Cosmologist in Lederhosen Spouts Nonsense!
in [Relativity]
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From: Robert L. Oldershaw on 16 May 2010 17:13 On May 15, 11:48 pm, eric gisse <jowr.pi.nos...(a)gmail.com> wrote: Nothing of note. Below from sci.physics relativity: On May 16, 8:59 am, "Sue..." <suzysewns...(a)yahoo.com.au> wrote: > Statistics are a human invention. However did > the fluids manage to behave before we came along > and wrote rules for them? :-)) ----------------------------------- Well put, Sue. And it is the misuse of statistics and inference that really characterizes contemporary theoretical physicists. Don, you can wait a googol of years for all of the air molecules to magically shift to one side of the room, but you will never be in the slightest bit of danger. The probability is not low, it is zero, and it ain't ever going to happen IN THE REAL WORLD. It only happens in the Platonic realms of theoretical physicists' postmodern abstractions. And Eric: Quite simply I understand statistics and nature immeasurably better than you. Best to all, RLO www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
From: Robert L. Oldershaw on 16 May 2010 17:19 On May 15, 11:48 pm, eric gisse <jowr.pi.nos...(a)gmail.com> wrote: Usual opinionated drivel. This is from sci.physics.relativity. On May 16, 8:59 am, "Sue..." <suzysewns...(a)yahoo.com.au> wrote: > Statistics are a human invention. However did > the fluids manage to behave before we came along > and wrote rules for them? :-)) ----------------------------------- Well put, Sue. And it is the misuse of statistics and inference that really characterizes contemporary theoretical physicists. Don, you can wait a googol of years for all of the air molecules to magically shift to one side of the room, but you will never be in the slightest bit of danger. The probability is not low, it is zero, and it ain't ever going to happen IN THE REAL WORLD. It only happens in the Platonic realms of theoretical physicists' postmodern abstractions. And Eric: Quite simply I understand statistics and nature immeasurably better than you. Best to all, RLO www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
From: Don Stockbauer on 16 May 2010 20:44 On May 16, 4:06 pm, "Robert L. Oldershaw" <rlolders...(a)amherst.edu> wrote: > On May 16, 8:59 am, "Sue..." <suzysewns...(a)yahoo.com.au> wrote: > > > Statistics are a human invention. However did > > the fluids manage to behave before we came along > > and wrote rules for them? :-)) > > ----------------------------------- > > Well put, Sue. > > And it is the misuse of statistics and inference that really > characterizes contemporary theoretical physicists. > > Don, you can wait a googol of years for all of the air molecules to > magically shift to one side of the room, but you will never be in the > slightest bit of danger. The probability is not low, it is zero, and > it ain't ever going to happen IN THE REAL WORLD. > > It only happens in the Platonic realms of theoretical physicists' > postmodern abstractions. > > And Eric: Quite simply I understand statistics and nature immeasurably > better than you. > > Best to all, > RLOwww.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
From: Don Stockbauer on 16 May 2010 20:49 On May 16, 4:06 pm, "Robert L. Oldershaw" <rlolders...(a)amherst.edu> wrote: > On May 16, 8:59 am, "Sue..." <suzysewns...(a)yahoo.com.au> wrote: > > > Statistics are a human invention. However did > > the fluids manage to behave before we came along > > and wrote rules for them? :-)) > > ----------------------------------- > > Well put, Sue. > > And it is the misuse of statistics and inference that really > characterizes contemporary theoretical physicists. > > Don, you can wait a googol of years for all of the air molecules to > magically shift to one side of the room, but you will never be in the > slightest bit of danger. The probability is not low, it is zero, and > it ain't ever going to happen IN THE REAL WORLD. > > It only happens in the Platonic realms of theoretical physicists' > postmodern abstractions. > Oh, I agree with you. I just remember that example from some physics book. It would never happen in the real world. But our mathematics is able to calculate the number of years it would take with some probability to occur if there were that many years left in the Universe. But there aren't. What does this all say? It gives people writing in usenet something to fill their white space with. And these transactions form the Global Brain.
From: Robert L. Oldershaw on 16 May 2010 23:37
On May 16, 8:49 pm, Don Stockbauer <donstockba...(a)hotmail.com> wrote: > > > Oh, I agree with you. I just remember that > example from some physics book. It would > never happen in the real world. But our > mathematics is able to calculate the number > of years it would take with some probability > to occur if there were that many years left > in the Universe. But there aren't. What does > this all say? It gives people writing in usenet > something to fill their white space with. And > these transactions form the Global Brain. ------------------------------------------ One problem with these arguments is that they assume that physical systems are "ergodic", which means they visit all possible states in their temporal evolution/motion. This is a nice fiction and makes the math simpler, but anyone familiar with nonlinear dynamical systems/chaos/fractals, which is the physics of real physical systems, knows that real systems are not ideally reversible and ergodic. They only act that way in Platonic fantasy- land. A great example is taking a canister of high pressure gas and releasing the gas into a very large concert hall. Deluded Platonists will tell you that you have an ergodic system and that one of its possible states is "all the gas molecules back in the canister", and that because of the ergodic theorem there is a finite positive probability that this state will occur if you wait a trillion years, or travel to Platonic ElseWhen. It is a lie! The gas molecules will never go back into the canister without a huge amount of effort because the system is not ergodic and the statistical arguments of the Platonists are wrong, if applied to the real world. They are "mathematically correct". It's just that the assumptions do not apply to the real world of nature. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to discuss this. Best, RLO www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw |