Posted by
Phil Henshaw-2 on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/bigger-plans-bigger-little-mistakes-tp523782p523821.html
Yes, well that brings up one of the other interesting things my dad
taught me... :-) People are really really stubborn. When I started
explaining to him the details of how you could draw reliable explanatory
principles while referring to physical things rather than mathematical
constructs based on measures he gave up in emphatic exasperation,
saying, "Everything you say is true Phil, it's, just, not, physics!!".
Look, it's not up to me to get anyone to admit that physics exists in a
real world. That's up to you. The evidence is pretty clear that we
need to figure out the connection somehow though.
The evidence is very strong that the aggregate global efficiency of
economic processes [DOE figures
-
http://www.synapse9.com/issues/GroEfficiency40.ppt] is improving as one
would expect if there were something like the 2nd law operating (i.e.
reducing waste by a decay curve not tending toward zero), and that that
pattern is consistent with all personal experience, that resource
exploitation ending in successively improving efficiency follows the
same developmental 'bump on a curve' starting with easier steps and
ending with waste reduction following the same decay curve that does not
tend to zero. It's quite validly demonstrated by the productivity of
cleaning your plate after a meal. Licking your plate after scraping up
the food with utensils with increasing effort and getting diminishing
returns, is a very productive last little refinement for getting all
there is, and still leaves some behind. Licking a plate again and
again, or after someone else has already licked it, though, is not
productive. You're still wondering whether any true thing can be said
about anything that is not well defined mathematically. That's a real
hurdle.
How about trying an example of some statement or principle or behavior
or anything that seems to suggest the physical world is not constrained
by natural limits?
Phil Henshaw ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040
tel: 212-795-4844
e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com
explorations: www.synapse9.com <
http://www.synapse9.com/>
-----Original Message-----
From:
[hidden email] [mailto:
[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Tuesday, May 01, 2007 12:46 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] bigger plans, bigger little mistakes
Humpty,
OK, I give up. Even though I may agree with your conclusions (yup,
doubling the world economy ever couple of decades is probably not a good
thing) I can't find any scientific validity in the arguments you use to
get there. Real science does not give equal weight to your version of
the second law as it does to Clausius's, no matter how much you may want
it to. Your constant redefinitions of scientific terms to mean something
you want them to mean rather than what they mean for everyone else makes
conversations bizarre and frustrating.
Robert
On 4/30/07, Phil Henshaw <sy at synapse9.com> wrote:
Robert,
As to "which 2nd law"? I guess I try to be consistent in allowing
people their regular meanings for their own terms while also trying to
connect those meanings to others that come from other perspectives. I
don't mind being called on the ambiguities at all. Some people think
nothing is real unless it can be defined and other people think nothing
is real unless it can't be defined. These both make perfect sense to
me, referring to different meanings of 'real'. The first meaning of
'real' as 'well defined' means 'part of a language' and the second
meaning of 'real' as 'needing to be undefined' means 'part of the
physical world'. I think this is a fascinating dichotomy, and
especially curious that our normal way of speaking uses the exact same
terms to refer to both meanings, (like the word 'apple'), though our
references are usually distinct (to either the thing or the idea).
I guess the '2nd law' I refer to beyond the world of precise
mathematical definitions may well originate with my dad's very skillful
explanation and demonstrations of physical properties that I thoroughly
enjoyed from age 1 on. I didn't learn the theory part till high school.
My dad was a college physics prof. who was a true master of the lab
demonstration method of teaching, which of course modern teachers have
tried to replace with theory, the whole theory and nothing but the
theory. I suspect it's my very clear perception, that the theories are
failing to communicate huge parts of what they mean in the physical
world, that partly motivated my expanding on explanatory principles for
'indefinable' physical things from ones for definable ones. One thing
I do more than others is use my models to study the data that does not
fit them.
Its one of the most curious aspects of physics that the theory of
physics actually never refers to any physical thing, but only to
idealized relationships between measures. There are dozens of ways to
show that there is really a very large difference between the idealized
model of physics and the ordinary things of experience, like, well, all
individual events. Physics describes a statistical world, not an
actual world, and all actual events progress differently than described
by physics. That doesn't mean the explanatory principles of physical
wouldn't apply to 'undefined' physical events, just that we haven't
learned how. Great useful explanatory principles like the 2nd law of
thermodynamics get short shrift as a consequence. The conservation
laws too.
I think if we were able to show that our global warming strategy
violates the 2nd law as expressed in physical systems in general, we'll
save 50 years of pursuing a demanding strategy that, as planned, is sure
to fail. Preventing the greater disruptions of global warming is
important to do, of course, but partly to give us time to fix the real
source of the problem that is actually fixable. The present plan is go
to all that trouble in order to perpetuate the underlying problem.
It's all ridiculous, of course, except that continually doubling the
real size of the world economy every 20 years, forever, if you count
real physical things anyway, is infinitely more ridiculous!! :-)
Phil Henshaw ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040
tel: 212-795-4844
e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com
explorations: www.synapse9.com <
http://www.synapse9.com/>
-----Original Message-----
From:
[hidden email] [mailto:
<mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 4:42 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] bigger plans, bigger little mistakes
On 4/29/07, Phil Henshaw <sy at synapse9.com> wrote:
<snip>
Thus it would still appear to me that the plan for fixing global warming
violates the 2nd law, ...
Which 2nd law, Phil? Not the one generally recognised by the scientific
community, as discussed earlier. It rather reminds me of scene in
"Through the Looking Glass" where Alice meets Humpty Dumpty:
...There's glory for you!' [said Humpty Dumpty]
`I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell
you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.
`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it
means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
Sound familiar?
R
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20070501/7e88d0be/attachment.html