means or why you get certain results or why it corresponds with another result (such as sin^2). On the other hand it might just be that this is say a different way to simulate particles and get similar results to some other way... so it could have use without having that much meaning. But my point is that I don't think you can express the meaning of the math beyond your understanding of the math or its meaning. Also I don't know the math of quantum physics so I couldn't tell you whether or not your results correspond and whether or not there would be a reason (other than my guess that you're plotting a bell curve). --- As for your code, what happens when the mistake is fixed? One example of how the mistake could manifest itself in the results, is as such: You intialize 4000 elements of array Lo[], but it only has 1823 elements. Array ex[] is declared next, and it's likely to be adjacent in memory, so you may end up initializing the first 4000-1823 (if the elements are the same size) elements of ex[]. Then you use elements of ex[] in a1, and you use a1 as a divisor. So if the last 1823 elements of ex[] are uninitialized, they may start off as some large pseudorandom number, and anything divided by those elements may be turned into something small. I don't know that that's happening, but I don't want to put a lot of effort into analysing the code to look for curious behavior, if there are mistakes like that which could account for it.

This article (David Mermin's "What's bad about this habit" http://www.ehu.es/ai...ence/mermin.pdf) was mentioned in another thread, about being wary of reifying abstract concepts. You've gone in the opposite direction to an extreme. The sin^2 curve that you fit to some of your output -- could it not be a bell curve? From a cursory glance at the description of what you're doing (intersection of random line lengths in a box), I'd expect a bell curve distribution, depending on what you're plotting. Also, the "1823" result is curious. Are you saying that you have N possible simulation results, and whatever N is, the probability distribution rises up until the last 1823 possible values at which point it falls to near 0? Do you know what is causing the result? Did you tweak things to get this result? In your program code for qsa.c you have this: long long S[1823]; // long long Po[80510000]; long long Lo[1823]; [...] d0 = 4000; // Particle 2 size [...] long long kk; for (kk = 0; kk <= d0; kk++) { S[kk] = 0; // *** Out of bounds error here??? // Sy[kk] = 0; // Loy[kk] = 0; Lo[kk] = 0; } // Next kk (*** note added by me) You're writing to 4000 locations in an array that only has 1823 locations? That's writing outside the bounds of the array. I think your results might be in part due to overwriting data. -- Actually that's jumping to conclusions since this code's just in the initialization stage, but still I get the sense that the program isn't reliable.

I've told you before, I've never known you on any other forums. Please stop telling lies about me. I've only fact-checked information you've posted on this forum. It wasn't a threat, it was an offer. Which you appear to have passed on. You're constantly providing character evidence in favor of yourself, so I think it's only fair that the other side is given. But if no one cares I won't even bother. I don't want to tarnish your reputation just out of spite. My personal agenda isn't against you, it's against your personal agenda. You know what? I think I should just bury the hatchet right here. Something you said (not here) reminds me of a quote from Twin Peaks: Albert Rosenfield: [to Sheriff Truman] Now you listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I'll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method... is love. I love you Sheriff Truman. This was after some unfriendly tension and maybe a couple punches to faces (Albert was not well-received because of his abrasiveness and lack of social etiquette). After this turning point they were best buds, and Albert turns out to be a pretty good guy. The fact is, people seem to enjoy these scholarly debates with you. They're obviously getting something out of it. I won't ruin the fun. I still disagree with you and what you're doing and I think you should stop. But I don't think I care enough to have a personal agenda, especially if people willingly engage you in debate. I think they can decide for themselves if there's a point to it. Ignoring me was working pretty well. Not a big fan of the whole responding to my post to everyone else while making a point of how you're ignoring me though.

How about my misrepresentation of you, is it true?: You have acquired your information via gnosis. This is more powerful and convincing than any scientific logic or mathematical argument. What others don't realize is that unless they can evoke a sense of gnosis in you, what you already "know" is truer than anything they can "prove" using reasoning or evidence, which is a "tedious" waste of time. You're not interested in discussing questions of philosophy of science, because you already have the answers. You're here to preach them. If required I can try to back up these statements with evidence. At your request I will refuse to disclose evidence on the grounds that it may identify you.

I think this calculation is in error. Unless you're purposefully limiting yourself to only one significant digit, in which case I'm not impressed. I could prove that pi=3, if 1 significant digit is good enough.

No, I don't think the statement's false, just that it's a bad bet (because you probably couldn't collect, and it's pessimistic). But I now realize that my reasoning for this is similar to the argument that atheism is "a bad bet", with which I don't agree. I think this is directly applicable: http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/what-is-epsilon/ In this case, I think a more interesting question is: How long of a period do you think it would take such that the probability of an amateur making a fundamental discovery sometime during that period is 50%? Would you think it is some high number of centuries, or actually infinity? I'm a crackpot, and I believe the answer is "1 year"... but I realize that I would change my answer after a few years without any discoveries, even though the probability shouldn't change much over time. Also, in considering the idea in detail, there's a lot left up to interpretation that changes my estimates from "approaching 0" all the way to "approaching 1". For example, if the question is if an amateur will have "a significant idea", it must be close to 1 (or within decades). If we mean that a complete novice will have an idea and develop it properly, alone, all the way through to a finished accepted theory while remaining an amateur, it might be close to 0 (perhaps not for many millennia). What I'm most expecting to happen, sometime in the lifetime of the human race, is that a novice will have an idea that compels them to learn and develop a "fundamentally important" theory properly, but by the end they may no longer be an amateur, and I'm certain that their idea will evolve enough that while the theory may still express the original idea, the idea won't be detailed enough to be called "the same as" the final theory.

How about 6.28318531 and 1.61803399?

LOL Honestly I think this line of reasoning is a digression. No one (not even owl) is claiming that there is a "real" rotation of the Earth that disagrees with science. Every observer should agree on the direction of the Earth's rotation relative to the sun. What's in contention is whether everyone agrees on the distance between the Earth and sun. Further, everyone agrees that every observer agrees on what a particular observer will measure (such as an observer on the surface of the Earth, measuring a certain Earth diameter and certain distance to the sun). owl's mistake is in assuming that everything that applies to one observer applies to every observer. The "rotation of the Earth" thought experiment is useful for helping someone realize the concept of relative measurements, but if owl hasn't already got it I don't think it's going to work for him.