The "shut up and calculate" remark, made by David Mermin, was meant to discourage people from . . . — TheMadFool

Like others, I attributed this wonderful line to Feynman. Mistakenly it would appear. Thanks.

I don't know why QFT doesn't get explored all that much on this forum. — PoeticUniverse

Oh oh. Awakening a slumbering giant! :gasp:

Busy day for the moderators.

I'm not chasing after anything with philosophy; I'm simply watching it flow past like a murky stream. The days of the classical philosophers are gone, but their dated thoughts come up over and over. That's fine with me. The natural sciences and mathematics have moved on and philosophy has given way to speculation leading to advancements.

However, philosophical discussions on social and legal issues seem relevant.

Core mathematics make up every single individual that; is, will, or in concept can manifest. — ExistenceofSelf

According to Max Tegmark all of reality is a mathematical construct. He's gone far beyond your limited view.

The question I have is: given how critical this moment is, what can be done to help it become reality? — Xtrix

So, this thread is not about discussing the bill, rather doing all one can to assure its passage. OK

:up:

Or do some still believe activism, politics, and topical issues are below the man of thinking, the intellectual? — Xtrix

Certainly not. I would be happy to vote for Joe Manchin for president should he be the democratic nominee in 2024. I seem to recall that Tocqueville made a comment to the effect that once a majority finds it can vote itself privilege and money democracy is in deep trouble. Of course his notions of democracy were varied. $3.5 trillion is excessive. Merely inflationary at best.

Bret, your website doesn't come up.

they want to submit each other to build a rank — FalseIdentity

??

As far as I can see, the systems view is relevant in all circumstances. — Pop

Could be. But the Butterfly Effect (In math: sensitive dependence on initial conditions) won't necessarily exist. Takes many tugs. :cool:

Movement in one system spreads throughout the others, causing what is popularly known as the Butterfly effect. — Pop

This concept from dynamical systems is sometimes assumed to exist in many if not all circumstances. In fact, the opposite can occur: disturbances in one area fritter out and don't really affect other areas. Or, as Stanislaw Lem conjectured, certain movements have lives of their own and are relatively immune to minor disturbances. Rise of the Third Reich, etc.

Of the categories listed the anti-vaxxers should be dealt with by a federal mandate requiring most receive the shots. Climate change mitigation can be government/citizen actions - the priority being to prepare for what seems inevitable. Creationists I have known have not been threatening, but rational disagreement leads nowhere, usually. 9/11 Truthers, well let them babble on.

Don't bother with climate science: some internet guy says it's all "pseudo-science." — Xtrix

Atmospheric science includes the climate and is more respectable.

The question is a problem for me — Valentinus

OK. Sorry. Carry on.

Does having an opinion about where it is happening change any of the burden of being a person who finds themselves having the problem? — Valentinus

What's the problem? Thinking? Is that a burden? The OP poses a question, not a problem. One answers a question and solves a problem. Is this really the Philosophy Forum? :roll:

Around the middle of the 20th century, many assumptions in meteorology and climatology considered climate to be roughly constant. While scientists knew of past climate change such as the ice ages, the concept of climate as unchanging was useful in the development of a general theory of what determines climate.

(Wikipedia)

This is what it was when I took the course in the late 1950s. By the 1970s this attitude had begun to change. Now, atmospheric science encompasses the physics as well.

Time to consider tidal energy to desalinate sea water along the west coast and pipe it to Las Vegas and Phoenix. The diminishing Colorado River is overburdened. Time to remove those ridiculous stilted houses on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. Time to sell your condominium on the seventeenth floor overlooking Biscayne Bay. Plan ahead, people, don't count on being able to significantly change the weather.

Where else? — tim wood

The rock that Samuel Johnson kicked?

[Tegmark's MUH] looks like hyper-Platonism to many but more like Spinozism to me. — 180 Proof

I answer favorably to being called an "Epicurean-Spinozist". — 180 Proof

It's entertaining to see efforts to shoe-horn Tegmark into the mix of classical philosophers and philosophical theory. But I think the gentleman is in a class by himself. My opinion? Sophisticated BS.

Is Climatology Science? — Neri

I'm probably the only (ex) meteorologist on TPF and I wish I could provide an answer, not to the ongoing arguments about deleterious effects of humanity, but this specific question. I spent twelve months at the U of Chicago completing a postgraduate curriculum in meteorology for the USAF during 1958-59. The course work was rigorous, especially atmospheric physics, but there was one exception: The class in climatology was considered the basket weaving course, and the class relaxed and drifted through it with nary a care.

So, at that time climatology was not held in high esteem. However, it is in all likelihood now quite sophisticated. Wish I were more up to speed on the subject.

Prishon banned for low quality posts. — Hanover

Well, maybe too many posts. He certainly liked to raise questions, some of which had merit. Too bad.

For the same reason that the count is impossible, so too is the movement. The impossibility has nothing to do with the length of time it would take and so isn't solved by referencing a convergent series of time intervals. — Michael

Here's something I've looked into on numerous occasions that bears some resemblance to this topic. Instead of dealing with 0 to 1 or 1 to 0, this is a sequence that goes from n to 1 where n is unbounded.

${{F}_{n}}(z)={{F}_{n-1}}({{f}_{n}}(z)),\text{ }{{F}_{1}}(z)={{f}_{1}}(z)$, ${{f}_{n}}(z)\to f(z)$

The question is does ${{F}_{n}}({{z}_{0}})\to L$ as $n\to \infty$ ?

So it might seem that n being unbounded raises a similar issue of where to start since backward recursion is involved? But an example of where this appears in math literature is in the analytic theory of continued fractions, and it is quite solvable.

Im a particle physicist — Prishon

I've never heard of a particle physicist who eschews mathematics. :roll:

Consider the notion of counting every 1/2^n between 0 and 1 in ascending order. — Michael

Why? This leads nowhere, nor does it prove anything. It does, however, resemble something I looked into a few months ago concerning convergence of infinite compositions in the complex plane.

How are they treated in NSA? — Prishon

Here's a good intro to the subject: Nonstandard Analysis

What is required is a proper analysis which separates space from time — Metaphysician Undercover

I shudder when I say this, but there might be something to this idea. Just a feeling, since the two are so different.

No. Aristotle was not a dentist.

Infinitesimals are the subject of modern non-standard analysis, and were one of Leibniz's playthings. Occasionally a calculus course is taught from that perspective, but most calculus is taught from the limit point of view developed by Cauchy and Weierstrass.

About as much as anything on The Philosophy Forum — jgill

And that is how much? — Prishon

:rofl:

There is the view that the abandonment of metaphysics in the Western tradition is an intellectual calamity, although of course that is regarded as reactionary in today's culture, but I think it is likely true. — Wayfarer

I consider String Theory to be metaphysics. And Leibniz's infinitesimals. But I'm probably in error.

The Metaphysics Research Lab at Stanford delves into abstract objects arising from axiomatic fundamentals. An example:Computational Metaphysics

Wasnt it terminator? — Prishon

:up:

A good starting point: Mathematics of String Theory

Good luck. It's beyond my pale.

What have they to do with the discreteness of space? — Prishon

About as much as anything on The Philosophy Forum.

I like math but in relation to physics Im a bit fed up with it — Prishon

I would think this would put you in an impossible position if you are serious about physics. :roll:

What are parabolic linear fractional transformation? Is it something I should fear lol, jk — Gregory

Infinite Compositions of Möbius Transformations

These are the same things as LFTs. LFTs have geometric, matrix, and analytic theories. Olde Goodies.

It are just transformations of the unit disc in the complx plane. A bit old already though. ☺ — Prishon

Yes, they've been around the block a few times. Sounds like you know what you are talking about!
:lol:

Who says Im unfamiliar with them? — Prishon

Prove you are not! :cool:

Which theorem? Whats NSA? — Prishon

If you are not familiar with a certain area of mathematics it would make little sense. Has to do with the convergence of infinite compositions of parabolic linear fractional transformations (having indifferent fixed points) that converge to the identity.

Non-standard analysis.

Ill be back. — Prishon

That has an ominous sound. Where have I heard that before? :gasp:

Not if the physical space has a Natural limit of continuity. — Prishon

infinitesimals to be precise — TheMadFool

I suppose physical space might. I'm not saying it does.

But infinitesimals are rarely used as such in math that is not non-standard analysis. However, just recently I employed a step to prove a theorem of sorts in which a second order term was ignored, similar to NSA.

Its not that difficult to understand! Everyone says"oöhhh... Quantum field theory..." but actually its very easy. — Prishon

Highly debatable. Unless you understand the math you don't understand the theory. Do you? If so, you are ahead of me. I've puzzled over the legitimacy and evaluation of Feynman's functional integral. :chin:

Should have implications for Calculus, infinitesimals to be precise. What say you? — TheMadFool

Nope. Limits of measurements are physical problems.

At a very grass roots level, his assertion that all mathematical structures exist in some physical way is a real stretch. I have no luck envisioning a physical structure coinciding with something I have developed as pure math. Perhaps I simply lack sufficient imagination. :chin:

But its a great subject for philosophical speculations.

Very often, when a physicist or a mathematician finds a solution to a problem, they describe it as "elegant". And what seems art to someone, may not look like art to someone else, which is common. — Manuel

Not every problem. The poetry of mathematics is in its elegance, a word easily spoken but not as easily defined.

I know the discussion doesn't need an actual mathematician chirping in, but I will nevertheless.

Personally, I think math is invented by people to merely describe physical states of affairs of which some show exact correspondence with physical reality. I think Max Tegmark was on dope. — Prishon

Inventiveness in the subject has gone far beyond this; abstractions and generalizations move way beyond physical applications. But there is some truth in your statement. Babylonians measuring fields and Egyptians designing pyramids, etc. The jury is out on Tegmark. Some take him seriously. I don't.

As of today, I doubt that there is any maths left that has not been incorporated in some physics. — magritte

ArXiv.org receives hundreds of mathematics research papers each day. I would guess relatively few make it into physics.

“I believe that the only way to make sense of mathematics is to believe that there are objective mathematical facts, and that they are discovered by mathematicians,” says James Robert Brown, a philosopher of science recently retired from the University of Toronto. “Working mathematicians overwhelmingly are Platonists. They don't always call themselves Platonists, but if you ask them relevant questions, it’s always the Platonistic answer that they give you.” — Smithsonian Magazine, What is Math?

Creating relevant questions is an art form. Like a lawyer never asking a question they do not know the answer to. My observations are that working math people pay little attention to these issues. As for discoveries, when a mathematician conjures up definitions and relationships from wherever, perhaps as mere speculation or like a game, if there is a consistency to what is done then a slew of logical results may suddenly pop into existence, to be discovered by investigators. But there is that touch of creativity at the beginning.