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TimBender

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Everything posted by TimBender

  1. Firstoff, I have no idea what "Guest observer" said. Did you mean to deny that Godel's theorom was correct? Seems a bit reminicent of times when I've heard objectivists say with absolute certanty that non-local physical theories are acausal...or that probablistic motion of molecules CAN'T be fundamental. That having been said, anyone who would use Godel to attack atheism lacks any real understanding. Godel's theorom says one thing (and it is correct in this), that any axiomatic system that includes arithmetic (so choice of religion comes from a logical system involving arithmetic?) gives rise to propositions that are undecidable without new axioms. Truth is most of these are silly self referance statements, however a few actually have some meaning. Example is the continuim hypothesis that has to do with cardinality (size) of sets and ideas of the "different sizes of infinity" (by the way, this is not some silly concept, the idea is that a set is called countably infinite if it can be put into a one-to-one correspondance with the natural "counting" numbers, and that some sets have this property and that some don't, and then another size would be if the basis of a topological space (yah that probably sounded like gibberish, its a sort of way of concisely specifying the set and certain relationships) is countable then the topological space is called second countable) Anyhow if your interested the way that you prove that the continuim hypothesis is not decidable is by constructing a model for each way and showing that it is consistent with the axioms. Anyow I suppose the rare, rare times when some relavent proposition is undecidable bothers the mathematicians, they just kinda work around it both ways. At any rate this has NOTHING to do with life outside of extremely complex mathematical systems. I suppose when people try to invoke Godel's theorom what they are really discussing is the sort of self referance garbage like "This statement is a lie"...although really who gives a shit about such worthless statements? Hey, if you want make a rule that you don't allow yourself to issue self-refereance statements and go about your life happily. And for fun download and print a copy of Godel's theorom and hand it to the humanities majors who are trying to invoke it, my money's on that they can't get through the first page (or become extremely upset that it uses logic and isn't quite as new age as they would hope) Tim
  2. A former top NASA official came to speak to a natural science group here at UT recently. In his speach he talked about how it seems proper to him that NASA's goals have shifted more to political than scientific. Truth is a large part of the NASA budget has been spent on projects with little scientific merit. For one thing manned space exploration is a pretty silly venture (for now, and after the first one or two times). Its much more expensive...if you are interested in the scientific goal of understanding the solar system and other stars and such the focus should be on unmanned craft. Tim Bender PS: heres a link to the astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss' congressional testimony on the subject, in which he discusses space exploration. http://www.house.gov/science/space/apr03/krauss.htm
  3. I'm actually a little sore about the Superconducting Supercollider being cancelled...of course government should not fund any science (except defense based) but taxes were not being raised for it, only the welfare state was getting a little less funds. As I understand it it was cancelled after a large part of its construction completed because all the politicians who had hoped to get it in their district lost that hope once actual production began. Now particle physics is going to have to rely on the europeans. Tim Bender
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