Mr. Hermit, tell me please, do you think that "truths" are qualities of the
universe or _descriptions_ of the qualities of the universe? And can you
see the difference? Because other than that, I don't think we're
disagreeing about anything whatsoever and as a result I don't really see a
need to agrue with you any further.
You seem to be saying that when truths aren't true anymore they stop being
truths. Which I agree with. You see, I asked you once how you'd change the
maxim to relect that and now I'll ask excatly the same thing over again one
more time and see what happens:
>But since it seems your real problem with the statement:
>
>>> All statements of truth are embedded a particular frame of
>>> reference from which they cannot be separated without becoming
>>> suppositions.
>
>was with the word "supposition", can I ask, why are we even having this
>conversation at all?
>
>More to the point: Would you care to offer another word (or words) that
>could take the place of "supposition" while retaining the intent of the
>statement above? A word that might make this bandersnatch acceptable to
you
>and yours?
TheHermit wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-virus@lucifer.com
>> [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com]On Behalf
>> Of Tim Rhodes
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 1999 5:09 PM
>> To: virus@lucifer.com
>> Subject: Re: virus: maxims and ground rules and suppositions
>>
>>
>> TheHermit wrote:
>> >The fact that I was able to respond to your requests at all, is
>> >because everything "real" has complex interrelationships - which I
>> >exploited.
>>
>> Which I think was, in large part, the point made by the
>> would-be maxim.
>> Remove the complex interrelationships and you aren't left with much
>> afterwords but jots on a page.
>
>Saying "remove the complex relationships" will not alter them by an iota.
>The complex relationships continue to exist and the truths about them
>continue to exist irrespective of what you choose to do with your symbols.
>Your symbols simply represent them well, represent them poorly or don't
>represent them at all. I would argue that a pragmatic approach to "how
well"
>the symbols represent the complex relations for a particular purpose is
what
>allows us to determine what a "statement of truth" is. If you are now
>arguing that a "statement of truth" exists outside of a "reality" in which
>you are making the "statement of truth", then I fail to see how you can
>possibly determine what "truth" is, and thus would suggest that you lose
the
>ability to determine if a "real" change in meaning has occured when the
>"statement of truth" is examined within another context. Which would mean
>that the wannabe-maxim is useless even if it were true?
>
>> >Which brings us back to: "All statements of truth are embedded a
>> >particular frame of reference from which they cannot be
>> separated without
>> >becoming suppositions." The "frame of reference" for my
>> "Blue period" is
>> the
>> >reality of the universe and the nature of "Blue". It has
>> nothing to do with
>> >the actual notation used to denote an attribute of blue.
>>
>> So remove the statement from the frame of reference and have
>> it still make
>> sense, then.
>
>You cannot and still have a "statement of truth". That is exactly my point.
>That the "statement of truth" has existence only because of the framework
of
>reality and the nature of blue. Take either away and you no longer have a
>"statement of truth". Of course, you are entitled to create an alternate
>reality for yourself, in which the maxim is accurate, and true statements
>can exist in the absense of referents, where you establish "truth"
>axiomatically. But then, not all the wishing in the world will allow you to
>pretend that the nature of your alternate reality applies to this reality
>(even though it is contained in our universe).
>
>> >I am going to try to remove the "frame of reference" e.g.
>> Joules, that you
>> >so object to, and using just the universe's attributes still provide
>> >"statements of truth". The "useful" statements I made about
>> "Blue", are so
>> >tied into the fabric of our universe that no matter where I
>> looked they
>> >crept out. Few people would recognise the numbers I gave as
>> being "blue"
>> >without help - a context if you would. Yet if I had removed
>> the "J" from
>> >this last statement - thus "Blue=4.1684x10^-19" - and seeing
>> as you seem to
>> >imagine there is something "special" about exponential
>> notation, perhaps
>> >"Blue=0.000 000 000 000 000 000 416 840", the essential
>> truth remains that
>> >that energy level represented is only available from a "blue photon".
>>
>> What energy level? You stopped representing energy when you
>> removed the "J"
>> and if you just wrote "Blue=4.1684x10^-19" on a phsyics test
>> the teacher
>> would mark you wrong. (And for good reason!) Is Blue=0.000
>> 000 000 000 000
>> 000 416 840 mph? Is Blue=0.000 000 000 000 000 000 416 840
>> grams? Or maybe
>> Blue=0.000 000 000 000 000 000 416 840 parsecs?
>
>Erm, no. You and the teacher would be wrong. The number gives the eV level,
>the ratio between the resting level and the exited level of an electron in
a
>hydrogen atom stimulated by a blue photon or quanta. In other words, it is
a
>valueless ratio - which conveniently (because the Joule is defined in eV
>Units) can be expressed in Joules (it represents an energy level, a
>"distance" from the nucleus as well as the balance of forces in the atom at
>a particular moment). Only by adding an invalid context do you make it "no
>longer a truth". You have also not succeeded in making it a supposition.
>Just no longer a truth and thus beyond the wanna-be-maxim.
>
>>
>> Sure, blue itself isn't changing at all in any of this. The
>> moon stays in
>> the same place no matter which finger you use to point at it
>> with, doesn't
>> it?
>>
>> (That doesn't shed much light on the nature of fingers
>> though, does it?)
>
>Ummm, it says quite a bit about anatomy (including fingers), vision,
>trignometry and geometry. At least when you notice how much of the moon is
>obscured by your finger and think about it a bit.
>>
>> You might try breaking down grammer of the maxim before you
>> get too far into
>> this again. What's the subject, for instance? It's a
>> statement about the
>> nature of statements isn't it? Not about the nature of
>> reality. (Which
>> couldn't give a hoot how you describe it.)
>
>
>> These particular
>> statements are
>> all meaningless out of context:
>>
>
>No, they all represent significant aspects of "universal truths" in many
>contexts. Particularly the fibonacci sequence (or the golden ratio), e,
>Plankes constant and the Gas constant. What you are obviously failing to
>grasp is that it is the fact that we have agreed that these digit symbols
>represent values which provides a context. If you wish to toss all
>rationality aside and translate them into a private babbling then you
remove
>the ability to communicate and thus the ability to determine a contextual
>truth (wannabe-maxim fails in the 1st clause), and you remove the ability
to
>establish an alternative framework in which the truths that these values
>represent might take on the value of a "supposition" (wannabe-maxim fails
in
>the 2nd clause). If you don't do that, then you recognise that they
>represent a value. And the ratios that these values represent have
>significance which is determined by the reality of the universe. If you
>recognise that, then you have agreed that they have a truth value as they
>stand. Which will not change as you alter their contexts, or which will
make
>them become false statements (as you did below) (such that the
wannabe-maxim
>fails to be relevant) or which will make them meaningless (so that they
>maxim fails in that they have not become suppositions).
>
>How do you define "truth" as used in the maxim?
>
>I have argued that there are certain realities which exist apart from your
>statements about it. When your statements match reality well enough to be
>useful for a given purpose, they are "true". When they fail to match
reality
>well enough to be useful, they no longer valid; no longer "true". If you
>disagree with this, please give an example (Given my aceding to your
>requests, I should insist that you do it using one of the examples below,
>but I don't) of something true in one context becoming a supposition in
>another context.
>
>> >1.41421...
>> >3.14159...
>> >6.626...x10^-41
>> >2.71828...
>> >0.70711...
>> >1.618...
>> >8.3145107...
>> >
>> >1,2,3,4,5,6,7...
>> >1,1,2,3,5,8,13...
>> >1,2,4,8,16,32,64...
>> >1,4,9,16,25,36,49,64...
>>
>>
>> The fact that, when put into context, they become very
>> powerful, has very
>> little to do with the nature of those particular strings of
>> numbers. How
>> about:
>>
>> >1.41421... times the diameter of a circle equals its circumfrence
>> >3.14159... is the squareroot of 2
>> >6.626...x10^-41 is the speed of sound in a vaccuum
>> >2.71828... is the cuberoot of e
>> >0.70711... miles per hour is the speed of light
>> And so on...
>>
>> No longer true or useful statements about anything are they?
>
>Here you make my point for me. That in order to invalidate the nature
>represented by the patterns I provided, you had to add a sequence of letter
>symbols which falsified their significance. That is, that you had to add to
>those numbers a false context to invalidate the "truths" that those numbers
>represent. So I take it that you are acknowledging that the numbers I
>proposed represent "some truth about reality" even when divorced from a
>context. Which means that expressed alone, these numbers do reflect "a
>truth". As in my previous example, you had to create a false context to
>remove "the truth" from them.
>
>>
>> >So, if you agree with me that these digit sequences (numbers and
>> >progressions) are "useful truths" in that they denote
>> certain "special"
>> >values tied into the fabric of the universe or the nature of numbers,
>>
>> When in context, yes.
>
>But what are you suggesting is the context? I am suggesting that the
context
>is the universe. And as you exist in the universe, you cannot avoid the
>context. They are built in constants in the nature of space-time and the
>energy-matter duality.
>>
>> >and that they remain "useful truths" without a particular "frame of
>> reference",
>>
>> But did you see the above? I just showed how they weren't at
>> all. That
>> when you change the frame of reference they are no longer
>> useful, in fact,
>> they're just plain dead wrong!
>>
>I don't understand what relevance you think this has in regards to the
>wannabe-maxim? I think you demonstrated anything about it all. You created
>either a lie or a meaningless babble so far as anyone else is concerned -
>because you sacrificed your ability to communicate effectively. But the
>values represented by the symbols continued to have their original values.
>And I cannot visualise how you imagined that you have turned the original
>"statements of truth" into a supposition. See above.
>
>>
>> Sorry, but agian, I think you need to rethink your belief
>> that these (or
>> any) numbers "remain "useful truths" without a particular "frame of
>> reference"."
>>
>> (Unless your going to tell me that these are sacred mystical
>> numbers that
>> are meaningful regardless of the relationships they
>> represent. But I'd be
>> truly surprised to find you having high tea in the Numerology
>> camp too much
>> of the time.)
>>
>No, no. It is the other way around. The Q'uabalists and others noticed that
>some numbers have "special properties" and by induction, assumed that
>because some numbers have "magical properties" that "all numbers have
>magical properties". The numbers and sequences I chose, I selected because
>they relate to the nature of numbers and the nature of the universe. They
>represent "truths" because they represent ratios which are "real" and occur
>over and over again. Once you start studying mathematics, or physics or
>chemistry or biology or astronomy, they leap out in all sorts of
>delightfully "unexpected" places. The fact that I wrote them in a
particular
>notation doesn't affect the underlying ratios. It is the ratios themselves
>which have significance. Even though sacred and mystical does not come into
>it. They are a function of structure. Some of them (e.g. "e", would remain
>the same in any universe where counting can occur and areas are possible -
>the value is intrinsic to those capabilities).
>
>> It's _really_ to step out of your context,isn't it?
>
>Please translate?
>
>>
>> -Prof. Tim
>>
>>
>TheHermit <Who wonders if Prof Tim is being deliberately obtuse or if he is
>participating in a high tea taken with a Q'uabalist :-) >
>