What does it mean for something to be "logically possible"?

[untermensche]

That's not right. Science does not consider everything impossible until it is shown to be possible scientifically - that doesn't make sense.

Science works off of evidence.

If there is no evidence of something there is nothing science can do with it.

 

[beero1000]

Well, you've gone all squirrelly all of a sudden. Realized a problem with your assertions?

Or will you give me a straight answer to my question: Are you saying that North isn't a direction or that North takes up a non-zero amount of degrees?

Attacking me based on what I don't understand won't help you now, I haven't made any claims, just asked questions. You backed yourself into that corner quite nicely all on your own.

North is no different from any direction.

And no direction can take up zero degrees. That is meaningless gibberish in the real world.

Wow, the denial runs DEEP. Who do you think you're fooling?

Looks like I won't get an answer to my question after all. I'm distraught.

 

[untermensche]

North is no different from any direction.

And no direction can take up zero degrees. That is meaningless gibberish in the real world.

Wow, the denial runs DEEP. Who do you think you're fooling?

Looks like I won't get an answer to my question after all. I'm distraught.

OK.

I want you to go to your telescope and scan zero degrees of the sky one light year away.

What have you scanned? Is it possible to do such a thing?

Or is the idea meaningless gibberish?

The only idea that is funny here is the idea that ZERO degrees is something real.

 

[beero1000]

Wow, the denial runs DEEP. Who do you think you're fooling?

Looks like I won't get an answer to my question after all. I'm distraught.

OK.

I want you to go to your telescope and scan zero degrees of the sky one light year away.

What have you scanned? Is it possible to do such a thing?

Or is the idea meaningless gibberish?

Sorry, I don't have a telescope right now. I do have a strawman though, would that help?

I haven't made any claims here about angles at all - feel free to go back and check. All I was doing was probing the self-consistency of your claims, and I've found that the lady doth protest too much, methinks.

 

[untermensche]

OK.

I want you to go to your telescope and scan zero degrees of the sky one light year away.

What have you scanned? Is it possible to do such a thing?

Or is the idea meaningless gibberish?

Sorry, I don't have a telescope right now. I do have a strawman though, would that help?

I haven't made any claims here about angles at all - feel free to go back and check. All I was doing was probing the self-consistency of your claims, and the lady doth protest too much, methinks.

You are claiming that 360 degrees can be divided infinitely.

That is true in your imagination only.

Zero degrees is as real as infinity as real as the Easter Bunny.

 

[beero1000]

Sorry, I don't have a telescope right now. I do have a strawman though, would that help?

I haven't made any claims here about angles at all - feel free to go back and check. All I was doing was probing the self-consistency of your claims, and the lady doth protest too much, methinks.

You are claiming that 360 degrees can be divided infinitely.

That is true in your imagination only.

Zero degrees is as real as infinity as real as the Easter Bunny.

Am I? Here I was, thinking that I was just asking you a question. Color me surprised.

Of course, it isn't my fault if the answer to that question brings your whole worldview crashing down around your ears, which leads to you doing everything possible to avoid giving a straight answer to it. Not just a river in Egypt and all that...

 

[untermensche]

You are claiming that 360 degrees can be divided infinitely.

That is true in your imagination only.

Zero degrees is as real as infinity as real as the Easter Bunny.

Am I? Here I was, thinking that I was just asking you a question. Color me surprised.

Of course, it isn't my fault if the answer to that question brings your whole worldview crashing down around your ears, which leads to you doing everything possible to avoid giving a straight answer to it. Not just a river in Egypt and all that...

I only answered your questions about five times.

It is hard when the person you are trying to communicate with can't even comprehend their questions have been answered.

A direction ultimately is not something real.

You cannot point to something and say "That is a direction."

You can observe. And move your observation.

But you cannot observe something out there occupying ZERO degrees of the circle.

If you want to make an observation you have to have something to observe.

 

[beero1000]

Am I? Here I was, thinking that I was just asking you a question. Color me surprised.

Of course, it isn't my fault if the answer to that question brings your whole worldview crashing down around your ears, which leads to you doing everything possible to avoid giving a straight answer to it. Not just a river in Egypt and all that...

I only answered your questions about five times.

It is hard when the person you are trying to communicate with can't even comprehend their questions have been answered.

It's entirely possible that I lack comprehension, but it seemed to me that you didn't answer the question, and instead:

1. Asserted that I was making claims
2. Attacked straw men of the (imaginary) claims I was making
3. Waffled behind non sequiturs or if/then statements

Can you quote your answer specifically? Any of the 5 will do. Maybe someone else can chime in on if they comprehended your answers too.

A direction ultimately is not something real.

I thought you said "And no direction can take up zero degrees. That is meaningless gibberish in the real world.", which seems to imply that a direction CAN be real, as long as it takes up more than zero degrees? Are you shifting the goalposts?

You cannot point to something and say "That is a direction."

Is that going to be the criterion for when something is real?

You can observe. And move your observation.

But you cannot observe something out there occupying ZERO degrees of the circle.

If you want to make an observation you have to have something to observe.

I'm gonna have to go back to my original question here - what do you think 'directions' are? Is this an 'animal, vegetable, mineral' type deal? How do I observe a direction taking up a non-zero amount of the circle? Is that even possible?

 

[ryan]

That's not right. Science does not consider everything impossible until it is shown to be possible scientifically - that doesn't make sense.

Science works off of evidence.

If there is no evidence of something there is nothing science can do with it.

Exactly, therefor science does not say it is impossible either.

 

[ryan]

There is a direction that is 0 degrees from itself. You may be travelling 15 degrees north of east (sometimes called 0 degrees) or you can be travelling 0 degrees north of East.

 

[fromderinside]

Thank you Speakpigeon. I'll maintain my idiotic posture without having to dissemble as you did after you wrote "So here it goes". Goes indeed. I needn't repeat it since you wrote it.

I'm not surprised.
EB

You actually wrote, in effect, intuition is unconscious thought. No need for a special name then is there. Most thought is unconscious as most will acknowledge. That is thought is thought.

Whether one is conscious of it has no bearing on what is being done.

So if you're not surprised then you know intuition is no more than unconscious thought, not worthy of note, since it is thought.

Ergo my Thank you.

 

[untermensche]

A direction ultimately is not something real.

I thought you said "And no direction can take up zero degrees. That is meaningless gibberish in the real world.", which seems to imply that a direction CAN be real, as long as it takes up more than zero degrees? Are you shifting the goalposts?

It was in response to your insistence to merely discuss one specific direction.

If we say that North is some specific direction from earth then the amount of degrees that represent "North" cannot be zero.

A specific direction must be greater than zero.

But the idea of "direction" is not something real.

It is just pointing an imaginary line at something.

 

[untermensche]

Science works off of evidence.

If there is no evidence of something there is nothing science can do with it.

Exactly, therefor science does not say it is impossible either.

In science if there is no evidence it is possible then there is no reason to think it is possible.

Things do not rise to the level of possibility without evidence.

Speculations are not possibilities.

 

[beero1000]

I thought you said "And no direction can take up zero degrees. That is meaningless gibberish in the real world.", which seems to imply that a direction CAN be real, as long as it takes up more than zero degrees? Are you shifting the goalposts?

It was in response to your insistence to merely discuss one specific direction.

If we say that North is some specific direction from earth then the amount of degrees that represent "North" cannot be zero.

A specific direction must be greater than zero.

But the idea of "direction" is not something real.

It is just pointing an imaginary line at something.

So now all directions are imaginary? What was all the fuss about zero then?

And what about your 'no imaginary things in the real world' business? I can assure you that directions are pretty useful in the real world...

I'd think you'd be better off taking a minute to think about your opinions before posting them. You might save yourself this kind of embarrassment.

 

[ryan]

Exactly, therefor science does not say it is impossible either.

In science if there is no evidence it is possible then there is no reason to think it is possible.

Things do not rise to the level of possibility without evidence.

Speculations are not possibilities.

So does no reason to think something is possible make it impossible or is there a 3rd option of middle ground?

 

[Kharakov]

untermensche

Your belief is that direction in spacetime is quantized? In other words, you believe there are only a finite amount of directions leading from a point in spacetime?

You also believe that length is quantized? In other words, you believe there are only certain distances something can travel from a point in spacetime, that are quantized units?

 

[rousseau]

Thought for a second that it was beero1000 talking to fromderinside. That woulda been good.

Perhaps one of you could wax poetic in length about scientific concepts, and the other could extract math out of there.

Yea, that'd spice the minimum wage and campus rape conversation up a bit.

I'm definitely not four beers deep right now.

 

[ryan]

untermensche

Your belief is that direction in spacetime is quantized? In other words, you believe there are only a finite amount of directions leading from a point in spacetime?

You also believe that length is quantized? In other words, you believe there are only certain distances something can travel from a point in spacetime, that are quantized units?

I am just thinking about what a quantized spacetime would even be like and if it is even logical. So if there is something between each point in space, then wouldn't that make that and spacetime continuous? It would be like how the rationals and irrationals need each other to be continuous.

Or, if there is nothing in between any two points in space (or nothing between stuff/ether that is between the 2 points), then wouldn't that also make the universe necessarily continuous? In other words, we say that there is nothing or no numbers between 2 and 2; or less abstractly we would say that there is nothing between my pencil at a point in time and my pencil in that same point in time.

Either way, there would seem to have to be something real that is continuous. Call it space-time-ether that is a fundamental continuum.

 

[Speakpigeon]

untermensche

Your belief is that direction in spacetime is quantized? In other words, you believe there are only a finite amount of directions leading from a point in spacetime?

You also believe that length is quantized? In other words, you believe there are only certain distances something can travel from a point in spacetime, that are quantized units?

I am just thinking about what a quantized spacetime would even be like and if it is even logical. So if there is something between each point in space, then wouldn't that make that and spacetime continuous? It would be like how the rationals and irrationals need each other to be continuous.

Or, if there is nothing in between any two points in space (or nothing between stuff/ether that is between the 2 points), then wouldn't that also make the universe necessarily continuous? In other words, we say that there is nothing or no numbers between 2 and 2; or less abstractly we would say that there is nothing between my pencil at a point in time and my pencil in that same point in time.

Either way, there would seem to have to be something real that is continuous. Call it space-time-ether that is a fundamental continuum.

Interesting example of the astonishing creative power of literal thought.

The principle seems to be that you can produce a novel if somewhat random idea by interpreting literally the wording of some preexisting and otherwise uncontroversial idea. Maybe it requires you to fail to understand the original meaning to be able to keep up the pretense that your literal interpretation is at all acceptable. After all, a chess board is effectively quantised from the point of view of the rules of the game and yet it is also topologically continuous in the physical reality, as far as we know at least, in that it allows to move the queen in an apparently physically continuous movement. Please note that this may be closer to the actual nature of physical space than you might think.

untermensche is another one who seems particularly apt at doing this while seemingly believing his own stuff. But now we have a conversation going which effectively reveals to the world the simple mechanism of this sort of mindset.


More worryingly for these two brave conceptual scufflers, the result is broadly to impoverish the range of concepts one can use to think. Ryan just ends up here proving at least to himself that the notion of quantised space is useless because redundant with that of continuous space, while untermensche seems to believe his own reasonings to the effect that all abstract concepts are as many vanity ideas, pretty and possibly impressive to some but ultimately useless. It certainly simplifies to the extreme the kind of thoughts to be contemplated seriously. Once you've done away with the idea of zero and that of direction the world suddenly looks simple.
EB

- - - Updated - - -

Thought for a second that it was beero1000 talking to fromderinside. That woulda been good.

Perhaps one of you could wax poetic in length about scientific concepts, and the other could extract math out of there.

Yea, that'd spice the minimum wage and campus rape conversation up a bit.

I'm definitely not four beers deep right now.

Something else?
EB

 

[untermensche]

It was in response to your insistence to merely discuss one specific direction.

If we say that North is some specific direction from earth then the amount of degrees that represent "North" cannot be zero.

A specific direction must be greater than zero.

But the idea of "direction" is not something real.

It is just pointing an imaginary line at something.

So now all directions are imaginary? What was all the fuss about zero then?

And what about your 'no imaginary things in the real world' business? I can assure you that directions are pretty useful in the real world...

I'd think you'd be better off taking a minute to think about your opinions before posting them. You might save yourself this kind of embarrassment.

?

A line of direction is imaginary as all lines.

But if we want to move in a real direction we can't travel on a line.