What do you mean when you say you think it's "true"?

↪Arcane Sandwich
What do you mean when you say you think it's "true"? — flannel jesus

I mean that I think that it has a truth value (T, F) of "T".

It is a proven equation. I don't know what the issue or question is about? It's true because it's proven, not because anyone thinks it is or is not.

Right, but if I said "Garbledy bombley goo" and then later said "That statement is true"...

what would that mean to think it's true? You know what I mean?

Thinking something is true is more than just saying "I think that it has a truth value (T, F) of "T"". If I say that about "Garbledy bombley goo", then someone really has no idea what I mean when I say it's true.

If you said "I think this weight is twice as much as that weight... and I think that's TRUE", then I understand what you mean. I understand what it means for one weight to be twice as much as another weight. Even if there's elements of abstract-ness to it, I can translate it into real meaningful things.

"Garbledy bombley goo", however... I can't. I'm not sure what someone means when they say it's true.

E = mc2 also. I'm not sure what you mean when you say you think it's true.

It's true because it's proven — Christoffer

So saying "it's true" just means "I think someone else has proven it"? There's no requirement for understanding? Even if they have no idea whatsoever what any of those symbols means, you think it's meaningful to say "I think that's true"?

I think it's at least debatable if it's meaningful to say something is true, if you don't understand the meaning of that "something" you're saying is true.

It was invented by Albert Einstein. — Arcane Sandwich

Invented or discovered? Maybe a quibble, maybe not.

"Garbledy bombley goo", however... I can't. I'm not sure what someone means when they say it's true.

E = mc2 also. I'm not sure what you mean when you say you think it's true. — flannel jesus

Is the following a fair reconstruction of your argument? Let's start with that.

(1) There is no ontologically significant difference between E = mc² and "Garbledy bombley goo".
(2) If so, then: if it is not necessarily the case that "Garbledy bombley goo" is T, then it is not necessarily the case that E = mc² is T.
(3) It is not necessarily the case that "Garbledy bombley goo" is T.
(4) So, it is not necessarily the case that E = mc² is T.

Is that your point? If not, then what is it?

Is the following a fair reconstruction of your argument? Let's start with that.

(1) There is no ontologically significant difference between E = mc2 and "Garbledy bombley goo". — Arcane Sandwich

nope.

I simply asked what he means. I'm not saying "there is no meaning". I AM saying, "IF there is no understood meaning of e = mc2 THEN there is no difference between E = mc2 and Garbledy bombley goo"

It's a conditional.

There are people in the world for whom e = mc2 has a specific meaning. For those people, E = mc2 and Garbledy bombley goo are not equivalent. Is OP one of those people?

I actually have an interesting experiment to kind of get at what I'm saying here, if you're interested to learn what I mean. You want to play along and try something with me? I'll ask you to follow a few steps and to trust me. What I'm saying isn't meant to be dismissive, nor meaningless - I actually think there's something at least moderately philosophically meaningful in what I'm saying here, though it might not be easy for me to express why, but if you try this experiment you might understand it a bit more directly.

You up for an experiment?

I simply asked what he means. I'm not saying "there is no meaning". I AM saying, "IF there is no understood meaning of e = mc2 THEN there is no difference between E = mc2 and Garbledy bombley goo"

It's a conditional. — flannel jesus

But that's what premise (2) says:

(2) If so, then: if it is not necessarily the case that "Garbledy bombley goo" is T, then it is not necessarily the case that E = mc2 is T. — Arcane Sandwich

There are people in the world for whom e = mc2 has a specific meaning. For those people, E = mc2 and Garbledy bombley goo are not equivalent. Is OP one of those people? — flannel jesus

I am the OP. I don't know if I'm one of those people or not. Why don't you tell me?

↪Arcane Sandwich
I actually have an interesting experiment to kind of get at what I'm saying here, if you're interested to learn what I mean. You want to play along and try something with me? I'll ask you to follow a few steps and to trust me. What I'm saying isn't meant to be dismissive, nor meaningless - I actually think there's something at least moderately philosophically meaningful in what I'm saying here, though it might not be easy for me to express why, but if you try this experiment you might understand it a bit more directly.

You up for an experiment? — flannel jesus

Ok, sure, why not?

I'm going to give you a bunch of symbols that, presumably, you don't understand. Your first instruction is to NOT LOOK THEM UP. Okay? Don't google, don't use a translation software, nothing. Just look at them on screen and accept that you don't understand them.

在直角三角形中，斜边的平方等于两直角边的平方和。

Now, your second instruction is this: BELIEVE ME. Understand that, despite the fact that you don't know what it means, I'm telling you something that is true to people who do understand those symbols.

And I really am, by the way. Those symbols represent a truth whether you understand them or not. I'm not tricking you.

Can you follow the above instructions? 1. Don't look it up, and 2. Believe me that it represents something true to people who understand the symbols?

And please confirm that you don't understand the symbols. This won't work if you actually do lol.

I am the OP. — Arcane Sandwich

my bad. I didn't notice that lol

↪Arcane Sandwich
I'm going to give you a bunch of symbols that, presumably, you don't understand. Your first instruction is to NOT LOOK THEM UP. Okay? Don't google, don't use a translation software, nothing. Just look at them on screen and accept that you don't understand them.

勾股定理

Now, your second instruction is this: BELIEVE ME. Understand that, despite the fact that you don't know what it means, I'm telling you something that is true to people who do understand those symbols.

And I really am, by the way. Those symbols represent a truth whether you understand them or not. I'm not tricking you. — flannel jesus

Ok, but given the above set of instructions and nothing else, how do I know that you're not tricking me?

Can you follow the above instructions? 1. Don't look it up, and 2. Believe me that it represents something true to people who understand the symbols?

And please confirm that you don't understand the symbols. This won't work if you actually do lol. — flannel jesus

No, I don't understand them, I don't read any Asian language. I know at least that much. By looking at them further, they could be Japanese, or Korean, or Chinese. Or perhaps they're from Southeast Asia. They could be Mongolian for all I know. Maybe even Russian. See my point?

Right, so you don't want to accept the truth of something you don't understand. Interesting.

So when I asked you, "what does it mean to say e = mc2 is true?", I'm looking for some UNDERSTANDING from you about the actual meaning of e=mc2.

And maybe you think it's true without understanding it. There's a way to make sense of that too. Is that the situation your'e in? Do you think e=mc2 is true without understanding any actual meaning of e=mc2?

(and I think it's worth pointing out that understanding each of those symbols in isolation is very different from understanding them all together as a single equation. I'm not asking you if you know that e means energy and m means mass - of course you do. that's trivial.).

↪Arcane Sandwich
Right, so you don't want to accept the truth of something you don't understand. — flannel jesus

I'm not sure if that's how I'd phrase it, but whatever.

Interesting. — flannel jesus

Why would you find that interesting, if such was the case?

So when I asked you, "what does it mean to say e = mc2 is true?", I'm looking for some UNDERSTANDING from you about the actual meaning of e=mc2. — flannel jesus

Well, I already told you my understanding of it, it's in the Original Post:

It means:

"Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared." — Arcane Sandwich

And maybe you think it's true without understanding it. — flannel jesus

No, I think it's true regardless. It doesn't matter if I understand it or not.

There's a way to make sense of that too. — flannel jesus

I'm all ears.

Is that the situation your'e in? — flannel jesus

No, it isn't, but please be my guest, and tell me why you think I'm wrong, about my own Original Post. I say that as the Original Poster of this specific Thread.

Do you think e=mc2 is true without understanding any actual meaning of e=mc2? — flannel jesus

No, I don't. I think it's true because I understand it's actual meaning.

Okay, what's it's actual meaning? What does it mean for energy to equal mass times the speed of light squared? What does it mean to multiply mass times the speed of light at all? What does it mean to multiply mass times the speed of light, and then multiply it times the speed of light again?

How would the universe be different if energy wasn't equal to mass times the speed of light timees the speed of light? What if energy was mass times the speed of light cubed? Does that have meaning? What would that mean?

PS I'm actually not trying to shame you. If you don't fully understand what it means to multiply mass by a speed, that's fine, that opens up a really interesting conversation *that I think is worth having*. Your'e allowed to not have a deep conceptual understanding of it, AND you're allowed to think it's true anyway. That's worth talking about. There's no shame in that, I just want to figure out if that's the situation we're in. I'm not criticizing you, just discussing.

↪Arcane Sandwich
Okay, what's it's actual meaning? — flannel jesus

I already told you its actual meaning. It's in the OP:

It means:

"Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared." — Arcane Sandwich

What does it mean for energy to equal mass times the speed of light squared? — flannel jesus

It means the following, first and foremost:

E = (mc²)

What's changed? You introduce brackets "(", ")". Why? because it allows you say the following:

Something, "E", in this case, is equal to something else: "(mc²)", in this case. It's a basic algebraic formula: a = b.

What does it mean to multiply mass times the speed of light at all? — flannel jesus

That part is, first and foremost, a mathematical formula by itself. It has the following form:

x . y²

First you calculate y², then you multiply x by y.

What does it mean to multiply mass times the speed of light, and then multiply it times the speed of light again? — flannel jesus

I already told you how I would proceed: you first calculate the speed of light squared, "c²", and then you multiply that by "m".

How would the universe be different if energy wasn't equal to mass times the speed of light timees the speed of light? — flannel jesus

How is that question relevant to E = mc²?

What if energy was mass times the speed of light cubed? — flannel jesus

Again, how is that question relevant to E = mc²?

Does that have meaning? — flannel jesus

I don't know, you tell me.

What would that mean? — flannel jesus

I don't know, why don't you tell me?

PS I'm actually not trying to shame you. If you don't fully understand what it means to multiply mass by a speed, that's fine, that opens up a really interesting conversation *that I think is worth having*. Your'e allowed to not have a deep conceptual understanding of it, AND you're allowed to think it's true anyway. That's worth talking about. There's no shame in that, I just want to figure out if that's the situation we're in. I'm not criticizing you, just discussing. — flannel jesus

It's all good dawg.

By the way, I still haven't looked up what the following means:

勾股定理 — flannel jesus

Nor this:

斜边的平方等于两直角边的平方和。 — flannel jesus

I think you understand all the symbols in isolation, and you understand the mathematical operations involved from a numerical perspective - you know generally what it means to multiply one number by another number, and what it means for one number to be equal to another number...

But I don't think that's a demonstration that you *actually* understand what e=mc2 means.You keep saying you already showed it's meaning - you didn't. You replaced the symbols with the words that the symbols refer to. That's not understanding.

I think there's a deep sense of TRUST when you say you believe it's true. You don't know what it really means for it to be true. You couldn't devise an experiment to detect if it were true, or some other formula instead were true.

Sure, you understand that e means energy and m means mass.

Above all it's TRUST. That's what I think. I think you believe first and foremost that the people who are qualified to know what e=mc2 actually means, have determined that its meaning in some sense is both testable, and closely matches test results.

Which is why I asked you to try to believe 勾股定理. If you were able to do that, I believe that would be a similar kind of belief to your belief that e = mc2.

You couldn't devise an experiment to detect if it were true, — flannel jesus

Are you sure about this?

Are you sure about this? — Arcane Sandwich

Not entirely, no, but it seems to me that someone who can't tell me what it means to multiply mass by a speed would have a hard time testing if multipying a mass times a speed, twice, were "true".

Which is why I asked you to try to believe 勾股定理. If you were able to do that, I believe that would be a similar kind of belief to your belief that e = mc2. — flannel jesus

And I asked you, if is a fair reconstruction of your argument, and you said .

yes, because the first premise wasn't one of my premises.

I'm also not making an argument so much as just spinning ideas.

Are you sure about this? — Arcane Sandwich


Not entirely, no — flannel jesus

Then what is your point?

Did you read the rest of that post?

Yes, I did. Einstein's formula has been experimentally corroborated many times.