Not if it's an escalator. Step on and move in a straight diagonal line to the top. — T Clark

If the stair is an escalator it's an escalator. Or a stair in a smooth disguise. Yes of course if the stair is flat, you can go straight up. I wrote that already. The elevator doesn't walk the stairs and makes you float upwards.

It's just shorthand for whatever or whoever is taking measurements, which can be a computer sensor — TerraHalcyon

That's not true. The computer sensor stays in a superposition. It only collapses after a conscious act of observation. Even if someone else looks at the computer, then he is for you still in a superposition Read about Wigner's friend or Schrödinger's cat. So your friend is right in claiming that the world is in a superposition if he doesn't look. There are all kind of ways constructed to circumvent exactly what you are against, but not successfully. Many worlds, decoherence, knowledge collapse, etc. Only hidden variables offer objective collapse. So if you hold this against him, you can take him down. It's the orthodox view (the ruling view) that gave rise to it. Let the guy think what he wants. If he wants to be solipsist, just tell him that according to you he is non-existent or in any case, you can't be sure of his reality.

The article is prejudiced? How you know the super position has collapsed without you or an observer? Here your opponent is right. You don't know. You can just state it, like in the article you linked, but the basic principles say only a conscious observer can do it.

Is that all it takes to get rid of this dumb-ass paradox - a motor and some gears? — T Clark

There is no paradox. The stair is just no diagonal. So you can't go up the stairs in a straight line. Guess you have to buy some gear for that. A lift or a constraining device to place your body in while walking the stairs. Though I doubt that even that is possible. The stairs paradox: it's impossible not to hop or wobble when climbing the stairs...

The ghost of departed quantities. Sounds great. And this sounds great too:

"In my opinion, the philosophical paradox is only solvable having gained an intuitionistic understanding of the continuum and of point-free topology, due to the fact that intuitionism is better fitted to the phenomenology of mathematical judgement"

But it's not true. I don't know what you prefer: "pretty stupid", which it is not, but the member claiming this is just sticking his too big nose in this debate he clearly doesn't understand (that's why he intervenes like an angry child, calling it stupid), or that it's not true...

Differentials are funny things. They are not points, but infinitely small pieces of a continuum. The small stairs has the same length as the big one. The smooth diagonal has a different structure as the infinitely small stair. You could put the differentials in a variety of ways together around the diagonal. Mutually orthogonal, like a stairs, or in a general zig-zag pattern, which will lead to a total length bigger than sqrt2. Maybe even an infinite length. Can one project all parallel differentials placed together to form an infinite line, squeeze together on the diagonal? If you rotate all dx on the infinite line 90 degrees, can the be layed side by side on the diagonal?

The problem with randomness is that just by looking, like at a long array of 1's, it's impossible to say if there is a connection between the elements of the array. A long array of 1's could be random, or each element of the array could be related to the other ones in a scale-independent way. The atoms in an ideal gas all are independent of one another. The atoms in a perfect crystal are orderly connected. If the local connections between the atoms are globally invariant, the atoms display total order. You just need to look at the connections locally to know the global order. In a gas the situation is the same. If you know the local appearance, you know the whole. The gas might show a fluctuation of orderly structure but only temporarily. The crystal structure is fixed in time.

Now how does this relate to rows of 1 and 0? If you are given a random array of them how we know it's random? In fact, every array of them could be random, even an infinite sequence of 1. If all the 1 and 0 are independent of one another they still could decide all to show 1. Like all particles of gas could find themselves in a corner. All particles of the perfect crystal are static (at zero temperature). But they are as dull a sight as the gas. The 1 and 0 array of sqrt 2 seems random. But they have a connection. To discover randomness, dynamics and initial conditions have to be taken in account. If all gas particles are given the same direction, their motion is not random, like the motion of "weather gasses", the atmosphere is only partially random. The fun lies between complete randomness and complete order. But what is complete randomness?

How can we determine randomness? Chance is invented for that. If there are correlations (interdependencies) found between stochastic variables, like the gas particles, there is a degree of non-randomness. If the particles in a gas showed a continued interdependence, it's not a fluctuation. If they find themselves all in a corner at a given moment (could be), and they stay there, there is a non randomizer (not to be confused with a sodomizer) active, like boundary conditions or internal changes (maybe the particles all hold hands suddenly). Are the initial conditions of the universe random?

Another aspect is the thermodynamics of the evolution of the wavefunction: its dispersion. If you measure a particle, it has a very localised wavefunction. As time progresses, it spreads out. It never does the opposite.
3hReplyOptions — Kenosha Kid

But what spreads out? If it spreads out it can collapse.

I'll agree that there are hierarchies of ontology. I don't _believe_ in quarks the way I believe in houses. But it's not just a case of wanting. — Kenosha Kid

I can always say that you see quarks because you only belive in them (personally I believe in two even smaller particles and find the believe in elementary quarks and leptons contrived but justified). The believe system of sciences is based on the existence of one objective reality to be explored by us interacting and theorizing. The reality is usually defended by stating that it's a succesful approach. Throw your notion of success and of one reality only overboard and quarks dissappear from the scene. Usually it is replied then that quarks still exist but you just close your eyes to them by. Here I disagree. That's the same as saying God exists no matter if you believe or not. Of course, for people believing in quarks (like me, but not as basic entities), quarks are real. Though the are pretty far removed from daily existence and they show themselves under pretty strict experimental conditions. When quarks were introduced in the sixties it took another 10 years to prove their existence and Feynman didn't believe in them, though he believed in partons. The pre-quark world of hadrons and mesons was completely different from the world of quarks, with a different experimental practice.

In my opinion, the philosophical paradox is only solvable having gained an intuitionistic understanding of the continuum and of point-free topology, due to the fact that intuitionism is better fitted to the phenomenology of mathematical judgement. — sime

You can solve this paradox intuitively. Infinitesimals are not points. You can envision the straight diagonal as a countable and sommable sequence of infinitesimals dl (the length being the integral, sqrt2). At the same time, the infinitesimal stair is a row of infinitesimals in the horizontal direction, dx (integral 1, total horizontal length), and a row of infinitesimals in the vertical direction, dy (total length 1). You can even view the first staircase a differential: one dx in the x direction and one dy vertically. There are no points involved here, as the continuum can't be constructed with points. It can with differentials. Even when they are infinitely small. A dx is larger than x. You can even attach a measure on it. The continuum is not a collection of points.

Consider for example, that it is impossible to visualise or perceive an extensionally infinite staircase, or a perfectly straight path, or vanishingly small point, or a precise angle. — sime

I can visualize both the infinite line as well as the point, perfectly straight line or infinitely small or long staircase.

The paradox lies in the fact that the stair length seems to be that of a straight line. Which it isn't. Someone here even thinks they float straight up a stair...

So, to speak more correctly — Alkis Piskas

Why is that more correctly? Because it's the way it actually is? Energy is physical. It's a means to gain motion by interaction. Pure energy, without mass, is used between massive particles, which might even be stuff without mass, gaining mass by some strong interaction. Is the charge, like mental charge, physical? What is charge? A physical property? Can we know it? It emits energy to interact. Is charge a will, a form of consciousness? It certainly seems so. It "wants" to be near other charges, opposites attract. Or stay away from them. Likewise, we could be viewed as charged people. With eyes, ears, a nose, etc. To feel other people and understand them. Our body seems fit for interaction. Why should energy be non-physical? It's the charge that's non physical and the inviable, correct, and necessary ingredient for the will and consciousness.

if they let go of any preconception — thaumasnot

But doesn't need a conceptual reconstruction a preconception also? If you were born in old Greek, maybe the instinctive narrative is different from ours? You think all people share the same instinctive narrative? Sounds like scientific realism. We all see the same world. Doesn't the view, the worldview, so to speak, depend on the narrative? If you value the scientific story (and there are a lot of different stories in the book of these stories, short ones, long ones containing dozens of chapters, basic stories, and they feature a wide variety of characters) then that's what you see. If you value other stories then you see different things. But I know what you mean. It's a great story you wrote!

say the painting a Jackson Pollock-like mess, well too bad. The goal is to intensify pleasure, yeah.
10mReplyOptions — thaumasnot

A JP like mess is sufficient for pleasure...A sufficient, but not necessary condition. Two orthogonal lines do just as well. Unless you don't view a JP-like mess as sufficient for pleasure...

Well it's still all to play for, but by my reckoning, if it diffracts like a wave and it interferes like a wave, it's a wave. — Kenosha Kid

Of course. The physicist wants his quarks and leptons (or subs within them, to which muon g2 anomaly seems to hint) to be real. What's thought real or not varies and there is, especially nowadays, no consensus, not even for the fundamental, what the right picture is.

Yes. If you reverse basic processes, you can't tell if time goes forward or backward. I don't think though that the absorption of a photon is the reversed process of absorption. The absorption involves a different photon state as the emitted photon. So one can see the difference. Or not?
What about the evolution of the wave function? Reversing motion will still produce collapse. Collapse is insensitive to time reversal. Still, if you reverse the movie of a collapse, a superposition magically appears.

Consciousness is not a substance (Re: Substance ia particular kind of matter with uniform properties.) — Alkis Piskas

Is electric charge a substance?

The fields are held in lock by the biological circuity of the brain. Just in the same way an electric circuit holds the current of an electric field. — Josh Alfred

The currents in an electric circuit are not the force fields though. It is an external field, generated by external charges, that direct, the electrons. The wire is indeed used to direct the field and push the charges, but this doesn't go on in the neuron wiring, where electric charge moves without a field directed by a field along the whole dendrites. The dendrites are there to direct the path of the charges, but doesn't pull it through, as on a wire on which a potential is applied. The charges move perpendicular to the dendrites (through the ion channels), and this process propagates along the dendrite line. Of course this motion creates its own EM field, and it can help to directs other running charges. All this directed and structured running charges constitute consciousness.

How would that look like for the two lines? What are the objectives everyone sees? How do you tell someone who doesn't see the painting? Or should he see it during the narrative? Do you offer generally applicable instructions to conceptually reconstruct? I haven't read the whole theorem you offered yet, but is that the aim? A kind of objective theory of everything in the realm of products of art? With the aim to intensify pleasure?

The medium specific narrative. The kind of paint used? What underground is used? Objective properties?

Somehow this discussion looks like a discussion I read on this forum.Look here.

There is spoken of a manifesto, like you speak about it. And in the same way, more or less, a conceptual reconstruction of science and its foundation is made. I don't say you have to read it, but the similarity is remarkable.

The area below the triangles (between the triangles and the diagonal) goes to zero, while the length of all triangle sides stays the same, i.e, two. The paradox lies in the fact that both shapes look the same but aren't. The diagonal and fine stairs both have the same area beneath them (1/2) but they are different in nature.

Haha! That's what I mean. Professor Zonnebloem, following his wild pendulum everywhere.

So earlier we established that it isn't the living (or life-modifying) individual that demonstrates will, but the RNA over many generations — Kenosha Kid

This is essentially the central dogma of biology. But it's a dogma. Who says it's true? Information can flow in two directions. From DNA to the organism, or from the organism to DNA. It's a pretty weird image of us hanging on the imperative lines of selfish genes willing to procreate only. You can just as well say that DNA is the altruistic follower of us. Giving us a means for existence. The organism needs proteins, the DNA provides. DNA stays alive through the generations, but does this show a will to survive? It are rather the the organisms that show a will, and pass this will on to a next generation, and this can only be done by means of DNA. Why should DNA wanna survive? To prolongate itself? That sounds circulary. The reason to live is to propagate life? The reason to live is spawning new life, or propagate genes or memes? Dunno, that robs them of value somehow. I want my memes to occupy as many as minds as possible. It can be a consequence, just as redirecting half of you genes to your children is a consequence, but to say this is the ground for what happens is circular. It is making the consequences the cause, the will, as you want. Genes are passed to the new generation, so it must be their will to replicate. If proteins came on the scene first, in the primordial soup of amino acids, and if these protein structures, this first life, had the "will" to pass life on, for the sake of life (so not to pass on genes or memes but to live, in which case the reason or meaning of life is life itself), then DNA can be seen as an aid. Altruistic, selfish, or better, neutral, You can label it anyway you want. Labeling it selfish is stupid, as this implicates the effect being the cause. Calling it altruistic is just as stupid, but it seems closer to reality. DNA offers its means to store information about proteins and the organism uses this property. DNA doesn't truly offer though, nor does it truly order a body which it has constructed blindly to ensure its continuation. That's why I don't understand why modern sticks to this language, which gives a false sense of reality.

The dogma hasn't been proven. Organisms might be able to influence DNA as well as the other way round.

I mistakenly read "Stalking with the Pendulum". I imagined people (scientist) looking at things secretely while holding a pendulum and scribbling down their observations, while counting the times a pendulum swings... Instead the wild pendulum is stalked. Evokes wild images. Even a seed for a painting maybe. A space full of wild pendulums. PEÑDULA.

Good looking guy, by the way.

Between what is said and not meant, And what is meant and not said, Most of love is lost — Kahlil Gibran

What does this mean? I say many things I don't mean (when I get mean), and mean many, if not most, things I don't say. Still, my love is there. And there is not much lost. I can imagine though it gets confusing if you never say what you mean or never mean what you say. But maybe this can even let love grow.

It depends. If the 1's are independent, it's random. That can only be decided by writing extra 1's and 0's. It's more likely it has total order. If the next sequence would be the same number of 1's then 0's again, the 1, etc. There would be total order. Though all 1's or 0's would be even more orderly. In a totally random sequence, your row occurs once in a while. But how can we tell by looking? We can't. Only by knowing if there is a dependency between the 1's and 0's. That might be the case for this row of 1's. It can be seen in a casino though. I was sure red had to appear after 13 times black. And it did.

That's simply not true either. You can always look at every measuring act as caused by a conscious observer. No claim of measuring devices can contest that. Only when a conscious observer looks, the wave function collapses. That's the weird stuff about QM. I don't buy it. But therre is no one to prove it's not like that. That's the reason for dozens of interpretations. The problem of wave collapse, of measurement. Only hidden variables claim an objective collapse.

Stalking the Wild Pendulum. — Mason

There you go! I was just contemplating the 3d torus. I have a similar view. With a different torus though. "Stalking with the pendulum" What a powerful image of what western man is doing!

You put that very well! I learned more from these words than a whole book of Salmon I had to read once, about "causal statistical laws and causal forks". Space is indeed needed for interaction. It separates but has, by interaction through it, the potential to unite. And that's what an agreement is about. There is a will inherent in nature. It uses space to articulate oneself and to reach out and be with others. Already in the fundamentals this can be seen. Space in between as the expression of the will to be separate or together. And time is the result. Without interaction no time and change. In which case space is totally useless. All matter would be without will, and it's the question if space could even exist.

I think there is only one way nature can be saved. To stop the economic machinery that spews out disposables with an inflationary rate, recreates nature to fit this goal, educates the masses on global scale to participate on the base of knowledge of nature from which they are further removed than ever before, turns thought into a logical process to come up with new ideas for sustaining and enlarging, automating, or improving the machinery and creation of new products on the base of an artificial knowledge, forces the non-complying to comply by technological force, and controls with a mindfucking omnipresence and potency. The face of the Earth is restructured, holes are dug, underneath the surface nature is sucked empty, or stuffed with poison which can't be puffed into the air. The growth of the machine is called progress and temporary stagnation recess, which only serves as a break for the reigning powers, in which they consolidate and plan for future development.

The world is artificially and with a false notion of self importance divided in a first, a second, and a third world, while this so-called first world arrived on stage last and whiped out worlds that existed long before to give a false impression and even the road for expansion, by means of the technology so worshipped. And now this third world are denigratingly called the developing world, while they are in a more miserable state then ever and suffer the most from the chaos in nature that only increases the longer we impose our crazy new order, the second law of thermodynamics backing me up here.

Great value is assigned to possessing the cleverness to participate in the system, and much time is spent to make propagate the importance of knowledge and technology,
creating a longing for it, acquiring it, and using it to... should I go on?

This is of course a pretty depressing and black vision. But it's a realistic one. There is no god battering the eaarth with his wrath, it's simply a natural fact that if we impose an artificial technological order on nature, the natural order will get fucked up and natural chaos will replace it. The image of a God unleashing chaos on nature is a powerful one. No doubt there is a god, or more, and created the universe, and their creation is a wonderful one, but maybe the destruction of their creation is of no importance for them, and is maybe even what they are waiting for. Who knows. Keeping nature in order is in our own interest and of course in the interest of all other creatures created by the Holy Creator, to who we can only bow in great awe and fortunate obedience! Praise His Name! So brothers and sisters, let's pray, to indulge in the heavenly wonders... well... fuck that...

So, why not slowing down? Why not look at knowledge as an art, with state of the art technology? Why not installing solar panels on every roof, intensify the search for managable fusion, use hydrogen tomorrow, and free people from the system? Best would be if we all just are put to sleep for a 1000 years and give nature a breather so we can be kissed awake and finally feel home in a world from which we are estranged and only the possessing class seems to feel well and project their silly ways into the world?

Randomness and total order are seemingly opposite but two sides of the same medal. Total order displays one globally and locally uniform pattern, while randomness displays none at all, nor locally, nor globally. The interesting patterns seem to arise in between. Inside the medal, so to speak.

A random sequence of 1's and 0's shows nor locally, nor globally a pattern. The 1's and 0's are independent of each other, non connected by a formula, while the 1's and 0's in a maximally ordered sequence are locally and globally connected by the same formula.

Both are simple.

Was it Novikov's evolution of the universe? He wrote stuff about white holes.

Starobinsky and Zel'dovich proposed a 3d torus shape of the universe, with a central singularity, a wormhole.

Put a tiny mirror on a Brownian particle, shine a light on it, and record the reflected light. The record of randomness.

As to what a random number is, that is not-so-simple, — tim wood

Isn't randomness in fact the most simple?

I can imagine though that I only push backwardly on the stairs, but I have to push myself upwardly too. I think you can direct your CoM linea recta only on flat surfaces. Nice problem! Let's solve... I think you have to use your body and muscles to let your body move straight up, but usually taking the stairs is taking the long way home.

So you go from 0 to 1 on a sine with zero wavelength? Does the line become a rectangle? With area 1xamplitude of sine? Great article! Is an infinite complex path projected on 0-1?

On a straight surface, your CoM can stay on one height while walking, as on a diagonal upward (wrt to the diagonal). On a stair you push yourself up each step.

I feel myself always hopping on a stair. My center of mass seems not to go in a straight line. Maybe you walk the stairs while your CoM floats linea recta.

How is an infinite line between 0 and 1 constructed?

Isn't the distance traveled on the stairs always 2? You not go in a straight line on the stairs. Only on a flat slope, if not slippery. The paradox is that the length of the stairs seems sqrt2 but is 2.

Self-consciousness versus consciousness though...... — Pantagruel

What's the difference? Both are conscious. Self-consciousness seems even a hindrance for consciousness. What's so special about self-consciousness? The consciousness about yourself, don't animals have that too? You gotta be conscious of your body to direct it. You gotta be conscious of your thoughts to think them or change them.

It are just words. Like hyperbolic, circular, linear, square, harmonic, spherical, tangent, projective, isomorph, injective, stochastic, conic, fractal, invertible, chaotic, infinitesimal, differentiable, continuous (a continuous poem need not be a differentiable one, while a differentiable poem is always a continuous one), singular, regular, particular (not to be confused with a singular poem), integrable, etc. You name it Or you don't, as seems to be the case, and you are allowed. It's an efficient way though to communicate a conceptual reconstruction of a poem in a strict, objective, consistent, effective, and unambiguous directive. No further questions to be asked. Like nature can unambiguously be captured by math, so can poems. Effectively reasonable.