Synergetics - jitterbug, scale
Gerald de Jong
.COM> writes:
>It's important, I think, to remember that the inside-out is not the mirror
> image. Remember the rubber glove Fuller was always using as his
> example: pull the rubber glove off of your left hand and you have a
> right-handed glove. But this glove is NOT the mirror image of the
> original, because it's inside-out: concave has become convex and
> convex has become concave.
yes, indeed. very good point.
>Reading Bucky requires reading ALL of Bucky, it seems.
oh no! where can i find the time? :)
>> also, is it not entirely possible that the topology of subatomic particles
>> resembles fractals (ie. Julia sets) more than shiny spheres?
>There's a problem with relating fractals to reality, though, and it's something
> I've been thinking about over the last few days. The main problem
> is that fractals require infinity: a finite volume/area enclosed by
> an infinite surface/perimeter. As Bucky was fond of pointing out,
> though, physics has disclosed no infinities. Humans' probing of the
> Universe has thus far discovered only finities.
i'm not so sure about that. i think that Bucky's main beef was with
the use of coordinate systems that were too "flat" and thereby introduced
infinity far off in the distance.
i know you've already got a lot to read <heh heh>, but i'd suggest that
you also make your way through "Chaos" by James Gleick (if you haven't
already). our recent probing into the universe has indeed revealed
infinities - in the simplest of nonlinear systems. it would seem that
even a jolted pendulum exhibits chaotic behavior - which is probably
best described as extreme (nearly infinite?) sensitivity to microscopic
conditions.
>if Nature is using fractals to design things, and
> fractals entail an infinitude of calculations, at what point does
> Nature say, ``That's close enough,'' and round off?
i'd guess that nature never gets tired of calculating, since She's
got access to the most incomprehensibly large massively parallel
machine - Universe. does She have to round it off?
>Also, when you write ``topology of subatomic particles'' I have to wonder what
> you mean. Einstein already showed us that the Universe consists
> entirely of ``discontinuous discrete-energy events''
well, it was iffy terminology to start with. suffice it to say that
these events appear from "above" (from much much larger scale) to be
discrete, but nobody is saying that they are so down deep. in fact
quantum mechanics has surrendered itself to being satisfied with a
"probability wave" description of quantum events (in other words:
uhh.. the particle might end up here, or there, but we'll just have
to wait and see), which does nothing to exclude the possibility of
a complex (infinitely so?) myriad of events behind the quantum
events. who knows what a subatomic particle looks like from the
inside out?
>And, discussing your ``scale loop,'' that would require a very different
> Universe than the one we've observed so far. This is not to say that
> such a thing is impossible -- I for one am willing to believe anything,
> really -- but current observations haven't borne this idea out.
> The macro world and the micro world are very different places, and
> the forces involved just don't ``scale.''
can you expand on that?
i sort of visualize a situation where each particle sort of stores inside
of it every interaction that it ever experiences, and as a result, the
entire experience of Universe would be stored "holographically" in
all the many discrete particles - each of them recording it's own
point of view. only the sum of all these experiences would be
able to make up Universe itself. of course i'm just "talking out
of my neck" as we say in Dutch. :)
--
________________ ___________ _________________
____/ gerald de jong \____/ rotterdam \____/ the netherworld \____
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
living on a billiard table, just a tad above sea level (4th floor)
Chris Rywalt
Subject: Synergetics - jitterbug, scale
> i know you've already got a lot to read <heh heh>, but i'd suggest that
> you also make your way through "Chaos" by James Gleick (if you haven't
> already). our recent probing into the universe has indeed revealed
> infinities - in the simplest of nonlinear systems. it would seem that
> even a jolted pendulum exhibits chaotic behavior - which is probably
> best described as extreme (nearly infinite?) sensitivity to microscopic
> conditions.
I haven't read Gleick's book (again, I've been meaning to) but I have done a
lot of research into fractals. I still don't recall that science has
revealed infinities, since the pendulum as a system is finite, as in
fact all systems are finite, Universe being the biggest system. As
far as sensitivity to conditions, this cannot be infinite either, as
the conditions themselves are finite -- packaged quanta -- and thus
everything occurs in finite steps.
> i'd guess that nature never gets tired of calculating, since She's
> got access to the most incomprehensibly large massively parallel
> machine - Universe. does She have to round it off?
Universe is still a finite machine. So, yes, Nature does have to round off.
If pi goes on infinitely, and Nature is using pi to calculate bubbles,
then for every bubble Nature creates She is either calculating
infinitely -- obviously not the case, or we would never see a bubble,
since as much as I would like to stick around that long I doubt I'll
manage it -- or She is rounding off somewhere down the line.
> can you expand on that? [``That'' being my contention that our universe is
> not just a sub-atomic particle in some larger universe and that there aren't
> any sub-atomic universes lurking smaller than ours.]
Yes. QED forces -- weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, and so on --
are very limited by distance. Thus, assuming humans have made a fairly
comprehensive list of forces acting in Universe, only gravity is
capable of long-range action. Therefore, if we are indeed just a sub-
atomic particle of a much larger universe, there must be some forces
at work which are both very long-range and very pervasive and thus
very nearly impossible to detect (much like the gravitational
attraction between two brass balls on planet Earth: the Earth's
gravitational field so overwhelms the gravitational fields of the two
balls, those fields are nearly unnoticeable).
As I said, I'm willing to believe that this is possible; but I also know of no
observations that would support such an idea. (I also wonder of how
much use such an idea would be; almost by definition, such a conclusion
would be meaningless to humans. But, I suppose the weak nuclear force
is also nearly meaningless except insofar as it increases humans'
understanding of Universe.)
> of course i'm just "talking out of my neck" as we say in Dutch. :)
In _Stranger in a Strange Land_, Jubal Harshaw calls it speaking ex cathedra
from his belly button. I'm very good at it -- so good, sometimes
people take me seriously.
Kirby Urner
>Universe is still a finite machine. So, yes, Nature does have to round off.
> If pi goes on infinitely, and Nature is using pi to calculate bubbles,
> then for every bubble Nature creates She is either calculating
> infinitely -- obviously not the case, or we would never see a bubble,
> since as much as I would like to stick around that long I doubt I'll
> manage it -- or She is rounding off somewhere down the line.
>
Picking up the PI thread... Bucky's contention was not that Nature is
rounding PI somewhere down the line, but doesn't use Pi at all.
Pi is useful in our algorithms (all of which truncate Pi -- keep in mind
that no calculation using non-terminating, non-repeating decimals
has ever been done by anyone, anywhere -- symbolic manipulation
doesn't require digital values, but once digits are introduced, they're
always terminated, i.e. rational in practice).
People may think that because trigonometric functions etc are useful
when predicting or modeling phenomena that therefore those phenomena
must somehow involve some kind of invisible "computing" on nature's part.
But the interplay of molecules and pressures which result in a bubble need
not involve anything like binary manipulation of electrons through logic
gates (our method).
Instead of saying that nature is involved in "rounding" inherently
non-terminating
sequences of digits, I think we should realize that Pi and root-of-five are
symbols
of algorithms, which, if run indefinitely, will continue to produce a string of
digits ad infinitum, how many depending on the time we allow the algorithm
to run. To say that "infinitely long strings of digits" really exist out
there somewhere,
to be rounded off by nature when she does practical things like make bubbles,
is misleading. These "infinite strings" do not exist anywhere and are not used
by anyone or anything. Nature is not "rounding" figments of our imagination
or approximating anything. To say our concepts are the real McCoy and nature
is "rounding" is to get it backwards. Nature is the reality, and our symbolic
systems and digit games are approximations thereto. To our infinite strings
from
algorithmic generators, nothing in nature corresponds, except her ability to
make each moment unique and different from the last.
Kirby
------------------------------------------------
Kirby T. Urner email: pd...@teleport.com (public access node)
4D Solutions www: http://www.teleport.com/~pdx4d/
Portland (PDX), Oregon "All realities are virtual" -- KU
Gerald de Jong
rites:
>> already). our recent probing into the universe has indeed revealed
>> infinities - in the simplest of nonlinear systems. it would seem that
>> even a jolted pendulum exhibits chaotic behavior - which is probably
>> best described as extreme (nearly infinite?) sensitivity to microscopic
>> conditions.
>I haven't read Gleick's book (again, I've been meaning to) but I have done a
> lot of research into fractals. I still don't recall that science has
> revealed infinities, since the pendulum as a system is finite, as in
> fact all systems are finite, Universe being the biggest system. As
> far as sensitivity to conditions, this cannot be infinite either, as
> the conditions themselves are finite -- packaged quanta -- and thus
> everything occurs in finite steps.
though quantum mechanics speaks of quanta - it doesn't predict them more
than to the level of probabilities. it appears that "from above" (from
a macro viewpoint) energy is quantized. we have no clue (i believe)
about the source of the unpredictability - and i doubt that we can
say definitely that it isn't due to perhaps even smaller nonlinear
events that combine into apparently stable quanta.
>> i'd guess that nature never gets tired of calculating, since She's
>> got access to the most incomprehensibly large massively parallel
>> machine - Universe. does She have to round it off?
>Universe is still a finite machine. So, yes, Nature does have to round off.
what's the basis for saying that Universe is finite?