From: Nam Nguyen on
Aatu Koskensilta wrote:
> Transfer Principle <lwalke3(a)lausd.net> writes:
>
>> Consider the thread in the link above. In this thread, Nguyen used
>> mostly symbolic language, which according to criterion III above,
>> suggests that he is standard.
>
> You do realize that in passages such as this you come off as extremely
> silly?
>

I'm glad that I'm neither crank nor standard. You must be a standard then?
From: Jim Burns on
Aatu Koskensilta wrote:
> Gc <gcut667(a)hotmail.com> writes:

>> I think you need at least borel measure to define
>> a Hilbert space which is used in Quantum mechanics,
>> but in the other hand Hilbert space probably
>> contains functions which have no physical meaning,
>> not differentiable anywhere etc. Anyway you probably
>> need some axiom of choice like stuff in functional
>> analysis, operator algebras etc.
>
> This is where the tedious coding and massaging, the
> chiseling off of spurious generality, comes in.
> There's loads of stuff on this in the literature on
> reverse mathematics. As to the axiom of choice, its
> use in physical predictions and such like is always
> eliminable.

This encoding and massaging you refer to brings a different
but similar-sounding question to my mind, one that may
not have a mathematical answer available.

Is it possible that these deeper mathematical principles,
the ones that could be chiseled off, are nonetheless
necessary, if not in a logical sense, then in order to
create effective theories that are also comprehensible
to the merely genius?

Could even Einstein have seen that the massaged and
encoded version of Riemannian geometry could lead to
a description of physics that does not use a
gravitational force?

Perhaps Hilbert space and operators and all that could be
expressed and reasoned about in a much emptier conceptual
landscape, but would we have been able to develop
them in that landscape?

A crude way of putting it is that I have a suspicion that
we would have taken a lot longer to invent the wheel
if we lived in a world without round things. In a world
without Hilbert spaces, would the time needed to
invent quantum mechanics also be "a lot longer",
maybe even "forever"?

Jim Burns

From: Aatu Koskensilta on
Nam Nguyen <namducnguyen(a)shaw.ca> writes:

> I'm glad that I'm neither crank nor standard. You must be a standard
> then?

Why do you think I must be a standard?

--
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta(a)uta.fi)

"Wovon man nicht sprechan kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
From: Frederick Williams on
Aatu Koskensilta wrote:
>
> Nam Nguyen <namducnguyen(a)shaw.ca> writes:
>
> > I'm glad that I'm neither crank nor standard. You must be a standard
> > then?
>
> Why do you think I must be a standard?

Perhaps he's seen you climbing up a flagpole.

--
.... A lamprophyre containing small phenocrysts of olivine and
augite, and usually also biotite or an amphibole, in a glassy
groundmass containing analcime.
From: Nam Nguyen on
Aatu Koskensilta wrote:
> Nam Nguyen <namducnguyen(a)shaw.ca> writes:
>
>> I'm glad that I'm neither crank nor standard. You must be a standard
>> then?
>
> Why do you think I must be a standard?
>

Well, I don't think you're a crank and, though I could be wrong, I very
much doubt if you are a "rebel" in the foundation of logic matters.
Then, seems like you must be in that standard school of reasoning.
(And many of your posts do seem to suggest so. No?)