Russell,
my apologies for the "approximate" typing. I don't assign to your "not
following my comments" to that awful new keyboard I tried to use (light grey
letters on a slightly less light grey base - not visible and I am not a good
'blind'typist) with the YAHOO-mail spellchecker that garbles up the
letters - I think your uncertainty stems from a different knowledge-base I
use.
Classical thermodynamics I learned in 1942 when I identified it as "the
science which tells us how things would go wouldn't they go the way they do
go"
meaning the game of isotherm and reversible equational craze in closed
systems.
Then later Prigogine et al improved upon it, but I still hold the field
within the limited model of our epistemic - ever changing, enriching -
interpretation of the (obsolete) historical bases from very primitive
knowledge level times and accordingly primitive measurements by
unsophisticated instrumentation, subject to an all ingenious explanation on
THAT level. (Think about the dozen+ (and still counting) changing views
about the 'entropy' conceptS).
The 'scientific view' does not fit into the interconnected and interactive
wholeness - it is topically boundaried (reduced?) into a model view. It is
representative to our ongoing sciences, we cannot think including the
'totality'
using our matter-limited brainfunction, - only in a 'reduced-to-models' way,
which is pretty efficient as long as we do not want to explain "them all" by
the results drawn from within a limited model.
Our present view (totality, or wholeness) is far from know-it-all, but I
think it covers more information than had Ptolemy, Newton, Adam Smith or
Rousseau.
Brilliance of mind does not substitute for factual knowledge.
*
Singularity in my view is a "no-system" because there is no way we can
extract any information about it - unless we give up the definition. This is
how I view a 'closed' system, (not lawyerish: "well, you can look at it as
semi-closed, or even open, if you like,...") If it is closed, it is closed.
Singularity is nice to speak about, I hold: there is no such thing only in
sci-fi. We get usded to many sci-fi marvels and in the 15th step it looks
like real.
Russell, when I said good bye to my polymer science (1987) and started to
think I tried to throw out things to be 'believed' (axioms, paradoxes,
emergence, chaos). I retired with limited movablity and allowed myself to
get away from conventional reductionism. You are in the profession, books
projects, responsibility for what you said yesterday: I don't want to
persuade you to think differently, especially since I am fully aware of the
embryonic level of the 'new ways' I still try to find. I have questions,
very few answers and I doubt them.
John
----- Original Message -----
From: "Russell Standish" <r.standish.domain.name.hidden>
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2006 12:17 AM
Subject: Re: why can't we erase information?
>
> On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 08:04:40AM -0700, John M wrote:
> >
> > Russell,
> > thanks for your fime and effort to reply. 3 things:
> >
> > 1. You picked my Hawkng typo, I have many more. I do
> > recall that post and it gives me while writing, the
> > subconscious vacillation: which version is the right
> > and which the left? Very rarely do I wright his name.
>
> Well I was having a little "dig" at you - not being at all serious
> about it...
>
> >
> > 2. You use usable (used) physics views in a topic way
> > away from classical physics views, puting a systems
> > talk into space-time measuring with a morphology I
> > cannot (don't want to) follow in this thread.
> >
>
> This is the usual definition and context of the term "closed system".
> Of course the term closed means many other things: a closed set for
> instance, or "closure" in formal systems (which means the formal system
> is complete). But I always thought we were talking about the
> thermodynamic meaning.
>
>
> > 3. In your last par you said it: "isolated from the
> > rest of the unkiverse" exactly the singularity I DO
> > identify with Tom's description of a "closed system".
> >
>
> But I'm not sure a singularity is a closed system (the thermodynamics
> meaning anyway).
>
> > And 2Qs:
> > Yours:
> > > What is an unknowable closed system?<
> > If nothing (including information) "comes out" it must
> > be pretty "unknowable". In that ballgame ou suppose:
> > it turns "open" from "c;osed" and then again "closed",
> > I assume it disappears from our observation. I see no
> > indication that it keeps the same coordinates when
> > dissappeared as we found kit at when it was "open".
> > The coordunates you want to find it at dissipate as
> > well.
>
> I don't see why this should happen - perhaps it happens sometimes, but
> not to classical thermodynamics systems.
>
> > Not to mention the changes "or" world ujndergoes to...
> > Mine:
> > RSt:> Usually because it doesn't move :) Consider
> > > something inside a shielded container in a
> > vacuum...<
> > How is "move" identified in connection with (my
> > version of) closed system (singularity) with no
> > interconnection in space lor time of OUR habiturl
> > system? Assigning coordinates to "no-info" sounds
> > funny. And the shielded vacuum container is Physics
> > 101.
> >
> > I am on a different track...
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > John M
> >
>
> I suspect I don't follow you at all...
>
> --
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile)
> Mathematics 0425 253119 (")
> UNSW SYDNEY 2052 R.Standish.domain.name.hidden
> Australia
http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
> International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
>
> >
>
>
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Received on Sat May 06 2006 - 22:32:55 PDT