How do we know this is true: Matter can only be finitely arranged in a finite space.

The question is not how large or small the squares are, it's how many can fit in a 1 square meter square. Why start with asking how many, and then switch to saying "too small to measure"????Are you kidding me?

 

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Maybe they just have never seen the word " explination" and so cannot comment.

Because we are not stupid.

Dr. Willian "Wild Bill" Henderson III.

Wild Bill looked at all of the matter and energy in a sphere of space 1 parsec in diameter and actually counted all of the different ways that the matter could combine and he found that it was indeed a finite number.

Because the work was done by Wild Bill for crying out loud and he is never wrong.

Now move along and engage yourself in your life.

 

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Yes, Tailspin, Brian Greene is wrong.

A "finite" region of space-time does not exist at all, because there is nothing suitable within or without it to nail the corners to, other than eight ideal points in space-time which only exist in the minds of a rather gullible breed of mathematicians who seem to believe that reality is subordinate to their own manifestly limited cognitive impositions.

Space-time is neither bound, nor a solid. I will stipulate that it may share some properties with liquids, but no bottle or other container possessing inertial mass can even briefly contain the contents of an arbitrarily small region thereof. The shape of any designated container is not fixed and may vary according to relative motion in an infinitude of possible directions, and a limited but continuous range of relative speeds. The possibilities are infinite before anyone even begins to fill and/or arrange the space with energy and/or bound energy, which is matter.

 

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"We are not stupid" is not an explination. And as for this "Wild Bill" you hold so mutch respect for, I wasn't a ble to find any record of him.

I feel like you might be having me on. How could he count all the variations of matter and energy in a parsec? That's 19 trillion miles.

And unless he is all-knowing, how can he or anyone else never be wrong?
Even Dr Steven Hawkings has admited he's wrong.

Thank you Danshawen, I'm not sure exactly what you are saying but I appreciate it. Does Space-time literaly mean a region of space and time?

 

I first met Wild Bill in a Juvenile Detention facility in Texas. I think he was in for beating up a high school physics teacher that disagreed with him. He is hard to track down since he uses a lot of aliases. He knows what he is talking about though.

How could he manually count all variations of matter and energy in a sphere of space 1 parsed in diameter? You realize we are talking about Wild Bill Henderson ferchrissake?

That is a good point. I think it is luck. With enough humans and time eventually there will be on person that never makes a mistake. I guess Doc Henderson is just that guy. By the way when he beat up that teacher he was right and the teacher later admitted that he should have had his ass kicked for questioning Wild Bill. No mistakes, again!

Which was a mistake in it's self.

 

Now I know you are joking and I have just reported your behaveiour to the website.

 

Guy was joking. So, you do understand that only finitely many n-length books can be written from a finite alphabet, right? And yet, Melville wrote Moby Dick and that was a highly creative act. He could have written "Call me, Ishmael," and it would not be the same sentence. So creativity exists in the *choices* we make in a huge sample space, whether that sample space is infinite or finite.

So I'm wondering, are you still emotionally or psychologically troubled by the fact that there are finite limits to creativity? After all, out of all the gibberish sequences of symbols, the author still has to take responsibility for what he puts on the page. That's creativity. Do you understand that?

By the way, this is Wild Bill Donovan, famous US spy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Donovan

 

Yes I am still troubled by this and I don't think you get why.

I had alway thought of creativity as an act of creation, that an artist brought somthing unique into the world, somthing only he could bring.

Now it seems that everything I have ever created or will ever create is written down on some cosmic list of possibilities. Every thing that can exist is on that list and every time I write I am just filling out a pre-determined possibility, it's almost like I have not created anything.

And what's more, if humanity continues to exist and create then it will become impossible for anyone to create any new art of any kind. I think that's enough to trouble anyone, not least somone who lives for creativity. I simply cannot live with it.

What I'm trying to find out is why so many people think this theory is gospel, is it known fact or finige nonsense? Incidentally I think it's terrible that so many are so single mined about it as open-mindedness is a vital quality for a scientist.

And I am still peeved about that prctical joke.

 

I've read what you've written in other posts and in this post, and I believe I'm understanding you perfectly well.

As I mentioned to you earlier, on your other thread someone brought out the example of a sculptor. The sculptor carves a statue out of a block of stone. Every molecule of the statue was already there. The sculptor adds nothing. Do you consider Michelangelo's David to be something other than a profound act of human creativity?

[NSFW, male naughty bits]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_(Michelangelo)

I would really like to hear your opinion on this issue; because out of ALL the creative arts, sculpture is one that undeniably consists of taking away in order to reveal what's always been there. The sculptor adds nothing; only subtracts from a block of stone. This is a beautiful datapoint to test your thesis. I'd like to hear you engage with it.

That's your expressed viewpoint. And as I say, I do understand it. But may I ask, where do these "potential" creations exist? And are you seriously maintaining that there has never been any creativity in the world? That when someone writes a novel, or paints a painting, or writes a song, that there is no creativity because these creations already existed "out there" somewhere? That seems like nonsense. Where do they exist?

The act of creativity is that of *instantiation*. Out of all the things that COULD POSSIBLY exist, the creator creates one. And if the creator is talented and hard working, perhaps what they create is especially good.

This is a bad argument. The space of possibilities is huge, far larger than humanity will ever exhaust.

I haven't taken a poll. I have no idea "how many" people believe this thesis (of a finite configuration space), let alone how many are so dogmatic about it. It's not something that's subject to experiment given current technology. We do not have the means to say for certain whether spacetime is discrete or continuous; or even if the question is meaningful.

I think you are afraid to fail, afraid of your own mediocrity; and so instead of doing creative work, you hide behind this nonsensical idea that it's impossible to create things. You live in a world of constant human creation, all the websites and movies and books and works of art and short articles and even discussion forum posts. There's creativity everywhere, and you use this line of argument as an excuse for why you haven't created anything. That is what I think of your psychological orientation towards this matter. You are the one who is obsessed with it, it's nice and safe. Beats the hell out of trying to create something.

Perhaps you need to lighten up and learn to laugh at yourself. It's an anonymous Internet forum, after all. And as you say: Every post has already been written already. How could you possibly be upset? Every conceivable practical joke that could ever exist has already been played on you. Right?

 

So you do belive that matter can only be finitely arranged in a finite space.

 

Yes indeed there is a limit to the arrangement that must follow Universe laws. Referring to Newton, and an object in motion will not change its motion unless acted upon by external forces. All loose matter will eventually end up in a gravitational pattern, in the vast volume of space, there is no where that has no external forces or internal forces at work.
All bodies will end up in a state of rotation around the isotropic constant of gravity.

The entropy of each system effecting direction of other systems.

 

Me personally? What difference does it make? Personally I have no idea. I want to know if you think sculpture is a creative act. That seems to be the heart of the matter, since the sculptor adds nothing, merely exposes what's already been there all along.

 

If the theory is false then yes. If it's true, no.

When I fist started asking about this on the web I encountered an enormous amount of certinty about it, I'm trying to find out if that certinty is justified.

But isn't it fair to say that, given the fact science is advancing faster then ever along with our knowlege of reality, this theory may one day go the same way as Phrenology and the Miasma theory?

 

Your obsession with this issue is more interesting than the issue itself, which is an idea that's not subject to experimental verification. As I say, I think you are simply afraid to create, out of fear of failure. So you spend your time obsessing that "there's no such thing as creativity." It's a lot like saying, "Well, the sun's going to explode in a billion years, so why get out of bed?" Same exact type of illogic.

I say this because you have emphasized, several times, that you are not interested in the intellectual aspects of this particular theory; but rather, you say that it has depressed and immobilized you. So it's your own mental and emotional state that's of interest.

After all, we're all going to die and the sun's going to explode; yet we get out of bed and greet each day with a sense of hope and purpose. Or dread and depression. It's not the day that's at issue; it's our own subjective attitude towards the day that matters.

Perhaps you should read some existential philosophy.

To answer your question, first, there's no possible experimental validation of the theory using present-day technology; yes, it's entirely possible that somebody the theory will be proven, or disproven; or rendered meaningless. And it really doesn't matter at all what people think about it. What matters is that you're using it to avoid dealing with your own life.

 

Are you saying that, not only is it unproven but currently unproveable?
Why then are so many people so sure it's true? My father is an intelligent man with a background in science and he believes this beyond the piont of disscussion.

It matters to me what people think of it becuse I don't have a background in science and I don't consider myself fit to challenge it.

 

Ah this is a daddy issue! Thanks for finally clarifying that.

So why not say, "I don't have the background to challenge that, but it's great to hear you explain the theory."

What's the obsession? Why don't you ask your dad to explain it? And which part don't you understand? You get the business with the books of a fixed length, right? The physics thing is the same general idea, if you assume that spacetime can only take finitely many configurations in a given bounded region. Who the heck knows what people will think about that a hundred years from now.

 

That's what I've said but for some reason people still stick to it. As for my dad, he told me this theory becuase he thought I'd find it interesting but it sent me into depression. I kept asking him about it until he said he refused to talk about bit ever again.

 

Did he tell you the sun's going to explode and that in a hundred years or so, everyone now alive will be dead? Do you find those things depressing?

 

I don't blame him. You just keep asking the same thing over and over and over and over. It is really tiring.

 

Isn't he related to farsight?

You forgot to mention Farsight had,years before, kicked that same teacher's ass for the same reason.