Natural discrete boundaries and continuous transitions

[Kharakov]

Do you feel like they exist?

Are you a dualist if you think they both exist?

Are you a monist (continuous transitions allow for discrete boundaries, so discrete boundaries are part of continuous nature)?

Is asking these questions going to make me any less screwed by reality?

 

[fromderinside]

We modeled with voxels to find boundaries for animations in closed spaces back in the day. Wouldn't want to have a maintainer cut hisdamnself in an access tube would we. I don't think there is a natural transition from flesh to aircraft.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Do you feel like they exist?

Boundaries? No.

There's an obvious boundary of sorts between what I know and what I know not but it's really a formal distinction, i.e. an abstract boundary, like between being and non-being. So I wouldn't say I feel like it exists.

Other would-be boundaries are integral parts of one perception field or another, between hot and cold, between hard and soft, between red and blue etc. So, there you could say I feel the boundary as a perception. I couldn't help it, obviously. Yet, I wouldn't say I feel like these boundaries exist. Rather, there are boundaries within my perception and they are real enough, and I interpret them as significant in terms of the reality perceived, but not going so far as accepting that it is necessarily true that there is any real boundary beyond my perception. I'm agnostic in that respect.

Are you a dualist if you think they both exist?

Well, it seems that any conception of reality that would require at least two distinct qualities, not reducible somehow to a unique quality, would have to be regarded as dualistic.

Still, we can represent curves with inflection points where the curve is effectively continuous but the differential is discontinuous and marks therefore a boundary. Think of a continuous two-dimensional space, a surface but with an inflection line making a fold going through it: a cube for example, with a continuous surface all over but edges which are in effect inflection lines, marking the place where the differentials are not continuous, which allow us to say that there are six faces to a cube.

But one may argue that only the three-dimensional space within which the surface appears is real, the surface itself and the boundaries with said discontinuous differentials being only epiphenomenal.

I wouldn't know...

Are you a monist (continuous transitions allow for discrete boundaries, so discrete boundaries are part of continuous nature)?

I can certainly understand how perception could conceivably make a continuous transition appear like a boundary. And vice versa. So I'm not going to be too categorical about anything.

Is asking these questions going to make me any less screwed by reality?

You seem to be assuming that the whole of reality would have to appear skewed to us. I would say that this seems to me to be necessarily an impossibility. That is, at least a part of reality can only appear exactly as it is to us. So that in effect, we have to know that part of reality exactly as it is, even if, perhaps, we're not minded to pay attention or think precisely in those terms.
EB

 

[Kharakov]

Boundaries? No.

I was thinking of discrete boundaries, as in transition points between positive and negative EM fields (zero points between the fields). There would only be one such boundary between any 2 point sources (although the boundary would constantly move, so would not be static).

Are you a monist (continuous transitions allow for discrete boundaries, so discrete boundaries are part of continuous nature)?

I can certainly understand how perception could conceivably make a continuous transition appear like a boundary. And vice versa. So I'm not going to be too categorical about anything.

Instead of using EM fields.. there are various zero points in the gravitational field between the Sun and the Earth. On one side of the zero point, gravitation is towards the Earth, on the other side, towards the Sun.

Spacetime is smooth/continuous, however there is a discrete (although always changing) boundary between the Sun and the Earth. There is only one such large scale boundary, but there are as many of these boundaries as there are particles between the Sun and the Earth (for various reasons that you can figure out).

Any place in spacetime where the prevailing direction changes is a discrete boundary in a continuous system. It's discrete because it is individual, and only around the source(s), it is continuous because it is part of spacetime itself.


So the idea is that continuous and discrete are part of the very same thing- that continuous gives arise to discrete, while I still haven't formulated a non-cray-cray gobbledeegook way for discrete to formulate the continuous.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Yep, seems like what I was suggesting.

Still, we can represent curves with inflection points where the curve is effectively continuous but the differential is discontinuous and marks therefore a boundary. Think of a continuous two-dimensional space, a surface but with an inflection line making a fold going through it: a cube for example, with a continuous surface all over but edges which are in effect inflection lines, marking the place where the differentials are not continuous, which allow us to say that there are six faces to a cube.

And the question is whether the inflection and the continuity are both for real.

I still don't know:

I can certainly understand how perception could conceivably make a continuous transition appear like a boundary. And vice versa. So I'm not going to be too categorical about anything.

EB

 

[Kharakov]

AFA I've read and thought, fields are smooth/continuous, so there cannot be an idealized cube in reality. Of course, with reality being what it is, I can't say that there is not an idealized cube in reality. Any idea how there could be?

AFAICT, there can be the thought of an idealized cube, and at certain scales and resolutions the perception of idealized cubes, but they don't actually exist (ok, maybe at the event horizons of a few merging black holes...).

We can describe cubes with thoughts, which themselves (the thoughts) are part of continuous reality, even if the thoughts have the sensation of being individual elements of reality with their own boundary conditions.

 

[fromderinside]

I can certainly understand how perception could conceivably make a continuous transition appear like a boundary. And vice versa. So I'm not going to be too categorical about anything.

EB

Good. Else I'd drop as many studies as it takes to convince you that perception needs edges.

 

[Speakpigeon]

EB

Good. Else I'd drop as many studies as it takes to convince you that perception needs edges.

Perception doesn't need edges. There, happy?

I think you are confusing "need" and "that's the way it works because edges are more economical in brain ressources and process time so that evolution and selection left only edge-based perception in the whole animal kingdom."

Yeah, mine is definitely longer to spell out but we're both alive apparently so you can't be sure you've been selected for your skill and not me.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

AFA I've read and thought, fields are smooth/continuous, so there cannot be an idealized cube in reality. Of course, with reality being what it is, I can't say that there is not an idealized cube in reality. Any idea how there could be?

AFAICT, there can be the thought of an idealized cube, and at certain scales and resolutions the perception of idealized cubes, but they don't actually exist (ok, maybe at the event horizons of a few merging black holes...).

We can describe cubes with thoughts, which themselves (the thoughts) are part of continuous reality, even if the thoughts have the sensation of being individual elements of reality with their own boundary conditions.

I only used the cube as an easy exemplar to specify my meaning, but I could have discussed "chairs in my kitchen", "stars in the night sky", "smoke clouds" and so on.

As to how there could be ideal cubes in reality I think, yes, there could be. Most people think mostly analogically. That is, they have to imagine life-like pictures representing somehow what it is they are thinking about. The fussiness of it all makes it difficult to imagine any physically real cube. But of course one can think in abstract, or abstracted, terms. So, a cube need not be represented as a geometrical figure having six faces and twelves edges all at right angles. Instead, the cube will be something having six faces and twelves edges at right angles. If it's all that then it's a cube even if it doesn't look like a cube. Cubes don't need to be looked at. Of course, I'm not claiming that there is any such physically real cube. I'm just suggesting how it could work. Essentially, you may want to claim that cubes cannot be physically real. If so, then what is a cube? You'd have to say that a cube is precisely what I imagine it to be or what I specify a cube to be. And then what you imagine or specify has to be the real cube. Not the physically real cube but the real cube still. And what we imagine or specify is just as real as physical things. They're not physical things but they exist as life-like imaginings or abstract specifications.
EB

 

[PyramidHead]

This reminds me of the unified field concept. If that hypothesis is correct, everything that exists is just one thing: a undifferentiated field that mediates all of the fundamental forces and is pockmarked by local perturbations of certain quantity and quality. The perturbations are continuous in the way that a depression on a piece of fabric is continuous, representing gradients of energy with no sharp edges.

 

[fromderinside]

Good. Else I'd drop as many studies as it takes to convince you that perception needs edges.

Perception doesn't need edges. There, happy?

I think you are confusing "need" and "that's the way it works because edges are more economical in brain ressources and process time so that evolution and selection left only edge-based perception in the whole animal kingdom."

Yeah, mine is definitely longer to spell out but we're both alive apparently so you can't be sure you've been selected for your skill and not me.
EB

Maybe I just needed you to respond?

Need is a dicey concept. Perception needs are a consequence of surviving needs are a consequence of existing needs are definitive of imaginary needs etc. Often when one uses needs on is saying such is essential to it's being, existing, like that. IOW perceptions aren't unless edges 'are' for living things. No pursuit of a holy grail meant here, no design, just meaning.

 

[Kharakov]

This reminds me of the unified field concept. If that hypothesis is correct, everything that exists is just one thing: a undifferentiated field that mediates all of the fundamental forces and is pockmarked by local perturbations of certain quantity and quality. The perturbations are continuous in the way that a depression on a piece of fabric is continuous, representing gradients of energy with no sharp edges.

In the unified field concept are changes in gradient direction boundaries?

How about edges of the depression in the "piece of fabric", over which whatever is contained would 'spill'?