Knowledge about the world, indeed. Why should the scientific approach be the most reliable? It offers an image of the world that's pretty distorted.

For example, the structure of millions of proteins was predicted on the base of their coding in DNA. AI was used to predict this. The structures differed from the real structure. You could also use other means to arrive at the right structure. Closer to the real stuff.

What I mean is that we don't need science to arrive at knowledge.

And again:

"So what you need to do in a rebuttal is demonstrate how your different pathways provide reliable knowledge about reality - evidence would be useful"

This is exactly the jargon of science. You want evidence that the non-scientific approach gives less reliable knowledge? Then science itself is the best example.

Philosophically interesting and insightful content is what would raise it up to an A (provided the insight and interest characterized the whole paper, and not just 1 small point). — Bitter Crank

Even more if you know what the professor is into. I made a scription on realism and included the work of the professor. No matter your grammar, your logical inconsistencies, being original or not, you will pass if you clearly include his ideas, even when criticizing them...

Using a naked man will certainly attract a musquito. I hope he bites his ass. Viruses won't feel attracted to the man. They probably take refugee in the poor woman. Especially when the see the musquito on his ass... When the man enters the room, he probably stirs the viruses in the room. They lie on the floor, waiting for someone to get in the room. The moving air will transport them to the old lady, whose immune response will probably lower because of the sight of naked young man. Heart attack. :broken:

I'm not sure if making love to the young man will help her. She will have an unforgettable time though. Or a heart attack... :broken:

Well, if I change the word God back in "science", you probably understand. So it's the language of science that you understand. While non-scientific language is hard to understand if your language is the scientific mind (which I have myself!). I'm not arguing against science, but at the prominent role it plays in modern society. Like God in the old days.

You're right, I don't think we understand each other — Tom Storm

Because you speak one language only.

So, for sure the universe is many gazillion miles across--or thick, long, diagonal--however you slice it. — Bitter Crank

If you slice the whole universe, you get a lot more pieces of the cake than only our observable piece. In the face of this enormous cake we look even smaller... But we are the ones eating it (the cake). And there are infinite universes ahead of us, and an infinite still come... I will get fat...

Merry second Christmas day!

They" say the universe is 13 billion years old, give or take 15 minutes. — Bitter Crank

:lol:

the brain is not a crystal ball. it has a genetic structure — Miller

Only the DNA in my neuron nuclei have. The processes on my neuron network can "resonate" with processes in the real world. But they just as well go contrary. They are not programmed by my DNA. It just happens or not.

I don't know what you mean by "number of times an infinity of the infinite is needed to specify the elements — TonesInDeepFreeze

If you need an infinity of infinites then aleph is 1. If you need an infinity of them, then 2, etc. The cardinal number of the continuum is defined on one dimension only. You really think the cardinality of the 2 or 3 dimensional space and the 1 d are the same? They're not. Aleph line is 1, aleph plane is 2 and aleph space is 3.

Forget the "of course"... If you don't see what that means then I can't help that. Already now you start analyzing. It's just an expression used. To make you see you don't understand what I mean.

The quote is from someone here. I changed the word "science" in "God". Did you understand it when science was still in the quote? Probably yes, as that's how you (and I) are taught to think.

If it works, it will change what we can ask about the universe. — Paine

Are you serious?

Also, the Big Bang was around 13 billion light years in the past, not 90 billion. — Bitter Crank

I was referring to spatial dimensions. Well, actually you're right. It's only 45 billion ly...

Yes, the dark side of the Moon is the far side. But to us that's pretty dark, as we can't see it.

"Just shove your head up your ass and get an even better view."

:lol:

The point is that the naked man can introduce viruses where there are none. You suppose there is already a mosquito in the room he enters, while in reality there is none.

point is logic is abstraction related to empiricism — Miller

Yes. And?

I'm not talking about rationality, I am talking evidence and results — Tom Storm

And that's exactly where opinions differ. And evidence and results are part of the scientific rationality. If you don't accept these, it won't work.

To what end? — Tom Storm

What do you think? To show there is no difference between the God story and the science story of course!

"You can lead a person to God, but it doesn't mean they'll accept Him. Generally to persuade people, you have to use rationality in combination with addressing their emotional feelings. Many people will often times reject rational arguments in favor of their own personal feelings, but that doesn't mean God is currently one of the most valuable tools we have to accurately assess the world.

So I do agree that God alone will not persuade or motivate most people. It it wants to do so, it must make great efforts at creating the positive emotions in people that will make them open to accepting the rationality that God has to offer "

I have seen this reasoning in the past, and in the present...

For my money science still provides the single most reliable pathway to knowledge about what we deign to call reality. — Tom Storm

For others money, there are other most reliable pathways. There simply is not one path which is the only enlightened one, as much as it says to be so. I realize I'm cursing in church, but that's simply how it is.

You can lead a person to science, but it doesn't mean they'll accept it. Generally to persuade people, you have to use rationality in combination with addressing their emotional feelings. Many people will often times reject rational arguments in favor of their own personal feelings, but that doesn't mean science is currently one of the most valuable tools we have to accurately assess the world.

So I do agree that science alone will not persuade or motivate most people. It it wants to do so, it must make great efforts at creating the positive emotions in people that will make them open to accepting the rationality that science has to offer. — Philosophim

Just replace "science" by "God"... Science is a tool, a worldview. If the most valuable remains to be seen. Sometimes it is, sometimes not. If a tool is valuable depends on the part of the world you apply the tool to, which in the case of science are rather abstract parts, like theory adapted experiments or statistical calculations. The rational arguments it uses to convince others won't work if you haven't already accepted its rationality.

:starstruck:

Haha! Nothing beats the image I see when holding a mirror between my legs. That's a black hole as never seen before! Well, a brown dwarf actually...


Merry Christmas :heart:

logic is a processing structure encoded genetically into our mind which comes from the way reality moves — Miller

That's nonsense. It's the same as saying God is genetically programmed in our genes because that's how reality is. Math isn't programmed by our genes. It's just a way of looking to nature.

The Webb telescope... Siiiiiiigh. Looking at stuff a 100 million years ATB. Looking at stuff 90 billion of lightyears away. A few pictures will be sent to us. So what? I can already tell what they will see. The should point it at the dark side of the Moon. Who knows what evil is playing there? 10 billion dollars... They could have given each person a vaccination with that money. Down to Earth. And dark energy? Not to be found by Webb.

If I understand correctly, the classical "electromagnetic field" which is a property of electrons, can be represented as two distinct fields, electric field and magnetic field. I understand the electric field (E) to be spatial, representing a spatial relation to the position of the electron. The magnetic field (B) I understand as temporal, representing the changing position of the electron. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that the relationship between the E field and the B field, which ought to represent "electromagnetism", is not strictly invariant, so there is a need to introduce an A field to compensate. I would conclude that the relationship between space and time is not invariant. It is made to appear as invariant through the use of the A field. If you can explain where this interpretation is misunderstanding, or deficient, I'd be grateful. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think it was a female bot that called me a bot. They tend to react quite emotionally. Especially when they don't understand WTF their male fellow bots are talking about.No, seriously... Sorry for the late reply. I got a bit entangled in this field last days. I traveled from the big bang (the ones in front of us and the ones starting behind us), mass gaps, pseudo-Euclidean metrics, closed, presymplectic differential- and two-forms, Poincaré transformations, the Wightman axioms, tangent-, cotangent, fibre, spin bundles, distributions, superspace, gauge fields (resulting from differential 2-form bundles), correlations (Green's functions), Lie groups and Grassman variables, operator valued distributions, point particles and their limits, to the nature of spin and spacetime, spacetime symmetries, lattice calculations as a non-perturbative approach, the non-applicability of QFT to bound systems, a mirror universe, composite quarks and leptons (no more breaking of an artificial symmetric Higgs potential!), viruses falling in air, and of course symmetries. I just want to know! Consequence of the story of science we are told already at young age. Even obliged to learn at our schools... It's a nice story though. My wife had to suffer from my apparent absence. With Christmas even... Well, I'm out of it, luckily. We saw a nice movie ("Don't look up", which somehow reminded me of this Corona era, the look-uppers and don't-look-uppers being the vaxers and non-vaxers; there was a nice quote from a Jack Handey: "My grandfather died in his sleep. While the passengers in his bus screamed in agony". I'm not sure what the connection with the movie was. Which was about an astronomy professor with his assistent who discover a meteorite on collision course with Earth and all ensuing madness; funny and serious at the same time. A symmetry?), and after I have given you this answer, there is the relief of closure.

The story of the A-field. Classically, the A-field is a contravariant four-vector, with the electric potential as time component, and the magnetic vector potential as the space part. Contravariant just means that the component values get bigger/smaller if the base vectors get smaller/bigger (derivatives, the change per length, get smaller if you go to smaller base: 10 per meter becomes 0.1 per centimeter, hence derivatives are covariant).

You can apply gauges to this A-field without changing the E-field (not the electron field!) and B-field. The magnetic field is an electric field also, but it is seen only when charge moves, and its effect is only felt by charge moving in it. It's a "relativistic E-field" in the sense that relative velocity causes the electric field to compress in the direction of motion. Hence its connection with being the space part of the A-field. It's a pseudo-vector and only gives a force when a charge has velocity in the vector field. The exterior product with velocity (and charge) gives the force, which is just an electric force. In an EM wave the are perpendicular, like you envisioned with the two planes. A charge feels the E-field and the magnetic gives an electric (caused moving charges elsewhere) which lies in a plane perpendicularly to it, with a direction dependent on the velocity of the charge.

If two charges move parallel in space, with equal velocity, they experience different fields as when standing still. What is an electric field only in the frame of non-moving charges, becomes a combination of E and B in a frame in which the both move. The time part of the A vector aquires a non-zero spatial part (in a fixed gauge) when the charges move. The E field gets smaller while the B-field increases (the length of the A vector is Lorentz invariant. So the decreased E-field is compensated by the appearing B-field, so the total force is the same in both frames. I think this is the compensation you refer to.

The B-vector is a pseudo-vector. It has weird relection properties. If the vector is reflected in a mirror parallel to it, it changes direction. When reflected in a mirror perpendicular to it, it stays the same. Contrary to the E-field.

Moving on to QFT. The A-field is a field that is not a part of the electron field. It is introduced to compensate for changes in the electron field (a Dirac spinor field, like that of quarks and leptons, and probably two massless sub-particles). If you gauge the electron field [this field assigns to all spacetime points an operator valued distribution (which creates the difference with classical mechanics which uses a real valued function), the operator creating particle states in a Fock space], you mentally rotate the particle state vectors in the complex plane. All the states can be seen as vectors in a complex plane (the plane of complex numbers). You have to rotate space twice to rotate such a vector once, hence these are spin 1/2 spinor fields. The local gauge rotates them differently at different spacetime points. This has an effect on the Lagrangian describing the motion, i.e.the integral over time being stationary, the difference with the classical case being that all varied paths are in facts taken, with a variety of weights.

Now, for the Lagrangian (which is the difference between kinetic and potential energy, like the Hamiltonian is the sum) to stay the same, a compensation has to be introduced. That's the A-field, which is a potential energy inserted in the Lagrangian since we started from a free field. Why should the Lagrangian stay the same? That's an axiom. But a reasonable one.

Now you can say the A-field is caused by the symmetry of the Lagrangian under the U(1) gauge. But... You can just as well say that the gauge field comes in the first place, and that it causes the Lagrangian to stay the same. There are interactions (by means of an A-field), and these give a gauge symmetric Lagrangian. The symmetry runs behind the facts, so to speak. Symmetry can indeed only be es
tablished after manipulations, like that of an equilateral triangle. Some parts of it have to be compared with other parts, and there is no pre-existing thing like symmetry to which the parts have to obey. Of course, afte arranging themselves in a certain way, there can be symmetry. Even if you draw a triangle when you see one in your mind, the image arises from three equal parts. Like the A-field induces a symmetry by keeping the Lagrangian the same.

Can a symmetry exist on its own? Well, symmetry means that aspects stay the same. Like the combination of the kinetic and potential energy, or like the distribution of particles on the corners of the triangle. Do these aspects conform themselves to a symmetry? The corners of the triangle can be created in similar circumstances. They have to be compared to know if they are the same, like potential and kinetic energy after a gauge. Are there symmetry principles lying at base of nature? If things stay the same, symmetry follows, but to say symmetry lays at the base? I don't think so, and the present-day urge in physics to symmetrize is dangerous, because it projects sameness on stuff that's not the same. As I already briefly mentioned, I think there is no symmetry on the basic level, after which a breaking of this symmetry gives rise to difference. It is said that the symmetry of the electroweak interaction at high energy (meaning that both forces are the same, stemming from the same gauge, which, by locally varying it gives rise to the EW force like the A-field in the EM case) is a unique force, but carried by four massless particles, like the photon for the A-field. For low energies the Higgs field falls into the rim of the potential energy form, thereby creating a weird vacuum with finite field values (normally, for a vacuum the fields are zero particle fields). I think the desire for symmetry got the upper hand, which made Higgs create his strange field. Well, actually to account for massive gauge bosons, which can be addressed in a more natural, less artificial way. The mechanism was used to artificially unify the weak and EM force (which is a completey different unification from the unification of E and B, which actually are the same (under spacetime Lorenz rotations).

Nice thread! You got me thinking...

Deleted..

But one particle can both be and not be in the same place at the same time. That's because LNC applies to arithmetic but (as it happens) not to superposition. So the theory goes. — Cuthbert

A particle cannot be and not be at the same place at the same time. It can be at all positions at the same time, with associated chance densities. It can't be at none of the positions at the same time, with associated chance densities. That would make the chance it's nowhere 1. How can the chance that it's nowhere be one and the chance that it's anywhere be 1 just the same? Of course there are complementary chances that it's not at that place, but that's simply the chance it's at another place. You don't make a measurement of a particle not being there. You measure the presence of particles, not their absence. In hindsight you can assign probabilities of not finding it, of not being at one place.
Isn't the LNC broken in this case? Does it make sense to say the particle is here and not here at the same time? If the chance it's not at A is 1/2 and the chance it's not at B is 1/2 too, is the chance it's not at both 1?

Let me continue. In the case of QED, you locally apply gauge transformations. At every point in space and time you rotate an internal vector in the complex plane. These internal complex vectors belong to electron field. They are associated with probability densities. Their squared length represents the probability density which give you the probability of finding an electron in some volume if you integrate over the volume. If you globally perform such a gauge (everywhere the same) then there will be no change in the physics. The probability density stays the same everywhere. Now you might expect this to be the case also when you rotate the vector locally (differently at each point in spacetime). After all, the length of the vector in the complex plane doesn't change if you multiply it by $e^{iq(x)}$. The transformation is an element of the unitary abelian Lie group U(1). So the operations are not completely random but continuous and differentiable.
The point is that the Lagrangian changes if you apply the gauges locally. So a compensating field is needed to keep the Lagrangian invariant, or make it symmetric under the gauge. This field is the A field, which is a 4-vector field comprised of the electric potential in the time component and the vector potential A in the space components.

Now when one states that the force or interaction appears because of a symmetry principle (the Lagrangian staying the same) one turns the world upside down. It only looks as if. When you apply the gauges you mentally change the electron field and this induces an A-field to compensate for the extra terms appearing in the Lagrangian. In the real world, the A-field induces gauge transformations in the electron field which make themselves noticed exactly when electrons interfere with each other.

Let me explain the last point. In the Bohm-Aharonov effect, an A-field is introduced between two slits and a screen. The A-field has no corresponding electric or magnetic fields. Before the advent of QM the A-field was thought to be a mathematical object only. One could apply gauge transformations to it without changing the corresponding E and B fields. QFT changed that image as an A-field without E- and B-fields can introduce (global) gauge transformations in the electron field. Before the introduction, an electron field passing through the slits forms an interference pattern on the screen. When the A-field is inserted, the field introduces global rotations in the two fields coming from the slits, and this difference in rotations shows up as a shift in the interference pattern. So it's the change in the two parts which actually translates the interference pattern. The individual parts would have shown no difference when projected on the screen. If we would have introduced an A-field with corresponding E- and B-fields the fields would experience local transformations which would have shown itself in an interference pattern on the screen that suggests the electrons have interacted with a real E- or B-field, or both, if the A-field varies in time.

The A-field in QED is caused by the electrons themselves and they induce local gauge transformations on the electron field, precisely in such a way that the Lagrangian of the conserved. The gauge changes introduced cause similar shifts in interference patterns as in the BA effect. This causes electron fields to get shifted like the interference pattern is shifted in the effect above-mentioned. The difference is that the shift is not the same everywhere (global) but rather varies from place to place. The induced local gauge transformations show themselves as interference effects (which is the only way to observe rotations of internal vectors in the complex plane).

It's actually the charge that is used for the local gauge transformations, the function $q(x)$ in $e^{iq(x)}$. Charge is the generator of the transformations. Together with the invariancy of the Lagrangian under the action of the gauge, this entails the conservation of charge
Likewise, energy, momentum, and angular momentum are generators of translations in time and space, and rotations respectively. And because the translations and rotations leave the Lagrangian invariant (like the gauge transformations generated by charge), energy, linear momentum, and angular momentum are conserved, and are also referred to as charges.

The conservation laws are not a consequence of symmetry, like the symmetry of the Lagrangian doesn't cause the A field. It are rather the conservation laws that are cause of the symmetry. So again, the world put upside down or the cart put in front of the horse.

You can rotate a square locally with your mind and demand that the because of an invariant shape of the square forces are induced to keep the shape intact. But in reality you apply forces to the square (albeit mentally) which induces contra forces that keep it in shape. The invariant shape is not the cause of the forces but a consequence. So it's force in the first place that induces force to keep it in shape, like it is the A-field in the first place that gives rise to gauge transformations and keeps the Lagrangian invariant when the gauge transformations are applied on it. But it's a matter of taste. If you hold the symmetry fundamental, the symmetry is the cause. If you hold the fields fundamental the symmetry follows.


It's possible to make the symmetry of the shape (by which I mean that it stays the same, so any form will do, also the asymmetrical ones) of the square (or any object) the cause of forces appearing in it. As I already wrote, this is turning the world upside down. You need to apply forces first which have as a consequence that shape remains fixed.
You can rotate the square (or any form) globally, in the external space, or translate it in space or time. This will involve forces obviously. But these are not internal transformations and the square being translated or rotated globally, will be related to energy, momentum, or angular momentum conservation.

I get your point completely and I always wondered about that myself. And you are right. Applying a principle of symmetry to the natural world implies an active manipulation of objects. Symmetry principles reverse the order of things. One can also apply passive operations under which an object stays the same. If you transform coordinates of space and time, an object in it will not change. It will not be seen to have a different motion or shape. If you gauge all clocks and lengths in flat spacetime by a continuous differentiable function then in the new coordinates fictitious forces seem present which make the object move in a way that's related to the gauge function, more specific, by a connection and by demanding that the object stays the same.
By applying an active gauge and demanding the object stays the same (so the object is symmetric under this gauge), real forces are introduced. You start from the position the forces are already there and exactly there lies the subtlety. If you start from non-interacting (free) fields, and apply active local transformations on internal properties of the fields (which require no force though), then demanding that a function of the fields and its derivatives, the Lagrangian (the difference between kinetic and potential energy, which in the case of free fields is only kinetic), stays the same introduces extra fields in it to compensate for the change introduced by the gauge transformations.
In the case of QED, you mentally rotate a real feature of nature. You rotate the complex phase of the wavefunction everywhere in spacetime, but differently at each point.

Sorry, pushed the post button. Not finished yet!

So, are qualia useful? Yes, even indispensable, but after being replaced by an assumed qualia independent world, it's easy to throw them away as being useless. The assumption is wrong though.

Did you argue for this somewhere? — Banno

I proposed it. No need to argue for it.

And why do you imply that my views are materialist? What gave you that impression?
6m — Banno

Because the modern view on nature is that of material processes going on independently of us. Elementary particles and all that. Don't you agree with this?

Hence my continuing view, that qualia lead to nonsense — Banno

A materialistic view can't even exist without them. Let alone the material it refers to. Material processes are just empty qualia. So the stipulation of qualia leading to nonsense is the same as saying material processes are nonsense. Material processes are useful, an for micro processes they are all we've got. Qualia and their subset of material processes give us a pretty adequate view on the outside of things.

Stable material processes existing objectively and independent of us is a justified view though. So drink your material wassail and be sozzled by it. Mollycoddle it even. The qualia brouhaha bottle you pour it from won't mind materialistic argle bargle.

That's the point; the supposition that you have privileged access to flubberts; as Wittgenstein might have said, the flubberts drop out of consideration, and all we have to talk about are the dundereekies. — Banno

I don't think one has privileged acces to flubberts. You have access as well, and even to that of mine, albeit only indirectly via the outside of the dundereekies they are situated in. This access can be gained by means of variable flubberts or more stable and abstract bocketibonders, which are a subset of flubberts. From one side of the moon I see a dark sphere with craters, while from the other side I see a while sphere with seas, and your flubberts might differ. Introducing a stable bocketibonders image might be helpful but it's still a flubberts image. I think you mix up dundereekies with bocketibonders. Dundereekies are fundamental and are no flubberts, although the contain them .By means of flubberts and bocketibonders, dundereekies present their outside. By means of their inside they allow flubberts and bocketibonders to exist. In our thinking about dundereekies we are bound by what's inside of them. So even in and outside is a flubbert or bocketibonder. But how else can it be? Dundereekies are weird stuff.

No, that's why Flubberts differ from person to person. You can't expect them to be all equal. Why should they? Because they differ they are even more useful in constructing an invariant picture of material processes behind them. If there would be only one common set of common Flubberts one couldn't even start looking for a common materialistic picture behind them.This picture is a subset of a much wider collection of Flubberts. Different and varying Flubberts can be reduced to a stable invariant set of common Flubberts, which are the Flubberts of the material processes. — AgentTangarine

:lol:

Yeah, alright. But that's a problem of language. You can rename objective material processes bocketibonders just as well. I think there is a relationship between flubberts and bocketibonders. Flubberts lay at the base. The offer a direct glimps on dundereekies. It's the outside of dundereekies we can percieve by means of flubberts, which lay inside the objective dundereekies. Bocketibonders are a special case of flubberts. They are colorless rather constant flubberts which, as such, correspond to limited dundereekie developments. Only in abstract experimental conditions, or in abstract views on dundereekies (like reducing the moon to a point mass or colorless mass, so it look the same to all people) it's a useful concept. Even in pointing to regions in the brain where flubberts get their shape by interacting dundereekies, they are useful as they can explain, besides direct introspection by experiencing them, relations or the internal dynamics of the flubberts (which, as said, form the inextractable inside of dundereekies, whose outside you can look at by by bocketibonders or flubberts.

So, when you examine dundereekies in my brain, you have only acces to their outside and you can only see it with your flubberts or bocketibonders, a more confined and seemingly more objective view. I, on the other hand, experience flubberts in my brain dundereekies directly. So you might be able to infer if I have a bocketibonders model in my mind.

Yes, a new kind of duality. But freed from the restrictive monism of material processes.

Is it a coincidence that the symbols for infinity and zero are similar? You can run around on both of them forever. But so you can on 8. On 4, 6, and 9, you can at least take a break on the the side.The infinite can never be reached. Every time you think you've reached it almost, it has resided to... infinity. So infinity is the unreachable. Can zero be reached? You can pass it on the way to negative, so I had exactly zero dollar, like I have right now. No dollar to be found in my pockets. Can you actually have zero dollars if you don't have them? Can the nothing be realized? You can take out all apples out of the back, but what if we dìvide them up? We can't do that indefinitely. But what about the vacuum? You can break that up infinite times. It consists of infinite points with an infinity of points in between them. Do you take points away when you divide it? Will dividing it up indefinitely leave you with nothing? Or with an infinite collection of points? If we assign real numbers to the points, how can two points touch? By bringing them infinite close to one another, so the decimal numbers coincide? The infinite line of real numbers needs an infinity of the infinity of the natural numbers to describe it. The continuum line can be said to have cardinal number $\aleph _1$, while the collection of natural numbers has cardinal number $\aleph _0$. The two-dimensional continuum has cardinal number$\aleph _3$, and the 3D continuum corresponds to$\aleph _7$.
The subscripts are ordinal numbers and they correspond to the number of times an infinity of the infinite is needed needed to specify the elements, which in the case of discrete points is one (so the ordinal in the cardinal number becomes 0). For the continous line, the number needed is two (ordinal subscript 1), for the 2D continuum it's four (corresponding to subscript 3), and eight will do for 3D continuous space (ordinal number 7, so $\aleph _7$).
Now we can play the same game with with the aleph numbers. For discrete aleph numbers, $\aleph _n$, the natural alephs, we can assign super aleph number $\aleph _{S_0}$, when the number of natural alephs needed is one. When 2 natural alephs are needed, for a continuous line of alephs, we get $\aleph _{S_1}$, for a 2D continuous plane $\aleph _{S_3}$, and for an n-dimensional continuous volume, when $2^n$ natural alephs are needed we arrive at $\aleph _{S_{n^2-1}}$.
Now we can play the game again for hypersuper alephs, $\aleph_{{HS}_n}$. For an infinity of inf... well, ad inf.


So, the infinite can't be reached like zero can't be reached (if you don't include the negation of the positive real). Both can't be reached, and still some try to reach it while others, mostly unwillingly are pushed towards nothing. The desire to reach for the nothing is not so different from the desire to reach for the infinite, though the implementations of this in material life have quite different implications. Life and death, even.

Infinity is just as useless as nothing. In between is where the action is. Are the things in life that never can be reached infinite? Yes. My wife is one of them. And I have to admit, attempts made by pettifoggers and skirlers on their doodlesack never cease to bumfuzzle me.

Everyday examples of infinity. Maybe falling asleep and waking up. It seems that time tic-toc-ed infinitely fast in between. It seems nothing at all exists in between, another example that nothing and infinite have a close, if not intimate connection.

Just to repeat what I have been saying for years, qualia seem either to just be seeing red and feeling a smooth surface — Banno

Aha! Then it's small wonder indeed that you think they are useless. In reality though, qualia make up the whole world we live in.

Qualia differ from person to person,
— AgentTangarine

That's why they are of little use in our accounts. I — Banno

No, that's why they differ from person to person. You can't expect them to be all equal. Why should they? Because they differ they are even more useful in constructing an invariant picture of material processes behind them. If there would be only one common set of common qualia one couldn't even start looking for a common materialistic picture behind them.This picture is a subset of a much wider collection of qualia. Different and varying qualia can be reduced to a stable invariant set of common qualia, which are the qualia of the material processes.

The natural sciences begin from a position of eliminated subjectivity: Let us imagine there are no humans and conduct observations accordingly — emancipate

If that is so, how will they be able in the first place to even think about conducting experiments? If you imagine there are no people you should imagine youself gone too, hence, no science about this objective world can be achieved.

A study of matter without experience is half-truth at best. If you want truth, science alone is not enough. — emancipate

I think it's at best no truth at all. A truth cannot exist without experience, neither a half truth. Science and journalists can find lots of truth though, and a philosopher must absorb them before he can even start philosophizing about them.

Agent Tangerine, the infamous cousin of Agent Orange...

You touch upon a deep issue here, as a matter of fact! It is claimed that symmetries lay at the basis of forces.The $SU(2)_l \times SU(1)_y$ symmetry for the so-called unified force (splitting in the EM force and weak force after a break of symmetry, namely that of the Higgs potential) the $SU(3)$ symmetry for the color force, and a coordinate symmetry for general relativity. You can perform symmetry operations without truly change a system. This is simply done mentally, and by demanding symmetry, forces arise, while in fact it's the other way round. It are forces which give rise to symmetry principles. You can literally force symmetry transformations upon nature, like you do with the squares, and retrospectivelyclaim that forces are the result, but that's indeed putting the horse behind the wagon. You can rotate all points of a square locally and say that because of this forces will appear in the square to let it keep its shape (making it symmetrical wrt to local rotations or gauges), but as you say, you have to pull and push it first for these forces to appear.

Symmetries are useful, but they are not the foundations of nature. They are projected on nature, and claimed to be axiomatic causes. I think it's the other way round. Symmetries and connections are axiomatized causes of forces, but it are the forces that cause symmetries and connections.

What I would really like to do is explore the possibility space on the matter of thought connections. Is it that only logical connections between ideas reveal truth/sense/reality? — Agent Smith

It depends on the ideas and logic used. Ideas and logic seem to couple themselves naturally, like Earth has coupled naturally with Sun. Ideas are not randomly appearing. They arise in the context of familiar ideas or locations, and I think any attempt to project the straight jacket of logic conformally to ideas and their connections is a constraining Bonzai excercise, probably ending in a last desparate Kamikaze effort to escape the bondage.

How would it be possible to apply a force to a thing without in some way changing the thing? — Metaphysician Undercover

The concept of force is closely related to symmetry. It can even define force.

If you play soccer with a ball protected by a coat then the ball beneath the coat will be the same ball before and after the game. Demanding that the ball stays the same under kicks and stops will introduce forces in the ball. Demanding that it stays the same in free flight will render it force free (this is the essence of Noether's theorem,).

So I've read the first paragraphs, and as I thought, Dennet doesn't convince. As usual for materialists, he siphons the burden of proof to the shoulders of quale defenders, who have nothing to proof at all because the kind of proof he means isn't used by the defenders of qualia. Material processes are part of the world of qualia and as such the can't be used in a defense or proof of the qualia. Qualia might differ from person to person, while material processes are objective and the same for everyone, but that's just a tactic used in their defense. Supporters of qualia don't need such claims of independent objectivity to infer their real existence. Qualia differ from person to person, and it's only in very specific conditions that stable qualia corresponding to a material process are formed.

DNA exists, of course. It is not made of qualia either. But viewing it as matter is invoking qualia too. The difference with everyday qualia being that they are standarized and seemingly the same for everyone. Everýbody agrees that DNA is a 2-meter long connection of two negatively coupled strings of 4 repeating units (themselves fixed structures particles), folded up intricately to fit in a nucleus. You can look at them under a microscope, make a (partial) colored model, or imagine them. However you present it, you are bound by qualia.

But then, what is a DNA molecule, If no matter or quaĺe?

No, I am saying that the square is no longer the same as it was before you turned it. — Metaphysician Undercover

The strange thing with squares is that they do stay the same after rotation. It's relation with surrounding squares may become different, but the square by itself stays the same.