The things shown and their appearance in your experience are not the same. The phenomenal experience is of the thing shown. — Fooloso4

If I were an auto salesperson, what would I make of this in my everyday experience? Would it make a difference were I to be a mathematician?

Yes— and how is this relevant to climate change? — Mikie

Milankovitch Cycles

But I see warming acts on the cycles as well. Learned something.

Lowering CO2 emissions is well within our abilities. — Mikie

No argument there. A noble effort if done cautiously with regard to human comfort/misery.

What’s childish is being an 80-year-old coming to a philosophy forum and declaring that climate change is only “natural,” then chastising people for being “woke” and emotional for believing otherwise. If you don’t want to be insulted, then stop insulting peoples intelligence. Next time take 10 minutes to learn something about the science of climate change — Mikie

At 86, and a one-time meteorologist for the USAF - doing weather briefings for fighter/interceptor squadrons and nuclear packed B52s going back and forth to the edge of the Soviet Union - certified by completing a post-graduate curriculum at the University of Chicago - I am probably qualified to speak here.

Years ago climatology was a mostly statistical study and was considered the "basket-weaving" class we took. Many from that generation may have similar opinions of climate science - the modern version. It's much more sophisticated now, but I suspect it has its flaws, and, like quantum theory, these are beyond the realms of common discourse. However, I think what you read from reputable sources is fairly accurate. Where I personally differ is the assumption humans will be able to deflect the consequences to any substantial degree. So it's best to prepare for what is to a large degree beyond our control.

The Earth's movement in our galaxy is beyond our present abilities to alter.

It's not for evesdropping on military sites that the Chinese buy farm lands along the Canadian border with the US. They look long term into the probable future, seeing that agriculture may well move north.

Well, yes. It would, off course, depend on people/beings outside of time. Superobservers. — Patterner

Yes, to distinguish differences in realities. I wonder, do we shift realities, never realizing? The very idea spoils a sense of adventure a time traveler might have. Best not to engage in the practice.

But there will be differences that are noticable to people who know what it should have looked like. — Patterner

How could they have known? Any minor changes in the timestream will actually be what they are accustomed to.

The Grandfather paradox shows how a trip to the past could shift alternate realities in the present in such a way no one would notice. Suppose someone has actually gone back in time and done some major damage. Then we would be in an alternate reality and could not distinguish the differences - there would simply be none. That person, who existed in one reality, would not exist in the present reality.

The Grandfather paradox is the biggy. Here's my take on the subject: You go back in time and kill your grandfather before he procreates. Instantly the world you came from vanishes and is replaced by an alternate reality in which you don't exist. So you disappear and there is no way to tell time travel has occurred. It's a suicide mission.

On the other hand, suppose you go back in time and don't do any real damage. Then the minor alterations you might cause in the time stream are absorbed and normalized. I don't subscribe to a butterfly chaos, rather what Stanislaw Lem saw as a series of effects that peter out and vanish over a time.

On the other hand . . . . .
Climate Alarmists

Sleepwalking to extinction. — Mikie

More like running. But yes, to extinction — Manuel

On the coast of Florida that might be more likely wading.

An interesting read. Recent discussions on TPF about definitions at the beginnings of philosophical arguments needing to be precise or left in some wobbly state demonstrate the tendency of the discipline to subside into the babbling of an academic brook.

We seem to be more concerned right now about whether we’re living in a virtual reality than whether we’re living in a text.

Speculations in science - even science fantasy - become a more attractive if not reasonable intellectual adventure than parsing sentences.

I should describe the mathematical ideas associated with infinite causation chains and initial values (“first causes”) that a colleague and I developed over thirty years ago.

And keep in mind that Russell was 76 in 1948 — Banno

Thus he was blessed with the Wisdom of the Ancients. Right? :cool:

↪jgill

From a mathematical pov, does prime number theorem support or act against the Boltzmann brain proposal? — universeness

It was a counter to the number of primes being 50%.

In an infinite duration, aren't all possible outcomes equally likely to occur? — Down The Rabbit Hole

An infinite duration could include an infinite number of stages, the possibilities of something happening in a particular stage might not exist in other stages. In other words, its all babble. :smile:

In an infinite duration, and as all possible existents are of finite duration, then everything would have happened already. — Wayfarer

Why is that?

your argument sounds like an AI generated device — Paine

:up:

Countable infinities are equal, so the infinite set of worlds where we're Boltzmann brains is equal to the infinite set of worlds where we're not. It's a 50/50 chance, epistemically speaking. Given an infinitely large multiverse, of course. — RogueAI

Prime Number Theorem

The phenomenon you call depth is generally known as scale — T Clark

:up: :roll:

It's odd that a thread on the S-B expansion arises in this forum. S-B is an outlier in number theory - the Wiki page is classified as low interest. And since a primary interpretation of its generation are continued fractions of a special type, one immediately loses easy addition and subtraction - which decimal expansions of the reals have.

The value of continued fraction representations is that chopping them off at various levels give rational approximations to what one is expanding. This is easily seen when expanding a real number, like the Golden Ratio. But where it is of greater value is expanding a complex or real function as a continued fraction, providing rational functions (one polynomial over another) as approximations to the expanded functions.

$Tan(z)=\frac{z}{1-\frac{{{z}^{2}}}{3-\frac{{{z}^{2}}}{5-\ddots }}}$

Although I have little knowledge of this kind of number theory (S-B) I feel the line of inquiry expressed here would be of little interest to the mathematical community. But I could be wrong.

Edit: After doing an internet search for "area" in S-B defined in the Wiki article on Farey sequences, I probably am wrong about the interest shown in S-B by mathematicians. Embarrassingly so as I find that two former colleagues of mine have included it in their book. :yikes:

I thought I saw this problem posted before in the Lounge? — L'éléphant

Yes. It's been discussed before. It can be considered a problem in decision making.

Sleeping Beauty

Wonder when Invicta's period of suspension will be over? — jgill

Never, as it turns out. — Banno

It's hard to know if he was putting me on. has a great deal of patience dealing with these things. Thanks, Tones. :cool:

But the diameter is a straight line… — invicta

And the importance of this obvious fact is . . . . ? :roll:

Make a circle with a line one foot long and the circumference is one foot (if no contraction/expansion). This simply means the diameter of the circle is irrational, 1/pi .

Apparently, in the face of such sniping, Invicta bailed on his own thread. :smile: — Gnomon

Apparently he/she has just been released from suspension.

I thought this post on Quora from Victor Toth was relevant — universeness

Toth is excellent. Sometimes Quora clarifies issues. A recent article explained entanglement in a way both appealing to intuition and illuminating: Two coins entangled, moved light years apart. One coin is tossed, coming up, say, heads. The other coin tossed comes up the opposite. Etc.

Invoking mathematics into a philosophical argument deserves not mangling that mathematics. Posting incoherently about the mathematics is a set up for degraded discourse from the start. — TonesInDeepFreeze

:up: :clap:

In uneasy times many look towards an authoritarian figure, in marked contrast to our current president, who is widely seen as only a figurehead, perhaps senile, controlled by a progressive cabal. We drift towards Banana Republic-hood with every video clip of Trump - no matter if they portray him as good or bad. He exudes confidence. :sad:

Corncob pipe? — L'éléphant

I'm not complaining. If this guy can puff away, so could I !

George Wallace demonstration and the date it happened. — L'éléphant

1963. There was turmoil all around, with the Klan playing the crowds. At one point there was an explosion, which someone said was one of the confederate canons at the ROTC building going off. One of the civil rights demonstrators yelled, "I hope they hit the bastard this time!" (meaning Wallace).

Edit: That's how I remember the incident, although the Klan perhaps was there before that day and not on the day he stood in the doorway. And the crowds may have been smaller on that day. The canon going off does stick in my mind, however.

Wonder when Invicta's period of suspension will be over?

Sorry. Just being frivolous! :smile:

Mind you that he never said anything else but what he felt or what background he's coming from. As soon as the man walked away, the woman called him a bigot and homophobic. — L'éléphant

I had a similar experience on another forum. I made a comment about how wonderfully women had progressed in a certain sport, given an opportunity to do so by Title IX. I am 86, so fair game for age discrimination. Two women replied, calling me misogynistic and demeaning, and referring to me as "puffing on a corncob pipe through withered lips" and avoiding the civil and women's rights movements in the 1960s. To which I replied I was on campus and had demonstrated against George Wallace as he stood in the doorway to the admissions office at the U of Alabama, denying entrance to a black man, and that, actually, I had joined the women's lib movement during that decade.

Age discrimination is thriving.

The 'something from nothing' proposal makes no sense. — universeness

Sure it does. The doughnut hole is something you eat and it is in 1:1 correspondence with the emptiness left by creating the hole in a chunk of cake.

No existent can satisfy the notion of nothing — universeness

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away...

:cool:

Is there a representation of nothing, that as a maths prof, you accept as meeting/satisfying its concept? — universeness

I'm tempted to say, Nothing I can think of. But I won't. How about an element of the empty set? :cool:

Math definitions will not resolve the terminology disputes in this thread because ↪invicta is not making a mathematical proposition. "Infinite Regress" and "First Cause" are philosophical concepts that are not addressed by Mathematics — Gnomon

Wrong. I and others have studied infinite regress in detail, as infinite compositions or iterations.

In Mathematics, “infinity” is the concept describing something which is larger than the natural number. — Gnomon
Huh? — jgill

Sorry, I forgot to provide a link. That quote came from a math website. I didn't make it up. — Gnomon

What is "the natural number" ?

But for the cosmos to be, the end has to be before the beginning, or why and how could it begin. — Beena

This seems to be an assumption on your part. Please elaborate.

Welcome to the forum. :smile:

Reality is a donut-hole, or nothing out of something. — Thus Spoke 180 Proof

Or something out of nothing? This is a legitimate philosophical issue. :chin:

Fixed. :cool:

I've left out details to give an outline.

Here's an explanation of this process converging to the Golden Ratio. Leaving out the details, we begin with the

cf = $1+\frac{1}{1+\frac{1}{1+\frac{1}{1+\cdots }}}$, corresponding to the pattern of movement down the SB chart. This cf can be generated by iterating the function

$f(x)=\frac{1}{1+x},\text{ }{{f}^{(2)}}(x)=f(f(x))=\frac{1}{1+f(x)}=\frac{1}{1+\frac{1}{1+x}},\text{ etc}\text{.}$

Setting $f(x)=x\text{ }\Rightarrow \text{ }x=\alpha ,\beta$, where the first of these fixed points

is an attractor: $f(x)-\alpha =K(x-\alpha ),\text{ }\left| K \right|\lt1$, $K=K(x)$, for most values of x.


And ${{f}^{(n)}}(x)-\alpha ={{K}^{n}}(x-\alpha )\to 0$ as $n\to \infty$

Now, the value of the cf is $1+\alpha$ = Golden Ratio



This curiosity has a relation to arguments about endless cause/effect chains and first causes. Viewing the cf as going back in time, there is no end to the process, but stopping at any value of n , the x we have chosen at random, say, is a first cause.

In Mathematics, “infinity” is the concept describing something which is larger than the natural number. — Gnomon

Huh?

A little knowledge (from Wikipedia) can be a dangerous thing. :roll:

Thus, infinity, taking Pi as a currently known example is non-repeating and unpredictable — invicta

Not quite unpredictable, as the first 100 trillion digits in its expansion are now known. Why on Earth someone would make that their life's work is beyond me.

At the very least, causation causes more philosophical problems than it solves — Banno

I suppose so. But when context is specified it's not so problematic. I put a kettle on the stove and turn on the burner. The kettle boils over. Because I turned on the burner - just don't go down the rabbithole. I can set up a causal chain in math using iterations or compositions of functions, basic in dynamical systems.