Recent content by conradcook

No, no, I didn't mean that anyone formal system is to be the only correct mathematics. I can't believe those formalists would claim that! C.

OTOH, your reason telling you something is NOT real is not always reliable, either! Your friend saw a Pooka. I have a friend who started taking psych drugs and reported seeing a little green man tearing around on a motorcycle. She looked it up online and found that people do indeed see...

Ah, I know about light cones; I guess that's a diagrammatic form of space/time/lightlike separation. Very interesting discussion. I'm following it diligently. Thanks to all.Conrad.

Similarly, the experience of "love" has been explained by neuroscience, which identifies neurotransmitters and parts of the brain, and so on. However, that does not speak to the *grounds* on which we love. Surely these grounds are in some sense present in the psyche, and in some sense exist in...

Peter, I grew up reading books on relativity -- popular books -- and have never heard of spacelike or timelike separation. I'm googling around. Can you draw out the difference between timelike and null separation? It seems to me the cosmic background radiation means that, at least...

Well... I can't travel at the speed of light, but if I could, time wouldn't pass. Dave, I just looked that up on Wikipedia. That answers my question! -- Many thanks. Conrad.

Bottom [awakening]: God's my life, stolen hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an a**, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was -- there is no man can tell what. Methought I was -- and...

"Rulesism" -- Mathematics is a set of rules, in theory and application. Conrad.

Title says it all. I've been wondering. The argument is, is there a minimal temperature required for any chemical reaction to reach its activation threshold? Or would the energylessness of the atoms prevent bonds from forming (or dissolving, I guess)? Conrad.

Relativity -- problem of simultaneity I wrote a basic outline of relativity on my blog. I think I got it right, as far as it goes: wp.me/p2ukOd-D --As I understand it, relativity says there is no *preferred* sequencing of events. Two events can be considered to be simultaneous, or one...