On Logic and Alternate Universes

[bennyboy]

Here's a novel idea: there is such a universe with the law of multiple identities. Now 2 + 2 could have more than one answer. But we're still trying to rationalise something that our logic inherently can't describe. No example will be sufficient to provide us with a preview of goblygoop. So we need to move past that.

THINGS could have multiple identities, in a sense. For example, you could argue that every subatomic particle in the universe of type X, being completely indistinguishable from all the others, is really the same particle. Or you could look at how a photon can be identified as either a wave or a particle or both. You could even conceive of a universe in which whenever you combine 2 particles, a third "ghost" particle is by some physical rule summoned from the ether, and whenever you separate them, it disappears.


However, NUMBERS must be distributable-- if you have 10 things, and divide them into two even groups, you MUST have 5 + 5. If this is not true, then you are in a universe in which numbers are meaningless. In other words, you don't have DIFFERENT math, you have a lack of it. So you could never have a universe in which 2 + 2 = 5. You could only have a universe in which numbers have no meaning.