Do you mean to say “nothing is bigger than X” is nonsensical? We regularly encounter such expressions e.g. “nothing is greater than God”.
Hudjefa
Karma: −18
So you mean to say … supposing there are no dogs and 3 cats and n(x) returns the numerical value of x that what 0 < 3 means is n(dogs) < n(cats) i.e. n({ }) < n({cat 1, cat 2, cat 3})? There must be some quality (in this case quantity :puzzled:) on the basis of which a comparison (here quantitative) can be made.
Do you also mean that we can’t compare nothing to something, like I was doing above? Gracias. Non liquet, but gracias.
Just a thought, but what if our ancestors had used an infinitesimal (sensu amplissimo) wherever they had to deal with n(nothing) = 0. They could’ve surmounted their philosophical/intuitionistic objections to treating nothing a something. For example if they ran into the equation , they could’ve used s (representing a really, really, small number) and “solved” the equation thus: . It would’ve surely made more sense to them than , oui?
LW is huge and I’ve just joined (it’s been less than a year). I didn’t realize … apologies. I will be mindful of what kinda questions I ask. Gracias
Si, it is absurd. I take that to mean some kind of error has been committed. On cursory examination, it seems I’ve made the blunder the Greeks were weary of: considering nothing to be something. Only something can be greater/less than something else. Yet in math we regularly encounter statements such as or , etc. Aren’t these instances of comparing something to nothing and deeming this a valid comparison? Am I not doing the same when I say nothing is greater than , which in math becomes ?
[Question] On Nothing
This is curious. The usual is atheism using psychology to discredit theism. Roles are being reversed here with trapped priors, the suggestion being some veritas are being obscured by kicking religion out of our system. I half-agree since I consider this demonstration non finito.
As for philosophia perennis, I’d say it’s a correlation is causation fallacy. It looks as though the evident convergence of religions on moral issues is not due to the mystical and unprovable elements therein but follows from common rational aspects present in most/all religions. To the extent this is true, religion may not claim moral territory.
That said, revelatory moral knowledge is a fascinating subject.
Hopefully, not talking out of my hat, but the difference between the final states of a double pendulum can be typed:
Somewhere in the middle of the pendulum’s journey through space and time. I’ve seen this visually and true there’s divergence. This divergence is based on measurement of the pendulum’s position in space at a given time. So with initial state , the pendulum at time was at position while beginning with initial state the pendulum at time was at position . The alleged divergence is the difference , oui? Take in absolute terms, , but logarithmically, .
At the very end when the pendulum comes to rest. There’s no divergence there, oui?
I have nothing against AI as a Jarvis/Friday-like assistant/advisor. A bad workman blames his tools (absit iniuria). Some us don’t know how to use stuff properly. My reckoning suggests that I’m aware of only 5% of my smart phone’s capabilities. Sometimes I get these random notifications full of interesting suggestions.
I don’t know the exact values Lorenz used in his weather simulation, but Wikipedia says “so a value like 0.506127 printed as 0.506”. If this were atmospheric pressure, we’re talking about a millionth decimal place precision. I don’t know what exerts 0.000001 Pa of pressure or to what such a teeny pressure matters.
Most kind of you to reply. I couldn’t catch all that; I’m mathematically semiliterate. I was just wondering if the key idea “small differences” (in initial states) manifests at the output end (the weather forecast) too. I mean it’s quite possible (given what I know, not much) that (say) an atmospheric pressure difference of 0.01 Pa in the output could mean the difference between rain and shine. Given what you wrote I’m wrong, oui? If I were correct then the chaos resides in the weather, not the output (where the differences are as negligible as in the inputs).
I know that there’s something called the Lyapunov exponent. Could we “diminish the chaos” if we use logarithms, like with the Richter scale for earthquakes? I was told that logarithms, though they rise rapidly in the beginning, ultimately end up plateauing: log 1 million—log 100 = 4 (only)??? log 100 inches rain and log 1 inch rain = 2 (only)?
I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m talking out of my hat here. It’s an interesting topic and I tried my best to read and understand what I read.
Gracias, have an awesome day.
Would I be correct to say that chaos as a science lives in the margins of error of existing measuring instruments. For weather, we could have one input, atmospheric pressure, say 760 +/- 0.05 mm Hg (margin of error stated). So the actual pressure is between 759.95 and 760.05 mm Hg and this range just happens to be the “small difference(s) in initial value” that leads to prediction divergence. That is the weather forecast could be as opposite as bright, sunny and heavy rain, stormy depending on whether you input 759.95 instead of 760 or 760.05 instead of 760 or 759.95 instead of 760.05 for atmospheric pressure. Doesn’t this mean chaos theory says more about the accuracy of our instruments than about actual chaos in so-called chaotic systems. It possesses this subjective element (what we consider to be negligible differences) that seems to undermine its standing as a legitimate mathematical discipline.
I also call into question the divergence, at least in weather prediction. Bright and sunny, how different/divergent is it from thunderstorm? There could be something lost in translation, going from numerical outputs to natural language descriptions like sunny, rainy.. etc.
That said, I’ve seen chaotic double pendulums and those do seem to exhibit real divergence in behavior; if the location of the pendulum’s bob is our output then there definitely is a large numerical difference, especially if we consider how close to each other the initial positions were, which is the point I suppose. We could artificially amplify this divergence by making the pendulum’s arms longer, which tells its own story.
Experiences differ. The experts I’ve seen bow out when discourse shifts, as it usually does in a free discussion, from one topic (they know like the back of their hand) to another (they have little to no clue about).
I didn’t realize it was AI age until I did. I believe the Turing Test has 2 tiers:
A candidate computer (soft + hard ware) must perfectly mimic AGI
An AGI must perfectly mimic a human
ChatGPT et all are probably past checkpoint 1
Hudjefa’s Shortform
Bowdlerized version follows:
Don’t utter falsehoods
Senses aren’t reliable
Don’t comment on matters outside your area of expertise
Please state beforehand that what you’re saying is opinion, not fact
Try to work with others to discover the truth
Beware of confirmation bias and don’t cherry-pick your “evidence” to support your pet theory/hypothesis
All arguments boil down to a modus ponens, you better know how it works
Allow people to recalibrate based on new information/evidence
Moving to a more-easily defendable position when attacked for holding a stronger view is the Motte & Bailey fallacy.
Please follow the above guidelines for the sake of sexual intercourse
That’s ok, different folks, different strokes. Yet, in the world in which this paradox lives, it is a mystery how we went/progressed from an absolute unknonw unknown state to where we are now, knowns, known knowns, known unknowns, oui? Do you have a hypothesis as to how this happened?
That’s a very interesting train of thought. Would you like to expand on that a bit? Please read my reply to @localdeity (vide supra). How did we make that saltus from literally everything being an unknown unknown to (some) known knowns?
Gracias, that’s the exactly the point in me humble opinion. The origin (0, 0) for all knowledge is late Donald Rumsfelds’ unknown unknowns. That means we made what could only be described as a quantum leap in epistemology. Raises the question do we know anything we didn’t know already?
I was wondering if the paradox was solved. The Wikipage doesn’t inform much about its status in current philosophical discourse.
The solution seems a sine qua non, before we can make progress.
What. if I may ask, is the sense in it?