A math Problem

[leroy]

hackenslashs statement on events with zero probability happen all the time, is based on the assumption that Platonism is true

No it isn't. From which orifice did you extract this idiotic arse-gravy? It has exactly fuck all to do with Platonism, not least because it's demonstrably true, as I have demonstrated. That you're too stupid to understand the demonstration is really not my problem.

Only if numbers where real objects (Platonism) the set of numbers could be infinite, if numbers do not exist and they are just a product of human imagination then the set of numbers wouldn't even exist.

an other way to see this is, if numbers only exist in your imagination, then there are only as many numbers as you can imagine in this moment, (which is a finite and a very limited number)


but please feel free to prove me wrong, all you have to do is explain how can the series of numbers be infinite, and Platonism be wrong at the same time? or to put it this way, how can the series of numbers be infinite, if numbers don't exist outside your imagination?

if something exist in your imagination, can you even ague that it exists?

 

[Deleted member 619]

points and lines are abstract objects, are you suggesting that time (or a second) is also an abstract (platonic object)?

What does that have to do with it?

as I said before, I am open to the possibility of infinite, time, the first step is to prove that an infinite amount of seconds is logically possible,

And here you are again, treating infinity as if it's a number. That's the core of your problem right there and, until you get past that and actually begin to learn some shit, you aren't going to get anywhere.

And seriously, stop talking about logic. You sully the word with every iteration of it, because you don't understand the first thing about it.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Only if numbers where real objects (Platonism) the set of numbers could be infinite, if numbers do not exist and they are just a product of human imagination then the set of numbers wouldn't even exist.

an other way to see this is, if numbers only exist in your imagination, then there are only as many numbers as you can imagine in this moment, (which is a finite and a very limited number)


but please feel free to prove me wrong, all you have to do is explain how can the series of numbers be infinite, and Platonism be wrong at the same time? or to put it this way, how can the series of numbers be infinite, if numbers don't exist outside your imagination?

if something exist in your imagination, can you even ague that it exists?

See, you're just emptying your arse at us again. You have absolutely no fucking idea of what you're talking about, and now it's beginning to piss me off, so I think I'm going to leave you to your ignorance permanently.

 

[leroy]

Only if numbers where real objects (Platonism) the set of numbers could be infinite, if numbers do not exist and they are just a product of human imagination then the set of numbers wouldn't even exist.

an other way to see this is, if numbers only exist in your imagination, then there are only as many numbers as you can imagine in this moment, (which is a finite and a very limited number)


but please feel free to prove me wrong, all you have to do is explain how can the series of numbers be infinite, and Platonism be wrong at the same time? or to put it this way, how can the series of numbers be infinite, if numbers don't exist outside your imagination?

if something exist in your imagination, can you even ague that it exists?

See, you're just emptying your arse at us again. You have absolutely no fucking idea of what you're talking about, and now it's beginning to piss me off, so I think I'm going to leave you to your ignorance permanently.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

translation, I am correct but you don't have the balls to admit it.

 

[Steelmage99]

Nah, leroy. You still fail to grasp most of the subjects you pontificate on.

Anyway.....what is your point with your original post?

 

[leroy]

[points and lines are abstract objects, are you suggesting that time (or a second) is also an abstract (platonic object)?

What does that have to do with it?[

aren't you suggesting that seconds and time are analogous to points and lines?

And here you are again, treating infinity as if it's a number. That's the core of your problem right there and, until you get past that and actually begin to learn some shit, you aren't going to get anywhere.

And seriously, stop talking about logic. You sully the word with every iteration of it, because you don't understand the first thing about it.

Time is measured in seconds and seconds are represented with numbers,


If you don't what to treat infinity as a number then time can not be infinite, you can have Infinite Seconds, for the same reason you cant apple seconds....it is simply incoherent,



besides why are you treating me with condescendence? I already admitted that I could be wrong, and that I am open to any arguments that prove that the idea of an infinite age of the universe is coherent.

 

[leroy]

Nah, leroy. You still fail to grasp most of the subjects you pontificate on.

Anyway.....what is your point with your original post?

my point is that even after an infinite number of tries John will never win the lottery,

 

[Steelmage99]

Nah, leroy. You still fail to grasp most of the subjects you pontificate on.

Anyway.....what is your point with your original post?

my point is that even after an infinite number of tries John will never win the lottery,

You will have to forgive me for suspecting you of being purposefully dishonest.

Cmon, leroy. What is your actual point of trying to set up a scenario where an infinite number of attempts doesn't lead to a success?

 

[Rumraket]

Well pretend that I tell you that I will give you a chocolate after an infinite amount of time.............will you ever receive that chocolate? (the answer is no)

Yes I will, after an infinite amount of time.

You could be lying (or mistaken), but if you're not, I will recieve chocolate from you after an infinite amount of time.

In the same way, if I tell you that you where born after an infinite amount of years, would you have reached the point that you where born (I would say that the answer is no)

Yes I would, I would have been born when an infinite amount of time has occurred.

You're not really pointing out the absurdity. You type a sentence, seemingly thinking you've said something absurd, but I don't see it. Can you make the absurdity more explicit?

So the fact that you where born at some point in time, proves that a finite amount of years has occurred

Because I'm not infinitely old. If I was infinitely old, that would entail that an infinite amount of years HAD occurred.

otherwise you'd be forced to argue that mathematics is logically absurd. And I don't think you want to do that.

I am not arguing that math is logically absurd, I would argue that you can represent absurdities mathematically.

things live negative distances, 2.5 dimensions and 2i computers can be represented mathematically but I Would argue that these are logical absurdities,

I'm not sure about the negative distance, but the 2.5 dimensions and 2i computers I agree are incoherent. There is no such thing as two and a half dimension*, or 2i computers exactly because they are incoherent concepts.

*(in fact I would argue this could not be represented mathematically, there's no way to denote half a dimension. A dimension either is or is not, there is no in between)

an infinite number of seconds would also fall in this category.

Why?

My point is that just because you can represent a negative distance mathematically does not prove that the concept of a negative distance is coherent.

The fact that it has not been proven to be coherent, does not mean it is thereby shown to be incoherent.

I am defining absurdity as something that cant exist in any possible world, things like squared circles and married batchers are absurdities

Okay, so you take absurd to mean it implies a logical contradiction, and as such it cannot exist in reality. Because those two examples are classic examples of logical contradictions.

Please show me the logical contradiction inherent to the concept "an infinite number of seconds".

 

[Grumpy Santa]

Nah, leroy. You still fail to grasp most of the subjects you pontificate on.

Anyway.....what is your point with your original post?

my point is that even after an infinite number of tries John will never win the lottery,

With the scenario you created that's probably true, but it's not a scenario that has any actual meaning in real life. In real life the odds don't get progressively more difficult each attempt. In real life there's more than one person playing the lottery which increases the chance that someone will win it even if it's not John.

Yes, you created an example that John probably will never win, but what's the point when that scenario isn't played out anywhere in real life?

Now, I should be honest here and admit that I suspect this is leading to a "747 in a junkyard" type of scenario where you claim some series of biological events so improbable that they could never happen and therefore required a "designer" type of being, am I right? If so, let's nip that in the bud using what I mentioned above.

In the biological evolutionary lottery, you don't have a single contestant with increasingly difficult odds. You have entire populations all playing one step at a time then the odds "start over". If out of a hundred thousand organisms all making babies, living, dying, etc. you have one that hits on an advantageous mutation what will happen is that that mutation will grow as a percentage of the population, meaning from its perspective over subsequent generations you now have more and more players in the new lottery, the lottery acting on organisms with that particular mutation. One of those descendants hits on a new beneficial mutation and we start over again, growing the numbers of (now) both successful mutations over time in a new lottery.

So IF you were going this route, don't. Just don't. We've seen it before, it's completely fallacious and has been thoroughly debunked in the past.

Now, let's cover a different possible path... if you're going down the "molecules in just the right sequence to form proteins" being some ridiculously high odds against, don't go there either. The simple reason is that you're wrong. The more complicated reason is that, say for example we have a protein consisting of... let's say 10K molecules. The odds of that protein forming exactly as it did would not be 10,000! (10,000 x 9999 x 9998 ...). They'd be much much smaller for a couple reasons... the first being evolutionary for the exact reason above, mutations giving benefits being passed along and built upon. The second is that not all possible arrangements of atoms/molecules are possible, a huge number of those possibilities are completely invalid and need to be eliminated from the calculations. For example it would be impossible to have a "protein" consisting of 2 carbon atoms and 9998 hydrogen atoms. Throw that out. Your basic CHON atoms can only form together in so many ways (other elements considered of course, left out for simplicity.) By failing to exclude impossible outcomes from any "probability" calculations you make them completely invalid.

 

[MarsCydonia]

just for the record, are you saying that 0 space is logically absurd? (yes or no)

Just for the record, are you saying that the above was an argument presented by MarsCydonia? (yes or no)

Just for the record Leroy, is the reason you have not answered this question because it would have yet again exposed your poor reading comprehension? (yes or no)

 

[leroy]

]

You will have to forgive me for suspecting you of being purposefully dishonest.

Cmon, leroy. What is your actual point of trying to set up a scenario where an infinite number of attempts doesn't lead to a success?

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Do you really think that I have a secret agenda?


In fact I do have a hidden motive..........

I heard somewhere about a theory (I believe presented by Sean Carol) this theory was obviously not presented as a scientific theory, it was just presented as a thought experiment.


The theory argues, even though entropy always increases, according to the second law, it is possible to have small areas of low entropy once in a while, small areas of low entropy are expected to be more common that big ones, an area of low entropy as big as our observable universe is extremely, extremely unlikely but given enough time such an event will eventually happen


The future age of the universe is presumible potentially infinite, this means that the universe will always get older without reaching a point where it stops existing. So eventually at some point in the far future after trillions over trillions over trillions... of years an area of low entropy as big as our observable universe will pop in to existence, and stars, planetas, galaxies etc. would form. ..........

The interesting thing is that our universe could have been an area of low entropy that popped in to existence from a larger universe with nearly 100% entropy.


So the fundamental question is, given a potentially infinite amount of time would we ever get an area of order as big as our observable universe from a random fluctuation? in the far future long after stars disappear would we get to a point where a random fluctuation re creates a universe as big as our observable universe with stars, planets, galaxias and all that stuff?


analogies with my math problem

Winning the lottery = having an area of low entropy as big as our observable universe

Everyday the probability of winning the lottery are lower than the previous day = everyday the probability of getting areas of low entropy are less likelly than the previous day


I do not claim to be sure, but according to my math the probabilities always increase as time passes but the probability converges in a very small number, ..........it doesn't matter if the probabilities always increase you will never get something like a 51% probability (or even 1% probability)

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

I'd mentioned, and linked, an article by Sean Carroll regarding our discussion on Boltzmann Brains and the multiverse - I believe this may be from where you got this idea.

Here's another article by Carroll that deals with the basis for your above "motive":

A Universe Out Of Chaos

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Grumpy Santa]

]

You will have to forgive me for suspecting you of being purposefully dishonest.

Cmon, leroy. What is your actual point of trying to set up a scenario where an infinite number of attempts doesn't lead to a success?

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Do you really think that I have a secret agenda?


In fact I do have a hidden motive..........

I heard somewhere about a theory (I believe presented by Sean Carol) this theory was obviously not presented as a scientific theory, it was just presented as a thought experiment.


The theory argues, even though entropy always increases, according to the second law, it is possible to have small areas of low entropy once in a while, small areas of low entropy are expected to be more common that big ones, an area of low entropy as big as our observable universe is extremely, extremely unlikely but given enough time such an event will eventually happen


The future age of the universe is presumible potentially infinite, this means that the universe will always get older without reaching a point where it stops existing. So eventually at some point in the far future after trillions over trillions over trillions... of years an area of low entropy as big as our observable universe will pop in to existence, and stars, planetas, galaxies etc. would form. ..........

The interesting thing is that our universe could have been an area of low entropy that popped in to existence from a larger universe with nearly 100% entropy.


So the fundamental question is, given a potentially infinite amount of time would we ever get an area of order as big as our observable universe from a random fluctuation? in the far future long after stars disappear would we get to a point where a random fluctuation re creates a universe as big as our observable universe with stars, planets, galaxias and all that stuff?


analogies with my math problem

Winning the lottery = having an area of low entropy as big as our observable universe

Everyday the probability of winning the lottery are lower than the previous day = everyday the probability of getting areas of low entropy are less likelly than the previous day


I do not claim to be sure, but according to my math the probabilities always increase as time passes but the probability converges in a very small number, ..........it doesn't matter if the probabilities always increase you will never get something like a 51% probability (or even 1% probability)

Except, with regards to the highlighted part, what if there's a threshold as you approach zero, a critical mass (so to speak) where below that threshold (in order to make the lottery fair?) the probability spikes and approaches 1? What if you can stretch the universe so thin that it ruptures?

 

[leroy]

[
Except, with regards to the highlighted part, what if there's a threshold as you approach zero, a critical mass (so to speak) where below that threshold (in order to make the lottery fair?) the probability spikes and approaches 1? What if you can stretch the universe so thin that it ruptures?

the point is not to discuss whether if the the model is true, or not, I simply wanted to discuss the math .........what happens if you have potentially infinite probabilistic resources and decreasing possibilities


an other version of the problem would be...

given that PI is made out of an infinite number of digits (randomly ordered) will you ever get to a point where the digits pi repeat? will you ever get to a point where all the previous digits repeat?

 

[leroy]

Just for the record Leroy, is the reason you have not answered this question because it would have yet again exposed your poor reading comprehension? (yes or no)

if I have poor RC why don't you simply provide direct answers? instead of contradictory and ambiguous statements?

 

[MarsCydonia]

if I have poor RC why don't you simply provide direct answers? instead of contradictory and ambiguous statements?

So I'll take this as a Yes to Steelmage99's question.

 

[Grumpy Santa]

[
Except, with regards to the highlighted part, what if there's a threshold as you approach zero, a critical mass (so to speak) where below that threshold (in order to make the lottery fair?) the probability spikes and approaches 1? What if you can stretch the universe so thin that it ruptures?

the point is not to discuss whether if the the model is true, or not, I simply wanted to discuss the math .........what happens if you have potentially infinite probabilistic resources and decreasing possibilities


an other version of the problem would be...

given that PI is made out of an infinite number of digits (randomly ordered) will you ever get to a point where the digits pi repeat? will you ever get to a point where all the previous digits repeat?

Well, the math is silly... you've poisoned the well against yourself. In a nutshell while the likelihood of hitting the lottery as you describe it remains mathematically possible it become more and more increasingly improbable. The problem I'm having with this, I guess, is that it's an exercise to nowhere. Nothing in real life reflects these types of conditions that I'm aware of.

 

[leroy]

[You're not really pointing out the absurdity. You type a sentence, seemingly thinking you've said something absurd, but I don't see it. Can you make the absurdity more explicit?

.

well how can someone be born after an infinite amount of seconds? how could it be that an infinite amount of seconds and then you where born,


I am not claiming to have absolute proof for the incoherence of infinity, all I have is examples of situations that would seem incoherent, it is just that I cant even conceive the idea of an infinite number of seconds, and I haven't seen any good argument for the coherence of infinity.


I mean, how would you prove that something is incoherent? for example how would you prove that 2i computers is logically incoherent?.........I don't think is even possible to prove something like that..........

 

[leroy]

if I have poor RC why don't you simply provide direct answers? instead of contradictory and ambiguous statements?

So I'll take this as a Yes to Steelmage99's question.

yes, but you are always welcome to explain clearly and unambiguously what you actual view is