cladking

Yes! Exactly. This is why math seems to work when it is applied to the real world; it reflects current understanding which is usually good enough for government work. We don't apply adjustments for relativity in the weight of a train as its velocity increases and one hundred years ago we didn't know better. We don't calculate things to twenty decimal places because they are irrelevant and outside our ability to measure. We rarely need to know the value of pi beyond the 5th or 6th decimal point. So long as equations are correctly applied we can usually make sufficiently accurate predictions. But there's still the fact that we can't predict the next earthquake or even explain much of what happens in nature. If two cars collide experts will differ in their opinions of direction and speed. Not only is the forecast for the next day wrong but the reporting of current conditions are wrong. Right now it's been overcast all day and it was 29 degrees on its way up to a high of 27 degrees but in reality the sun shone earlier and it's snowing now. It's commonly wrong and the temperature is often wrong as well or unavailable. But we don't normally see such problems or that we see the world in terms of what we know. Equations always return answers so long as you have enough of the variables. It's not the math that is the problem. It's not even the fact that math can't be applied that is the problem. The problem is that people see that math "works" so they don't see that nature is not beholden to math. Nature may or may not follow the same logic as math but we don't know. We know that math works so we see the world in terms of math even where the world doesn't obviously behave in terms of math (almost all the time, really). There's no problem with math. There's no problem with using math to unlock the secrets of nature. The problem is in understanding reality through what's known. The problem is that it limits one's ability to observe. You might be surprised. At the risk of going off topic and of making a statement I can't and won't defend at this time anyway, I believe there's another kind of math that is derived from an understanding of nature rather than being the basis of an understanding of nature. At this point I'm merely trying to establish that so far as we know nature is not reflective of math. Our metaphysical understanding and how we think says that nature is reflective of math but the reality does not bear this out. We merely use math to learn natural law and as a basis for technology. This is certainly a part of what I mean. Even when we use math to invent technology it is a process suimilar to the lab where we omit extraneous variables. In machines this is simply done by design. If you want a train to follow a track then the track leads in only one direction. We can't measure everything that affects results in the real world. We can't count the individual rabbits in a square mile and even if we could we won't know when the number changes or one individual is exchanged for another. Even if a process is simple and we know the equations to apply we don't know that we have all the equations that are necessary. The fact is that long periods and small scales are almost impossible to make predictions in the real world. It's easy to predict how much water will be in a reservoir next week but it's usually difficult one year out and impossible 100 or 1,000,000 years out.

Yes. Exactly. But what I said is math doesn't apply to the real world which has a completely different meaning and you must first know math to know it doesn't apply.

I'll try this one more time. It may fall on deaf ears but somehow it seems everybody can see the point. The most basic and important distinction to all life forms is the difference between existence and non- existence. This is the most basic thing that is needed to be known by individuals and it's the most com- monly communicated concept. A bird needs to know if a hawk is in the vicinity. This is essentially the same thing as the ability to count to one or the application of a mathematical concept to the real world. If a bird were to continually an alarm that there is a hawk in the area when no hawk exists he will prob- ably be ignored like the boy who cried "wolf". If a person points at a plastic daisy and says it's a flower it remains a piece of plastic., It might mean nothing to the person to whom he is communicating or to the individual who pronounced it a flower but he has declared the existence of something that doesn't exist. He has misapplied the concept of "one". A rabbit can't eat a plastic daisy and bees won't be drawn to it. If the purpose of the flower is to attract bees then this misapplication of math will result in a poten- tially serious deficiency. One and zero can't be any more different than night and day or life and death. The difference can result in life or death, and even night and day are undefined at 12 o'clock. We live in a world where math is far more often misapplied than people notice. We live in a world where rivers are forever changing as are all other things. You can add the Mississippi and the Amazon and divide by the Volga to get the Ganges. Reality simply doesn't work this way. If you use a sufficiently broad definition of "flower" to include a plastic daisy then the ability of the word to identify something is decreased. If a painting or drawing of a flower is also a flower then you get to the point that no utterance has any mean- ing. Only a part of the problem of applying math to the real world is language but the fact remains even each daisy is distinct. At what point is a decaying daisy no longer a flower at all? One or zero?

Perhaps my best strategy at this time is to retreat, regroup and plan to fight another day. My point is merely that perspective is everything and most mathematicians or physicists will have a perspective that sees most aspects of their reality in terms of math. In the idealized model of their perspectives these applications of math will always be spot on and where they aren't they can be recalculated or examined to see new hypothesis or new insight. It's hardly my contention that any perspective at all is necessarily wrong, merely that the logic of theory and math apply perfectly only in the idealized world of models and technology. They apply in the lab and they are the result of experiment and theory but they are still a perspective rather than a reflection of reality itself. I believe this is an important distinction because what we see is defined by our perspective and experience.

People do use math to understand the world but to the degree the specific application of math is illegitimate it leads to a misunderstanding of reality. A concientious mother will count her children to assure she brings home the same number of children from the store as she took. If she's fastidious she will even assure they are the same children. But exactly as you can't step into the same river twice you can't bring the same child home whom you took. This is in no way to suggest she should just exchange her children, get extra kids, or leave some behind. It's merely an observation that the real world behaves outside the constraints of math. At least we have no way of knowing if the real world always behaves according to natural law. Since we don't know we should always carefully examine how we apply what we do know to the real world. Just because something can be described with an equation does not mean that the real world will operate in that way. Trains do wreck and sometimes it's not because the rail is defective or something gets in the way. There are millions of things that cause even the freight train coming not to get there.

I don't believe that math is required at all to understand the world. Yes, science without math is almost like language without words but one doesn't need words to understand the world either. We use symbolic representations of concepts to think and mostly this is words. You paraphrased me but your paraphrase displays a perspective that suggests understanding is impossible without math. From your perspective this is probably true but a sixth grade dropout who never learned arithmetic can still understand the world from a perspective that doesn't include math. If he's sharp he can probably understand nearly any scientific theory in a non-mathematical way. Some people like this can easily picture a plane taking off from a conveyor belt. His model of reality can be more accurate in some ways than a physicist's. A scrub lady in the 1850's might have thought doctors could save more patients if they washed their hands. Math works because it is logical. Any logical format should work for almost any task. If you assign numbers and quantities to a logical system then you have invented a mathematics and so long as the logic is correct it will be consistent. This math can be applied to learning about nature because it is logical and consistent like nature. The fact that it is logical and it works for understanding nature is neither indicative of it being the only means to understand it nor that all applications of math to nature are legitimate. Just because you can count rabbits and the number is usually meaningful doesn't show that we have any control of rabbits. If you stick ten random rabbits in a cage with plenty of food there is a very high probability that in a short time there will be many more rabbits. If there aren't it's because the rabbits are individual rabbits and by some chance you have ten rabbits that are not representative of other rabbits. Even if you use all female rabbits there's a fair chance at least one is pregnant and there will be male offspring because... ...they breed like rabbits. Of course we apply math to the world all the time but this doesn't prove the world behaves according to the logic of math simply because the world is far more complex than math and has untold more variables and processes than we can even imagine (probably). This is why we get unintended consequences and experts don't agree on causations even after the fact. This is why we can't predict things. Many of the processes on which we rely in industry are very poorly understood. We explain phenomena based on observation and extrapolation from theory. Without the observation we'd be at a loss in many cases. Who would predict something like supercooling based only established theory?

No. Read the post again. I'm saying that sixty pills are way too many for a dead man or the pilot of a speed of light ship. It's far too few if you can't get a refill in a 31 day month and they are needed to survive. Math is correct but it's not applicable to the real world even though it seems to people that it necessarily is. I'm saying that your perspective is kaleidoscopic and prone to lead to error in some things. It causes an incorrect assessment and even an incorrect quantification of the real world to the degree it can only be seen from this perspective. You act as though I'm doing the math wrong. 2 X 30 = 60 does it not? This simply doesn't and can't mean that all individuals taking two pills per day for a month need 60 pills. In real life the doctor might change the prescription or dose. In real life math simply isn't applicable which should lead us to examine the variables and the measurements to see that they fit the specific application. People don't do this so they design bridges that fail and Improperly ground mirrors. They get questions wrong on physics tests but never seem to notice the source of the problems. They simply don't notice that everything is perspective. Even physicists think planes can't takeoff from a conveyor belt. We see what we understand and can't see the vastness of our ignorance. We stumble blindly into the future certain of our destiny and status at the crown of creation.

I think you're forgetting my original contention that math is never applicable in the real world. Saying you need 60 pills at two daily for a month is merely a shaort hand way of expressing the concept that many natural processes, logic, and patterns are harmonic and repeatable. Relativistic considerations will affect the number. If the doctor is computing the number of pills needed for the pilot of a speed of light ship to Alpha Centari then he'll be way off. If the prescription is the wrong one or the patient is allergic he will die and need no more pills. If the month has 31 days he will run short. It's not only the terms and variables that aren't reflected in the real world but the application of them aren't.

Most people do lose the ability to use math in their lives. Some of this is natural since most people become specialists and most specialties don't require any math. More accurately everything requires math but people simply don't know how to use it in everyday life so lawyers and doctors don't. They simply ask for advice from experts or others. Many doctors can't even do the simple arithmetic to calculate numbers of doses needed. But this is simply a different subject. For instance if you need two pills per day you'll need 60 for the month. But if you cross the international dateline you'll still need sixty for the month as defined by the location that the first dose was taken. If you get on a rocket and cross the dateline repeatedly your frame of reference changes but you'll still need two pills every 24 hours of a fixed point. Even if the planet vaporizes and the word "day" is no longer defined you'll need two pills everytime the hand of your Rolex goes around twice. Walking around the north pole doesn't affect the dosing schedule. I believe 80 time zones is probably a pretty conservative estimate because maritime laws are extremely complex. Ships at sea are required to keep a specific time that doesn't always correspond to the time zone or port in which they are. Having the wrong time can even be a serious offense in some jurisdictions. Just because much of nature can be described mathematically doesn't mean that nature behaves by laws or that math is necessarily applicable to anything at all. Just because math is a large part of how we come to develop theory doesn't mean that nature behaves mathematically. Even if someday we find that all of nature does in fact behave mathematically it still won't mean that there's such a thing as one rabbit or two rabbits. I'm sure if we get to the point that nature can be shown to be strictly mathematical that it will be recognized that every rabbit is different and you still won't be able to step into the same river twice. People might consider all this mere semantics but it isn't. It's perspective. From most individual's scientific perspective virtually everything is known and from the more realistic perspective almost nothing is known. From a religious person's perspective all moral tenents are factual and can be found in the Bible, Koran, etc but require interpretation. From some athiest's perspectives there are no moral tenents. There's as much difference between reality and some scientific perspectives as there is between religion and some athieism. Perspective is everything and people now don't even attempt to identify perspectives. Most scientists are not identifying their perspective nor considering the metaphysics that generates (or is supposed to generate) their perspectives. So long as you believe you can count things and manipulate them with equations you are taking what's known and applying things learned in the lab. You can make very fundamental mistakes counting rabbits because they aren't in the controlled conditions of the lab. What you actually see in the wild might have little or no bearing on the reality of what it means to be a rabbit or the way a rabbit exists in nature. A disease that appears to be decimating rabbit populations might be secondary to the actual cause of population decrease. Slower rabbits being eaten by foxes might not be indicative of the reason they were on the menu. We see what we expect and if our perspective is "wrong" then what we see isn't what we get.

Actually the American public is in far closer agreement than the parties purporting to represnt them. Most Americans are fiscally conservative and socially liberal and favor less government intrusion in private and public affairs. Very few Americans support huge bonuses for bankers destroying the economy or shutting factories and moving the jobs to China. Of course consensus can't be achieved but a working platform should be possible.

One of the things that has disturbed me the most over the last few years is that there were hundreds and hundreds of quarrymen. This was the most numerous job at the site if my theory is correct yet I had never seen so much as a trace of them anywhere. This was probably a relatively low status job and primarily required a strong back. These workers got good medical care and a solid diet just like all the others and it appears they even used dust suppression in the quarry since some water was apparently channeled there. But before now there was no trace of the workers themselves. Now this very last piece of the jigsaw is in place and they've been found. Quarrymen appear to have thought of these stones as "horuses". Horus the elder was the phenomenon of the land where the pyramids were built and horus the younger was the stone quarried from this land of horus; he was born of horus the elder. 503a. which allows each Horus to glide through, in which N. will glide through, in this flame under that which the gods create. But the problem is that there's no evidence anywhere for the quarry workers except the handiwork left in the 6 1/2 million ton pyrramid and in the quarries. There should be many hundreds of quarrymen including some at Giza. "Chief of Sculptors" is it!!! 1128a. To say: It is certainly not N. who asks to see thee 1128b. in the form which has become thine; 1128c. Osiris asks to see thee in the form which has become thine; 1129a. it is thy son who asks to see thee in the form which has become thine; 1129b. it is Horus who asks to see thee in the form which has become thine. 1130a. When thou sayest, "statues", in respect to these stones, 1130b. which are like fledglings of swallows under the river-bank; The men weren't quarrying stone, they were sculpting horuses. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2001/11/01/html/ft_20011101.5.fulltext.html Near the bottom of this page you can see the overseers name is "Nefu ef nesu".

...And I expected to be accused of hyperbole again. The exact percentage of everything known that is known would seem to be irrelevant when we can round it off to about 0%. It might seem strange when we have so much technology to say it's a rounding error but this is consistent with our lack of ability to make predictions and to explain events. We can predict what will happen when we turn the key in the ignition or put strontium to a spectrograph but predicting things outside of our direct control is far more iffy. Even explaining events outside our control tends to produce a lot of divergence of opinion.

Because for every answer there are a million questions. We don't see the questions so much as we see what we already know.

Of course scientists understand such things. Non-scientists understand some aspects of nature. Even Elmer Fudd knows where to go look for the most rabbits in areas he's already traveled extensively. I'm simply saying that a hunter doesn't need to differentiate one rabbit in order to make pot pie any more than a scientist needs to in order to predict daisy populations. We have a perspective that sees "rabbits" despite the fact no such thing exists. We see our entire world from this perspective. It's not only rabbits that don't really exist but everything from cars to people. Even our constructs including theory are real only within theire definitions and metaphysics. This doesn't mean scientists are dumber than Elmer Fudd merely that we share a perspective and our perspective allows us all to misapply knowledge. We don't even think of the misapplication of knowledge as a misapplication but rather as a special case. This perspective not only affects chaotic forces but harmonic ones as well. Even though almost all natural processes involve both harmonic and chaotic forces we are nearly blind to the latter. They tend to be a sort of "rounding error" in many cases outside the lab. It's not the math errors that are the problem; it's the perspective. Of course scientists know it's a complicated world. We know it much better than most. Of course scientists know that things outside the lab can only only be approximated. But what isn't being seen is the nature of science and its metaphysics. "Metaphysical implications" should be included in the experiment conclusions. This doesn't change the nature of science or theory; it merely changes the perspective of science and theory. I disagree. Just like having some 80 time zones and no defined midnight is a fundamental flaw so too is having no standard means of depicting overhanging cliffs. What's so difficult about recognizing and correcting simple problems? Why not just draw overhanging cliffs in red or in dotted lines? It is our perspective preventing such things. We pay the UN billions of dollars yet they haven't done the simple things that would help bring the world together. I fail to see how grouping dissimilar things is advantageous except in communication. It's much easier to say take the Mississippi to the Ohio than to describe the "river" and its tributaries. It's probably even easier to speak of "mammals with the exception of the platypus and the echidna bear live young" than it is to list every animal with the other attributes of mammals but this doesn't mean that a platypus falls into any natural grouping called "mammals" or even that platypuses actually exist. It's not the nomenclature nor the taxinomies that are problematical, it's the perspective that leads us to believe we know about nature because we've defined "mammal". The problem is each individual sees what he knows and can't see what he doesn't know. The problem is that we see the trees and miss the forest. And yet we don't see that each tree is an individual rather than an oak or a maple.

I hardly know where to start here. As usual people just aren't following my arguments. Please bear with me as I try to address everything. If the two cliffs are a perfect plane and the topographic depiction is enlarged until only the cliff faces themselves are shown then the overhanging cliff depiction and the steep cliff are identical. Indeed, without a scale for height and distance you can't even determine the steepness of the cliff face.

They get their government for almost nothing. Very few senators and Congressmen are worth more than about 3,000,000 but this represents less than $10 per citizen. If every person in the 99% contributed just $10 per month (a tiny fraction of their tax dollars) we could retilt the playing field away from the 1%. Call it the "Citizens Lobby". We get rich government employees and we should get cheap office space as we take over Washington DC. Indeed, we can even let them raise their pay to astronomical levels so the rich people have to contribute to the 99%. Everyone wins since the destruction of wealth will stop.

One dollar one vote wouldn't be as bad except the poor man has no political power at all any longer. Both parties pander to him but the poor man's dollar has no value at all. Even though the 99% still have more money than the 1% our dollars have no value for tipping the playing field so it continues to be tipped in only one direction; toward the 1%. What we need is a tax payers union. We could easily outbid the paltry sums being paid by the 1%. I'm in general agreement with all your points except I believe government needs to be kicked out of research except for limitedly as it applies to military research. Research should be funded by corporations, individuals, universities, and trusts. CEO's pay should be capped at around 10 million through onerous taxation or whatever is required except where the founder of a company runs it. This will likely require SEC reform to get individuals back into corporation ownership. Taxes on stock sales will be a big step toward this goal. Any system where participants skim off the creme by having nanosecond headstarts is corrupt and broken. It needs to be stopped. The changes in the FED should begin immediately. I'd suggest very extensive changes and very draconian changes in education starting immediately. The system should be run by the teachers for the benefit of the teachers and based on the attainments of the students. I'd cut the budgets 50% and fire the school boards. Let the teachers hire them back as they are needed. It will take 40 years after education is fixed to get this country back on track. This needs to start now. Schools need to teach metaphyics from a very early age and continue through the doctorate programs. Indeed, there need to be new specialties such as generalists and metaphysicians.

Yes. Certainly definitions are the primary problem in most practical applications. You can compute the number of rabbits you need to make enough pot pie to feed a certain number of people and usually nothing will go wrong. You can always add side dishes like apple sauce if too many are coming back for seconds. My point isn't that math and science don't work but rather that math and science are a perspective rather than the reality itself. Theory explains only small spectra of reality of unknown extents. Scientists percieve the world in terms of math and science despite the fact that most things remain unknown. This doesn't impede the ability to perform experiment but it does restrict their ability to form hypothesis, and often severely. Most importantly this perspective of reality formed by theory leads to a severe misestimation of human knowledge and our proclivity to applying our knowledge illegitimately. We simply forget and are blind to what we don't know.

Imagine two cliffs. Both have faces that form a plane. One is 80 degrees and the other is 100 degrees. Now imagine the topographic maps that depict these planes. Blow up both maps until only the cliff face itself is on the map. Even though the maps appear to be identical a man on the first cliff represented can climb but on the second cliff would fall. Cliffs exist because of the nature of all things. All of nature's forces and "laws" are brought to bear on everything that exists. Nothing can exist outside of nature. These forces and processes that formed these cliffs wouldn't have existed if reality didn't support both the cliffs and the math we use to describe them. Similar arguments can be made about counting apples and rabbits. We use theory to describe the world and we see reality through theory but this is woefully inadequate to explain even a few of the forces and processes that affect a few of the things that exist. It can blind us because we simply don't see that all of nature affects all aspects of nature. We imagine an infinity that doesn't exist and don't see improbability that might be many orders of magnitude "greater" than infinity. We count butterflies in China and pay them little more mind. .

I was actually thinking of mathematicians when I said this. Pure math can have value to a mathematician simply because it brings him joy. Few things in life want to order themselves and follow rules of logic. I would think most mathematicians think there might someday be a practical benefit to their work even if the only practical benefit is understanding or the feeling it gemnerates or the anticipation of that feeling.

I'm not certain of the question here. Even if there were no people dying in (or of) poverty today there would still be people for whom poverty was a factor in their demise. If you have $1000 in your pocket you won't get hit by a bus when you go to borrow $10 from your cousin to eat at McDounall's. Essentially yes, this is what I'm saying except I would add the problem is far more extensive, pervasive, and ubiquitous than this. It affects everything incliuding our understanding of theory.

The USGS maps the US. But this is beside the point since even if there were a universally accepted means of depicting overhanging cliffs and it was strictly adhered to the fact would remain resolution of the map could easily cause misinterpretation. Rather thsan using red lines or some unambiguos means of depiction it's very easy to misread a map even if it's right. The same thing was a problem in the medical professsion for many years. Rather than printing xRays so they could fit only one way in a reader they were printed so they could be inserted upside down. Thousands of people have been maimed or killed by surgeons amputating the wrong limb or removing the wrong organ. This happens and is unseen because of the humans think. We misapply knowledge, science, and math and rarely if ever notice. Our economy hums along at about 5% efficiency because we throw away far more natural and human resources than we use. We throw away our future because it's easier than the alternative and because everyone with two brain cells to rub together has been trained as one damn specialist or another. We can't see there are other ways. We can't see what we don't know.

And all taxinomies are constructs. Even a river has no clearly defined beginning and end until you define the tributaries and end points which are forever changing. If the US Midwest became much drier would the Mississippi River begin in Pittburgh? Surely a river can't just move but what if the Ohio carried much more water than the Mississippi north of Cairo? We simply come to mistake these taxinomies as reality instead of models. DNA evidence is showing plants and animals always thought to be very different or very similar often aren't. Similarities are apparent and not real. Even two "rabbits" have different DNA.

Humans are a part of nature. Nope - we have been doing portage for centuries if not millennia Scientific predictions are often accurate because equations can be applied properly and enough of the nature of something understood to apply those equations and quantify the variables. But it doesn't change the fact that there's no such thing as rabbits and cliffs. It doesn't change the fact that modern science only works because reality acts as a check on experiment. Science works because reality works and humans are an aspect of reality. An argument can be made that it has nothing to do with math and science because reality is excluded from them but the fact is math nor science has any value at all except to the degree they can be applied to the real world. We understand the world in terms of math and science (theory) and this is a misapplication unless we remember that no application is fully legitimate. Accidents and disasters are the result of these misapplications. Misapplications are misunderstandings. The best math in the world is meaningless if not applied properly. It's of no value if variables can't be quantified or if various relevant forces and processes are not understood. This really seems so obvious that there must be a problem with communication. Surely all of us has computed a physics problem incorrerectly at some point. Some things are more easily grouped than others. I've never seen documentation. It is hearsay.

And this is exactly the problem; it's impossible to count apples. More precisely, it's impossible to know whether you've counted apples correctly or not. If a tree produced two apples last year and two apples this year then how many apples do you have? Obviously you can't have four apples because apples don't last so long. The problem with counting and measuring go far beyond chronological and definitional issues since there may be no two identical things to count. Two newtons plus two newtons (same vector) equals four newtons but this introduces more things that don't exist in the real world like calculations and the ability to measure variables. We look at an old Mathew Brady photograph and can probably coiunt the number of individuals in it. But what of a battle scene where there are large numbers of grainy and only partially photographed individuals? What of the dead and maimed? What of the simple fact that every individual in the photo has been dead for many decades? What if one soldier is a shaved monkey that was used as a unit's mascot? We imagine we can count and measure because this is what we are taught and it is the means by which we are taught. It is the means by which we understand models and paradigms. But most importantly it's how we view reality and it defines our perspective of realiity. Reality doesn't really exist as being axiomatic to modern science except inasmuch as it affects experiment so we see reality indirectly through our beliefs in science (experiment) or other beliefs (often religion). So to most of us the concept that you can't step into the same river twice seems absurd. If the Missisippii is ever changing then it's impossible to measure the distance between St Louis and New Orleans. If the planet is forever changing then no measurements have real meaning outside all of the definitions and all of the variables. This is nature. This is the real world; ALL of the definitions and forces which we barely understand at all. Perhaps it would be more true to say that "the cliff can exist for the same reasons that math can exist.". Nature has an internal logic reflected by the cliff and by humans' math. Without this logic neither can exist. If somehow "consciousness" existed anyway 2 + 2 wouldn't equal 2 x 2. Nothing can exist without cliffs and 2 + 2 equaling 4. But math still doesn't apply to the real world so much as the real world applies to math.