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Topic: Nothingness (Read 7170 times) |
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Grimbal
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Re: Nothingness
« Reply #50 on: Jan 7th, 2008, 1:41am » |
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The "he could be blind" was meant as a joke.
But it could be made to make sense.
The guy had an operation to the eyes to cure his blindness. He wakes up in the middle of the night and doesn't see anything. He doesn't know whether it is because he became blind again or because the light is off. So he lights a match to check which one it is.
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shasta
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Re: Nothingness
« Reply #51 on: Jan 21st, 2008, 9:49pm » |
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on Dec 7th, 2007, 5:49am, SMQ wrote:
No, I don't believe I do. 
If you have 3 apples, you have three real apples, yes? And if you have -2 apples, you owe two real apples, yes? So if you have  apples, as he-who-shall-not-be-here-named asked, you have one imaginary apple. If you owed an imaginary apple you would have - apples. 
--SMQ |
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To "owe" is merely a concept. If you "owe" someone 2 apples, it doesn't really mean you actually have -2 apples, what it really means is that if you're a good person you will at some point in the future give someone +2 apples, presumably because they have already paid you for them or some such thing.
Once you try substituting other verbs for have the problem with the idea of -2 apples actually existing becomes obvious. Can you garnish a plate with -2 apples? Can you polish -2 apples? Can you put a bunch of bananas on one side of a two-tray scale to compare the weight to that of -2 apples?
Negative numbers are part of the mathematical model of the universe, and a very useful part of it, but they do not have a corresponding equivalent in the actual universe, (save when we use purely conceptual things like "owing" to govern our own behaviors). The same is true of irrational numbers and by extension perfect circles.
The overriding question in this thread is whether or not zero or nothingness actually exists beyond a conceptual model. At the moment, I believe it does not. I'll argue that nothingness doesn't exist, because there is something everywhere, and therefore only in places which do not exist could nothingness exist, which by definition means it doesn't.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 21st, 2008, 9:51pm by shasta » |
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towr
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Re: Nothingness
« Reply #52 on: Jan 22nd, 2008, 1:57am » |
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on Jan 21st, 2008, 9:49pm, shasta wrote:| Once you try substituting other verbs for have the problem with the idea of -2 apples actually existing becomes obvious. Can you garnish a plate with -2 apples? Can you polish -2 apples? Can you put a bunch of bananas on one side of a two-tray scale to compare the weight to that of -2 apples? |
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The problem with such linguistic arguments, is that, for example, you can use it to point out the problem of 1 apple actually existing. Try a verb like comparing; you can compare two apples, but not one. And two apples can collide, but one by itself can't.
That some verbs don't apply doesn't necessarily mean that 1 apple can't exist; nor that 0 or less can't. Granted, to be able to polish something, it needs to exist (in some sense), but that doesn't mean that something which you can't polish doesn't. You can't polish a woolen sweater or the wind.
I think that to make such an approach work, you would need to define 'existence' in terms of sets of verbs that have to apply; e.g. something exists if either you can hold it and/or observe it and/or drop it etc.
But most likely any attempt would always include some things you don't want to include and/or exclude some things you don't want excluded.
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Wikipedia, Google, Mathworld, Integer sequence DB
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HiddenHeart
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Re: Nothingness
« Reply #53 on: Jan 22nd, 2008, 9:48pm » |
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Speaking of Nothing, once there was a factory that invited an industrial engineer to see whether things can be made more efficient and streamlined, and whether it would be possible to eliminate some jobs due to duplications. So the engineer sees a worker who seems to be idle, and asks him: “what are you doing all day?”, “Nothing”, he replied. The engineer says “thank you” and goes on. A while later, the engineer sees another worker who seems to be idle, and asks him the same question, and gets the same answer, “Nothing”. The engineer then recommends to the manager to fire that other guy. “But that’s unfair, exclaimed the worker, that first guy is also doing nothing, and you didn’t fire him!”. The engineer replied: “That’s exactly my point, we don’t need two different people doing the same thing!”
So Nothing is really something, but only one thing. 
Let me also remind you that zero, like all of mathematics, is fictional and an idealization. It is impossible to reach absolute zero temperature or to get perfect vacuum. Luckily, mathematics is a fairyland where ideal and fictional objects are possible.
The Empty Set In the 19th century, Leopold Kronecker famously said that “God created the integers, all the rest is man-made”. A bit later, about a hundred years ago, mathematicians and logicians thought that even integers are too complex to be really fundamental, and they tried to reduce everything, in particular integers, to sets. So the great computer pioneer, John von Neumann, when he was still rather young, came with a brilliant way to define integers in terms of sets, and all he really needed was a starting point: the empty set.
So according to von Neumann:
0 :=  .
Now we have one object at our disposal, so let us form the set consisting of what we have so far:
1 := {} .
Now, at the second day, let’s gather what we had so far, and make them into a set
2 := {, {}} ,
and at the third day, let’s define
3 := {, {}, {, {}}} ,
and, in general
n := (n-1)  {n-1} ,
ad infinitum.
But von Neumann’s construction can only handle integers, starting with the empty set. What about other kinds of numbers? About thirty-five years ago, John Horton Conway realized something revolutionary.All numbers are games! Now there are many games that are not numbers, so game is a more fundamental object than number. According to his own account, he felt a bit guilty that during the research slump that hit him after discovering the Conway groups, he hardly did any mathematics, but spent most of the day playing games at the common room of his Cambridge college. Only later did he realize that playing games is research, and furthermore, more interesting and significant than the vast majority of his colleagues’ research, since it lead him to the great idea that numbers are games.
That is one astonishing theory!!!! but out of the scope of this discussion ! 
courtesy:
Doron ZEILBERGER for his nice talk on nothing.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 22nd, 2008, 11:40pm by HiddenHeart » |
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HiddenHeart
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Re: Nothingness
« Reply #54 on: Jan 22nd, 2008, 10:10pm » |
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This discussion is already painfully large . I must end it now. Before finishing I prove a Theorem that proves the power of nothing!!! so that reader doesn't under estimate nothing
Nothing.
Theorem: (anon.) A ham sandwich is better than good sex.
Proof: (anon.) The following two assertions are obvious.
1. A ham sandwich is better than Nothing.
[Indeed!! Though I am Muslim and don't have ham, if I were stuck on a desert island, and had nothing to eat for five days, I admit that I would eat it, and it is better than having nothing.]
2. Nothing is better than Good Sex.
[Actually I cannot say it exactly, because I didn't have sex yet (very sad indeed!!). But existing data indicates that for sure!!! ]
The theorem follows by the transitivity of the is better relation.
[Q.E.D]
P.S: okey, i have posted my blogspot blog named: Nothing!! in these replies. As, i find that we are talking about nothing here!!!
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| « Last Edit: Jan 22nd, 2008, 10:14pm by HiddenHeart » |
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temporary
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Re: Nothingness
« Reply #55 on: Jan 22nd, 2008, 10:28pm » |
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Or perhaps with imaginary apples, -i doesn't mean you owe an imaginary apple, but that you have a negative imaginary apple(opposite to a normal imaginary apple in every way). This only occurs with imaginary, because anything can be imagined.
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My goal is to find what my goal is, once I find what my goal is, my goal will be complete.
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Grimbal
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Re: Nothingness
« Reply #56 on: Jan 23rd, 2008, 12:47am » |
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In short, you imagine you're hungry. If you add an imaginary apple, you get just yourself.
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Re: Nothingness
« Reply #57 on: Jan 23rd, 2008, 5:54pm » |
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Except I could imagine anything happening even if it doesn't add up. If I am hungry for i apples and I eat i apples, I could imagine a hole being blasted through me and still be hungry for i apples. However, this discussion of imaginariness is only semi-relevant to nothingness, so let's get back to the topic.
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My goal is to find what my goal is, once I find what my goal is, my goal will be complete.
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