Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!yale!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!wex@dali.pws.bull.com From: wex@dali.pws.bull.com (Buckaroo Banzai) Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds Subject: Re: "Space" -- apology and clarification Message-ID: Date: 7 Aug 90 22:08:26 GMT References: <9007250107.AA01311@hitl.vrnet.washington.edu> Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu Organization: Bull Worldwide Information Systems Inc. Lines: 58 Approved: hitl@hardy.u.washington.edu for virtual-worlds@milton.u.washington.edu (from news@pws.bull.com (Remote NNTP postings)) id ; Tue, 7 Aug 90 18:04:39 EDT <1141.26bbff7e@waikato.ac.nz> Nntp-Posting-Host: dali.pws.bull.com In-Reply-To: phys2094@waikato.ac.nz's message of 4 Aug 90 23:14:06 GMT In article <1141.26bbff7e@waikato.ac.nz> phys2094@waikato.ac.nz writes: I responded to the above note in what has proven to be a controversial note. An apology is in order. [Apology text deleted.] Thank you! It takes a pretty big man to admit a mistake as forthrightly as you did. Please note that I do not withdraw all my criticisms, but here I restate them in the hope of generating a rational response. > TIME is just another space, one that we have forgotten how to travel > freely in. 1. I cannot but interpret this to mean that humans have had the ability to journey through time. This to me is not a justifiable scientific statement. Will is, I think, being a bit overzealous here. From my (limited) readings, I am given to understand that the effects of various drugs on the time sense, plus the apparently-different time sense of some aboriginal people, is taken as evidence that we (homo sapiens) have the biochemical ability to perceive time in a way different than we do now. This difference may be evolutionary or cultural. In any event, one ought not to take "time travel" too literally in this context. > IMAGINARY: contradictory spaces. Sqrt[-1]. Both True and False. EG: > our construction of mental images from words, wave propagation, inside a > black hole. 2. I object to illustrating contradictory spaces with wave propagation and black hole interiors. If you can think of a better way to do this, please speak up. I have been worry about this off and on. One thing that comes to mind is to somehow partition the imaginary space into "pieces" and represent the pieces as simultaneous places along a line. Thus, a contradiction (SQRT(-1)) would be represented as a contradiction: one thing appearing simultaneously in multiple places. This is already done sometimes with negative roots which are broken up into a real number and an imaginary one (7i or the real number seven times the square root of minus-one). I cannot accept that concept of space in Descartes' sense can be extended to include the measurement theory types of spaces as perhaps orthogonal extensions. I need to better understand your confusion before I can answer this. In my recent posting titled "Space" I give some examples of dimensions that take advantage of other measurement types. My paper and chapter give more examples. Please try to elucidate your confusion. -- --Alan Wexelblat phone: (508)294-7485 Bull Worldwide Information Systems internet: wex@pws.bull.com Today is Hiroshima Day. Rest in peace 200,000+ innocents