Author:
Wade A. Tisthammer
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Date Posted: 02/12/04 10:17am
In reply to:
Damoclese
's message, "Less than" on 01/18/04 4:13pm
>>
>>That link doesn't claim that points don't exist in
>>reality.
>
>If it be the case that in reality a point can be
>anything (or math for that matter) then the value of a
>point is intrinsically nothing. It MUST be nothing,
>because it can assume ANY value.
What do you mean by “value”? It exists in space, e.g. (0,0). It’s just there.
>>On the contrary, it is quite meaningful in the context
>>I am applying it in. What day did he write about last
>>year? This wouldn't even be a point in the sense of
>>having no "thickness," it has a temporal "thickness"
>>of 24 hours. Yesterday is a point in time in that
>>sense, to say that yesterday is meaningless will not
>>help matters.
>
>You are defining a point in time as something
>temporal. That's fine, but the point itself has to be
>meaningless as I said above.
I can easily understand its meaning. Nonetheless, it doesn’t seem to help matters. What day did he write about last year?
>The main question here is whether or not mathematical
>terms hold any water in reality or if mathematics
>simply stands in symbolically for reality.
We’re just dealing with simple logic here. If Shandy was writing at the rate of one day per year for as long as time has existed, and if the past is infinite, what day did he write about last year? Logic is reliable, I think, even here. Without any reason to abandon logic (even quantitative logic, like math) I think we should trust it.
Either Shandy finished his autobiography or he is infinitely far behind. What about being finitely far behind? Then there was a point where he finished sometime in the past, given by the equation Y = 4 * (D – 1)/1457 where we round up Y (the year he finished), and D is the day he wrote about last year. (The numbering scheme is backwards, where last year is year 1, two years ago is year 2 etc.; today is day 1, yesterday is day 2 etc.). There is just no way around this for any finite D. About the only way to avoid this if he is infinitely far behind rather than finitely far behind, but this generates absurdities as well.
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