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Scientology is Obsolete

Zinjifar

Silver Meritorious Sponsor
I have to say, Zinj, that I LMAO while trying to keep a straight face reading your post, and simultaneously looking at your rotating antenna.

Thank Paul.. He asked me if I could do it and so I tried it and, once tried, why not ?

Zinj
 

Lucretia

Patron with Honors
It's entirely possible that we have missed some basic mathematical insight, and are thereby limited in our science. Sometimes this thought keeps me awake at night.

SoT - thank you for your explanation. I doubt that I will take 2 weeks off to study algebra either. In fact it would probably take me about 10 years to get a handle on it. My encounter with pure maths in first year university was enough to spin my mind permanently.

Further to your occasional sleeplessness, it always struck me as being really odd - well, bloody stupid really - that we could not accurately describe the circumference of a circle, given its radius. If you draw the circle from a radius, it has finite length and it can be measured with a ruler. Why can't it be calculated???

And.... capacitance, which is also an actual thing, has to be described using the square root of -1. What's this about???

If there is something wrong, it must be pretty basic.

If we were blessed with eleven figures instead of 10, or 7 or 16, would this make a difference? Have we been led down a mathematical dead-end because a chance mutation way back when gave us 10 fingers to count on, which led to a base 10 system?

In quantum physics, do you actually plug numbers into the equations, or is this 19th century thinking as well??
 

Student of Trinity

Silver Meritorious Patron
I don't know why there is no way to calculate the circumference of a circle exactly — that is, to compute pi exactly — except that in fact hardly anything can be calculated exactly. Pi is by no means unique in being uncomputable (transcendental). Most numbers are transcendental. What do we mean by 'calculate,' anyway? I think we simply mean that there is some set of simple operations we do to get one number from some others. So then maybe it's not surprising that this is a rare and special case. Most things just aren't simple.

Capacitance does not actually need the square root of minus one. That's just a technical trick that can be used, but doesn't have to be used, to figure out the effect of a capacitor in an AC circuit. All it really means is that the capacitor cares about the previously accumulated charge, rather than the instantaneous current.

Nothing in higher mathematics depends on using any particular base. If we have missed something basic, I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with base 10.

We do plug in numbers in quantum mechanics, and compute numbers as answers. That's all that really counts in physics; philosophizing about what it might all mean is something you have to do on your lunch break.
 

Smilla

Ordinary Human
Scientology teaches the most complicated ways of doing the simplest things. They can't talk - they have to have 'com cycles.' They can't think - they have to 'consider.' They can't have lovers - they have to have 2D's. Which brings me to to the final proof that Scientology is obsolete:

Scientology is not sexy.

That's why it's obsolete.


I rest my case.
 

Gilbert

Patron with Honors
They're different equations for the same phenomenon, both describe the strong nuclear force. Check Wikepedia, you people here throw it around so much. Euler's equation was realized as an advocate of string theory in the 1970's and does describe a holomorphic curve that yields R2 / {0} = 2
 

Gilbert

Patron with Honors
...of a wave-particle in space-time. Look I am not here to play math teacher. What's your theory of the universe, any ideas?
 

Student of Trinity

Silver Meritorious Patron
Whatever a 'wave-particle in space-time' is, it does not seem to be or have either a complex plane or an absolute value, so I cannot understand this as an answer to my question.

Sorry, Gilbert, but your answers make no sense to me at all. You clearly know a number of terms from math and physics, but I'm afraid you don't appear to understand them.
 

Gilbert

Patron with Honors
Wrong it does have a complex plane and absolute value, to state otherwise is to subscribe to quantum mechanics which is wrong, quantum physicists admit this, it also says we live in a universe with 2 sets of laws that do not agree, again they say this is nonsense. So if it is nonsense why do I have to meet your criteria? I can use every equation available without a single change to determine my planck values. What do you know about it anyway?
 
I don't know why there is no way to calculate the circumference of a circle exactly — that is, to compute pi exactly — except that in fact hardly anything can be calculated exactly.

Oh, but you can! It just takes adopting a numeral system which makes such values fall out easily. This is like measuring angles in radians instead of degrees.

To get the point across sometimes I adopt the usage of the numeral 1 for the value of pi. Thus, "2*pi" is 2, "3*pi" is 3, etc.. By adopting this numeric trick "pi" is exactly rendered as "1".

Of course, with such a system other numbers may not be so easy to work with. As an example the "multiplicative identity" is no longer 1. Thus, it is NOT true that for all x: 1*x = x. :omg:

Given this basis, try rendering the traditional counting numbers.* :bwahaha:

[*Actually there does exist a relatively "simple" representation for these. :whistling:]

Essentially, in achieving "simplicity" in one area you simultaneously introduce "complexity" somewhere else. The actual relationships may be in some sensed "fixed" but, given the structures we adopt to represent those relationships, their representations may "vary".



Pi is by no means unique in being uncomputable (transcendental). Most numbers are transcendental. What do we mean by 'calculate,' anyway? I think we simply mean that there is some set of simple operations we do to get one number from some others. So then maybe it's not surprising that this is a rare and special case. Most things just aren't simple.

The fallacy lies in assuming that the systems that humans use to describe the world of mathematics, and by extension the physical world, must of need have an intuitively "simple" representation to the human intellect. It might be nice were it true, but there is a great deal of evidence which contradicts it.

Of course, there are also considerations about what constitutes "simple" vs "complex". To someone "in the know" Euler's equation is tremendously "simple" and an amazingly unifying result. To someone with "math phobia" Euler's equation may appear horrifying and overwhelming.

You pays your money & you take your choice. :)


Mark A. Baker
 

Lee_from_phx

Patron with Honors
To say that Scientology is obsolete implies that there was once a time when it was useful in some way.

Scientology is a scam. The only thing it is good for is victimizing the young, the foolish, and the weak. It is a trap created by a drug-addled sociopath to get rich and make himself feel important.
 

uniquemand

Unbeliever
The two sets of laws are reconciled, and the infinite values that generate gibberish are handled, by adopting more dimensions. This is the utility value of string theory.
 
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