Re: THIS STATEMENT HAS NO PROOF IN ANY SYSTEM = true or false?

From: Mitch Harris (harrisq_at_tcs.inf.tu-dresden.de)
Date: 02/02/05 

Date: 2 Feb 2005 21:36:48 GMT

 <examachine@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>I think the evidence for a discrete world far outweighs the evidence
>for a continuous world,

what little I know of contemporary physics seems to agree with this, at
certain very small scales.

>which is basically non-existent.

evidence for a continuous world non-existent? I couldn't say.

>If the world were continuous, then there might be a way to store a real
>number as a physical property. However, all storage devices have to
>rely on fundamental properties in the atomic world which are _all_
>discrete, e.g. quantum physics.

Have to? that's a bit unimaginative.

>There is also something called Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Why
>would I believe that something exists beneath the Planck scale, while
>our physics tells us that you cannot physically subdivide the Planck
>scale. There is no such thing, as far as I can tell, as to measure time
>or space in fractions of the Planck scale. I would of course be
>interested to know if there is a work that shows the Planck scale is
>bogus!
>
>The problem with that kind of a belief is its similarity to theological
>"reasoning". There is something called "God" that is fundamentally
>unobservable,

(this is quite another topic but some people claim very clear evidence
of such things)

>but some people believe in its existence. Substitute God
>with continuum. (That is I object also on metaphilosophical grounds)

OK. Substitute God with discrete. same problems (or same difficulties
removed)

>The only "evidence" for a continuous world is classical and
>relativistic physics cast in the language of geometry which makes use
>of real-valued numbers, that is they are no evidence. (How can a
>"theoretical assumption" be an evidence?)

just as the theoretical structures of group theory that provide some of
the language of quantum theory are not evidence.

>If we take particle physics
>seriously, which we should, we cannot say that they are equal ways of
>describing the world.

one way might be more successful in describing the world.

>Here, something interesting you might ask: but the wave function is
>continuous right? Right. Does the wave function exist? I don't think
>so. It is merely another theoretical instrument.

(sorry to keep using the same example but) 2 is merely another theoretical
instrument.

Mitch

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