4 ms·

> Numbers like pi are not just magnitudes, but form critical relationships. Yes, relationships. But the only way to test relationships is to eventually get to

> Numbers like pi are not just magnitudes, but form critical relationships. Yes, relationships. But the only way to test relationships is to eventually get to measurements of magnitudes. > And relationship tests offer (unimaginable) orders of magnitude more stringent testing. How? > "Weak" relationship test: The 3-body problem. You can't prove the 3-body problem isn't rounding to the nearest planck unit. You can't measure it precisely enough. > Strong example: If wave equations were not exact to pi, the discrepancy would be obvious in a nanosecond, much less thousands, millions or 14 billion years. I don't think you're conceptualizing "a thousand digits" properly. > where any offset completely destroys its properties What's an experiment we could do that verifies pi doesn't have an offset of 1e-1000? Also keep in mind that just the slightest bit of gravity or cosmic expansion has a much much bigger warping effect then 1e-1000 and yet physics keeps working the way we expect, and we can't tell the difference for small enough amounts of those things. > The maximum discrepancy you can come up with would be an unimaginable infinitesimal, shrinking faster and faster every Plank unit of time since the Big Bang. And also shrinking relative to the increasing volume, in Plank lengths, of observable space ever since the Big Bang. Why would it have to keep shrinking? I think you're saying that for it to have no difference at all it would have to be that small. But my challenge is for an experiment that measures the difference. If some physical effect shifted over by 5 Planck units would you be able to tell? What if reality has just a tiny itty bit of jitter to it that ruins perfect numbers like Pi? > It is impossible to create a circle made up of discrete lengths (Plank or not) in flat space, due to basic geometry. So using that as a test, when no theory predicts or depends on a "perfect" spacial circle, is a red herring. We already know it does not exist. It's not a red herring when I'm suggesting that no test is even possible. Can you come up with a test?

Nevermark 3mo ago
> What's an experiment we could do that verifies pi doesn't have an offset of 1e-1000? Quantum mechanics, the wave equation. Electron shells, photochemistry, general chemistry, just about everything if we are talking about pi, or e, or i. 1 part off in trillions ^ trillions would impact the fusion of stars, the rates of chemical reactions, require adjustments to basic laws, violate conservation of energy as we know it, ... really obvious impacts. As in: "we would not be here" impacts. Cosmology has run experiments for us that ran billions of years. Contrast: Not everything can be tested with virtually unlimited precision, but basic mathematical constants in physics often can be. The gravitational constant is not testable like that. We don't have a mathematic derivation that we can leverage to test for violations like we do with pi, e, i, and other basic mathematical relationships that show up in physics. But often, even a tiny difference becomes obvious. We exist because the production of matter and anti-matter at the beginning of the universe was off by a tiny amount. Despite the small discrepancy, that there was a discrepancy is very clear. Another "we would not be here" test.
- Dylan16807 3mo ago
  > 1 part off in trillions ^ trillions would impact the fusion of stars, the rates of chemical reactions, require adjustments to basic laws, violate conservation of energy as we know it Pointing at entire fields is not helpful. Can you give me one specific measurement and an estimate of how far off it would be? > really obvious impacts. As in: "we would not be here" impacts. That sounds pretty nonsense to me. The range of possible values for life isn't that narrow. And relativity is already in there ruining any straightforward conservation of energy and mass by constantly shifting the weight of things as their state changes. But it still works just fine! And we don't know exactly how strong that effect is, which could hide all sorts of imprecision in the real world. It would not be obvious. > Not everything can be tested with virtually unlimited precision, but basic mathematical constants in physics often can be. I'm begging you, name a specific test. One that could tease out 1e-1000. > But often, even a tiny difference becomes obvious. We exist because the production of matter and anti-matter at the beginning of the universe was off by a tiny amount. Despite the small discrepancy, that there was a discrepancy is very clear. Another "we would not be here" test. And if the matter-antimatter imbalance was 1e-1000 it would be imperceptible. It would be less than one atom in the entire visible universe, by an unimaginable factor. It was somewhere around 1e-9, probably, sort of. Not that small at all.
  - Nevermark 3mo ago
    > Pointing at entire fields is not helpful. Can you give me one specific measurement and an estimate of how far off it would be? You are dismissing my point, then asking me to make it. You can think of tests/measurements of values as falling into different classes. The strongest tests of all are for the critical values of systems. Because any discrepancy would result in entirely different system behaviors. Single highly accurate measurements are much lower on the rung. Complementing those are many tests with known statistical inaccuracy. Etc. Single tests? Every experiment involving quantum mechanics tests pi's role in those equations to a much lesser extent. Similarly, any test involving gravity tests the gravitational constant. But we have much stronger tests for pi in quantum mechanics that we do for g in gravitation. There isn't just one kind of measurement/test, there are many. And we want the strongest test we can make in any given situation. But of course, we can always perform weaker tests. Validating pi in quantum mechanics can be done with extreme robustness, because the entire theory depends on that value critically. Even the tiniest discrepancy would result in different physics compounding over all Plank space and time units, over billions of years and universe expansion, and we wouldn't be here. Of course, we can't rule out any discrepancy. But in this case, we can rule out discrepancies down to unimaginable infinitesimals. I doubt anyone even knows how to characterize how much of a discrepancy from pi would still be consistent with what we know. That tiny. The criticality is what gives us this far stronger test. Non-critical values cannot be tested this way. Pi can. Particular tiny ranges of stable constants in a stable 3-body system can (to a lesser extent, given the smaller system and higher bounds on criticality). Another way to view the systemic criticality of pi, is to recognize that pi is not just a representation for a particular magnitude, but a representation of conserved cyclic behavior. Any deviation from pi breaks cyclic behavior. Thus, the implications of pi in a theory, and our ability to test pi, are profoundly greater than for most other constants. Because the difference between cyclic vs. non-cyclic behaviors, is profound. Not just slightly different behavior, but entirely different behavior.

Nevermark 3mo ago

> What's an experiment we could do that verifies pi doesn't have an offset of 1e-1000? Quantum mechanics, the wave equation. Electron shells, photochemistry, general chemistry, just about everything if we are talking about pi, or e, or i. 1 part off in trillions ^ trillions would impact the fusion of stars, the rates of chemical reactions, require adjustments to basic laws, violate conservation of energy as we know it, ... really obvious impacts. As in: "we would not be here" impacts. Cosmology has run experiments for us that ran billions of years. Contrast: Not everything can be tested with virtually unlimited precision, but basic mathematical constants in physics often can be. The gravitational constant is not testable like that. We don't have a mathematic derivation that we can leverage to test for violations like we do with pi, e, i, and other basic mathematical relationships that show up in physics. But often, even a tiny difference becomes obvious. We exist because the production of matter and anti-matter at the beginning of the universe was off by a tiny amount. Despite the small discrepancy, that there was a discrepancy is very clear. Another "we would not be here" test.

Dylan16807 3mo ago
> 1 part off in trillions ^ trillions would impact the fusion of stars, the rates of chemical reactions, require adjustments to basic laws, violate conservation of energy as we know it Pointing at entire fields is not helpful. Can you give me one specific measurement and an estimate of how far off it would be? > really obvious impacts. As in: "we would not be here" impacts. That sounds pretty nonsense to me. The range of possible values for life isn't that narrow. And relativity is already in there ruining any straightforward conservation of energy and mass by constantly shifting the weight of things as their state changes. But it still works just fine! And we don't know exactly how strong that effect is, which could hide all sorts of imprecision in the real world. It would not be obvious. > Not everything can be tested with virtually unlimited precision, but basic mathematical constants in physics often can be. I'm begging you, name a specific test. One that could tease out 1e-1000. > But often, even a tiny difference becomes obvious. We exist because the production of matter and anti-matter at the beginning of the universe was off by a tiny amount. Despite the small discrepancy, that there was a discrepancy is very clear. Another "we would not be here" test. And if the matter-antimatter imbalance was 1e-1000 it would be imperceptible. It would be less than one atom in the entire visible universe, by an unimaginable factor. It was somewhere around 1e-9, probably, sort of. Not that small at all.
- Nevermark 3mo ago
  > Pointing at entire fields is not helpful. Can you give me one specific measurement and an estimate of how far off it would be? You are dismissing my point, then asking me to make it. You can think of tests/measurements of values as falling into different classes. The strongest tests of all are for the critical values of systems. Because any discrepancy would result in entirely different system behaviors. Single highly accurate measurements are much lower on the rung. Complementing those are many tests with known statistical inaccuracy. Etc. Single tests? Every experiment involving quantum mechanics tests pi's role in those equations to a much lesser extent. Similarly, any test involving gravity tests the gravitational constant. But we have much stronger tests for pi in quantum mechanics that we do for g in gravitation. There isn't just one kind of measurement/test, there are many. And we want the strongest test we can make in any given situation. But of course, we can always perform weaker tests. Validating pi in quantum mechanics can be done with extreme robustness, because the entire theory depends on that value critically. Even the tiniest discrepancy would result in different physics compounding over all Plank space and time units, over billions of years and universe expansion, and we wouldn't be here. Of course, we can't rule out any discrepancy. But in this case, we can rule out discrepancies down to unimaginable infinitesimals. I doubt anyone even knows how to characterize how much of a discrepancy from pi would still be consistent with what we know. That tiny. The criticality is what gives us this far stronger test. Non-critical values cannot be tested this way. Pi can. Particular tiny ranges of stable constants in a stable 3-body system can (to a lesser extent, given the smaller system and higher bounds on criticality). Another way to view the systemic criticality of pi, is to recognize that pi is not just a representation for a particular magnitude, but a representation of conserved cyclic behavior. Any deviation from pi breaks cyclic behavior. Thus, the implications of pi in a theory, and our ability to test pi, are profoundly greater than for most other constants. Because the difference between cyclic vs. non-cyclic behaviors, is profound. Not just slightly different behavior, but entirely different behavior.