Re: Clarifying Infinity
by Brent696 on July 19th, 2018, 9:59 pm
>>>>>>I think I was having a hard time catching the drift of your argument and was pushing back on parts of it that didn't make sense to me<<<<<<<
So am I gingerly pulling the chair back from the table to sit back down, last time I had food thrown in my face and was told I didn't belong. Now are you inviting me back, I just want BIV to take note, this really was a long dead thread,
>>>>>>>It's not all that bad. You're raising a good point. I have this question in my own mind. We do have this wonderful theory of the infinite going back to Cantor, and frankly back to Archimedes and Eudoxus.<<<<<
"Theory" is ok with me, I figure if I am truly right, we will one day see it or we will one day will not, I might even be both right and wrong. But I do have my own views and may or may not agree with these guys.
>>>>>But what about the physical world? Physics often talks about infinities, such as at the heart of singularities in spacetime, or infinitely many possible worlds in the multiverse, or the infinities of renormalization. Well, those aren't really mathematical infinities. They're "physicists doing math," which is a frequent source of confusion. Physicists aren't required to do rigorous math, and they don't. So people should be careful of getting their math from physicists.<<<<<
Aren't physicists those guys who are trying to tell us matter is traveling back in time, no, no, don't believe anything they tell you, next they will be telling us a cat can be both dead and alive, In the REAL? world my girl friend is either pregnant or she's not, don't go messing around with my head. (Jokes)
It SEEMS, once physicists opened the door of "probabilities", not they can do damn well whatever the hell they please with their math.
But once Mathematicians opened the door to statistics and game theory, now they also can do whatever the hell they want with their math.
Now that's just a layman's view, I'm the visual thinker, my wife is the accountant and she has the talent for making numbers grew, not me. But Infinities, as I understand how they are used in conjunction with universal realities, exist on paper as it were and potentially. In math class we learned that multiplying 4 or 8 times infinity left only infinity, but that is never a reality, it simply describes a "relationship" between infinity and finite math. In odds, probabilities, and the like, I can see quotients of infinity being used to re-contextualize abstracts. (OK that last sentence was even hard for me, it may not be the exact language mathematicians use but I always suppose if you think about it, you can grasp what I mean assuming I'm close enough) But ultimately and absolutely, such infinities do not and cannot exist as in physical reality.
For example, a potential infinite number of even numbers. as a potential this is a reality within a potential equation, but it is never a reality in the physical (real) world. This Universe, the same universe that is manifesting finite attributes from top to bottom, from the life of a fruit fly to the death of our sun to the end of the expansion and final collapse, I see finite attributes reigning. And this might be a bit of logic, but if everything within this universe is finite, then the universe itself, as the parent so to speak, is also finite.
This finitude is not abstract, the very conditions of existence depend upon the time and spatial dimensions. Math would not be superior to time and space but rather as they are constants which define the universe, they provide the underlying structure from which math is derived.
Thus any True Infinity, one that might actually exist, must exist transcendent to this universe. What help in understanding this transcendent reality is when we stop thinking of the universe as an addition, as if creation truly added something, but rather in the infinity of nothing, nothingness was squeezed down by imposed limitations.
IOWs, the universe would be happening all at once, but when the speed was restricted to the speed of light, that allowed for a separation of time units. The limitation of the speed of light allows and creates time. What I am proposing is upside down from how we normally think of it.
Most of the questions you pose can only be answered when the attribute of Infinity and the attribute of the finite are kept strictly apart, this means that ultimately such potential infinities in math do not really exist.
Anyway its late, perhaps this will give you something to think about.