Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (9783)	3/26/2001 8:05:58 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

c3.lanl.gov Zeno's Paradoxes The Archer's Arrow An archer picks up an arrow, places it agains the bowstring, draws the string back and lets the arrow fly towards the target. It looks like it will be a bulls-eye, but of course we won't know for sure until it hits the target. Before the arrow reaches the target, it must first travel half of the distance to the target. From there the arrow travels half of the remaining distance to the target. Quickly, the arrow travels half of the distance which remains after that, then half of the distance that is still between it and the target. In fact, before it can get to the target, the arrow must always first go half of the distance that remains between it and the target. Gee.... Does the arrow ever hit the target? Its simple, each "half the remaining distance to the target" takes up half as much time. You can imagine an infinite number of "half the distances" but then they become infinitely small. You can keep adding these smaller and smaller amounts but they don't add up to an infinite distance but have a limiting factor of the actual distance from the archer to the target. I don't know if you would call this a mathematical proof but one could be constructed that would show how the "half the distances" and "half the times" don't add up to an infinite amount. Another way of looking at it is these "half the distances" eventually get so small that they are less then the uncertainty in the position of the arrow. Of course Zeno knew nothing about quantum mechanics. Tim

To: The Philosopher who wrote (9783)	3/26/2001 8:33:52 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Godel didn't say that there were no truths, but that some truths weren't possible to answer from ONLY within the system. The example I was given was comparing certain sizes of infinities can't be determined. The example was the question is there an infinity between the smallest known infinity (the set of integer numbers, known as aleph zero) and the infinity expressed as all real numbers, called the continuum. A mathematician named Cohen showed that this was in the category of unanswerable questions in mathematics. But there are mathematical proofs that don't have this problem. I can prove that there is an integer between 2 and 4. That is NOT an undecidable question. Questions like what happened BEFORE the BB are of the unanswerable type because they can only be answered referencing something outside of the universe in which we exist. It isn't our universe anymore so its relevance to and answerability in our world is not decidable within the context of our existence. We can pose the question, but can't answer it definitively. Therefore, I remain an agnostic. There will always be doubt on this topic as long as I'm bounded by this universe (in my corporeal form, that is).