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Post by mrsonde on Jul 23, 2016 23:29:54 GMT 1
Come on, come on - I haven't got all night!
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Post by mrsonde on Jul 23, 2016 23:43:17 GMT 1
Oh well, I guess she's gone off to brood and seethe, yet again.
Marchesa - I think you'd better prepare the emergency alternative board, encore. Jean's offended, again.
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Post by fascinating on Jul 24, 2016 9:05:33 GMT 1
I'm not sure I accept that definition of "absolute", where did you get it from? According to one dictionary I looked up it says "not qualified or diminished in any way".
If saying Pi is 3.14 is ABSOLUTELY precise then presumably 3.14159 is also ABSOLUTELY precise? Or isn't it?
Who the hell is Louise, and where is this Louise-Land of your fantasy?
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Post by mrsonde on Jul 24, 2016 18:58:09 GMT 1
I'm not sure I accept that definition of "absolute", where did you get it from? From the history of philosophy. Yeah, that will do. Real, objective, existent, immune from subjective distortion. Yes it is, within 5 decimal places. Wtf? Is this like - primary school? You are. You were when you posted as such on this board, anyway. Before you stomped off because Marchesa "insulted" you. It's sitting on the front row of a second-rate Sociology or maybe Women's Studies lecture in a second-rate college somewhere in the English provinces, in pigtails and gingham or Laura Ashley, sometime in the early 70s, dutifully noting down every ludicrous word some moustachioed reject from the LSE pontificates, or perhaps some beefy Lesbian from Salford, feeling very shaky in a confused but exciting way because she's being informed her entire value system is wrong and her Christian upbringing is perverted colonial patriarchal nonsense, and that if only she could shed herself of her false-consciousness she'd see socialism was the beatific future, where illusions like "economic prudence" and "race" and "scientific evidence" would finally be done away with.
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Post by aquaculture on Jul 24, 2016 23:35:26 GMT 1
It's sitting on the front row of a second-rate Sociology or maybe Women's Studies lecture in a second-rate college somewhere in the English provinces, in pigtails and gingham or Laura Ashley, sometime in the early 70s, dutifully noting down every ludicrous word some moustachioed reject from the LSE pontificates, or perhaps some beefy Lesbian from Salford, feeling very shaky in a confused but exciting way because she's being informed her entire value system is wrong and her Christian upbringing is perverted colonial patriarchal nonsense, and that if only she could shed herself of her false-consciousness she'd see socialism was the beatific future, where illusions like "economic prudence" and "race" and "scientific evidence" would finally be done away with. Do you realise what you've done there?
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Post by alancalverd on Jul 24, 2016 23:49:06 GMT 1
Just to add to the fun, absolute measurement has nothing to do with precision.
A wall is 10 bricks high. This is an absolute measurement because you have counted the bricks without reference to anything else.
If you used standard bricks and 10 mm mortar, you could measure the wall with a tape or a laser interferometer, and get a range of relative values around 750 mm with any degree of precision you care to pay for.
So to revert to the original question "how long is a piece of string" the absolute answer is "modulus (A - B)" where A and B are the vectors of the ends of the string. But like "10 bricks", the answer is of sod-all use.
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Post by fascinating on Jul 25, 2016 9:22:36 GMT 1
You just don't know how deep you are in la-la land do you?
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Post by fascinating on Jul 25, 2016 9:28:31 GMT 1
Just to add to the fun, absolute measurement has nothing to do with precision. A wall is 10 bricks high. This is an absolute measurement because you have counted the bricks without reference to anything else. If you used standard bricks and 10 mm mortar, you could measure the wall with a tape or a laser interferometer, and get a range of relative values around 750 mm with any degree of precision you care to pay for. So to revert to the original question "how long is a piece of string" the absolute answer is "modulus (A - B)" where A and B are the vectors of the ends of the string. But like "10 bricks", the answer is of sod-all use. I can't understand the last bit Alan. In the case of the brick wall, can you say with total precision the height of the wall, using a laser interferometer. Could you thereby come up with an "absolute measurement" of the wall height? In the case of the string, can we "absolutely measure" the values of A and B?
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Post by alancalverd on Jul 26, 2016 0:11:51 GMT 1
The notion of absolute measurement has nothing to do with precision. The absolute value of the height of the wall is 10 bricks because however you measure it, it will always be made from 10 bricks: an absolute statement. If you measure it with anything else you will by definition be getting a relative measurement: you are comparing its height with umpteen zillion wavelengths of your laser.
The absolute definition of a meter is the distance travelled by light in 1/299,792,458 of a second. No problem there (at least in principle) because the second is the time that elapses during 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the cesium 133 atom. In defining the second and thus the meter, all we are doing is counting unequivocal natural events, not comparing things. But as with the absolute height of the wall or the absolute length of the string, these are not particularly useful statements in practice.
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Post by fascinating on Jul 28, 2016 7:55:59 GMT 1
So, in principle, you cannot have an absolute measurement of a piece of string can you? You can't say (as with the bricks in the wall) it is so many atoms or molecules long, because the atoms are not arranged in a linear fashion. And of course coming up with a length such as 45cm is not absolute but relative, you are then comparing the string with something else.
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Post by alancalverd on Aug 1, 2016 16:55:21 GMT 1
Absolutely.
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Post by mrsonde on Aug 1, 2016 22:41:47 GMT 1
Just to add to the fun, absolute measurement has nothing to do with precision. A wall is 10 bricks high. This is an absolute measurement because you have counted the bricks without reference to anything else. If you used standard bricks and 10 mm mortar, you could measure the wall with a tape or a laser interferometer, and get a range of relative values around 750 mm with any degree of precision you care to pay for. So to revert to the original question "how long is a piece of string" the absolute answer is "modulus (A - B)" where A and B are the vectors of the ends of the string. But like "10 bricks", the answer is of sod-all use. Well, quite. So? The issue isn't precision. it's truth.
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Post by mrsonde on Aug 1, 2016 22:44:06 GMT 1
You just don't know how deep you are in la-la land do you? Don't be silly. You do realise Marchesa has access to your IP address, don't you? I have something even more certain. You are "louise" - why lie about it?
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Post by mrsonde on Aug 1, 2016 22:51:47 GMT 1
So, in principle, you cannot have an absolute measurement of a piece of string can you? You can't say (as with the bricks in the wall) it is so many atoms or molecules long, because the atoms are not arranged in a linear fashion. And of course coming up with a length such as 45cm is not absolute but relative, you are then comparing the string with something else. No. How many times do I have to point out this elementary truth? You merely have to state your parameters and your range of reference. Then you can state an absolute truth - repeatedly verifiable, within your parameter and your range. For this to become falsified requires a theory shift - but in that case your parameter spec has also shifted, and it hasn't really been falsified at all, merely contextualised. In the meantime, you can state absolute facts - spatio-temporal measurements. This is the foundation of science. I include statistical measurements within that rubric. If you deny this, you deny any possibility of knowledge at all. And that is the BBC agenda I've been pointing at.
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Post by alancalverd on Aug 1, 2016 23:49:50 GMT 1
Ooh-er! Don't he talk la-de-da? And all them science-sounding words! Bollocks, mostly, but tres posh with it.
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