"math is NEVER applicable to the real world" split from is current day math flawed

[Strange]

 

I was just assuming that he didn't carefully consider his words

 

Even after agreeing to more general statements such as "people make mistakes", "not everything can be described mathematically", or "you can't calculate to infinite precision" he still seems to come to the conclusion that therefore "math is NEVER applicable to the real world". Which is just irrational.

[DrP]

It is irrational and pretty dumb - there are clearly MANY ways in which mathematics is applicable to the real world... so many equations that model precicely what happens in reality.

 

Most equations are set up to reflect what actually happens - so by default are applicable to the real world.... Philosophers just like to argue semantics and go round in circles.(As do trolls)

Edited October 7, 2015 by DrP

[cladking]

I understand what he is saying and it is in fact true that mathematical models do not reflect reality in an obscure philosophical sense.

 

 

It's not in a philosophical sense but in reality.

 

Obviously models are tied to reality but the tie is indirect. Reality affects experiment and the models reflect experiment. The problem is that people are mistaking the model for the reality. There is no such thing as an "electron" but rather there are extensive experiments of many types which all say something similar to our "electron" must exist. This is no fine distinction when fundamental knowledge about the nature of electrons is lacking. Our understanding of models fools us into thinking we understand the reason so many experimnents say "electrons" exist.

 

When Plato says everything in this world is an imperfect representation of its perfect Form he captured the idea perfectly. Abstract ideas to Plato existed outside the mind and for many people it is a hard concept to grasp.

 

Yes. This is the nature of language. Words represent concepts rather than the thing itself.

 

To illustrate the point think of things that are not real in the sense that they have no physical existence such as money, home runs, equality or mathematics. These things everyone would agree are real but are some how more perfect because they are not physical. When we think of a chair or a table we call them real objects but we also recognize that our senses do not give us a perfect estimation of the thing itself. In a similar way our mathematical model, and other thinking tools in sciences are more perfect than the image they provide of the thing being studied. Ideas can be perfect because they are abstract and not bound by physical laws. Everything else is an estimation of reality.

 

 

Essentially true but not quite what I'm trying to convey.

 

Words represent concepts because there is no ideal for "chair" or "table" and there are many definitions and connotations for both words.

 

We see what we know and when we have a model for everything we tend to believe we know everything when in point of fact our ignorance is virtually complete.

 

I'm afraid though that I fall in the camp of those who think metaphysics has done more harm than good.

 

 

I'm using the definition of "metaphysics" as "the axioms and definitions upon which a science is founded". I never use another definition of this word.

 

There may not be any rules. But nature behaves in predictable ways as if there were such rules. As I say, we can't know what nature is "really" like, only what we observe. And what we observe appears to follow rules we can model.

 

 

Perhaps it's the belief that rules exist that is confounding things and holding up progress.

 

Nature behaves in predictable ways only in the short term and the large scale. In the long term and on the tiny scale nature is notoriously unpredictable. Man is part of nature yet in the affairs of man the future is also notoriously unpredictable. Indeed, nature is quite unpredictable all the time when all the variables can't be identified and quantified and this is almost all the time. For instance it's nearly impossible to predict what will happen in a power failure. Sure you can use statistics to estimate the number of fatalities but you certainly can't identify any of the victims before the fact.

 

No, nature has numerous characteristics and processes that are repeatable. You can compute how far a rock will move if you know the forces applied to it with great accuracy. This does not mean the rock is behaving laws nor that nature does. It merely means that we can identify gross and subtle ways that nature operates. It doesn't mean we know all the rules nor that nature must operate in some given way.

 

If you find the models confusing, that is your problem. It doesn't stop them being useful.

 

Reality cannot be known. Science is about what we observe. Whether that is "reality" is a philosophical argument and therefore undecidable and meaningless

 

.

I know nothing about the other thread.

 

But science is merely the scientifiuc process, its results, and its axioms and definitions. Nature is reality and until we understand nature there are only scientific models which will become ever more encompassing unless this tool is already played out. Need I remind you we've been stuck on the unified field theory for nearly a century.

 

Real world referents of infinity exist if the universe is infinite. As you cannot prove it is not infinite, this is a baseless assertion.

 

 

And it probably can never be proved to be infinite and this assumes that cartesian geometry has any meaning in reality.

A real number can dwarf infinity. Numbers extend to infinity in two directions and if you can add more dimensions. How much is infinity squared? etc etc.

 

How many billions of vigintillion atoms exist? A few million? Each one of these may affect every other so in every collision there are a virtually infinite number of possible outcomes yet there are countless such collisions in even the briefest lenght of time. These collisions always determine the course of events yet the number of possible outcomes is staggering. If you convert these possibilities to ones ands zeros and the entire known universe with them (ones and zeros) you can still hold all this information for only the tiniest lenght of time. Infinity is child's play in comparison to the actual complexity of reality.

 

If the butterfly in China causes a hurricane here next week will the first water molecule that was exhaled by Ghengis Khan be the one that causes a leaf to fall that plugs a drain and floods a home? This comnplexity is boundless but we can't see it because we see our models and the understanding they generate. We are blind to what we don't understand.

 

I'd just like to add a word of support for Cladking: I'm enjoying reading your thoughts. And a word of sympathy too: I see you're struggling against the same jawdropping silliness that I've been dealing with myself in another thread.

 

 

Thanks.

 

People are so set in their beliefs they can only see a single perspective most of the time so they run out in front of a semi never seeing the car hidden behind it before they are hit. They check to make sure there's no car coming never realizing that if you don't look at the entire lane there might be a motorcycle in it. Despite the fact that riding a motorcycle is tantamount to suicide they won't put light extending away from the machine so it can be seen.

 

People live in a narrow world created not by human nature but by language.

 

These are models, based on what we observe.

 

As as been painfully explained to you dozens of times: science builds models of what we observe.

 

 

It builds models of experiment.

 

Observation merely drives experiment (and about everything else in science).

But that's not the same as claiming math is never applicable to the real world.

 

 

If you add one penny plus one penny you get two pennies and it doesn't matter if one is shiny and the other is corroded. Of course if a baby swallows the corroded one it might dissolve and be fatal and there's nothing you can buy for 2c any longer. It's painfully obvious as I've stated several times that we usually get away with applying math to the real world and this is because we recognize the limitations of math and the complexity of reality. We simply don't compute how much gas we'll need to drive to Hawaii.

 

But we do compute how long it will take to get home and whether we need to stop for gas even though we later learn the bridge is out or the car gets a flat. We can count our rabbits but if they share cages we can grossly underestimate the cost of rabbit food because 1 + 1 = 2 never applies perfectly to the real world. Nature doesn't hold still for our math and it doesn't do what we tell it to or does it obey laws.

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

If math is not applicable in the real world, then how is it we can identify the location of orbiting objects in space? Or know when a comet will show up? Or how to get to the moon?

 

Copernicus was correct assuming the earth orbits the sun, but his math was incomplete. It was Kepler who discovered orbital patterns as "elliptical", not circular.

ISS (ZARYA)             1 25544U 98067A   15280.87785174  .00007073  00000-0  11371-3 0  99962 25544  51.6449 241.5603 0006347  12.7972  82.0158 15.54191378965570

Anyone with a PC and these two lines of data can accurately calculate the position of the International Space Station.

 

1. Epoch
2. Orbital Inclination
3. Right Ascension of Ascending Node (R.A.A.N.)
4. Argument of Perigee
5. Eccentricity
6. Mean Motion
7. Mean Anomaly
8. Drag

Edited October 8, 2015 by Lagoon Island Pearls

[Strange]

The problem is that people are mistaking the model for the reality.

 

You have said this before but never provided any support. It isn't true of the people who make and use models.

 

This is one of the problems with your argument, you state things that are obvious and that everyone knows as if they were some great new insight that only you understand.

 

 

when in point of fact our ignorance is virtually complete.

 

Nonsense. Your using a computer and a worldwide network that are only possible because we are not completely ignorant.

 

 

I'm using the definition of "metaphysics" as "the axioms and definitions upon which a science is founded". I never use another definition of this word.

 

I had no idea that you were (mis)using the word in that way. It is a ludicrous thing to do. Especially by someone who bangs on about the meanings of words being important.

 

Once again, if you insist on using non-standard definitions for words, people will misunderstand you. (Even if you define that when you say toast you mean banana.)

 

I suppose we could substitute every word in the thread title for a different one so it would make sense.

 

 

No, nature has numerous characteristics and processes that are repeatable. You can compute how far a rock will move if you know the forces applied to it with great accuracy. This does not mean the rock is behaving laws nor that nature does. It merely means that we can identify gross and subtle ways that nature operates. It doesn't mean we know all the rules nor that nature must operate in some given way.

 

Er, yes. That is exactly what I said.

 

 

And it probably can never be proved to be infinite and this assumes that cartesian geometry has any meaning in reality.

 

It is not relevant whether we can prove it is infinite (did you miss the "if" at the beginning of the sentence). But if we can't prove that, then we probably can't prove it is finite, either.

 

And, while irrelevant, Cartesian geometry has not been used to describe the universe for nearly 100 years. Time to catch up!

 

 

A real number can dwarf infinity. Numbers extend to infinity in two directions and if you can add more dimensions. How much is infinity squared? etc etc.

 

This is plainly not true by the definition of infinity: a value larger than any real number. But perhaps what you are trying to say is the cardinality of the reals dwarfs the cardinality of the integers? But I doubt it because that would require mathematics.

 

 

Thanks.

 

He is from "the other thread". Oddly, he disagrees with almost everything you say but here he sympathises with a fellow "underdog".

 

 

It's painfully obvious as I've stated several times that we usually get away with applying math to the real world

 

So you agree that the thread title is incorrect. I suppose that is small step.

[swansont]

 

How many billions of vigintillion atoms exist? A few million? Each one of these may affect every other so in every collision there are a virtually infinite number of possible outcomes yet there are countless such collisions in even the briefest lenght of time. These collisions always determine the course of events yet the number of possible outcomes is staggering. If you convert these possibilities to ones ands zeros and the entire known universe with them (ones and zeros) you can still hold all this information for only the tiniest lenght of time. Infinity is child's play in comparison to the actual complexity of reality.

 

If the butterfly in China causes a hurricane here next week will the first water molecule that was exhaled by Ghengis Khan be the one that causes a leaf to fall that plugs a drain and floods a home? This comnplexity is boundless but we can't see it because we see our models and the understanding they generate. We are blind to what we don't understand.

The argument "we can't apply math to everything" is not the same as "we can apply math to nothing" Surely you can see that. So coming up with examples of where we can't apply math, says nothing about the latter argument, which is the topic of this thread. It's absurd that we have gotten past 130 posts into the discussion.

[Strange]

 

It's absurd that we have gotten past 1 post into the discussion.

 

FIFY

[swansont]

 

FIFY

 

Technically it would take two.

[cladking]

 

If math is not applicable in the real world, then how is it we can identify the location of orbiting objects in space? Or know when a comet will show up? Or how to get to the moon?

 

Copernicus was correct assuming the earth orbits the sun, but his math was incomplete. It was Kepler who discovered orbital patterns as "elliptical", not circular.

ISS (ZARYA)             1 25544U 98067A   15280.87785174  .00007073  00000-0  11371-3 0  99962 25544  51.6449 241.5603 0006347  12.7972  82.0158 15.54191378965570

Anyone with a PC and these two lines of data can accurately calculate the position of the International Space Station.

 

1. Epoch
2. Orbital Inclination
3. Right Ascension of Ascending Node (R.A.A.N.)
4. Argument of Perigee
5. Eccentricity
6. Mean Motion
7. Mean Anomaly
8. Drag

 

 

It's the same thing I spoke of earlier. If you stand on the track in front of a speeding freight train your life is in extreme danger. It doesn't matter if the exact outcome is predictable or not to the individual standing on the track. Of course if the train is still a mile away then perhaps it will be switched to another track or will derail before it gets to you. If it hasn't even left the Omaha station yet then many things might prevent it from killing you.

 

This same thing applies to the ISS. In twenty seconds it would be impossible to notice any deviation from its computed location and speed. But how about tomorrow or next year. This is one of the things that can be plotted in exquisite detail since it is large scale and brief duration but extend the time frame and no one knows. The forces that will affect it aren't even known yet and the events that will shape its future and its future trajectory aren't yet known. If it were simply abandoned and its orbit allowed to decay we couldn't begin to predict where it would crash or the shape of the debris. This would be affected by more subtle things like weather patterns and the myriad situations where the variables can't be identified and quantified.

 

If you open a pair of pliers you can predict exactly how much the handle must be opened to grip a three quarter inch bolt but you can't predict how much it must be opened to to grip a cherry that only exists in the form of a blossom.

 

Of course we apply math to nature all the time. But our understanding and our models are highly incomplete so math is of necessity always misapplied to a greater or lesser extent. With the ISS it's about 99.99999% properly applied in the short term. But even here if the people in the ISS all were to suddenly start off in the same direction the numbers would be thrown off. Obviously, in docking and maneuvering operation the orbit would change. In the real world there are always unknowns.

 

I think people are missing my points here. I'm hardly calling for an abandonment of math, science, and the ISS. Indeed, I'm not really asking anything here except that people try to see a different perspective. From this perspective the world looks far different than it does from the models. From this perspective the things that can be seen are just as real and some might be more important than even the models themselves.

[Strange]

Indeed, I'm not really asking anything here except that people try to see a different perspective. From this perspective the world looks far different than it does from the models. From this perspective the things that can be seen are just as real and some might be more important than even the models themselves.

 

Maybe you need to explain what this "different perspective" is. You haven't done a good job of that so far.

[cladking]

 

Maybe you need to explain what this "different perspective" is. You haven't done a good job of that so far.

 

 

In a nutshell it is what the world looks like from a scientific perspective without the models.

 

This will prove quite difficult for most individuals because most people don't know what they know.

 

For some a first step might be reading "The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science".

 

There are others but they might be considered off topic here and I'm considering starting a more apt thread; "Metascience".

[Strange]

In a nutshell it is what the world looks like from a scientific perspective without the models.

 

Science without models is not science.

[swansont]

 

I think people are missing my points here. I'm hardly calling for an abandonment of math, science, and the ISS. Indeed, I'm not really asking anything here except that people try to see a different perspective. From this perspective the world looks far different than it does from the models. From this perspective the things that can be seen are just as real and some might be more important than even the models themselves.

 

 

This isn't your thread, this is my thread (as in, I opened it, and chose the topic for discussion). So I am not interested in your perspective other than to defend your claim that math is NEVER applicable to the real world. If you want to expound on your view, separate from that statement, please open up a new thread or post in an existing thread that's relevant. But here in this thread, I'd like you to stay on-topic.