650nm or 640nm?

As is always the case with surveys, the results are taken as generalizations. A lot of Christians I know are mathemeticians. Lots scientists too. The blurb starts off with "For many people, believing in God comes down to a gut feeling that a benevolent deity is out there" ...so they're talking about nominal Christians: people who have no commitment one way or another but attend church for some reason other than what is being preached from the pulpit. Taking those into account the uk is 70% Christian, and not the 6% who attend a church regularly. (Church statistics are more like 3% believers)

I find that a methematical mind is actually more prone to acceptance of the kind of thinking that would accept something on cognition alone. People that demand the impossible, hard evidence like a slap in the face aren't usually convinced by this.

Of course there are Christians who are quite unthinking and believe on intuition. I don't condemn them for that. There's a lot to be said for a gut feeling and going with it: If it's simple and true to you then the chances are it's good.

So we're covered on both angles: people believe through cognition and through instinct. America is a lot like the uk: There are a lot of people declare themselves as Christian with little idea of what it is they're making a declaration of. And certainly act the opposite of what they would do if they actually held the position.

(September 29, 2011 at 10:18 pm)Pendragon Wrote: No kidding? And in the "real" world" they will never match the perfect idea in our head. If you take a pound of sugar (you will never get a "perfect" pound)
but then you will never be able to divide it into 3 perfectly equal piles. Do you know nothing about the real world? You might get close, but that is not good enough for the idea of "3 equal piles" in our mind.
The real world will never match the subjective image in our mind.
By the way, I am holding one finger up. Am I saying Fuck YOU, or am I relaying the idea of 1?

YES THEY WILL! They do all the time! That doesn't detract in the slightest from my point, but this makes me angry! If you have an orange, how many oranges do you have? Not 1.02 or 1.3502376502386819305723067423805237049325893205723096731095314 or some impossibly accurate but not-quite-1 number of oranges, you have exactly one.

The sugar can be divided into three equal piles, if we're using an equal number of grains of sugar rather than equal mass. Each grain of sugar is discrete and can be counted exactly, and if there is a multiple of 3 number of grains of sugar in the original pile, it will divide exactly into 3.

Your last point appears to bear no relevance to anything. Please elaborate.

(September 30, 2011 at 9:36 am)Pendragon Wrote: We use math to simplify our understanding of how objects relate in the world. It is a tool from inside. Everything in the objective world has mass, and energy. What mass, and energy do you ascribe to numbers, as you believe them to also be objective?

Light doesn't have mass. Are you saying it's not in the objective world?

Rhythm, did you just argue reality with the lesser known cousin of solipsist?

(October 1, 2011 at 1:10 pm)edk141 Wrote:

(September 29, 2011 at 10:18 pm)Pendragon Wrote: No kidding? And in the "real" world" they will never match the perfect idea in our head. If you take a pound of sugar (you will never get a "perfect" pound)
but then you will never be able to divide it into 3 perfectly equal piles. Do you know nothing about the real world? You might get close, but that is not good enough for the idea of "3 equal piles" in our mind.
The real world will never match the subjective image in our mind.
By the way, I am holding one finger up. Am I saying Fuck YOU, or am I relaying the idea of 1?

YES THEY WILL! They do all the time! That doesn't detract in the slightest from my point, but this makes me angry! If you have an orange, how many oranges do you have? Not 1.02 or 1.3502376502386819305723067423805237049325893205723096731095314 or some impossibly accurate but not-quite-1 number of oranges, you have exactly one.

The sugar can be divided into three equal piles, if we're using an equal number of grains of sugar rather than equal mass. Each grain of sugar is discrete and can be counted exactly, and if there is a multiple of 3 number of grains of sugar in the original pile, it will divide exactly into 3.

Your last point appears to bear no relevance to anything. Please elaborate.

(September 30, 2011 at 9:36 am)Pendragon Wrote: We use math to simplify our understanding of how objects relate in the world. It is a tool from inside. Everything in the objective world has mass, and energy. What mass, and energy do you ascribe to numbers, as you believe them to also be objective?

Light doesn't have mass. Are you saying it's not in the objective world?

Last point first. I should have said energy or mass. But there is no experiment we can yet devise that can prove this. If we could create in the lab (an exotic type of machine,)
the conditions of absolute zero, the photon would be at rest, and we could see if it has mass. We remain in limbo.
Big problems testing this here: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Pa..._mass.html

So how about that sugar? Do you know of a machine that can balance out 1/3 lb with zero error? Ever look at manufacturing in this objective world of actually doing it, rather than imagining it?

We have never as humans (not for lack of trying), made an observation, or made a machine that can measure mass/energy in this world, to zero percent error.
(if we could make perfect observations, we could make perfect machines) So far, not yet.

This physical world is the objective world. That is 100 percent failure making perfect observations of this world. Fail!

Math, when proved out right, is 100 percent correct. 1+1 =2. Perfect!

Which world is that existing in again?

As a last little bit, referring to oranges, you had a slightly rotting moldy orange, and someone gave me a blood orange, that doesn't look orange color, but I guess we each have 1 orange. Mine was fresh off the tree.

1 =1
Blood orange: not equal to your moldy rotten one.

Next time we fight over this, lets use snowflakes.

(October 2, 2011 at 2:13 am)Pendragon Wrote: Last point first. I should have said energy or mass. But there is no experiment we can yet devise that can prove this. If we could create in the lab (an exotic type of machine,)
the conditions of absolute zero, the photon would be at rest, and we could see if it has mass. We remain in limbo.
Big problems testing this here: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Pa..._mass.html

Had you read your own link:
"If the rest mass of the photon were non-zero, the theory of quantum electrodynamics would be "in trouble" primarily through loss of gauge invariance, which would make it non-renormalisable; also, charge conservation would no longer be absolutely guaranteed, as it is if photons have zero rest mass."

Congratulations, you just broke E/M, general relativity and violated gauge invariance.

Last one's a killer though.

How do you plan to not violate gauge invariance while maintaining that light has mass? Or would you hold that the laws of physics are not uniform?


For others:
What is Gauge Invariance?
http://www.vttoth.com/gauge.htm

(October 2, 2011 at 3:06 am)Moros Synackaon Wrote:

(October 2, 2011 at 2:13 am)Pendragon Wrote: Last point first. I should have said energy or mass. But there is no experiment we can yet devise that can prove this. If we could create in the lab (an exotic type of machine,)
the conditions of absolute zero, the photon would be at rest, and we could see if it has mass. We remain in limbo.
Big problems testing this here: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Pa..._mass.html

Had you read your own link:
"If the rest mass of the photon were non-zero, the theory of quantum electrodynamics would be "in trouble" primarily through loss of gauge invariance, which would make it non-renormalisable; also, charge conservation would no longer be absolutely guaranteed, as it is if photons have zero rest mass."

Congratulations, you just broke E/M, general relativity and violated gauge invariance.

Last one's a killer though.

The main point is that they said there is no way to test it. Sorry, still limbo on actual knowledge at this point. We may find soon another way that does allow us to test it, to find if a photon does have mass.

I don't have a dog in the fight except for finding exception to the absolute statement, "a photon has no mass".
Other tests may lead us to this opinion, and certainly close the case, but when they say no test has been actually carried out, and they can't imagine how to do it, how certain can you be?

I am quite comfortable with a photon having no mass, and being merely energy if this can be tested, or other related tests show this to be true.

I would say that possibly the laws are not uniform, based on the fact that we have incomplete, and imperfect observations. Though, not certain that it is true, has the speed of light been surpassed recently?
Or even if the laws are constant, our observations being imperfect, and incomplete prevent us from being sure. I thought science was aware of this, and maintains its own strict skeptical reviews.


The argument, really, is can you create a machine with zero errors in measurement? If so, the perfect observations/proofs seen in math can be now verified in the objective world.
Until then, one can maintain a view that math is subjective.

LOL, Moros, sometimes I don't realize that people are arguing, I fall into the trap of thinking that they actually want/need something explained to them.

There are a lot of assumptions in QM. Equations are 'normalized' quite often to fit the expected and observed results. In reality, a 'photon' does not exist and certainly not at rest. So the 'rest mass' of a photon is only a 'normalization' to accommodate the formulas. A 'photon' only exists at the speed of light or it does not exist.

We can measure the 'wave function' of a particle or we can measure the 'particle' function of a wave, but we cannot measure both simultaneously. we do not really understand the wave-particle duality. It is probably something totally different than what we can perceive at this time. Once this is identified, we will, again, modify and 'normalize' the equations to suit our needs.

(October 2, 2011 at 3:06 am)Moros Synackaon Wrote:

(October 2, 2011 at 2:13 am)Pendragon Wrote: Last point first. I should have said energy or mass. But there is no experiment we can yet devise that can prove this. If we could create in the lab (an exotic type of machine,)
the conditions of absolute zero, the photon would be at rest, and we could see if it has mass. We remain in limbo.
Big problems testing this here: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Pa..._mass.html

Had you read your own link:
"If the rest mass of the photon were non-zero, the theory of quantum electrodynamics would be "in trouble" primarily through loss of gauge invariance, which would make it non-renormalisable; also, charge conservation would no longer be absolutely guaranteed, as it is if photons have zero rest mass."

Congratulations, you just broke E/M, general relativity and violated gauge invariance.

Last one's a killer though.

How do you plan to not violate gauge invariance while maintaining that light has mass? Or would you hold that the laws of physics are not uniform?


For others:
What is Gauge Invariance?
http://www.vttoth.com/gauge.htm

How shall I not violate gauge invariance? Gosh, almighty, I so want to violate it. Is there invariance anywhere? Or do all things change? Do you think the simplistic ideas in science now, will be laughed at in 100(more or a lot less) years?

I do!

Do you not laugh at Victorian era science, and their projective ideas?

Except for the bits that seem true Sometimes genius humans figure important bits out.
If the jury we are hoping to impress, maybe just 1 year, or even 10 years from now, thinks this may solve some of their physics issues...,