Worse than futile.

Hi Bill Hobba, You mentioned,
" I have recently become interested in
Wesson's Space Time Matter theory ( STM )
and noticed a post by Gregory Hansen explaining
the Pioneer anomaly by Quasi-Metric Relativity " .

Re: STM and Quasi-Metric Relativity, you added,
" another had already noticed a connection
and written a paper explaining it in terms of STM
( and other Kaluza Klein like theories ) " .

Very interesting, thanks.

But that prompted me to lookup one of your old posts,
From news:[Only registered users see links. ].au ,
" I admire Einstein and respect his devotion to his beliefs
as well as his scientific willingness
to admit that SQM meets the test of experiment.
However the lack of
an experimentally differentiable deterministic alternative
is a minus in my view
and why Einstein is not one of my heroes.
What would have been heroic is to abandon ones belief
when faced with the facts. Einstein did not. " .

Einstein gave us relativity,
Brownian motion, the EPR paradox ...
He greatly helped define the photon and the atom ...
He helped create lasers ( Bose-Einstein condensates ) .

Although he accepted the probabilistic equations of SQM,
he objected to the idea that randomness could be
somehow more than just incomplete information.

Einstein was very brave, and very right,
to take such a stand ...

Because, like evolution insults us by calling us apes,
The idea that time is actually a spatial dimension,
( despite notional randomness )
also insults us by calling us notional beings.

Stephen Hawking agrees with Einstein on this point:

In 1990, Hawking said,
" In summary, the title of this essay
was a question: ' Is everything determined ? '
The answer is yes, it is.
But it might as well not be,
because we can never know what is determined. "

Hawking said, " one has to find
a consistent solution of the equations of physics "
....
" It would imply that we were completely determined :
we couldn't change our minds. So much for free will. "

Also,
Because well tested assumptions are not just unavoidable,
they are also cleaner ...
Hawking uses Godel's incompleteness theorem
to explain why a purely scientific theory of everything ,
( such as string theory ) is worse than futile ...
it's just plain ugly .

Jeff Relf <[Only registered users see links. ]> wrote in message news:<1up8qd60e3st1$.[Only registered users see links. ].Relf>...


Not quite. Einstein didn't give us Brownian motion. (Otherwise it'd
be called Einsteinian motion.) He made a specific study of Brownian
motion to provide strong evidence for the atomicity of fluids.

-Mark Martin

Jeff Relf

Yep - it does make for interesting and thought provoking reading. STM would
seem to do what Einstein wanted - building the wood of matter from the
marble of geometry. Also connections between that and M theory are also
quit interesting - do I think it is 'a great leap forward' or anything like
that - no. Do I think it is an interesting step along the way - yes.

Jeff Relf wrote:

Sure - and is totally consistent with what I wrote in this more recent
discussion where I said: 'Einstein, for the most part was not either (I side
with Bilge and believe if Einstein was exposed to what we currently know
about QM he would change his views).'

Jeff Relf wrote:

Yes he was - but was he correct? The evidence we currently have is he was
not. His physical intuition - which was formidable and powerful - led him
astray on QM. The trick is to know what way to view the world to progress.
I have outlined by belief - time will tell if it is correct or not.

Jeff Relf wrote:

Your knowledge of evolution and SR is obviously lacking - you should not
make comments about subjects you obviously do not understand - eg time is
not considered a spatial dimension - why do you think physicists talk about
'time like' and 'space like'.

Jeff Relf wrote:

Quoting Hawking out of context tells us nothing - even if the world is
deterministic (and QM has a very interesting twist on that) please explain
to me how that will help us - ever hear of the butterfly effect?

Jeff Relf wrote:

And because Hawking says it, it must be true - unless of course he says
something you do not like in which case he is wrong. I may be guessing here
but Jeff do you actually know what Godels theorem says? Not some folksy pop
culture version but real actual technical detail?

Thanks
Bill

Mark Martin

True Mark - and represents the kind of evidence I would accept for existence
the of an aether - except of course evidence of that type has never been
produced.

Thanks
Bill

Hi Bill Hobba,
Re: How Einstein used Brownian motion
to support the notion that atoms exist,
You commented that that,
" represents the kind of evidence I would accept
for existence the of an aether " .

The granularity of photons is impossible to study
because we can't travel that fast.
The faster a particle travels,
( relative to the human frame of reference )
the greater the time dilation and length contraction,
including the Planck time and length ...
so the Notional randomness inside a photon
approaches infinity.

Yet, from the study of certain supernovas,
the vacuum energy density is observed to be negative,
enough to cause the accelerated expansion of the universe.

However,
none of that recommends adding a third frame to relativity.

Hi Bill Hobba,
Re: How Hawking agrees with Einstein
on the issue of time being intrinsically spatial,
and how it's only our incomplete information
that makes it seem otherwise,
You mocked me by saying
" And because Hawking says it, it must be true -
unless of course he says something you do not like
in which case he is wrong. "

Newton felt the same way, so did Maxwell,
not to mention John Bell, etc., etc. .
It's just what's most probable ...
it's just a well supported assumption.
The fact that you disagree with such people
does not speak well of you ... I'm sorry to report.

Re: The following quotes from Hawking ...
Without offering any proof,
you said that Hawking was quoted " out of context " .
<< In 1990, Hawking said,
" In summary, the title of this essay
was a question: ' Is everything determined ? '
The answer is yes, it is.
But it might as well not be,
because we can never know what is determined. " .
Hawking said, " one has to find
a consistent solution of the equations of physics "
...
" It would imply that we were completely determined :
we couldn't change our minds.
So much for free will. " >>

Due to our ever-incomplete information,
scientific determinism can never be complete,
while material determinism is most probably absolute.
If you don't understand that difference,
( and I'm quite sure that you don't )
then you can't understand Hawking or Einstein .
( And I'm quite sure that you can't )

You asked,
" I may be guessing here but Jeff do you actually know
what Godel's theorem says ? Not some folksy pop
culture version but real actual technical detail ? "

Godel's incompleteness theorem proves that
every set of axioms is either incomplete
and/or inconsistent . . . Forever and always.

In other words,
it all comes down to well tested assumptions.

I sincerely doubt that
you could explain that theorem any better .

And that theorem applies to physics as well.
So a purely scientific theory of everything ,
( such as string theory ) is worse than futile ...
it's convoluted.
Hawking said that he was wrong to have ever sought it.

You suggested,
" even if the world is deterministic
( and QM has a very interesting twist on that )
please explain to me how that will help us -
ever hear of the butterfly effect ? " .

Right, Isn't that where we try to maximally exploit
the full extent of our ignorance in order
to confabulate delusions of grandeur ?

By the way,
I'm sure that this is beyond your understanding,
but QM is scientific determinism,
therefore it is incomplete.
while, in comparison, and by definition,
material determinism is complete.
( And it's the most likely reality )

Re: How physicalism is
even more repulsive than evolution,
You accused me thusly,
" Your knowledge of evolution and SR is obviously lacking -
you should not make comments about subjects that
you obviously do not understand -
e.g. time is not considered a spatial dimension -
why do you think physicists talk about
' time like ' and ' space like ' . " .

Again,
you confused the incompleteness of scientific determinism
with the completeness of material determinism.
Evolution is just physicalism-light.
Perhaps you should look in the mirror,
maybe it's you who, " obviously does not understand " .

Re: Einstein's trust in physicalism,
You asked, " was he correct ? " .

He was absolutely correct.
Randomness is sure to be incomplete information,
which is not locally physical.

For example, as observed from the human frame,
because of the time dilation and length contraction
inside of a single photon,
it's clock never tics, and it's a dimensionless point.
( i.e. it's not observed to be granular,
no aether can be observed )

So, from our frame,
Planck's constant is dilated to infinity.
Such near infinite randomness is obviously
nothing but a total lack of information.
( Not only is the information not known,
it's not even knowable )
But in the photon's local frame,
the physicalism would be much more obvious.

You said,
" I side with Bilge
and believe if Einstein was exposed to
what we currently know about QM
he would change his views " .

From what little I know about Bilge,
he seems like a total idiot to me.

You mentioned,
" STM would seem to do what Einstein wanted -
building the wood of matter from the marble of geometry. "

Mass-energy is most certainly a spatial dimension,
space-time is warped by it.
Plus the so-called " Age " of the universe
is demarcated by the temperature of
the cosmic microwave background radiation.
( At it's core, heat is random mass-energy )
Plus, by observing certain supernova,
the negative mass-energy of the false vacuum
is thought to be causing the accelerated expansion
of space-time.

"Mark Martin" <[Only registered users see links. ]> wrote in message
news:7d087978.0402201030.65aeea27@posting.google.c om...
news:<1up8qd60e3st1$.[Only registered users see links. ].Relf>...

You were too kind. Relf's ignorance apparently also includes ignorance
that:

1) the "P" and the "R" in "EPR paradox" stand for Podolski and Rosen, with
whom Einstein shares credit.

2) the atom was an ancient idea of by the Greek philosophers Democritus and
Leucippus (around 450-420 B.C), which owes to Dalton (1803) the proof of
atomism, to Rutherford (1911) the proof of the nuclear structure, and to the
quantum mechanics of Niels Bohr, Sommerfeld, Heisenberg, and Schrödinger the
structure of electron orbits.

3)lasers (the first working laser was in 1960), while based on Einstein's
ideas, have nothing to do with Bose-Einstein condensates (first produced in
1995).


Tom Davidson
Richmond, VA

Bill Hobba wrote:
I may be guessing here but Jeff do you actually know what Godel's theorem
says ? Not some folksy pop culture version but real actual technical detail
? "

Jeff Relf replied:
'Godel's incompleteness theorem proves that every set of axioms is either
incomplete and/or inconsistent . . . Forever and always.'

Sorry Jeff back to the drawing board. It only applies to systems that
implicitly or explicitly contain within them arithmetic. The exact
statement is: (from an internet site)

'The proof, published by Kurt Godel in 1931, of the existence of formally
undecidable propositions in any formal system of arithmetic. More precisely,
his first incompleteness theorem. states that in any formal system S of
arithmetic, there will be a sentence P of the language of S such that if S
is consistent, neither P nor its negation can be proved in S. .This makes it
possible to show that there must be a sentence P of S which can be
interpreted (very roughly) as saying 'I am not provable'. It is shown that
if S is consistent, this sentence is not provable, and hence, it is
sometimes argued, P must be true. It is this last step which had led people
to claim that Godel's theorem demonstrates the superiority of men over
machines - men can prove propositions which no machine (programmed with the
axioms and rules of a formal system) can prove. But this is to overlook the
point that the proof of the theorem only allows one to conclude that if S is
consistent, neither P nor its negation is provable in S. One cannot go on to
conclude that P is not provable in S, and hence must be true, without having
proved the consistency of S. Indeed, because Godel's proof is formalizable
in S, it could be said that one machine T could prove of another machine T'
that if T' is consistent, there is a proposition that T' cannot prove. But
T' could prove the same thing about T. The fact that the first
incompleteness proof can be formalized in S allows one to derive Godel's
second incompleteness theorem as a corollary. This theorem states that the
consistency of a formal system of arithmetic cannot be proved by means
formalizable within that system. This result was damaging to the prospects
of completing Hilbert's programme for the foundations of mathematics, for
Hilbert had hoped to justify the use, in calculus for example, of the notion
of infinity by showing that a formal system governing its use could be shown
to be consistent using only finitistic methods. This would have demonstrated
that the notion could be regarded merely as a calculating device whose use
was legitimate, in that it would never lead one astray, and justified in
terms of economy of labour. But the finitistic methods envisaged are
formalizable with a formal system of arithmetic and were thus shown to be
inadequate to Hilbert's task.'

As I said previously - your one of these types that throw folksy statements
about as if they we fact beyond question, have no idea what they mean, and
think you have actually said something of substance. however the truth is,
to those that actually take the and effort to understand things what you say
is childish in the extreme.

Thanks
Bill

Bill Hobba wrote:


The incompleteness of first order arithmentic goes even further. If you
add the Goedel sentance as an additional postulate the augmented system
is still incomplete and another Goedel sentence will be constructable.
You can do the augmentation all you want and the result will still be
incomplete. There is no finite patchup that will render arithmetic both
complete and consistent.

Bob Kolker

"Bill Hobba" <[Only registered users see links. ].au> wrote in message news:<[Only registered users see links. ].au>...


Or even to those who haven't taken the effort but know a slogan when
they see one. I knww I don't understand Godel's theorem (any of them)
as a concrete technical result, and that it is highly probable Jeff
does either (though I have no wish to insult him), and also know
enough not to write things which might make it sound like I did
understand the technical result and could apply it sensibly.