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Mephist

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Probably you think that I completely missed the "meaning" of what a mathematical proof. But that's the way computers (formal logic systems) see proofs...
January 17, 2020 at 20:11
OK, let's start from examples of normal forms: "245 * 10" is a number that is not in normal form. "2450" is the same number in normal form (one of the...
January 17, 2020 at 19:58
OK, I'll try. But I think it will be a long post anyway. So, I'll do it after answering the other posts before. But I can give you the reference to a ...
January 17, 2020 at 19:14
OK, I'll try to explain this point. The fact that there is a relation between topology and logic (mediated by category theory) was well known even bef...
January 17, 2020 at 19:01
Yes, exactly! (well, I don't understand what energy has to do with this, but more or less...) However, that's only MY idea (and it's more about philos...
January 17, 2020 at 04:53
Yes, there are a lot of formal logics based on type theory - and even Martin-Löf type theory has a lot of variants (too many to be something important...
January 17, 2020 at 00:12
No, a finite state machine is equivalent to a finite Turing machine, I guess. Yes, lambda calculus (the original one invented by Church - https://en.w...
January 16, 2020 at 23:24
Well, OK. Turing machines are a model of computation equivalent to Church's untyped lambda calculus. Limiting Turing machines to have finite dimension...
January 16, 2020 at 22:50
Well, my argument was simpler than this: - We know that we cannot enumerate all halting Turing machines, so for every supposedly complete list of halt...
January 16, 2020 at 22:30
Yes, but the existence of Turing machines cannot be proven from other principles of logic: it has to be assumed as an axiom. Maybe (I don't know) it c...
January 16, 2020 at 21:48
Yes, of course practically all "normal" proofs are short and all the computing power needed is a pen and a peace of paper. But in reality all computat...
January 16, 2020 at 21:11
OK, so let's try to follow this definition of measure to calculate the measure of the two sets that you mentioned: (1). - The set of computable bitstr...
January 16, 2020 at 20:54
How do you define this measure in pure mathematical terms? You cannot use probability, because probability is physics (unless you find a sound mathema...
January 16, 2020 at 04:32
All right, as I said, I just gave up arguing about constructivism.. :meh:
January 16, 2020 at 04:30
Yes but mathematics needs computations for proofs, and computations are physical processes. You may think that computations are not physics if you mak...
January 16, 2020 at 04:28
Any counter-example? P.S. I see there are several persons that studied physics visiting this site: maybe we could create a post especially on this poi...
January 16, 2020 at 00:41
I can assign a number to an experiment (calculated with some well-defined algorithm) and call it "probability" (for example defined as the square of t...
January 15, 2020 at 23:35
Yes, that's very confusing. And if you look at the mathematical literature, the terms "constructive" and "intuitionistic" seem to have changed meaning...
January 15, 2020 at 23:15
Constructive physics (constructivist logic) can ASSUME the existence of a function that you can call "random" (whatever it means: it's an axiomatic th...
January 15, 2020 at 23:08
There is in fact a physical assumption that is necessary for both mathematics and logic to make sense: the fact that each time that you repeat the sam...
January 15, 2020 at 22:51
Yes, exactly! If there were an experiment that could tell the difference, then it's no more metaphysics! But my guess about the future is that none of...
January 15, 2020 at 05:55
:smile: Super! So we can speak about QM without equivocating the words! :cry: OK, let's just "pretend" that a Hilbert space is complete even in constr...
January 15, 2020 at 03:52
OK, Yes you are right, I used the term "computability" meaning of computational complexity.
January 15, 2020 at 03:36
No, in QM the pattern is NOT computable: the pattern is NOT predictable from the theory, so you DON'T NEED any computable function to predict it!
January 15, 2020 at 03:23
OK, I'll not insist going ahead on the first part. Only about this part. Short answer: this is not a computable sequence. - So how is this experiment ...
January 15, 2020 at 03:14
Yes! ( on all points :smile: )
January 15, 2020 at 02:23
No, I didn't say you can calculate anything. You can calculate the magnetic moment of the electron in quantum electrodynamic with arbitrary precision,...
January 14, 2020 at 21:56
The binding energy due to the coupling between quarks and gluons is responsible for the most part of the mass, the rest of it (I don't remember now in...
January 14, 2020 at 21:26
I didn't answer to this yet, so I'll do it now. In general, category theory can be used to represent formal logic systems and their interpretations, i...
January 14, 2020 at 20:54
OK I'll stop arguing about intuitionism. But I think you didn't get my point here, so let me try one last time: Cantor's theorem is valid in intuition...
January 14, 2020 at 03:48
So, you can see constructivist logic as an algebra of propositions built with computable functions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heyting_algebra). Yo...
January 12, 2020 at 20:20
But I am afraid that's all what physics (at least contemporary physics) does: prediction. Nothing else! Nobody knows how to make sense of the equation...
January 12, 2020 at 17:30
Yea, but I was speaking about a way to approximate space-time with discrete pieces to make computer simulations, not of the real equations. The real e...
January 12, 2020 at 17:13
No, maybe I shouldn't have talked about "points": you simply split space and time in a lot of little "cubes" that are attached one to the other. Only ...
January 12, 2020 at 16:30
Yes, but the problem is that (for example) particles are always detected as little spots (such as a point on a photographic plate) and wave functions ...
January 12, 2020 at 16:12
Yes, that's one of the most interesting subjects even for me :grin: Yes, everything right until now. No, because even the motion of the quarks inside ...
January 12, 2020 at 12:24
Let's put it in this way: what you call "noncomputable" in boolean logic should be called "nonspeakable" in constructivist logic: they are not part of...
January 12, 2020 at 08:53
OK, I'll avoid to get into trouble with constructivism again :smile: Basically, what I wanted to say is that there is a "trick" in his kind of "constr...
January 12, 2020 at 07:57
Yeah well, let's say so... The way QM is formulated is: there are "observables" that represent the objects (or better: the results of experiments), an...
January 11, 2020 at 20:47
Thanks for the reference! I took a quick look at the book (just a quick look at the equations, really) and the first think that I thought is: what's t...
January 11, 2020 at 19:25
So is the 3,4,5 triangle really straight or not? I don't understand... OK. OK, the identity cannot be identified with the name. OK, so what can I do w...
January 11, 2020 at 00:38
OK, division and multiplication are not symmetrical for integers, because integers are "quantized": you can't give one candy to three children, becaus...
January 10, 2020 at 23:55
If you consider geometric spatial figures as real physical objects, there are a lot of "problems" with them: first of all, they are 2-dimensional (or ...
January 10, 2020 at 23:31
The even more interesting thing (that's why I talked about atoms) is that this is true not only for elementary particles as electrons, but even for at...
January 10, 2020 at 22:01
OK, but I don't understand how all this can be related to irrational numbers. Division between integers is repeated subtraction ( A/B you count how ma...
January 09, 2020 at 20:49
Well, in the current theory of the physical world (standard model, or whatever variant of it you prefer) all atoms of the same element are supposed to...
January 09, 2020 at 00:49
But I can use numbers to describe (or model) physical processes (experiments): 1. Call Build_Side(N) the physical process of putting N sticks in line ...
January 08, 2020 at 22:03
Sorry for the intrusion, but I am curious of this issue (only one premise: I didn't study philosophy :yikes:, so, for example, I don't really understa...
January 08, 2020 at 19:59
Well, the "issue" of the irrationality of the diagonal of the square is the one that ancient greeks recognized: you cannot find any unit length that e...
January 08, 2020 at 19:11
I am curious to know: do you have an answer to this question?
January 07, 2020 at 13:03