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Math is literally the language of the Universe.
It did not have to be like this. Matter and energy could just as easily behave in random, unpredictable ways. In fact, at a quantum level, they do. But even this quantum randomness obeys statistical — i.e. mathematical — laws, and at nonquantum scales the behaviour of matter and energy becomes mathematically predictable.
It did not have to be like this. Matter and energy could just as easily behave in random, unpredictable ways.
originally posted by: spy66
a reply to: Korg Trinity
Do you see anything wrong in this video?
It is actually displaying the Experiment wrong. And this is what happeneds when People dont understand what they are doing.
Do you see what is wrong? I bet you wont. And i dont think anyone else will either. Even though i have given a Clue.
Is this (image bellow) how People think it would be like if the Experiment was done according to the video?
originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Astyanax
It did not have to be like this. Matter and energy could just as easily behave in random, unpredictable ways.
Could have. But they don't. Not in our Universe anyhow. A good job they don't, I say!
Random vectors and fields I would not like at all.
You can however see the issues at hand... from the perspective of the person standing on the asteroid light appears to have traveled further than the people on the spaceship measured it traveling.
What I'm trying to avoid is the idea that we've somehow decided how the universe works because we think it obeys our laws of mathematics.
A civilization billions of our lightyears away will have a completely different way of interpreting the universe that may very well have no meaning to us. So whose language supersedes?
When we use a light year, it is based off our own locally derived and arbitrarily defined units of measure. There is no universal measure for distance.
Relativity should apply to universal understanding as well.
originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: Korg Trinity
And let's not even get into the Lorentz Contraction.
Not to mention calabi yau space
The problem is easily avoided by acknowledging that they are not our laws. They fall out of the initial condtions that gave rise to the universe. We have merely found the way to understand them, which we call mathematics.
It takes a leap of faith, but only a small one, to surmise that, absent such a frame, we would not exist to observe the universe and interpret its laws. Surely that is easily argued, though empirical proof will always be lacking. This is because the implications, as I know you are aware, cut both ways: it had to be like this for us to be here, but if it could be otherwise, how would we know?
However advanced they are, their mathematical concepts and operations will be translatable into ours, and vice versa. That is because both would be systems for describing the same universal relationships, or — as we call them — the laws of physics. Both would be descriptions of, and operations upon, the same metrical frame.
How will we do this? Why, we will measure both against one of two universal yardsticks, the distance travelled by light in a given time or the Planck length. Both of which are invariant however they are observed, whether by the inhabitants of Gliese 180c or by ourselves.
We will, that is to say, do it using the awe-inspiring mathematical consistency of the universe.
The objections you put forward in your post are based on the assumption that the laws of nature are a human construct. Therefore, you can't use them to prove that they are a human construct. You have to use other arguments, one based on premises that would be equally true whether maths is universal, or a human invention. That's the way it works.
originally posted by: PhotonEffect
Mathematics is a conceptual abstraction that helps us achieve some relative understanding of these so called laws. But the universe may very well operate in ways that are beyond our mathematical comprehension.
Math is not an abstract human concept, it is fundamental to reality.
It might also be worth mentioning that should we be lucky enough to find intelligent life out there, Math would be the way we would communicate, precisely because 1+1 = 2 where ever you are in the universe.