Slashdot Mirror
The Peculiar Math That Could Underlie the Laws of Nature (quantamagazine.org)
xanthos writes: A fascinating article in Quanta magazine introduces us to Cohl Furey and the eight dimensional mathematics called octonions that she is using to model the interactions of strong and electromagnetic forces.
"Proof surfaced in 1898 that the reals, complex numbers, quaternions and octonions are the only kinds of numbers that can be added, subtracted, multiplied and divided. The first three of these "division algebras" would soon lay the mathematical foundation for 20th-century physics, with real numbers appearing ubiquitously, complex numbers providing the math of quantum mechanics, and quaternions underlying Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity. This has led many researchers to wonder about the last and least-understood division algebra. Might the octonions hold secrets of the universe?"
"In her most recent published paper she consolidated several findings to construct the full Standard Model symmetry group for a single generation of particles, with the math producing the correct array of electric charges and other attributes for an electron, neutrino, three up quarks, three down quarks and their anti-particles. The math also suggests a reason why electric charge is quantized in discrete units -- essentially, because whole numbers are."
"Proof surfaced in 1898 that the reals, complex numbers, quaternions and octonions are the only kinds of numbers that can be added, subtracted, multiplied and divided. The first three of these "division algebras" would soon lay the mathematical foundation for 20th-century physics, with real numbers appearing ubiquitously, complex numbers providing the math of quantum mechanics, and quaternions underlying Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity. This has led many researchers to wonder about the last and least-understood division algebra. Might the octonions hold secrets of the universe?"
"In her most recent published paper she consolidated several findings to construct the full Standard Model symmetry group for a single generation of particles, with the math producing the correct array of electric charges and other attributes for an electron, neutrino, three up quarks, three down quarks and their anti-particles. The math also suggests a reason why electric charge is quantized in discrete units -- essentially, because whole numbers are."
nah, normally 4 vectors are used which are NOT quaternions. Not seeing what advantage their use would give over four-vectors since they wouldn't represent space-time but rather space and operations in space.
Who ever put together that diagram about "Four Special Number Systems" was completely clueless about Mathematical Singularities
*facepalm*
NO, you do not. 0/0 is a singularity because it does NOT produce another real number. You get TWO numbers: +Infnity, and -Infinity and thus Mathematicians say the operation is "undefined".
"Can I have a Coke please."
He invents fake news!
Did I win anything?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And this is why we can't have nice things. People say they want peace, but they do not. People want war and struggle. That is why a country can never have peace, If there are no external enemies they will make up internal enemies called Democrats and Republicans who will fight to the bitter end for good and right. Just remember these so called evil Trump supporters feel to their very heart that they are doing the right thing. They were just born in a different part of the country from your soo enlightened self.
There are some more loft individuals that can find their struggle in understanding the beauty of the universe. Lets keep politics out of mathematics
No she says "and uh uhm yeah like he totally did understand it."
Some fried mushrooms to.
I don't think the timecube guy was ever on slashdot.
Time to offend someone
Everything is connected in ways we can't even comprehend.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Fuck women!
Not with that attitude you won't.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
... Lets keep politics out of mathematics
The endless struggle to keep politics out of "X" rides the same rails as the struggle to keep religion out of "Y".
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
So, the only thing wrong with the Timecube was that it was only half the story. Timecube is dead. Long live Octotime.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Great article and illustrates how as we try to understand reality (for lack of a better word): we first find that our current level of physics can't explain what we observe so we need to go to the next level. That next level needs the appropriate mathematical tools which often end up being already invented and looking for a practical application.
From the perspective of using a branch of mathematics that is new to the field, there's a lot of similarity between this story and using mathematics to predict crime: https://science.slashdot.org/s...
I believe we need to promote and retell these stories to students so that they can look beyond the simple and search for mathematical analogues that allow them to understand and model the physical world in different ways.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
3.9% GDP growth in Q3 2014. Enough said you conservative hack.
Can any of you smart mathematicians and physicists possibly down-translate this for the rest of us?
I'm sure I'm not alone in admitting I have not the slightest idea what the hell this is. OK, maybe I'm alone in admitting it, but I'm sure I'm not alone in having no idea what this is saying.
So... you're telling me that reality is defined by an abstract algebra concept?
I thought we were using abstract algebras to *model reality*--not the other way around.
Yes. Reality will be defined by some mathematical structure or another. We can invent mathematical structures to describe any possible way that reality might be. Whatever way it turns out that reality is, whichever mathematical structure accurately describes it defines its properties.
One might even say (as Max Tegmark more or less does) that concrete existence, the kind of existence that applies to rocks and trees and such, is just a special case of abstract existence, the kind that applies to mathematical structures like numbers and triangles. All mathematical structures "exist" in that abstract sense, and the things that "exist" in a more concrete sense are just the things that are part of the same mathematical structure of which we are a part, i.e. of our physical reality.
Similar to how, as David Lewis puts it, "'actual' is indexical", i.e. in a multiverse of possible worlds (which, NB, would all be part of the concrete world we're talking about above), the "actual world" is just the one that we happen to be part of, and not ontologically different from any of the other possible worlds. We might likewise say that "'concrete' is indexical"; concrete reality is just the abstract structure of which we are a part, and not ontologically different from any other abstract structures.
It's still an empirical question to figure out which possible world (configuration) of which abstract structure we are a part of. But whatever the answer will turn out to be, there's some possible math that will describe it.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Without having to understand the physics or worry if it's right or not there is an important fact to be gleaned for computer scientists here. Specifically, we won't have a strong need to ever build SIMD systems wider than 8 (well maybe 16). There might be advantages for parallelism beyond that but they are merely scaling advantages not representational advantages.
That is to say, we currently handle 4 wide floats efficiently in SIMD systems. That's not an accident. Systems like Silicon Graphics were specially designed for exactly the purpose of efficient 4x4 matrix multiplication to handle quaternion graphics. Four is the essential number needed to make the atomic unit of all those transactions be the quaternion size. It makes everything else easier if you are not having to do bookkeepping on the data representation of the 4-vectors.
One might have thought that well, make an 8 then someone will want a 16 then a 32. So there's nothing special about 8. But this says indeed there is something special about 8. It's the largest size you really need to worry about the bookkeeping on. It's the largest atomic unit most algebras will ever need to treat.
You could scale beyond that but you will want to make sure that the most efficient ops can work on 8-vectors in whatever designs you consider in the future. it's special.
And microcode desginers will also want to make 8-ops special as well. Page boundaries should be multiples of 32= (8*float) etc...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The really amusing thing to me is that historically, James Clerk Maxwell’s mathematical theory of electromagnetism (published in 1865), which for the first time unified electricity and magnetism, was written in the form of quaternions. For this reason, it was viewed by the engineering world as obtuse and impenetrable – 20 equations in 20 unknowns! Little was done with it until Oliver Heaviside re-wrote the theory in 1884 using the curl and divergence concepts of vector calculus, replacing 12 of the 20 equations with four short differential equations. Ironically, these four equations are now taught to undergraduates as “Maxwell’s Equations,” even though Maxwell never saw them (he died in 1879).
I’ve never seen an electromagnetics textbook written after 1900 that uses the original quaternion description of electromagnetics – they all use Heaviside’s vector calculus approach. It would be supremely ironic if a distaste of quaternions set the search for Physics’ Unified Field Theory back 150 years.
You're assuming horizontal SIMD, and ignoring vertical SIMD. Horizontal SIMD places values in the SIMD lanes corresponding to dimensions 'x', 'y', 'z', etc. Vertical SIMD places values in lanes corresponding to the same dimension across different items: e.g. 'x0', 'x1', x2', ....
The former is arguably bounded to a small finite number, the latter isn't.
Octmushrooms!
Yeah... um, right... this is intuitively obvious to the casual observer...
We could have had a nice topic on math and physics, but nooooo you had to toss out a non sequitur and bring up Trump and shit on the entire topic instead of letting the ACs respond to themselves.
It seems to imply that she is going through the process of refining the Standard Model and Quantum Mechanics in octonion maths, but isn't fully there yet. Some of it is done, but there is more to go. Perhaps once done, predictions will be made. Although it's does already seem to predict that there is nothing beyond the Standard Model, with a magic number being 8.
And here we are, talking about the most profound mysteries of the universe until the trump derangement syndrom had to pop up. The poor leftist mind, can never catch a break.
... I was gonna say that.
I'm reminded of Oliver Heaviside, who refactored Maxwell's equations into the useful and familiar vector notation that has adorned many tshirts of electrical engineering and physics students. Heaviside took an unwieldy set of twenty field equations, and reduced them to four. I do wonder what insights we can potentially learn if the model itself is refactored into an elegant form.
Her PhD thesis: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.091...
The mathematician John Baez has an engaging writing style, and gave an amusing account of octonian numbers (His blog is very interesting BTW): http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/
"There are exactly four normed division algebras: the real numbers (R), complex numbers (C), quaternions (H), and octonions (O). The real numbers are the dependable breadwinner of the family, the complete ordered field we all rely on. The complex numbers are a slightly flashier but still respectable younger brother: not ordered, but algebraically complete. The quaternions, being noncommutative, are the eccentric cousin who is shunned at important family gatherings. But the octonions are the crazy old uncle nobody lets out of the attic: they are nonassociative."
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/...
I don't understand this. Doesn't ontology ask "what is?" not "what is possible?"
Says that the reals, complex numbers, quaternions, and octonions are the only kinds of numbers that can be added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided. This is obviously false, as that can be done in any division algebra (including any field, like finite fields, rational numbers, etc, and there are there are uncountably many fields).
What they meant to say is that those are the only normed division algebras - basically, algebras over the real numbers with a notion of distance and such that the distance is compatible with multiplication.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
So in the 50s a mathematician named David Hestenes developed a new branch of math called Geometric Algebra (based upon Clifford Algebras) which could subsume all of the different algebras used by physicists (and many others too). Additionally, it can handle contravariance and covariance, any positive integer number of dimensions, and handle algebras over imaginary numbers. Quantum Loop Gravity uses Geometric Algebra for instance. The problem is that Geometric Algebra isn't taught yet except perhaps at a post-doc level to mathematicians. The first textbook covering GA for Computer Science was just published in 2017. There are hopes that reformulating physics in to GA will allow unifications that were either not possible or too difficult when each part of physics uses different types of algebras.
The problem with all of this? GA is really really really hard. There is even an extension to GA called Geometric Calculus that's even more difficult. Given how difficult most students find VA which is much easier than GA, I'm not sure when we can expect most physics to make new theories using GA instead of VA. But when we can climb that hill, we will likely be able to see new physics on the other side. There are also a great many CS applications of GA as well (which is what I do).
My take on TFA, is that this physicist is going down a wrong path because she was never taught GA. If she finds something, it will likely have to be converted into GA to unify it with other algebras used in other parts of physics. But I could be wrong, who knows but some of the greatest physicists in history have gone down this specific rabbit hole with nothing to show for it at the end. I wish her luck.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Can any of you smart mathematicians and physicists possibly down-translate this for the rest of us?
I'm sure I'm not alone in admitting I have not the slightest idea what the hell this is. OK, maybe I'm alone in admitting it, but I'm sure I'm not alone in having no idea what this is saying.
Around 1940 (IIRC), Eugene Wigner pointed out that symmetries in physics let is map physical theories to abstract groups, and this can place restrictions on what the correct equations have to be, in a way that lets us winnow down the possible theories to only those that satisfy the group topologies.
Suppose you have a square playing card nestled in a square indentation on a table (a regular playing card, except it's square instead of rectangular). How many ways are there to pick up the card and place it back down in the indentation?
The answer is 8 possible ways. If you paint one of the edges of the card, then there are 4 possible sides (of the hole) where the painted edge can go, and then you can have the card face-up or face-down. Each of these placements corresponds to a rotation or a flip of the card: Four rotations (including the identity rotation of 0 degrees), and four flips, along the vertical, horizontal, or two diagonal axes.
No matter how many rotations and flips you make, you always end up in one of the 8 basic positions. Thus, the operations form a group - called the "dihedral" group. The operations are closed: no matter how many flips and rotates you use, it ends up as the same as one of the original 8. Each operation has an inverse, and the 0 degree rotation acts as an identity element. (It's also associative, but that's difficult to show.)
Now imagine the card centered on the X-Y plane, and draw 4 vectors from the origin out to each of the four corners. You can define 8 matrices that flip the vectors in various ways, each matrix being associated with one of the flip or rotate operations.
Thus, the 8 matrices become a representation of the dihedral group. This puts some strong restrictions on the types of matrix you use: each matrix has to have length 1 (it can't change the length of the vectors), and you can't flip one edge over without flipping the opposite edge, because you can't "twist" the card. The matrix length can't be -1 because that would make the card a mirror image - the "J" of a Jack would curve to the right instead of the left.
You can now use matrix mathematics to prove things about your group.
For a different group, consider a vector going from the origin to the unit sphere. You can consider all matrices that rotate the vector in 3D without changing its length or moving its origin. This also forms a group (operations are closed, operations have inverses, and there's an identity operation), but it's an infinite group (a Lie group) and the sphere surface is "smooth". This means that you now can now use differential geometry to prove things about your group.
This group is called SU(3), the "Special Unitary group". It's "Unitary" because the rotations don't change the lengths of the vectors (the matrices are of length 1), and it's "Special" because it doesn't allow mirror-images: the determinant ("length") of the matrix cannot be -1, in the same way that we can't have a matrix of length -1 when rotating cards.
Now consider a physics experiment. We set up an apparatus, calculate the wave equation, and at the end we measure (for example) the energy. We measure energy by applying an operator to the wave equation that describes the experiment.
We can imagine rotating our point of view around the experiment, so that when we do the experiment we measure the energy looking from the other side of the apparatus.
We expect in that case to get the same value.
This means that the energy operator we apply to the wave eq
Ontology does ask "what is?", but a possible answer to that question is "everything that could possibly be".
Even given that answer to that unqualified question, we can (and usually implicitly mean to) ask a more restricted version of it, like "What concretely exists?", "What actually exists?", or even "What presently exists?" In philosophy of time people argue about presentism vs eternalism, and one proposed resolution to that argument is just to note different senses of the word "exist", one in the present tense and one tenseless: only the present presently exists, now, but other times exist in a tenseless sense of the word "exist". Other possible worlds and other mathematical structures may likewise "exist" in increasingly broader sense of the term than the one that means "right now, in the actual configuration of this reality".
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
So is it like Bill Clinton said, "depends on what the meaning of "is" is? I suppose it's all way over my head, but I have to say that I was always quite happy with Johnson's refutation of Berkeley.
Bad form to reply to myself, but can't edit posts on Slashdot:
In the most restricted sense, one could say "only what I am experiencing right here right now exists": complete solipsism. Everything else is some degree of inference and abstraction. Part of what I'm experiencing right now is memory, from which I infer (intuitively, without thinking about it) the existence of other times, including projected future times. In that "movie" of my past, present, and future experiences now inferred, I seem to move around different places, so I infer (again, just intuitively; we all do this stuff without thinking about it) that other places exist too, besides just the here that I am experiencing now. Other possible worlds help to make sense of the larger world of space and time now inferred, so we can infer their existence too. Other mathematical structures help to make sense of that multiverse now inferred, so we can infer their existence too. All in more and more broad and general senses of the word "exist", true, but you're going to concede to a broader reality than just your own present experience anyway, why not go all the way?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Remember Mathematics only MODELS reality. It isn't reality itself. It is just a model of reality we can understand and manipulate.
So is it like Bill Clinton said, "depends on what the meaning of "is" is?
Hah, I like making that joke/reference in this context myself. :-)
Another fun one: the field of mereology studies the relationships between parts and wholes, and the difference between continuous stuff that has no proper parts and is infinitely divisible, and discrete things that are made of other discrete things down to some atomic (indivisible) level. In that context, "stuff" and "things" are technical terms referring to those continuous and discrete kinds of beings. So what do mereologists study? Oh, you know... things, and stuff.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
The map is not the territory, true. Unless you have a perfectly detailed map at 1:1 scale, in which case you have just replicated the territory.
Mathematics models reality in that we don't know exactly what reality is like and we're trying to make a map of it. But whatever model it is that would perfectly map reality in every detail, would be identical to reality itself. We just don't know what model that is.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
When Bruce Schneier sees something he doesn't understand, he mentally decrypts it.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Her name sounds like a comic book super hero. Cold Fury?
Or, as Aristotle says, the substance of a thing like a rock or a tree has a prior existence to the concrete instances of it: "The essence, i.e. the substantial reality, no one has expressed distinctly. It is hinted at chiefly by those who believe in the Forms; (...) they furnish the Forms as the essence of every other thing, and the One as the essence of the Forms." (Metaphysics, Book I, part 7)
Aristotle again? "Actuality, then, is the existence of a thing not in the way which we express by 'potentially'; we say that potentially, for instance, a statue of Hermes is in the block of wood and the half-line is in the whole, because it might be separated out, and we call even the man who is not studying a man of science, if he is capable of studying; the thing that stands in contrast to each of these exists actually."
Yes. Reality will be defined by some mathematical structure or another. We can invent mathematical structures to describe any possible way that reality might be. Whatever way it turns out that reality is, whichever mathematical structure accurately describes it defines its properties.
You are turning math into a religion, in a very unconvincing way.
Following the same line of argumentation, I could state "The God of my religion X has created the Universe and defined the one true reality. It is all written in our holy book. Whatever observation you might come up with that contradicts the colorful stories in our holy book, we will just adjust the book to make it fit! So no matter how many convoluted additions we will need to make, we can invent them!".
Math is a utility. A useful one to describe a model of reality as we know it. But it does not define or create reality.
Just because some solutions exists for formulas used in general relativity that could be interpreted as "Tachyons" does not mean such "Tachyons" exist in reality. It might be worth looking for them, but the result can be there are none. Whatever mathmatical model you can invent, it will certainly allow for possibilities that do not exist in reality. And it might still miss to model real things that do not become known to any intelligent lifeform before those ceases to exist.
Your religious analogy is flawed in that you're talking about people claiming that some particular book defines reality, and then freely and unabashedly modifying that book to fit reality; whereas what I'm talking about is more like saying "there is some possible book that could be written that would perfectly describe the rules of reality. Whatever rules would be written in that book, those rules define reality." It's pretty much a tautology.
There is some rigorous formal (i.e. mathematical) system that would be a perfect description of reality. Whatever the rules of that system are, those are the rules of reality, because that system is defined as whichever one has the rules of reality as its rules.
What the author of the paper in question here is saying that if this math regarding octonions is part of the mathematical system that perfectly describes reality, then no further explanation for the discrete values of electrical charges is needed, because that phenomenon is just an automatic consequence of integers having discrete values, in such a system.
It's like saying that if the geometric structures called ellipses describe the motion of the planets, and the Earth is a planet whose motion is described by that structure, then no further explanation for the apparent retrograde movement of the other planets in the sky is necessary, because that relative apparent motion is just an automatic consequence of the geometry of elliptical motion.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
And, BTW, what the heck does this have to do with 8 dimensions anyway?
logically for math to work, God must exist
Gods. Plural. At least according Plato's ontological realism, in which every number is a god, as is the demiurge and many other stuff. Or, alternatively, according Aristotle's and his unmovable movers (yes, more than one). Or even according Neoplatonism's polycentric henology.
Monotheists like to try and bring the Biblical notion of the one single god into this, but that's actually just one alternative between many. And that's not even counting Eastern meontologies, which move one step beyond the above ontologies up into non-being/ground-of-being territory.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Can I get a diagram of this please? Asking for a friend.
Yes, but when you don't yet know the answer, it helps if you can at least confine your search within what is possible. Math in general defines what is possible. We can further confine the search based of what math in particular can describe what we already know about reality.
What's really interesting is that the algebra of Octonions seems to have the physical properties of the standard model naturally fall out as a result of the properties of the underlying algebra rather than having to be "bolted on" piece by piece. In general, that's a sign that you're on to something. Compare elliptical orbital mechanics controlled by one equation and a few simple parameters vs an infinite series of epicycles each hand tuned to fit observation.
well yes I think that's what I said in other terms. the representational format (as you called "x y z t") verus the pures scaling format (0,1,2,3,4..). the limit of 8 on the divisional algebras makes this special for the representational one.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Your portfolio went up under Obama too.
No,you just plan your day around crying about crying about Trump, you dimwitted dram of donkey diarrhea.
hmmm does this make i and imaginary god...
and if that is proven true... that is an amazing feat in itself.
All of a sudden the world is filled with women geniuses in every area. The past has been rewritten to include "very important" discoveries made by previously unknown women.
There is nothing in this garbage that hasn't been figured out by men long time ago. I'm sick with this propaganda. Fuck women!
Proof that Incel Trumpeters aren't coping well with the recent bans on Alex Jones.
USB, USB, USB!
Currently, it doesn't predict anything. HOWEVER, once complete (if successful), it will be a cleaner and more natural formalism. It should also be able to unify relativity/gravity with QM. THAT should produce some strong predictions.
Immigration and hatred for the newcomers is absolutely nothing new in the country
sudo get me a coke
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Are we supposed to understand this comment?
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
... Lets keep politics out of mathematics
The endless struggle to keep politics out of "X" rides the same rails as the struggle to keep religion out of "Y".
How about the doctrine of fairness? Politicians and voters don't allow logic and analysis in politics, therefore, we shouldn't put politics into math. Thinks of it as a commutative property of philosophy.
Trump's Republican Party is a White Supremacist organization and you are clearly with the program. Remember it was only a year ago that real live American Nazis with real live swastika flags were marching in Charlotte in support of Trump. Your claim that minorities are thriving under the current regime smacks of the same kind of propaganda as Arbeit macht frei used at Nazi death camps.
Why is Snark Required?
Pythagoras called, he wants his idea back
Excuse me sir do you have any spare brain cells.
This is still above my pay grade.
There is some rigorous formal (i.e. mathematical) system that would be a perfect description of reality.
How do you know this? Reality might not be describable by any formal language.
There were eight quarters of growth of at least 3 percent, including three of 4 percent or better under Obama.
Oh, yeah, forgot the required insult.
um, you obtuse conservative.
I'll never survive the age of Trump, I suck at insulting people.
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
Because we can always just invent one as needed.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
That begs the question. Consider mathematics, which cannot be completely described by any formal language, to the extent that there are true statements that cannot be derived from axioms (Goedel). Reality might have properties that cannot be derived or even stated in any given formal language. No matter how much you tweak and extend your formal language, some of reality will always escape it. Maybe. I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case, but I certainly don't share your certainty that reality can be completely ("perfectly") described formally.
So I'll ask again, out of genuine curiosity: Do you have some reason to believe that reality is completely formally describable?
You're assuming that such a model must necessarily exist, which is a huge assumption to make. Especially considering that there are many results in mathematics indicating that self-referential systems (say, for example, a complete model of reality created from within said reality) tend to be problematic.
Happy people make bad consumers.
OK, so what I am hearing you say is this "CNN, Reuters, AP news, NPR, and MSNBC are horrible news sources that Trump has co-opted and subverted to Russian control. No one can be trusted. I don't even know if I can be trusted. I swear I heard Russian voices from my toothpaste tube this morning. Are they in my head now?"
You have taken a logically sound position (distrust of politicians, government, and the press) and twisted it into an excuse to deny the veracity of any information you find undermines the house of cards you call a worldview. Go check out any news source you would like on this claim. No one, save you, disputes it.
Also, can we coin a new logical fallacy already for people who see NAZI's everywhere?
Your insanity aside, the truthfulness of the issue is really not at issue with respect to what I am stating. The Democrats at the State of the Union address weren't protesting the veracity of the information about jobless claims. They were upset that this happened under Republican control and wanted to make sure to turn a victory of the American people into a point of contention. They made it about themselves, not about We, The People, and in doing so fomented division, hatred, self hatred, disorientation to truth, and disorientation to authority.
I didn't expect Trump to speak for The People, to be their champion, to sing their victories and to point out how strong we are. That is the domain of the Democrats. Well, was the domain of Democrats, until they found their true religion and started selling division and hatred as their mainstay of party politics.
So yeah, telling me to not trust Trump is just finger exercise you pitiful nincompoop. Par for the course, of course. What I was deeply saddened by was the reaction by the Democrats. They wanted to make a statement, so they did. In doing so they showed me what they really think of us.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Hatred is one thing. Saying you support people who come here and then making sure they have no path to citizenship is completely another. Those hated Irish were citizens. They got a voice and a vote, and while they might have lived in fear of what some other citizen would do to them, they didn't have to live in constant fear of what the country's laws would do to them.
How can you miss the glaringly obvious differences? Are you too stupid to realize the difference between being a citizen and an illegal immigrant? I don't think so. I suspect you are trying your best to sidestep the issue because you have no way to rebut the facts.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
wrong, the theoretical predictions include properties that are verified by experiment.
However I will not tolerate your bigotry. Calling me stupid because of a stated opinion is completely unacceptable
You misunderstand Goedel. Any sufficiently expressive formal languag can formulate statements that IT cannot decide the truth of, but we can always formulate another language with which to discuss that system and the truth of the statements it cannot decide. We wouldn’t even be able to state Goedel’s theorem if that were not the case.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
"There is some rigorous formal (i.e. mathematical) system that would be a perfect description of reality. Whatever the rules of that system are, those are the rules of reality, because that system is defined as whichever one has the rules of reality as its rules."
Wait a second. I'm a bigot because I want people living in America to be full participants in this country? Because I want people to live without fear of their families being taken apart i'm hateful? Because I don't want to hold people for ransom and don't rejoice when the second lives they have worked so hard to start and build are destroyed, I'm a hateful bigot?
You think because I subscribe to a version of America described by "The New Colossus" that I am a hateful person?
You are either the stupidest human I have ever met, or you are a sub-human piece of shit. Either way, I will state one last time unequivocally that exploiting people for political gain is anti-American, even though partisans will tell you completely different. Like you're doing.
I do not support hatred, especially the ingrained kind where people will tell themselves they are helping people while they use them for their own purposes. You seem to espouse this.
You can fuck right off to the depths of hell for all I care. You're aren't part of the problem, you are the problem.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
I'm kind of baffled that you could think it could possibly not be, absent some reason to think that (like your misunderstanding of Goedel). The alternative to reality being describable by a formal language would be one of these two things:
1) Some phenomenon occurs, and we are somehow unable to even speak about it.
or
2) We can speak about it, but only in vague poetic language using words and grammar that are not well-defined.
I struggle to imagine any possible phenomenon that could cause either of those problems. In fact, it seems to me that such a phenomenon is, in principle, literally unimaginable: I cannot at the same time picture in my head some definite image of something happening, yet at the same time not be able to describe it, as rigorously as I should feel like, not even by inventing new terminology if I need to. At best, I can just kind of... not really definitely imagine anything in particular.
To be fair, some people (theological noncognitivists) hold that religious concepts are like this, but precisely because of that, I find I cannot pin down what exactly they're even really talking about. They seem to be saying something to the effect of that religious terms are like poetry, which seems to me to mean that the referents of those terms are... the warm fuzzy feelings that that 'poetry' gives you?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
You are a bigot for calling me an idiot for a stated opinion and for continuing on with personal insults.
Here is exactly what I wrote. Show me on the doll where I called you stupid...
"Are you too stupid to realize the difference between being a citizen and an illegal immigrant? I don't think so."
So me saying you are not stupid means I called you stupid, which makes me a hateful bigot.
Got it. I was right: " I suspect you are trying your best to sidestep the issue because you have no way to rebut the facts."
I hit too close to home. Understood. You can't take it. Understood. You will lie to yourself and to me to protect yourself from seeing yourself as you truly are. Understood.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
"You are either the stupidest human I have ever met, or you are a sub-human piece of shit."
Typical bigot. When faced with differing opinions, insult.
You're such a good example of the kinds of behavior I see in partisan humans. I was just describing this exact scenario to someone yesterday. You see something you don't like, it grates on your world view, so you interject yourself into the situation in an offensive way and then use the reaction you create as proof and justification of the attitude you brought to the situation and the viewpoint of the other person.
You are nothing more than a curiosity at this point. How did your mind get so twisted? I think, just as I stated before, that you present a simulacrum of stupidity, when in truth you have ulterior motives.
Come clean, speak straight and plainly, and work out your kinks. You will be more effective in life. Cheers!
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
It doesn't work. Bigot!
Whatever. Unemployment around here is at record lows, and my portfolio at record highs. My taxes didn't go up, and freedom didn't go down. Couldn't say that during the 2008-2016.
All bought and paid for using borrowed money and environmental disasters just so Trump can make himself look good on TV.
(and some Democrat government will have to try and clean the mess up in the future, after Trump is gone)
No sig today...