Can the definition of infinity disprove an infinite past?

[Speakpigeon]

[Time doesnt need to start, it can have been going on forever.

Any directional progression, like time, needs to have begun.

If it never began it does not exist.

If the progression never begins it cannot go anywhere.

I hope you're all aware you ain't going to get any better than that.

UM won't budge. He can't perceive infinity so it doesn't exist and logic doesn't even register as a concern with him.

He can't even explain himself so there's literally nothing to understand in what he keeps repeating.

Still, it's touching that so many people should at least try to give it a try, as if they hoped they could find the proper cure for the terminally hill patient.

The line is flat.
EB

 

[Bomb#20]

Show me a picture of these infinite slices?

You going to come meet me some place in real life so I can show you a picture?

?

You can post pictures here.

But the mere request for one should have made you think about it.

There could be no picture. There could be no infinite slices.

Again I have to ask, what is wrong with you? Why do you keep snipping out part of what I say and then responding as though I hadn't said it? Here it is again for your viewing convenience:

"Any picture I send you over the web will have been pixelated, which would kind of defeat the purpose, no? If you want to see what infinite slices of real estate look like, take a look at any piece of real estate you please."​

Of course there could be a picture; but a picture posted to TFT only shows a million or so discrete points from the photographed object. It can't possibly distinguish between a continuous object and an object made up of discrete points. You might as well demand to see footage of one of these alleged newfangled "Color TVs" broadcast so you can view it on your black-and-white TV, before you'll believe color TVs exist. It's an absurd demand. It's self-defeating.

How small would the smallest slice be?

The Nth slice is 1/2^N meter wide, for all N. Since there is no largest N, there is no smallest 1/2^N, so there is no smallest slice. Just as every integer has a bigger integer immediately after it, every slice has a smaller slice immediately to the north of it.

How long did it take you to make infinite slices?

I'm sorry, did I claim to have made these slices? Each slice is simply the portion of the whole piece of real estate whose latitude is greater than x degrees north and less than x + epsilon. Those portions existed long before any people were around to make them.

There is no way to make you think about this is there?

You're the one who is choosing not to think.

If you actually thought about an infinite operation like slicing something you would understand there is no amount of time in which that could be accomplished.

But no slicing operation needs to be accomplished in order for all the slices to exist. They are not separated from one another. Nobody needs to go through a piece of real estate with a plow carving furrows in order for the land north of 37.11163 degrees N and south of 37.11164 degrees N to exist.

Perhaps the word "slice" is confusing you. I'm using it in the sense of portion, not in the sense of having been cut from something. If that's hard for you to wrap your mind around, just replace the word "slice" with "portion" in my description.

Hint: In the real world all things are finite.

Proof by blatant assertion is not much of an argument.

It is an assertion. That is true.

It is a true assertion.

Which is why you can't dispute it in any way.

And yet I dispute it; and as usual you simply pretend the argument you're unable to refute was never made. Here it is again for your viewing convenience:

"If space is discrete then relativity is wrong. But relativity has been very thoroughly tested and appears to be right. Therefore, if you propose that relativity is nonetheless wrong, the burden is on you to present an alternative theory of time and space that is both (a) consistent with discrete space, and (b) at least as accurate as relativity at predicting our observations. Break a leg."​

If you are correct that in the real world all things are finite, then it follows that there must exist a theory of time and space that's consistent with observation of the real world and that's consistent with all things being finite. Conversely, if no such theory exists then you are wrong: in the real world there are an infinity of points in space between any two separated objects. So your assertion amounts to asserting that such a theory exists. Your listeners are skeptical of your existence claim. Why should the rest of us believe such a theory exists, when you refuse to show it to us?

 

[untermensche]

[Time doesnt need to start, it can have been going on forever.

Any directional progression, like time, needs to have begun.

If it never began it does not exist.

If the progression never begins it cannot go anywhere.

I hope you're all aware you ain't going to get any better than that.

UM won't budge. He can't perceive infinity so it doesn't exist and logic doesn't even register as a concern with him.

He can't even explain himself so there's literally nothing to understand in what he keeps repeating.

Still, it's touching that so many people should at least try to give it a try, as if they hoped they could find the proper cure for the terminally hill patient.

The line is flat.
EB

You are clearly merely a spectator.

You claim you can't understand anything I write.

I believe you.

But when they say they can't understand anything you know it is cognitive dissonance.

 

[untermensche]

How small would the smallest slice be?

The Nth slice is 1/2^N meter wide, for all N. Since there is no largest N, there is no smallest 1/2^N, so there is no smallest slice. Just as every integer has a bigger integer immediately after it, every slice has a smaller slice immediately to the north of it.

If there is no smallest slice then you do not have infinite slices.

Infinite slices would include all possible slices.

Including the smallest possible slice.

If you do not have all possible slices you don't have infinite slices.

Your talk of infinity is nonsense.

 

[Jokodo]

How small would the smallest slice be?

The Nth slice is 1/2^N meter wide, for all N. Since there is no largest N, there is no smallest 1/2^N, so there is no smallest slice. Just as every integer has a bigger integer immediately after it, every slice has a smaller slice immediately to the north of it.

If there is no smallest slice then you do not have infinite slices.

Infinite slices would include all possible slices.

Including the smallest possible slice.

If you do not have all possible slices you don't have infinite slices.

Your talk of infinity is nonsense.

Infinite doesn't mean "including the end". It means there is no end.

 

[steve_bank]

I watched a show that talked a little about clocks. There was a point where people did not perceive reality through our scientific concept of linear time and clocks. They just observed change. There was no concept of time as we have. So when did time start? With the first water clock?

Time having a beginning makes no sense.

 

[untermensche]

If there is no smallest slice then you do not have infinite slices.

Infinite slices would include all possible slices.

Including the smallest possible slice.

If you do not have all possible slices you don't have infinite slices.

Your talk of infinity is nonsense.

Infinite doesn't mean "including the end". It means there is no end.

OK.

But his example was of defining some infinity of slices.

Can't be done.

No matter how many slices you defined there would always be infinite more you did not.

You could never define infinite slices.

So to say they are there is just an act of faith.

It is nothing real.

No real infinity can exist.

 

[steve_bank]

If there is no smallest slice then you do not have infinite slices.

Infinite slices would include all possible slices.

Including the smallest possible slice.

If you do not have all possible slices you don't have infinite slices.

Your talk of infinity is nonsense.

Infinite doesn't mean "including the end". It means there is no end.

OK.

But his example was of defining some infinity of slices.

Can't be done.

No matter how many slices you defined there would always be infinite more you did not.

You could never define infinite slices.

So to say they are there is just an act of faith.

It is nothing real.

No real infinity can exist.

We can not know if the universe is unbounded and uncountable, IOW infinite. An infinity does exist as a definition.
-infinity ...-2,-1,0,1,2,...+infinity. And we descend into metaphysics. Infinity is a word, a label, a description of a condition.

 

[Bomb#20]

How small would the smallest slice be?

The Nth slice is 1/2^N meter wide, for all N. Since there is no largest N, there is no smallest 1/2^N, so there is no smallest slice. Just as every integer has a bigger integer immediately after it, every slice has a smaller slice immediately to the north of it.

If there is no smallest slice then you do not have infinite slices.

Why would you believe that inference is valid? It's the other way around: if there is a smallest slice then you do not have infinite slices, whenever the sum is finite, which it is in my example.

Infinite slices would include all possible slices.

Why would you believe an infinite set has to include everything it possibly could? It's absurd. Here's an infinite set of numbers: 1, 4, 9, 16, ... N², ... That set doesn't include 2, or 3, or 8, or any other non-square number. But I could have included all those numbers in the set. They're possible set members, but my set doesn't include them. Do you deduce from this that there exist only a finite number of perfect square numbers? Do you think there's an integer that doesn't have a square?

Including the smallest possible slice.

Here you are assuming your conclusion as a premise. Whether there exists a smallest possible width for a slice is precisely what's in dispute. When you just take for granted that it exists you're making a circular argument.

If you do not have all possible slices you don't have infinite slices.

Show your work. If I leave the first slice out of my set, so it only includes the real estate from 1m north of me to 2m north of me and skips the real estate from me to 1m north of me, that means I have one less slice than before. Infinity minus one is still infinity. This is not rocket science.

 

[untermensche]

If there is no smallest slice then you do not have infinite slices.

Why would you believe that inference is valid?

Yes, so I have moved beyond it to:

I still believe that infinite slices has to include all possible slices, it's a lot of slices you know, I have no interest in going down that road any further.

But his example was of defining some infinity of slices.

Can't be done.

No matter how many slices you defined there would always be infinite more you did not.

You could never define infinite slices.

So to say they are there is just an act of faith.

It is nothing real.

No real infinity can exist.

This is what you have to deal with now.

Acts of faith are not real.

Believing an infinity is in something but being unable to prove it is just an act of faith.

In your scenario all you have is a faith that there are infinite slices.

You cannot prove it in any way.

And your slices are going to crash into reality very soon. Very soon you will not be able to make any more distinct slices. Moving from 0.0000001 to 0.0000002 will not give you a different slice.

Reality can only be sliced so much.

Reality is quantized.

 

[Speakpigeon]

You claim you can't understand anything I write.

This is just such a shameful lie that you couldn't support by any quote and that very characteristically you're not even trying to because I just simply never claimed such a stupid thing to say.

I certainly understand some of what you say, although very nearly always it's clear it's not the crucial bit.

Plus, I already asked you many times to clarify without any significant result. More gobbledegook usually.

I don't think I made any progress in understanding what you say beyond your basic point that infinity does not exist, and this despite hundreds of your posts on the subject. You're just terminally incapable of explaining yourself. You're not even capable of having a civil conversation with anyone, let alone anything like a debate. Your replies are vague and unspecific. Your arguments are based on false premises that are not only false but idiotic. Your English is substandard and most people struggle to understand even what you say, let alone what you may mean if anything. You're also pretty clearly intellectually dishonest, preferring to ignore the bits in other people's posts that you have no answer to. You're not having any debate ever. You're merely repeating a deadbeat mantra. I think your attention span is too short to allow you to understand other people's point. Every new post and you forget the previous one. No exchange possible.

It's like trying to debate a parrot, just less funny.
EB

 

[untermensche]

I support it with the complete absence of any specific questions from you.

I cannot prove a negative.

What specific questions about my positions do you have?

Prove you should be taken seriously. What you just wrote is devoid of anything to take you seriously.

Like a specific question or specific misunderstanding on my part.

It is a blanket statement that includes no specifics.

It is worthless.

What specifically do I not understand?

What specifically do you not understand from these hundreds of posts?

And my English is perfect.

It is idiosyncratic like a natural language should be.

You on the other hand are a parrot with English.

 

[Bomb#20]

But his example was of defining some infinity of slices.

Can't be done.

No matter how many slices you defined there would always be infinite more you did not.

You could never define infinite slices.

So to say they are there is just an act of faith.

It is nothing real.

No real infinity can exist.

This is what you have to deal with now.

Acts of faith are not real.

Believing an infinity is in something but being unable to prove it is just an act of faith.

In your scenario all you have is a faith that there are infinite slices.

You cannot prove it in any way.

Proof is what mathematicians do. We are discussing science. In science we do not prove hypotheses; we falsify them. Rational people believe things are probably real not when they're proven to exist but when well-supported theories imply they're real, based on accumulation of empirical evidence. We believe other galaxies exist not because we can prove it but because we see them in our telescopes, and because hundreds of years and billions of observations of how light behaves have contributed to falsifying the hypothesis that telescopes just make up nonsense. That's not proof; that's a reasoning method that's intrinsically incapable of ever delivering proof. But neither is believing in galaxies an act of faith.

We have a hundred years of empirical evidence supporting relativity and quantum mechanics. We have negligible evidence that they're wrong. We have innumerable successful predictions from them. We have any number of inventions that would not have been conceived of without those theories, and that if conceived of wouldn't have been expected to work based on pre-relativistic and pre-quantum ideas of physics. That makes relativity and quantum mechanics well-supported theories.

Relativity and quantum mechanics both assert that space is infinitely divisible. Believing well-supported theories is not an act of faith. It's an act of accepting the implications of the available evidence.

And your slices are going to crash into reality very soon. Very soon you will not be able to make any more distinct slices. Moving from 0.0000001 to 0.0000002 will not give you a different slice.

Reality can only be sliced so much.

That cannot possibly be correct unless there's an alternative theory of physics that does not assume space is continuous and that makes at least as good predictions as relativity and quantum mechanics. You have no proof that there exists such a theory; worse, you have no empirical evidence for one existing; even worse than that, over the last hundred years a lot of smart physicists have tried their hand at discovering such a theory and so far they've all failed. For you to believe it exists is therefore an act of faith. You have no evidence that moving from 0.0000001 to 0.0000002 will not give me a different slice.

Reality is quantized.

Yes. But quantum mechanics never claimed every aspect of reality is quantized; rather, it identified a number of particular aspects that are quantized in addition to those aspects of reality that classical mechanics already knew were quantized. The breakdown of what is and isn't quantized can be surprising and counterintuitive. For example, according to quantum mechanics, momentum is not quantized -- it can be divided endlessly -- but angular momentum comes only in integer multiples of Planck's Constant. A solid object can move from point A to point B fast or slow or anywhere between, but it can't rotate at any number of RPMs between fast and slow. Go figure.

Point being, just because this is a quantum world doesn't mean you get to take it for granted that everything real you can think of will be quantized. We have no evidence that position in space is one of the quantized aspects of reality, and a fair bit of evidence against it.

 

[untermensche]

Proof is what mathematicians do. We are discussing science. In science we do not prove hypotheses; we falsify them. Rational people believe things are probably real not when they're proven to exist but when well-supported theories imply they're real, based on accumulation of empirical evidence. We believe other galaxies exist not because we can prove it but because we see them in our telescopes, and because hundreds of years and billions of observations of how light behaves have contributed to falsifying the hypothesis that telescopes just make up nonsense. That's not proof; that's a reasoning method that's intrinsically incapable of ever delivering proof. But neither is believing in galaxies an act of faith.

People do not believe things are real. They know it.

If you can observe it in some way it is real. There is no more to that.

Relativity and quantum mechanics both assert that space is infinitely divisible.

?

Neither can assert anything.

And quantum mechanics says the world is quantized.

You confuse the models used in physics with reality.

The models may need to see something as infinitely divisible but that doesn't make it so. The models make use of imaginary points and imaginary lines. The model is not the real thing. It is not close.

The model is just something used to make a prediction. That is all it is. It is not a description of "reality". It is just a way to predict what "reality" will do. Nothing more.

Relativity says that if we make certain assumptions and use certain formula's we can make predictions. That is all it does.

And it does not prove the assumptions are true. It merely works with them.

And your slices are going to crash into reality very soon. Very soon you will not be able to make any more distinct slices. Moving from 0.0000001 to 0.0000002 will not give you a different slice.

Reality can only be sliced so much.

momentum is not quantized -- it can be divided endlessly

I don't believe that for a second.

You will very quickly get to a point where observable changes in momentum become quantized.

You will not be able to observe, ever, infinite changes in anything. To observe it would take infinite time. Time that never ends in other words. It is an impossibility.

 

[untermensche]

The paradoxes are not a bunch of nonsense.

They show how infinity becomes unworkable in the real world.

If we say an object makes infinite movements when moving from A to B then it will have to take infinite time.

Because a movement has to be something positive and it must take some positive amount of time to make.

The only way the object can get there is to make a finite amount of smallest possible movements. Quantized movements.

 

[Jokodo]

The paradoxes are not a bunch of nonsense.

They show how infinity becomes unworkable in the real world.

If we say an object makes infinite movements when moving from A to B then it will have to take infinite time.

Because a movement has to be something positive and it must take some positive amount of time to make.

The only way the object can get there is to make a finite amount of smallest possible movements. Quantized movements.

...or an infinite number of infinitisimal movements. Claiming that it is making a finite number of steps implies that C as the universe's speed limit only holds at large scales. Do you have any evidence for superluminal velocities at microscopic levels?

 

[steve_bank]

I think unternensche got something right.

From QM energy transfer is quantized. It is said that as the number of aggregate particles of an object increases from the particle scale to our macro Newtonian scale the density of states is so high that things appear continuous.

The motion of a planet to us appears continuous, we quantify a planet's motion as a real number infinitely divisible as a practical matter.

IAW QM a planet can only change velocity in discrete steps. It takes energy to change velocity and energy is quantized.

We do the same with electric current. Current is Coulombs/second. Current is quantized, but in most cases we treat it as a continuous variable with real numbers infinitely divisible knowing it is not. The quantization effects are normally far below instrument's detection ability

Natter is quantized. If matter was continuous where would you cut it?

What he gets wrong is that quantum reality does not preclude an infinite number of objects or an finite unbounded universe.

 

[untermensche]

The paradoxes are not a bunch of nonsense.

They show how infinity becomes unworkable in the real world.

If we say an object makes infinite movements when moving from A to B then it will have to take infinite time.

Because a movement has to be something positive and it must take some positive amount of time to make.

The only way the object can get there is to make a finite amount of smallest possible movements. Quantized movements.

...or an infinite number of infinitisimal movements. Claiming that it is making a finite number of steps implies that C as the universe's speed limit only holds at large scales. Do you have any evidence for superluminal velocities at microscopic levels?

How much time does it take to make one "infinitesimal movement"?

If it takes any time at all, in other words, if it is real, it will take infinite time to make infinite movements. No matter how much time it takes to make one infinitesimal movement.

If you claim an infinitesimal movement takes no time then it is not a movement. It is something imaginary.

 

[steve_bank]

The paradoxes are not a bunch of nonsense.

They show how infinity becomes unworkable in the real world.

If we say an object makes infinite movements when moving from A to B then it will have to take infinite time.

Because a movement has to be something positive and it must take some positive amount of time to make.

The only way the object can get there is to make a finite amount of smallest possible movements. Quantized movements.

...or an infinite number of infinitisimal movements. Claiming that it is making a finite number of steps implies that C as the universe's speed limit only holds at large scales. Do you have any evidence for superluminal velocities at microscopic levels?

How much time does it take to make one "infinitesimal movement"?

If it takes any time at all, in other words, if it is real, it will take infinite time to make infinite movements. No matter how much time it takes to make one infinitesimal movement.

If you claim an infinitesimal movement takes no time then it is not a movement. It is something imaginary.

Nothing can change in zero time. In electronics the fundamental limit is the speed of light. It sets the upper boumd on computer speed. Along with that IAW with relativity as you increase switching speeds in transistors energy demand goes up.

Planck Time is a theoretical minimum interval for change. There is a Planck time and a Planck length.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time

In quantum mechanics, the Planck time (tP) is the unit of time in the system of natural units known as Planck units. A Planck unit is the time required for light to travel in a vacuum a distance of 1 Planck length, which is approximately 5.39 × 10 −44 s.[1] The unit is named after Max Planck, who was the first to propose it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length


Planck length
Unit system Planck units
Unit of length
Symbol ℓP 
Unit conversions
1 ℓP in ... ... is equal to ...
SI units 1.616229(38)×10−35 m
natural units 11.706 ℓS
 3.0542×10−25 a0
imperial/US units 6.3631×10−34 in
In physics, the Planck length, denoted ℓP, is a unit of length, equal to 1.616229(38)×10−35 metres. It is a base unit in the system of Planck units, developed by physicist Max Planck. The Planck length can be defined from three fundamental physical constants: the speed of light in a vacuum, the Planck constant, and the gravitational constant.

 

[untermensche]

You don't need any formulas to know that no change can occur in zero time.

There are two choices if something moves infinite times between A and B.

If a movement takes some time then the total movement will take infinite time.

If a movement takes zero time then the total movement will take zero time.