Better. Still wrong, but at least not logic-chopping games. Don't do THAT again.
ETA: Oops. I guess I should have read a bit further. I won't bother admonishing you; it's pointless. I'll just note that since you seemed to feel that you were making some sort of final point, it seemed best to ensure that no one would mistake your misunderstood pieces of outmoded physics and electronics technician math for anything meaningful.
I have noticed some people get downright testy about this 'universe is digital' thing.
No, some people get downright testy when you play logic chopping games and don't respond to what they say. You're still ignoring some stuff you don't want to hear; I'll give it another try and see if you wake up. I'd lay off the personal comments if I were you, however.
I am surprised so many people do not realize that infinitesimally small distances do not make sense - continuum cannot exist in reality!
Why not? You keep saying it, I keep proving it wrong, and you keep ignoring my proofs and saying it again; how about you provide a proof of your own, that doesn't just ridiculously contradict reality, but actually has some content to it? Can you do that? If not, then yer just talkin out yer hat.
Many of you have had college electromagnetics, at the very least, if you were a physics or engineering major. They had you calculate field potentials and energy stored in the field - things like that. Do you remember that there is, according to this classical theory, an infinite amount of energy stored around a point charge? That is per Maxwell's electromagnetism.
Ever hear of Richard Feynman? He solved that one- and BTW, you've gotten Maxwell confused with Dirac. It's called renormalization. And using it gives the most accurate- and the most precise- predictions ever, in any science, period.
Then according to quantum field theory, there is an infinite energy content in a vacuum.
I say QFT says nothing of the kind. As evidence I offer, again, the mathematical procedure that won Richard Feynman a Nobel Prize, and that has given the most accurate and precise predictions in the history of science. Prove this, or admit it's not true.
If you want infinitely precise measurements, you need infinite energy. But long before you get to that point, you get so much stuff in one space, gravity will collapse the whole mess!
The only mess is this argument, with its premise appearing to be untrue.
So there are a couple good reasons that continuum is nonsense.
Wrong. Try again.
Then there are about a thousand fellows working on string theory. After more than twenty years... what do they have? Why all this jumping on the concept of string? Huh? Ever wonder why?
Standby for the rest of the story... The point charge problem with Maxwell's model - the infinite field strength, infinite energy problem, can be eliminated with stretching the point out into a line!
No, it can't- having already been solved by renormalization. Which has nothing to do with string physics, other than being a premise of it, since it so accurately and precisely predicts how the electromagnetic force behaves.
That's basically the big sexy attraction of string theory - it's a detour from admitting the universe is discrete.
No, it's not. You've read a couple of hostile reviews of it, and think you know it all. I'd suggest that you take the time to do some studying before you say anything else embarrassing.
Why don't they admit that continuum is baloney? I think it's because it's too much a paradigm shift for them.
So, basically the ENTIRE COMMUNITY of physicists, which basically comprises about 75% of the brightest people alive, are all stupid.
Pull the other one.
So by stretching the point into a line, they have artificially produced a minimum distance so they aren't dividing by zero.
Above, I suggested you find out more about string physics before you said anything else embarrassing. I guess it's too late.
String theory is an arbitrary trick to get rid of the fact that the continuum-model wrecks the math at every turn.
You are a woo. I'm sorry I even started responding to this.
There is another good reason that continuum is nonsense.
No, there isn't, but I'm sure you were more than happy to share why you thought there was.
So if you want to be in the good crowd of those who know damn good and well that zero distance from a point charge makes no sense, and so invent a 'workaround' instead of admitting continuum is wrong, then you have safety in numbers. If someone throws a dig at you for believing such nonsense, you can duck behind any one of a whole bunch of bright fellows. But it doesn't make you right.
See, this is how you tell a woo: every time you bring up the fact that the people they're saying are wrong are obviously brighter than they are, they accuse you of using the argument from authority.
A poster said that Schroedinger's cat shows us that reality is analog. He didn't explain why.
No, I didn't- I assumed that anyone with the chutzpah to be discussing this in the first place knew enough quantum physics to understand the meaning of quantum chimarae. Obviously, I grossly underestimated YOUR chutzpah. Or perhaps hubris would be a better description; certainly there's no American English word that quite fills the bill. "Arrogance" ignores the essential naivete involved.
I will try to guess what he means.
I mean, specifically, that the cat is either alive or dead, but cannot be stated to be in either state, even though it must be, until it is observed. It is therefore in a mixed state, which is normally impossible (and actually impossible, from the cat's point of view) for non-quantum objects, but a state that quanta seem to have no problem with. As proven by the Aspect experiment, which apparently you are unfamiliar with. No surprise there, I guess.
Maybe he thinks that Schroedinger's wave equation, being that it uses a continuous math model, maybe that 'shows' that reality is just the same as the math tool.
Maybe he doesn't. Maybe you completely missed the point; and maybe if you'd paid any attention whatsoever to the points that surrounded it, you might have gotten a clue that you had done so. But you're a woo, so I guess that's pretty much beyond your abilities.
We use calculus (which works only on continuous functions) so the reality it models must be continuous. My point was that we have discrete mathematics that could be used instead - don't confuse the nature of the tools you use with what you are modeling. Maybe that's not what he meant, but if not, why did he merely say I don't read 90% of what he says - maybe he should have explained himself. I went back and read what he says and he never explains.
Actually, I did- if you knew enough quantum mechanics to understand what I said. In other words, if you knew enough to even be having this conversation.
We can write a wave equation with arbitrary parameters and we can do it with discrete math. An algorithm can define a wave equation that is smeared over the whole size of the universe. Does that make it analog? No, it is 'smeared' over the whole universe but it has finite space-time variables. This seems simple enough.
Yes- it is in fact too simple to describe reality. Oops. Looks like you confused the map with the territory. Oh, yeah, isn't that what I said before? Gee, whadda ya know?
I suppose it is difficult to see if you can't allow yourself to think in terms of minimum space and time quanta.
Woooooooooooooowoooooooooooooo! Teh physisicts can't ALLOW themselfs to thimk about teh TIME quantums!
If you still have trouble with that, go back and ask yourself again about the problem with infinities near a point charge again.
Why? I generally don't bother thinking about things that are disproven. Do you? Do you, perhaps, fantasize about proving one of them?
If you can't think in terms of the universe behaving as if it is the result of algorithms, I can understand that being difficult to accept. ...Especially if you're so sure the universe isn't discrete! I think quantized space-time, and what derives from it, is the next scientific revolution. Someday this view will become mainstream.
You think so because you don't know enough to be able to distinguish plausible physics from implausible physics. You don't know very much about quantum mechanics, and you certainly have not the slightest idea how string physics works. This is a complete waste of time; you're a woo. Fine, you got me to talk to you for five posts. I won't waste any more time.
