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From your comment above I am making the (admittedly presumptuous) inference that you didn't study Quantum physics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renormalizatio
by ukj 6y ago
From your comment above I am making the (admittedly presumptuous) inference that you didn't study Quantum physics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renormalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renormalization
If giving up infinities allows me to understand The Universe better, I don't see how that robs me of marveling at the stars - it only makes it more exciting!
I can't comprehend an infinite universe. Nobody with finite memory/time can.
- cjfd 6y agoWell, I did a PhD in quantum field theory and as part of that published a paper on renormalization..... Of course the infinite sets involved can be approximated using finite sets if one does not mind losing important symmetries. Still, these finite sets would still be frightingly and incomprehensibly large.... If one wants to comprehend anything one may be better off just ignoring quantum mechanics..... And I am not talking about the measurement problem. I am talking about the incredible vastness of the state space. The wave function of the universe is an incredible and completely untractable thing even if one assumes it is finite. It contains all possible histories of the universe for one thing and lets all of these possible histories interact with one another.
- ukj 6y agoI hear you (and I obviously made a bad inference re: your background - apologies), but there is a distinction to be made between large-but-finite (computable? halting?) and infinite (non-computable? non-halting?) sets. We can't comprehend the universe using numerical methods - it's too complex for our brains/computers. But we can understand complexity using symbolic methods. Symbolism/representationalism (religion) is rather inevitable part of the human condition. ∞