5 ms·

Well leaving aside Godel, I think one can have a theory of everything that has, as Rumsfeld would say, "known unknowns", i.e., a theory of everything which "man

by Allocator2008 18y ago

Well leaving aside Godel, I think one can have a theory of everything that has, as Rumsfeld would say, "known unknowns", i.e., a theory of everything which "manages" in some way unknown parameters. Like infinities in quantum field theory go away by the nature of string theory's elimination of arbitrarily small distances. Anyway. I think I'm keeping my money on string theory, but an interesting thought nonetheless!

maurycy 18y ago
What a brilliant observation about "known unknowns". Though, one could say that there are also unkown unkowns, and unkown knowns, yet.
DanielBMarkham 18y ago
If you read a bit of Wolfram, he asks a provocative question: suppose the universe is, in fact, discrete and not continuous. If this is the case, and I think that's non-controversial now, then it may be that Sir Newton took us way down the wrong road with his discovery of the integral. We've been doing continuous math-type things with a universe that simply does not work that way. The integral was simply a cheat -- a numbers game that looked as true to reality as we could possibly verify at the time. So we're working with known unknowns. That is, the integral works so well in most everything we do we're comfortable where it falls apart -- right around ToE, probably. But if we went belly-up as far back as Newton, where to start to fix it? I know I'm sounding like a shill for NKS now, but I _did_ find it had some really interesting ideas. In a computational universe, we could have really simple physics that lead to incredibly complex and non-intuitive results.
- DaniFong 18y ago
  I didn't think the question of continuous versus discontinuous universes has ever really been resolved in a convincing way. Do you have any references?
  - aswanson 18y ago
    No references and I may be going down the wrong path here, but wasn't there some relatively recent activity with respect to the quantization of space, with the Planck length being the minimal quantum?: http://www.scienceandresearchdevelopmentinstitute.com/planck.pdf http://www.scienceandresearchdevelopmentinstitute.com/planck...
    - DaniFong 18y ago
      As far as I know the question is completely theoretical: we haven't been able to use the idea to produce any predictions which we might use to measure whether the universe is this way or isn't. Also, that linked paper seems to be nothing other than numerology. It is interesting that the numbers are so close, but that could be a pure coincidence.
      - aswanson 18y ago
        Numerolgy, hilarious. I have to use that one someday, hope you don't mind. At any rate, I meant to post a Smolin paper on LQG that posited quantized space, and if I recall there was supposed to be some data coming in from an observatory that could lend some weight to the theory (back in 2005?).

maurycy 18y ago

What a brilliant observation about "known unknowns". Though, one could say that there are also unkown unkowns, and unkown knowns, yet.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

If you read a bit of Wolfram, he asks a provocative question: suppose the universe is, in fact, discrete and not continuous. If this is the case, and I think that's non-controversial now, then it may be that Sir Newton took us way down the wrong road with his discovery of the integral. We've been doing continuous math-type things with a universe that simply does not work that way. The integral was simply a cheat -- a numbers game that looked as true to reality as we could possibly verify at the time. So we're working with known unknowns. That is, the integral works so well in most everything we do we're comfortable where it falls apart -- right around ToE, probably. But if we went belly-up as far back as Newton, where to start to fix it? I know I'm sounding like a shill for NKS now, but I _did_ find it had some really interesting ideas. In a computational universe, we could have really simple physics that lead to incredibly complex and non-intuitive results.

DaniFong 18y ago
I didn't think the question of continuous versus discontinuous universes has ever really been resolved in a convincing way. Do you have any references?
- aswanson 18y ago
  No references and I may be going down the wrong path here, but wasn't there some relatively recent activity with respect to the quantization of space, with the Planck length being the minimal quantum?: http://www.scienceandresearchdevelopmentinstitute.com/planck.pdf http://www.scienceandresearchdevelopmentinstitute.com/planck...
  - DaniFong 18y ago
    As far as I know the question is completely theoretical: we haven't been able to use the idea to produce any predictions which we might use to measure whether the universe is this way or isn't. Also, that linked paper seems to be nothing other than numerology. It is interesting that the numbers are so close, but that could be a pure coincidence.
    - aswanson 18y ago
      Numerolgy, hilarious. I have to use that one someday, hope you don't mind. At any rate, I meant to post a Smolin paper on LQG that posited quantized space, and if I recall there was supposed to be some data coming in from an observatory that could lend some weight to the theory (back in 2005?).