3 ms·

So strictly speaking, when you don't see the person behind you, you can only make a prediction/hypothesis that if you turn around you will see that person again

So strictly speaking, when you don't see the person behind you, you can only make a prediction/hypothesis that if you turn around you will see that person again. It's based on some laws of physics suggesting that a person can't disappear, say, in one nanosecond. But hypothesis is just a hypothesis, and it's not observation of reaality, e.g. a fact. There is a pretty good Overcoming Bias post on why this is wrong: http://lesswrong.com/lw/pb/belief_in_the_implied_invisible/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/pb/belief_in_the_implied_invisible/

mojuba 17y ago
Nice read, thank you. So he understands that when we lose sight of that photon, from that point on our knowledge about it becomes a hypothesis based on laws of physics. Unfortunately laws of physics are neither 100% accurate nor complete - there may be some laws not discovered and formulated yet and even those discovered never give you 100% accuracy in making predictions. However, we are talking about infinities, which is a different kind of beast. My main thesis is that in order to measure infinite distance you need infinite time, which we simply don't have at our disposal, and thus infinity in any of its form can't be observed in principle.