Time and Space

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I was just playing with my thoughts - no need to go serious! I don't know much about maths save what I know intuitively. I wasn't expecting to get a maths conversation going.

Sophistry - a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning (Dictionary.com) Well at least it's 'sophistry' even if it is 'BS' to you. Though I cannot do other than live my life by logic I sometimes think that logic isn't real. The universe doesn't have to abide to logic and since humans created logic how can it be independent.


If one person calls a 1 a 3 and one person calls a 1 a 1 then to the first 1 + 1 = 6 and to the second it is 2. How much is 1 anyway? Where does the 1 end? One orange is one orange but where does the orange become the air and where does the air become the table yet an orange is not a table. Would 1 exist if there was none to count it? D1nkO, you were right. 'BS sophistry' might sum up my ideas nicely.



Humans made the laws of mathematics. Humans did not create physical phenomena. It seems more likely that physics governs mathematics - although it is really exciting that mathematics seems to describe physics so well.

Since when is 'my brain' not 'me'?

Actually, experiments from physics suggest that physics is governed by mathematical principles. The contruction of 0 and 1 can be done using the axioms of ZFC set theory-its called Peano Arithmetic.

Since when is 'my brain' not 'me'?[/quote]

Your brain's the enemy of you, you know; it tries to make you rational. It's also all you are. 'Tis a paradox! A paradox, I say!

Your brain's the enemy of you, you know; it tries to make you rational. It's also all you are. 'Tis a paradox! A paradox, I say![/quote]

(BTW, FYI, I'm laughing AT you and not 'with' you)

I was being silly...

You can't know...you will never know. No matter how much a persons brain is studied...I DON'T THINK that you can measure a persons perception of time. Well...thats in my opinion.

Well, what we decide to call the integers is completely arbitrary. You can call one "six" or you could call one "a papaya," it doesn't matter, but the values that they represent are objective truths. Let's look at a physical interpretation, you have one rock, and one rock, and adding them together, you have two rocks. Call the numbers whatever they want, but what you call them is merely symbolic of the objective truths that they represent.

There's a major but subtle difference between syntactic truth and semantic truth: i.e., what is true because it must be true by the rules of the language and symbols we work in, and what is true because of the meaning we assign to those symbols.

Ultimately, we have to start from somewhere, where we fix some components of the language to specific meanings and let the rest sort of "float" undefined. For example, consider assigning the usual meaning to equals, but leave unspecified what any other symbols "mean"

Then, for example, a statement like "1+1 = 2" or "1 + 1 = 6" cannot be considered "true" or "false", since we have not assigned any meaning to the symbols +, 1, 2, or 6 - I could come up with some assignment that makes the first true and the second false, or vise versa.

However, consider statements like "1 = 1" or "6 = 6" or "(1 + 1) = (1 + 1)". Regardless of the meaning we assign to +, 1, or 6, as long as we are consistent, these statements must always be true: I could pick "1" to mean 5 and "6" to mean 1, and "+" to mean multiply, and the statements must still always be true.

By choosing the behavior certain symbols such as "not", "logically implies", "equals", and "for all" to mean what you expect them to mean, you can confidently state the truth of an enormous number of statements, regardless of what, for example "1" or "+" mean. (This is actually a result from Godel which precedes his incompleteness theorem)

The infinite corridors of time topic

Time is best understood as a comparison. I know time has elapsed if an object is different in the next viewing. However, this is not foolproof. You might ask what if the object has not visibly changed? This does not mean time has not elapsed. Change can be subtle, and at the molecular/subatomic level. I always thought of movement as a sort of time experience.

In ordinary life we use clocks to measure the passage of time. Common sense, I suppose. Most of us would be lost if not for clocks.

Asha, I know you were asking a deeper question. Phagocyte is on the right track, of time, pardon the pun.