Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by FollowingTheDao 1130 days ago
> Calculus provides efficient, high quality estimates for messy real world phenomena.

Can it love?

> Calculus put a man on the moon and a camera next to Pluto.

I am not saying the illusion is not useful, but all the things that come out of it are also inside the illusion.

What if Pluto is not as far away as we actually think it is?

4 comments

Generally we think things are far away when it takes a longer time to get to them. We have some reasonable assurance that the speed of light is immutable and so we can measure the distance in our frame of reference by bouncing light off of Pluto. Are you nerd sniping sir?
I am making the distinction of what we perceive to be reality to actual reality.

Distance is a human concept. The moment we stop thinking distance does not exist. It may be a limitation that we perceive distance as something to be overcome through rocket ships and not through other methods.

Time is also in the same category. If you want to read a good book on the topic read “the end of Time quote by Jason Barbour.

> What if Pluto is not as far away as we actually think it is?

What if, what if.. um.. nothing, really? Our ships continue to work for a while, (may be t=0), then they won't, and we correct the models or the math.

You have moved deeply out of the realm of the scientific, into pure imagination. What if squiglal butterplotz mishric?
It’s an imagination where new discoveries are found.

The idea of distance being a human construct is not a new idea and may be the underpinnings of spooky action at a distance.

Then once you imagine it and write it down in a testable prediction, get back to is. Before then you have no means of getting us here to there.
I have thought it was interesting that, Christians believe, God became human and of all the things in the universe he could choose to teach about, apparently more than anything it is all about love (of a particular kind, actually).