Can You Imagine a Universe Without Space and Time?

[Chronos]

Hi Dr. Dick! You are always a breath of fresh air. You have ideas and passion behind them - but so do your critics. They have flaws in their arguments, but are yours beyond reproach? Seriously, you talk down to everyone who dares comment. Permit me to criticize your approach. You are a true genius, and I mean that. Few people gather what you say, and you say it well, my friend. But you do not advertise well. You never say a nice word about the people who 'get it' and make meaningful comments. To you, my friend, I say get some humility.

You will gather more allies when you speak softly and draw in an audience. We have talked before, and I agree you are brilliant, but, you antagonize your opponents... why? There is no need to do that, and that is why you fail to attract supporters.

 

[Canute]

DoctorDick

Please take note of Chronos's post. You really must make the effort to understand what other people are saying before being so ludicrously patronising. Hell, you disagree with me even when I agree with you. My suspicion is that you assume the whole world is against you. It may not be true, not yet anyway.

I believe your position is based on the ease with which human beings are able to visualize things. Etc... for 3 paragraphs

My position is based on the facts. Space and time are, as far as we know, conceptual constructs. If the existence of information requires that it is extended in space and time it follows that information may be a conceptual construct. It's no good just saying "Clearly spatial and temporal extension are not fundamental aspects of information." If they are not then information can exist unextended in space and time. Does this idea not seem a little incoherent to you?

Now think about that for a moment. Are you going to seriously propose that a mechanical device can perform a correlation transformation that the human brain cannot?

I have no idea either way. According to science the human brain is a machine so in this view of course a machine can do what any human brain does. However this is not my view. But it seems pointless to argue about this issue. I never even mentioned it and don't know why you bring it up.

It seems to me that it is the "visual" display itself which lends itself to be easily understood. Now, from that perspective, the conclusion that the original (fundamental) source of information which we are trying to understand (the universe) is organized in such a manner is a leap of faith not an objectively defendable fact and physics, if it is to be objective science, should not make such an assumption. I think one does a disservice to physics (or at least to exact science) to avoid this issue via a derisive use of the term metaphysics.

What? Of course it is a leap of faith to conclude the universe is as we visualise it. How could one possibly think otherwise?

Essentially all you are saying here is that you cannot conceive of the universe being anything except a visually organized construct. That cannot be taken as evidence of its truth.

Well, that's a clumsy way of putting it, but something like that. I was agreeing with Kant. Can you conceive of the universe non-visually?

Well, I can see your saying the disease might be unreal (whereas I would call it an "unknown" disease) but I know a number of doctors and patients who would be upset being added to the list of "unreal" things.

No doubt. But so what?

You disagree with the fact that I define an object in that way? How did you become knowledgeable of how I do things or what goes on in my head? The definition tells you what I mean!

I felt your definition was ambiguous so I neither agreed nor disagreed with it. This is why I said that I was not sure whether I agreed or disagreed with it. What I meant by this was that I wasn't sure whether I agreed or disagreed with it. How you conclude that I disagreed with it is not clear to me.

Any time the information commonly used to describe something is sufficiently stable in time that it may be conceptually considered independent of the rest of the universe...

So time is fundamental to information representing objects. What sort of information is time not fundamental to?

Then you would regard the description of neurons and their activity in your visual cortex as "unreal"?

Yes, in the final analysis. Not just the description, but the neurons and their activity. It's a common view, sometimes known in western philosophy as relative phenomenalism.

If you are going to hold that the concept of wave/particle duality is inconsistent, I think you will have some major arguments on your hands. I agree with both Tournesol and SelfAdjoint; I don't think you have a good understanding of the concepts.

As Tournesol and SelfAdjoint disagreed on this I can't imagine what you mean here. Did you misunderstand their posts? What does the term 'duality' mean. Why do you use this term? You use it because particles are not normally the same thing as waves. Why did it take such a long time for us to accept that the wave and particle descriptions theories of light were not mutually exclusive? Because on the surface it is a self-contradiction. Even now it is a contradiction, but we have learned that contradictions can be resolved by the principle of complementarity. I know this is is a slight extension of the principle, but it hardly seems contentious to suggests that waves and particles are complementary properties of 'wavicles', just as are position and momentum.

A very popular opinion but not fact at all. I am sorry you do not understand mathematics.

If it was a popular opinion I wouldn't get into so many arguments here.

Feynman once defined mathematics as "the distilled essence of logic", and I think a lot of professional mathematicians would agree with that. I suspect that what you are lacking is the facility to think in the symbolic abstract.

Doh. That must be it. Or perhaps you just lack the facility to give thinking time to anybody else's arguments, finding it quicker and easier to dimiss them as idiots.

I have not read the works you quote and am not referring to them. I am referring to my own work.

Perhaps you ought to consider reading more widely.

I have no idea of what you mean by "meta-mathematics" other than the fact that you seem to believe "meta" means in-exact and/or logically sloppy.

This is an ignorant remark. If you don't know what meta-mathematics is look it up. It does not mean inexact or logically-sloppy. It may sometimes mean meta-logical, but I don't imagine you'll know what that means either.

I would define "meta-mathematics" as the study of poorly understood aspects of mathematics.

In that case you'll have defined it incorrectly.

I personally define mathematics as the design and study of internally self consistent systems. That would define any "successful" outcomes of "meta-mathematics" to be "mathematics". Furthermore, the study of "meta-mathematics" is certainly bounded by logic which is usually taught as a branch of mathematics.

I think you ought to read up on these issues. I think also that I shan't respond to your posts in future. The discussion inevitably descends into complete silliness.

 

[Doctordick]

Hi Dr. Dick! You are always a breath of fresh air. You have ideas and passion behind them - but so do your critics. They have flaws in their arguments, but are yours beyond reproach? Seriously, you talk down to everyone who dares comment.

The only thing I complain about is their utter refusal to examine my deductions. To date, saviormachine is the only person to show any interest at all it what I have to say. (That is, outside of Paul Martin who holds that my mathematics are over his head). Everyone else is putting up arguments as to the ridiculousness of even considering what I bring up; certainly not giving any consideration to my work. I personally don't feel it should be necessary to defend the idea of looking at things from an alternate perspective. No one has even begun to discuss even the first step of my arguments.

Permit me to criticize your approach.

Criticism is always welcome but serves little purpose if it opens no leads to rational dialog.

You are a true genius, and I mean that.

I am no genius at all; in fact, I would say I am mentally rather slow and ponderous. The only claim I put forth is that I have looked where everyone else refuses to look. And all I get are reasons why no one should look there.

Few people gather what you say, and you say it well, my friend. But you do not advertise well.

Advertise it well? I have no interest in publicizing[/color] what I have discovered, all I would like to do is talk to someone about my reasoning and my deductions. My main problem is that no one will even consider working with the definitions I propose.

You never say a nice word about the people who 'get it' and make meaningful comments.

Who are these people you say "get it" and have made "meaningful comments". I apologize if I have misunderstood them as I most certainly must have as I am not aware of anyone other than Paul Martin and Saviormachine who have even shown an interest in the issues I am attempting to bring up. The rest are more concerned with trying to convince me that it is ridiculous to even think about these things.

You will gather more allies when you speak softly and draw in an audience. We have talked before, and I agree you are brilliant, but, you antagonize your opponents... why? There is no need to do that, and that is why you fail to attract supporters.

I have no interest in obtaining supporters. Either my work is correct or I have made errors; the work itself stands on its own. What I would like to find is someone with enough logical ability to work with my definitions and discuss the validity of my deductions from those definitions. As far as I am concerned, it is entirely possible I have made some stupid errors. I hate the idea that I may have done exactly that and will die not knowing.

You say, "we have talked" but, in actual fact, I wouldn't refer to any of our exchanges as "talking". Unless I have forgotten something you have said, all I have received from you are criticisms of my presentation, no criticisms at all of any of my work. In fact, as far as I know, I don't even have any indications you have even looked the logic of those presentations.

I really have very little interest in the common opinion of the validity of my definitions as the only real defense of any set of definitions consists of the relationships required by those definitions. Those relationships arise from deductions which can be constructed from those definitions. The common emotional attitude that my definitions are not correct carries no weight at all and, until someone rational enough to see that makes his presence known, all I am doing is keeping the issue open in the hopes that someone competent will decide to consider what I am saying.

Sorry if that seems abrupt and antagonistic to my "opponents" but, to date, I have discovered no opponents. All I have discovered are people who refuse to discuss the issues. Actually, I have no desire to antagonize anyone; I just get frustrated by their utter refusal to look.

Have fun -- Dick

Knowledge is Power
and the most common abuse of that power is to use it to hide stupidity

 

[genep]

Can You Imagine a Universe Without Space and Time.

Yes, I live in a universe without space and time every day when I dream that I wake up in the morning.
And even in my sleep-dreams, when I think I am awake, this universe has no space and time.

 

[Tournesol]

Space and time are, as far as we know, conceptual constructs.

We don't have any reason to believe that. To be precise, we don't have any reason to suppose that s&t are any more conceptual constructs than anything else.