The Logical Leap: Induction in Physics

[George H. Smith]

I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, but I will sometimes spend some time writing a post, only to get disconnected and lose what I have written before I get a chance to post it. After a number of annoying instances of this, I began to hit "Add Reply" rather than "Preview Post" in order to be sure that I don't have to retype everything; then I run the spell check and make other corrections after the post has appeared.

What I do is to open an email form in my Eudora program and then every paragraph or so copy-paste a post I'm working on to the email form and hit Save there. Thus if I get disconnected from the list -- which hasn't happened to me often since we got highspeed a few years back -- or some other problem develops, such as my mangling nested quotes so badly I need to start over, I have "the story so far" saved as an unsent email.

(I still often have to edit a post after it appears because of my not noticing a typo such as writing "in" meaning "it" and stuff like that -- usually details that would pass the Roland test and which I don't notice until the post appears in final version on the screen.)

Ellen

I have high speed cable as well. Some of my disconnects have resulted from my typing too quickly and hitting keys (I'm still not sure which ones they are) that disconnect me.

When I write a complex post or one that I want to keep, I will sometimes write the message on MS Word and then copy and paste it to OL.

Nothing has aggravated me more on OL -- not even some of the exchanges on this thread -- than attempting to post a message, only to be greeted with the warning that the number of my "begin quote" and "end quote" tags don't match. I have wasted more time than I care to remember attempting to figure out where the snags are. On a few occasions I have even deleted the draft and started over.

Ghs

[Ellen Stuttle]

[....] The battle in which [GS and I] were most strongly and staunchly aligned was that which followed upon Jimbo Wales' announcing a civility policy -- with the result, since Jimbo wouldn't rescind, that Old Atlantis was ruined.

I don't think rescinding would have saved it. The man suddenly appeared from behind the curtain asserting ownership de facto and de jure. You'd think if the ostensible here-to-fore owner, now forgotten, had had any balls he'd have put it up for sale instead of accepting Wales server charity putting Atlantis's neck in a noose. [....]

I think it could have been saved if Jimbo had immediately realized how foolish the idea was. I was the second person, after JR, to see the announcement. I immediately sent an email to Jimbo telling him that I'd be gone if he did institute a civility policy. He wrote back astonished, Why would I leave?, he wondered, since he didn't think of me as particularly uncivil. I realized from this response that he hadn't a clue, not a clue, as to why the dynamic on that list worked so well and as to the non-welcoming-of-nannies nature of most of the prominent posters.

The "ostensible here-to-fore owner" was by then so involved in his career he hardly ever read the list and didn't really care about it any longer.

Ellen

[BaalChatzaf]

You are dropping the context of the distinction between a potential infinity and an actual infinity.

I am quite familiar with the different types of infinities. They are all potentialities, not actualities.

Are you saying that the universe is actually infinite, or not? The second is unconfirmable. There would be no way to verify what was 10^10000000...... times as far away as you could see or travel.

No possible claim that the universe is actually infinite could have any concrete meaning (which you admit) nor any sufficient evidence to support it.

It's not a scientific statement, it's not compatible with any rigorous actually held model. It's simply an arbitrary assertion that cannot be reduced to its concretes.

Are you familiar with the requirement to be able to reduce abstractions to the concretes upon which they depend? Do you deny its validity? Do you still deny that I can visualize 100,000,000,000 objects? Do you still claim that you can visualize an actually infinite number of objects? Do you have a problem with my reduction of the model of a finite, bounded model of the universe to concretes?

Do you deny that the universe is actually expanding? Do you hold that a universe which is actually infinite can be getting bigger? If it were infinite, would it not already be bigger?

You offer the partially imagined notion of the idea of space which does not stop, and then you stop and say you see no problem with this.

Arbitrary, unconcretizable, and negatively defined, assertions hold no weight.

As for the problem with mathematical equations using undefined terms, do you not understand that they allow one to express contradictions?

Fallacies based on division by zeroIt is possible to disguise a special case of division by zero in an algebraic argument,^[1] leading to spurious proofs that 1 = 2 such as the following:

With the following assumptions:

The following must be true:

Dividing by zero gives:

Simplified, yields:

The fallacy is the implicit assumption that dividing by 0 is a legitimate operation.

Does this not trouble you in the least bit?

Are you not tempted to check your premises?

Division by 0 is not defined. Period. Only non zero elements in a division ring (aka an algebraic field) can have multiplicitive inverses. Division by zero is not allowed under the axioms of a division ring.

When I behold the level of mathematical understanding in the various publics I live in, I shudder and I weep for The Republic.

Ba'al Chatzaf.

[Ellen Stuttle]

Nothing has aggravated me more on OL -- not even some of the exchanges on this thread -- than attempting to post a message, only to be greeted with the warning that the number of my "begin quote" and "end quote" tags don't match. I have wasted more time than I care to remember attempting to figure out where the snags are. On a few occasions I have even deleted the draft and started over.

I find the "tags don't match" problems aggravating, too. BUT, I really love the screen results of the quote system -- the ability to track exactly who said what from the visual display. Plus the ability to quote material from outside sources, books, web articles, etc., setting that off in a quote box.

Ellen

[merjet]

Division by 0 is not defined. Period.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_theory

[BaalChatzaf]

Division by 0 is not defined. Period.

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Wheel_theory

The real number system (which includes the rationals) and the complex number system are fields (also called division rings).

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_ring

Our beloved real numbers and our complex numbers do not constitute a -wheel-. The only way to extend the real numbers and maintain the local topology is with a one or two point compactification when means the infinities are added at the "ends" of the real number line. Alas, the system so obtained is topologically compact but its algebraic character is destroyed. The infinities do not have the same algebraic properties as genuine real numbers.

Bottom line: In the rational, real and complex number fields division by zero is not defined. Period. End of Story.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[George H. Smith]

[....] The battle in which [GS and I] were most strongly and staunchly aligned was that which followed upon Jimbo Wales' announcing a civility policy -- with the result, since Jimbo wouldn't rescind, that Old Atlantis was ruined.

I don't think rescinding would have saved it. The man suddenly appeared from behind the curtain asserting ownership de facto and de jure. You'd think if the ostensible here-to-fore owner, now forgotten, had had any balls he'd have put it up for sale instead of accepting Wales server charity putting Atlantis's neck in a noose. [....]

I think it could have been saved if Jimbo had immediately realized how foolish the idea was. I was the second person, after JR, to see the announcement. I immediately sent an email to Jimbo telling him that I'd be gone if he did institute a civility policy. He wrote back astonished, Why would I leave?, he wondered, since he didn't think of me as particularly uncivil. I realized from this response that he hadn't a clue, not a clue, as to why the dynamic on that list worked so well and as to the non-welcoming-of-nannies nature of most of the prominent posters.

The "ostensible here-to-fore owner" was by then so involved in his career he hardly ever read the list and didn't really care about it any longer.

Ellen

I suspect that Jimbo's "let's all be nice to each other" policy was largely an attempt to control JR. He probably thought that JR used the word "asshole" a few hundred times too many. And as anyone familiar with JR will tell you, he is oh-so-receptive to warnings.

I always regarded Jimbo's policy not only as unwise but also as unethical. He was not an impartial moderator; he was frequently an active participant in the debates. I had a number of highly charged arguments with him, and I wasn't about to let some guy who was hurling his share of zingers issue official warnings to me. Who was to issue official warnings to him?

Although Atlantis II sometimes matched the quality of Old Atlantis, at least for the first few years, I don't think it did so consistently. (A2 is now more of a chatroom for old friends, probably because the elist format has become outdated.) After the exodus, a number of interesting posters who agreed with Jimbo remained with Old Atlantis, and the split resulted in less interesting controversies on both lists.

What a pointless and destructive policy that was. Old Atlantis might have petered out eventually, but in its day there was nothing like it. I would hate to see the same thing happen to OL, which has many excellent members and some very interesting exchanges.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Nothing has aggravated me more on OL -- not even some of the exchanges on this thread -- than attempting to post a message, only to be greeted with the warning that the number of my "begin quote" and "end quote" tags don't match. I have wasted more time than I care to remember attempting to figure out where the snags are. On a few occasions I have even deleted the draft and started over.

I find the "tags don't match" problems aggravating, too. BUT, I really love the screen results of the quote system -- the ability to track exactly who said what from the visual display. Plus the ability to quote material from outside sources, books, web articles, etc., setting that off in a quote box.

Ellen

I agree. The results are terrific.

Ghs

[kiaer.ts]

I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, but I will sometimes spend some time writing a post, only to get disconnected and lose what I have written before I get a chance to post it. After a number of annoying instances of this, I began to hit "Add Reply" rather than "Preview Post" in order to be sure that I don't have to retype everything; then I run the spell check and make other corrections after the post has appeared.

There seems to be something about the way this website treats replies that are being composed that makes them irretrievable, if, say, you happen accidentally to click on a link or new tab while composing one. If you have to use the back arrow to get to what you were typing you are screwed. In ever ran into this problem at SoloP or RoR. Yes, I do the same thing, hitting add reply prematurely to avoid a loss into the aether.

[sjw]

Nothing has aggravated me more on OL -- not even some of the exchanges on this thread -- than attempting to post a message, only to be greeted with the warning that the number of my "begin quote" and "end quote" tags don't match.

Not to piss you off more, but you're seeing the direct consequences of statism in technology. It is difficult to solve the kinds of problems you're having with OL, not because it is technologically difficult, but because it is politically difficult.

Shayne

[Ellen Stuttle]

I suspect that Jimbo's "let's all be nice to each other" policy was largely an attempt to control JR. He probably thought that JR used the word "asshole" a few hundred times too many. And as anyone familiar with JR will tell you, he is oh-so-receptive to warnings.

It was a direct result of JR's using in the title of a post addressed to Jimbo the words "functional illiterate" or "functional illiteracy" or very close to that, something calling Jimbo "illiterate." That blew Jimbo's gasket, and then he wouldn't back off. Funny thing is (yes, there was one aspect of the situation I found humorous): After the damage had been done and there'd been a mass exodus of those who found the civility policy that up with which they would not put, Jimbo was left in the awkward position of having to try to instruct Jason Alexander and Ellen Moore on civil posting. Neither ever suspected, in supporting the policy, that he or she respectively might be considered uncivil.

Oh, well...

Have a nice Labor Day.

Ellen

[kiaer.ts]

Nothing has aggravated me more on OL -- not even some of the exchanges on this thread -- than attempting to post a message, only to be greeted with the warning that the number of my "begin quote" and "end quote" tags don't match.

Not to piss you off more, but you're seeing the direct consequences of statism in technology. It is difficult to solve the kinds of problems you're having with OL, not because it is technologically difficult, but because it is politically difficult.

You might be saying something interesting here. Could you please explain yourself explicitly?

[George H. Smith]

There seems to be something about the way this website treats replies that are being composed that makes them irretrievable, if, say, you happen accidentally to click on a link or new tab while composing one. If you have to use the back arrow to get to what you were typing you are screwed. In ever ran into this problem at SoloP or RoR. Yes, I do the same thing, hitting add reply prematurely to avoid a loss into the aether.

Yeah, I lost a number of unfinished messages early on by backtracking to earlier posts. When I clicked on the back arrow to return to my message, I would often find the composing window but with none of my comments. It was as if I had just clicked on the Reply button before writing anything. Now I always open a completely new window.

Ghs

[sjw]

It was a direct result of JR's using in the title of a post addressed to Jimbo the words "functional illiterate" or "functional illiteracy" or very close to that, something calling Jimbo "illiterate." That blew Jimbo's gasket,

I guess Jimbo didn't get the memo about how you guys insult each other in good fun and then go have a beer.

Shayne

[sjw]

Nothing has aggravated me more on OL -- not even some of the exchanges on this thread -- than attempting to post a message, only to be greeted with the warning that the number of my "begin quote" and "end quote" tags don't match.

Not to piss you off more, but you're seeing the direct consequences of statism in technology. It is difficult to solve the kinds of problems you're having with OL, not because it is technologically difficult, but because it is politically difficult.

You might be saying something interesting here. Could you please explain yourself explicitly?

I'm an engineer and this is a "don't get me started" issue. Since I think George understands the principle of how statism corrupts everything it touches (physics included), I don't think it's lost on him, regardless of whether I post the detailed reasons why.

The world is filled with piles and piles of problems and annoyances, and if you diligently trace them to the root cause, you will find usurpations of consent near the root of virtually every one of them. But hardly anyone notices or cares.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

I suspect that Jimbo's "let's all be nice to each other" policy was largely an attempt to control JR. He probably thought that JR used the word "asshole" a few hundred times too many. And as anyone familiar with JR will tell you, he is oh-so-receptive to warnings.

It was a direct result of JR's using in the title of a post addressed to Jimbo the words "functional illiterate" or "functional illiteracy" or very close to that, something calling Jimbo "illiterate." That blew Jimbo's gasket, and then he wouldn't back off. Funny thing is (yes, there was one aspect of the situation I found humorous): After the damage had been done and there'd been a mass exodus of those who found the civility policy that up with which they would not put, Jimbo was left in the awkward position of having to try to instruct Jason Alexander and Ellen Moore on civil posting. Neither ever suspected, in supporting the policy, that he or she respectively might be considered uncivil.

Oh, well...

Have a nice Labor Day.

Ellen

As you know, Atlantis had a tradition of members inventing fictional characters, such as Helena Handbasket and JR's Roland Pericles. Not long after departing Atlantis, I began posting under the name Frank B. Perrizo, Jr. Frank was extremely civil, even sickeningly polite, but very, very dense.

It wasn't long before I got a "I know who you are" email from Jimbo. I replied that, yes, I was Frank B. Perrizo, Jr., but Frank was very respectful of the new civility policy, so what was the problem? I never heard back from Jimbo, and polite Frank continued posting for a while, until I got tired of the character.

Ghs

[kiaer.ts]

Nothing has aggravated me more on OL -- not even some of the exchanges on this thread -- than attempting to post a message, only to be greeted with the warning that the number of my "begin quote" and "end quote" tags don't match.

Not to piss you off more, but you're seeing the direct consequences of statism in technology. It is difficult to solve the kinds of problems you're having with OL, not because it is technologically difficult, but because it is politically difficult.

You might be saying something interesting here. Could you please explain yourself explicitly?

I'm an engineer and this is a "don't get me started" issue. Since I think George understands the principle of how statism corrupts everything it touches (physics included), I don't think it's lost on him, regardless of whether I post the detailed reasons why.

The world is filled with piles and piles of problems and annoyances, and if you diligently trace them to the root cause, you will find usurpations of consent near the root of virtually every one of them. But hardly anyone notices or cares.

Shayne

So your point is that in this case you are emotionally incapable of reducing your abstraction to its concretes? Come on, man, pull yourself together.

[sjw]

So your point is that in this case you are emotionally incapable of reducing your abstraction to its concretes? Come on, man, pull yourself together.

Actually, I was trying to be polite. My real point was that I know the nature of the presumptuous moron who asked me the question, and what to expect if I actually answer: an endless stream of empty-headed trolling regarding anything I might say.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

It was a direct result of JR's using in the title of a post addressed to Jimbo the words "functional illiterate" or "functional illiteracy" or very close to that, something calling Jimbo "illiterate." That blew Jimbo's gasket,

I guess Jimbo didn't get the memo about how you guys insult each other in good fun and then go have a beer.

Shayne

People who know JR only from his posts and then meet him for the first time are often surprised to learn how gracious and good humored he is in person. I am often curious about people I have known for years on the Internet but have never met in person. On those occasions when I have met such people, they are often quite different than I imagined. I know several people that I like in person but who irritate me to no end on elists.

As for people who meet me for the first time, several have told me that I am much more easy going than they expected from my posts.

Ghs

[Robert Campbell]

A simple policy allowing people to use the report button to notify the moderator of ad hominem attacks, irrational abuse, and contrarian nonsense, with the proviso that those who abuse the report function would themselves be moderated, would work at the moderators convenience and quickly discourage those who have nothing but smoke and bile to contribute.

Considering that when Ted took exception to a few questions I was asking about Ayn Rand's intellectual development, he labeled them "contrarian" and refused to respond to them, I can anticipate with some clarity how his moderation policy would work out.

A better way to proceed: If you don't care for the way the thread is going, quit participating.

I will henceforward be following this advice.

Robert Campbell

[George H. Smith]

A better way to proceed: If you don't care for the way the thread is going, quit participating.

I will henceforward be following this advice.

I am more like Lewis Carroll's Alice: "She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it)...."

Ghs

[sjw]

As for people who meet me for the first time, several have told me that I am much more easy going than they expected from my posts.

Ghs

All they need do is watch this to know:

It would be great to see you do more youtube videos.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

I suspect that Jimbo's "let's all be nice to each other" policy was largely an attempt to control JR. He probably thought that JR used the word "asshole" a few hundred times too many. And as anyone familiar with JR will tell you, he is oh-so-receptive to warnings.

It was a direct result of JR's using in the title of a post addressed to Jimbo the words "functional illiterate" or "functional illiteracy" or very close to that, something calling Jimbo "illiterate." That blew Jimbo's gasket, and then he wouldn't back off. Funny thing is (yes, there was one aspect of the situation I found humorous): After the damage had been done and there'd been a mass exodus of those who found the civility policy that up with which they would not put, Jimbo was left in the awkward position of having to try to instruct Jason Alexander and Ellen Moore on civil posting. Neither ever suspected, in supporting the policy, that he or she respectively might be considered uncivil.

I miss them both. Their wrongheadedness was instructive in itself. Then there was the time Ellen wrote about being attacked by a turkey and George started a contest on AtlII with the question: "Why did the turkey attack Ellen Moore?" The winning answer was she objected to his [Jason Alexander's] Cypress Lectures, effectively a two-fer. I got a runner up with, "He was next in line." Ross Barlow emailed me that that practically put him in convulsions.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

I suspect that Jimbo's "let's all be nice to each other" policy was largely an attempt to control JR. He probably thought that JR used the word "asshole" a few hundred times too many. And as anyone familiar with JR will tell you, he is oh-so-receptive to warnings.

It was a direct result of JR's using in the title of a post addressed to Jimbo the words "functional illiterate" or "functional illiteracy" or very close to that, something calling Jimbo "illiterate." That blew Jimbo's gasket, and then he wouldn't back off. Funny thing is (yes, there was one aspect of the situation I found humorous): After the damage had been done and there'd been a mass exodus of those who found the civility policy that up with which they would not put, Jimbo was left in the awkward position of having to try to instruct Jason Alexander and Ellen Moore on civil posting. Neither ever suspected, in supporting the policy, that he or she respectively might be considered uncivil.

I miss them both. Their wrongheadedness was instructive in itself. Then there was the time Ellen wrote about being attacked by a turkey and George started a contest on AtlII with the question: "Why did the turkey attack Ellen Moore?" The winning answer was she objected to his [Jason Alexander's] Cypress Lectures, effectively a two-fer. I got a runner up with, "He was next in line." Ross Barlow emailed me that that practically put him in convulsions.

--Brant

Ellen Moore would come up with oddest interpretations of material from Rand's ITOE. It wasn't as if there was an ideological motive involved, since she was an Objectivist; they were just off-the-wall. They often left me shaking my head, wondering if she had a different version of ITOE than I did.

I knew Jason Alexander in S.F. before he joined Atlantis. He was a strange character who somehow managed to impress T.J. Rodgers, who paid him a lot of money to be the resident philosopher of Cypress Semiconductor Corporation. I always pitied those poor executives at Cypress who had to sit through Jason's worthless -- and I mean completely worthless -- lectures on philosophy.

I first met Jason when he took me to lunch to discuss a project he wanted me to do for him. (He paid very well, I must say.) At one point he told me to put out my open hand. Then he pointed to each of my fingers, explaining that each stood for a certain element of his philosophy. Then he told me to form a fist -- well, you get the point. I felt like Woody Allen in "Annie Hall" when he said, "Excuse me, but I'm due back on planet earth," but I managed to restrain myself.

That's when I learned that Jason Alexander was not his real name. He got "Jason" from Jason and the Argonauts and "Alexander" from Alexander the Great. Even then he came up with the name of the actor who played a buffoonish character on the Seinfeld Show.

Gotta love the libertarian movement....

Ghs

[kiaer.ts]

Nothing has aggravated me more on OL -- not even some of the exchanges on this thread -- than attempting to post a message, only to be greeted with the warning that the number of my "begin quote" and "end quote" tags don't match.

Not to piss you off more, but you're seeing the direct consequences of statism in technology. It is difficult to solve the kinds of problems you're having with OL, not because it is technologically difficult, but because it is politically difficult.

You might be saying something interesting here. Could you please explain yourself explicitly?

I'm an engineer and this is a "don't get me started" issue. Since I think George understands the principle of how statism corrupts everything it touches (physics included), I don't think it's lost on him, regardless of whether I post the detailed reasons why.

The world is filled with piles and piles of problems and annoyances, and if you diligently trace them to the root cause, you will find usurpations of consent near the root of virtually every one of them. But hardly anyone notices or cares.

Shayne

So your point is that in this case you are emotionally incapable of reducing your abstraction to its concretes? Come on, man, pull yourself together.

Actually, I was trying to be polite. My real point was that I know the nature of the presumptuous moron who asked me the question, and what to expect if I actually answer: an endless stream of empty-headed trolling regarding anything I might say.

Shayne

God, you are emotionally crippled. You interpret everything as an attack and in the worst possible way.

I am actually interested in what you have to say, (I highlighted it in bold) and wish you would get over your cringing.

It's not like I can smack you through the screen.

Please drop this and explain yourself. I am interested in hearing what you have to say.

Edited September 7, 2010 by Ted Keer