Re: virus: Brain Tennis

JPS (schneids@centuryinter.net)
Fri, 25 Oct 1996 06:36:41 -0500


On Thu, Oct 24, at 16:50, Kenneth Boyd wrote:
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> > > the meme theorists are themselves putting forward a mystical
> > > argument. Just like Christians, they're claiming that the Word
> > > can control the real.
> >
> > What is "mystical"? Either an argument works or it doesn't.
> > Quantum mechanics works, even though it seems "mystical".
> > Would Mr. Barbrook agree that 'people act according to various
> > beliefs they accept'? If so, then the identical statement
> > 'people act according the various memes which they host'
> > should also be accepted.
>
> Mathematics is Very Mystical. Tell me [without going circular, or
> stopping at the mathematics level] how Voyager__ could exploit math to
> fly by ALL 4 gas giant planets! Sure, there's a lot of technology in
> use--but no math, no 4 gas-giant flyby.

I never said math was NOT mystical. Who are you arguing with?

> Quantum mechanics looks mystical because it must be worked in highly
> abstract math.
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Perhaps that is one reason, but there are lots of other situations
which can only be approached using highly abstract math, which are not
taken to be mystical. Example: fluid mechanics - everybody is familiar
with the 'meniscus', but it is staggeringly difficult to predict, since
it requires the solution of an extremely complicated nonlinear partial
differential equation: even more complicated than the Schrodinger
equation as it looks in, say, Bell's Theorem. But nobody says that
fluid mechanics looks mystical, while people will say that Bell's
Theorem requires a certain 'mystical' interpretation of quantum
mechanics... that is due to that "conscious observation" makes,
or seems to make, a difference in the outcome of events, which, I
assert, is why quantum mechanics appears mystical.

-JPSchneider