From a short dialog today in my combox as an aside to our discussion of Natures lack of determinism and any consequences on discussions of free will.

So you think the universe is not continuous because irrational numbers are not real? Do you think that differentiability is a useful concept but doesn’t really apply to reality? Why then Wigner’s “unreasonable success of mathematics” if there is no underlying reality to those mathematical concepts (like pi).I wasn’t clear. Pi does not exist in the real world. It’s not that we can’t measure pi exactly, but that it’s literally impossible for it to exist, exactly. How could you have a circle in the real world whose radius or circumference is an irrational number? You couldn’t. So pi, and math generally, is just an elegant approximation of reality.

This is worth a little elaboration. Continuity, mathematically speaking is all “about” that dense uncountable set of irrational numbers. Differentiability likewise requires not just continuity but that the manifold in question be “smooth.” Pi as was noted in a following reply is not limited to the ratio of circumference and diameter but crops of in a myriad of places. My interlocutor JA offers that just like that ratio for pi, all these others are “idealizations” and don’t reflect any reality.

When we make mathematical models of the Universe in Physics the common way of approaching these models is to assume that our measurements are inexact and that many of these models are closer to what is “really” being measured than our inexact measurements. When pi appears in descriptions of electron orbits we think that this value pi is “real” and the measurements of electron energy levels which depend on fundamental constants like pi and Planck’s constant and the electron mass are approximate. Someday we expect that we will arrive a a theory in which Planck’s constant and the electron mass like pi fall out as consequences of a mathematical understanding so that just like circumference/diameter all these numbers will be arrived at via fundamental relationships.

Or take the continuity/differentiability matter, which by the by depends as noted above on irrational numbers as well. Early astronomers like Galileo and Kepler took very imprecise measurements to deduce some relationships to describe motion. Newton and a host of later mathematicians went to work with this erecting an elaborate and very beautiful framework which today are known the Hamiltonian and Lagrangian descriptions of classical mechanics. These equations then can be pressed into service many many orders of magnitude past their original measurements without requiring modification and allow for example cis-lunar docking of spacecraft. These descriptions as well drive our methods and intuitions in the quantum (very short distance or high energy) regions and the relativistic ones as well. One suggestions as to why the mathematics of continuous differentiable manifolds is so important and successful at describing nature is that this description of nature (as continuous and differentiable) is accurate, that is it reflects reality.

Current Physics understands a number of fundamental particles to be “point-like”, that is to say that their best description physically speaking is as a “point.” A point in space is commonly thought to be an idealized mathematical concept. There is no “such thing” as a real “point.” Small dots or specks of dust are used to illustrate for the imagination what something approaching a point might be as a learning aid. However quarks and electrons, for example (and setting aside String theory for now) are described in the theory which we use today that best describes nature, the Standard Model, are point-like objects. Our best description of these (real) things is as a point (and it might be added that protons, neutrons, and baseballs are not point-like in our best descriptions). My eldest daughter recoiled when she heard my description of an electron as “point-like.” The principal problem for her was that electrons could not be point-like and massive. Yet mass is just a property. Like spin and charge, mass is just a numerical value assigned to that point-like object which affects how it interacts with other objects.

That being said, which is more real? The inexact measurement values or theoretical value which they approach? If the things you see with your eyes and other perceptive senses are seeing things which you believe to be real, then I offer that these concepts, pi, continuity, and point-like electrons represent our best understanding of what that reality “really” is. They are as real as the chair you sit upon for they are fundamental pieces of our understanding of how that chair is best described. If the chair is real then there are only two possibilities. Either our current (Standard Model) as our best description of that said chair reflects reality (in which case pi, irrational numbers and so on are also real) or there exists a future theoretical model (consistent with our current measurements) will replace it. If that future theory also has properties like continuity and constants (some irrational like pi) arise naturally in that future (correct) theory then … aren’t irrational numbers therefore real? How could it not be so?

1. Quoting Williams on Dostoevsky. I found Williams book difficult, requiring of the reader a familiarity with the Dostoevskan canon that I didn’t have. When I do, perhaps I’ll return to it.
2. A quote. This is not unrelated.
3. Heh.
4. Self and Salvation … missing communion.
5. A big wind shadow.
6. Of time and measure. It is, I think, important to remember that employment is not a zero sum game.
7. Kosovo.
8. Lexicon and love.
9. Seeking global currency, now that the US is showing it is to provincially minded for the dollar to be used as such.
10. Starting young.
11. Hmm, a concise wrap-up of the latest plan, “Even if it were brilliant of itself, it doesn’t really address the issues including in the administration’s fiscal spending package, which includes tons of pork and politically motivated programs; it has nothing to do with the debate over carbon trading, health care, or education. In other words it might be a cherry, but still a cherry atop a mud sundae.”
12. Of God and the Dr Pepper matter.
13. Energy policy.
14. Zap.
15. Bang bang … and why.
16. Home away from home.
17. Speaking out.
18. Of stink and men (and truck).
19. Sign of the times.

1. The feminization of Christianity (and Jewish Orthodoxy) … I think that the example of the role of women in the Church in Russia during communist rule is an important point. The women save the church there in times of stress and the prosperity our culture enjoys currently riding the petroleum bubble is perhaps as stressful as persecution, just not in so obvious a manner.
2. Bioethics and modern (protestant) denominations as stress as well.
3. Credit crunch? Maybe not.
4. But in our minds … perceptions differ.
5. A perception of the Geithner/Obama relationship.
6. Dissent in mythical economic consensus.
7. That’s not where I’d place math in its role in our modern society … and it doesn’t have to “inspire any kid” just the ones with real talent.
8. Church and state … in the UK.
9. A prayer request.
10. Zap.
11. Boom.
12. POV.
13. School.
14. Verse.
15. Bang.
16. Two arches.
17. May God grant them many years.
18. Origen.
19. NPR, fairly unbalanced.
20. Examining economists.
21. Well, Congress gives many major league sports, baseball in particular special status regarding anti-trust. Why shouldn’t they limit their profits? It always strikes me as odd the “free market” American sports are heavily protected and structured while socialist Europe has a free wheeling market driven sports environment, e.g., compare baseball to European cycling.
22. Considering Orthodoxy.
23. Uninformed (or unlettered) liberals?

As I mentioned Friday in my blog, I’m going to begin a short discussion about this paper on some consequences of special relativity and quantum mechanics on our view of determinism and the Universe. The authors, John H. Conway and Simon Kochen, establish three “axioms” (and a “paradox”) and from these statements establish consequences which have wide ranging implications. All of these measurements and the following discussion regard the behavior of a spin 1 massive particle. Spin 1 massive particles can have three possible measured values of quantum mechanical spin, namely -1, 0, or 1.

The first of these axioms is a consequence of spin statistics known in this paper for reference as the SPIN axiom. If we take three orthogonal measurements and the norm (or square) of that spin value then the only possible value for a spin measurement consistent with quantum mechanics is that two of those squared spin values are 1 and one is 0 (or “101” in the paper for brevity). This leads to a paradox, named the Kochen Specker Paradox. This paradox arrives as follows.

If we were to set aside the more troubling aspect (from a classical viewpoint) of quantum mechanics for a moment and imagine that the values of possible measurements of the spin was known before the measurement was taken. If we then examine the set of 45 degree rotations about any and all possible axis from the original orthogonal axis. Takeing a subset of 33 of these possible axis and then attempt to assign “1” and “0” values for the axis points spread about the surface. If the measurement values were known ahead of time, then a value should be pre-assignable via some function to these nodal points. But it turns out that no such function exists. That is, it is impossible to assign these values consistently throughout all permutations these 45 degree symmetry transformations. Therefore no such function can exist. Yet of course, experimentally it does. Quantum mechanics is very well established experimetnally. This function does not exist yet this is what is observed. Which means that values of those experiments are not preassigned.

The next quantum mechanical conseqence that is used is called the TWIN axiom by the authors. This is the basics of quantum entanglement. If we create two particles “twinned” or created by a particle anti-particle pairing their squared orthogonal SPIN measurements will be the same if the two measurements of the two particles are taken on the same axis.

Finally the last axiom (MIN) isolates a particular peculiarity of special relativity and brings that into the context of this discussion. In special relatively simultaneity is not a clear cut matter as it was in a Newtonian system. An “event” in a relativistic setting is an occurrence, like the (idealized) snap of a finger which occurs at a singular point in space and time for any given observer. In special relativity two events separated in space can be seen to occur in the opposite order in different inertial frames. That is one observers moving past (and by internal frame that means the observer is not accelerating) by in different directions might observe event “A” to occur before “B” while another observer might observe “B” to have occurred before “A”. The MIN axiom basically asserts that our two experimenters measuring two entangled spin one particles SPIN measurement can independently and freely choose the axis by which they measure the particle.

Although the majority of evangelical Chrisians voted for John McCain in 2008, Christian leaders I’ve talked to said that it was the Obama campaign that did a far better job courting the evangelical community.  Obama seemed to better understand and relate to evangelicals, and indeed, far more voted for the Democratic ticket than in previous presidential elections. Now, writes evangelical ethicist David Gushee of Mercer Univeristy, Obama’s action on life issues has disappointed the evangelicals who supported him.

Gushee writes in USA Today:

What has occurred are a series of disappointingly typical Democratic abortion-related moves:

 First, the new president followed precedent by overturning the so-called Mexico City policy, which basically had withheld U.S. Agency for International Development funding from any organization that discusses, advocates or provides abortion as a method of family planning. Republicans withhold the money; Democrats provide it. Not great, but predictable. I stayed quiet on this one.

 Next, Obama revoked the “provider refusal” rule that President Bush promulgated by executive order very late in his presidency. The stated aim of this rule was to protect medical professionals from being forced as a condition of employment to provide health care services or information about services, such as abortion or contraception, that violated their consciences. Provider-conscience exceptions related to abortion are not new; the concern from the pro-choice side was that Bush’s version of that rule had become too broad. Concluding that the basic idea of conscience exceptions was probably safe, I stayed quiet again.

Then the president nominated Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be head of the massive Department of Health and Human Services. The nomination of Sebelius, a Catholic whose bishop has condemned her stance on abortion, has gotten entangled in both national and Catholic abortion politics. Her opponents argue that she is a pro-choice extremist; her allies say she is a conscientious Catholic who has reduced abortion by 10% in Kansas. I signed on to a statement that was viewed as offering uncritical support for Sebelius. What I meant to say was that given the inevitability that Obama would choose a pro-choice HHS secretary, it seemed positive he would pick one with an abortion-reduction track record. I wish I had stayed out of this one, too.

 Finally, last week Obama signed his long-promised reversal of Bush policies on embryonic stem cell research. Again, this was not a surprise, either politically or, sadly, morally. A country that is willing to permit the destruction of a fetus at five months, when that destroyed fetus can provide no conceivable utilitarian benefit to society, is certainly going to permit the destruction of a leftover frozen embryo on the promise that it can contribute to medical breakthroughs someday.

He adds:

My understanding of the majestic God-given sacredness of human life tells me that a society that legally permits abortion on demand is deeply corrupt. It pays for adult sexual liberties with the lives of defenseless developing children. That practice, in turn, desensitizes society to the implications of paying for prospective medical cures with defenseless frozen embryos, which themselves are available because our society pays for medically assisted reproductive technology by producing hundreds of thousands of these embryos as spares. And yes, that same commitment to life’s sacredness has grounded my opposition to paying for national security with torture, or paying for today’s affluence with tomorrow’s environmental destruction.

Gushee is a thoughtful and principled evangelical centrist who is profoundly disappointed in a politician who appealed on the possiblilities of compromise producing some movement on life issues, but has not only failed to deliver on promises, but advanced policies that are totally contrary to the protection of life. 

Hope unfulfilled. 

…for stretched definitions of "temporary".

President Barack Obama’s budget would generate deficits averaging almost $1 trillion a year over the next decade, according to the latest congressional estimates, significantly worse than predicted by the White House just last month.

The Congressional Budget Office figures, obtained by The Associated Press Friday, predict Obama’s budget will produce $9.3 trillion worth of red ink over 2010-2019. That’s $2.3 trillion worse than the White House predicted in its budget.

Worst of all, CBO says the deficit under Obama’s policies would never go below 4 percent of the size of the economy, figures that economists agree are unsustainable. By the end of the decade, the deficit would exceed 5 percent of gross domestic product, a dangerously high level.

Yeah, this is all just until we get back on our feet again.  Just something to tide us over, while we ride out the recession.

Or while we deepen it.

Early next week, I’m going to blog about the contents of this paper, via slashdot.

Your (optional) “homework” is to read through it … so our possible discussions might be all that more fruitful.

1. Mr Obama offers a message to Iran. And Iran responds.
2. More Lenten thoughts.
3. My view is “not much” in a positive fashion, but the last month or so is showing he can certainly have a substantial negative impact.
4. Of being young and foolish.
5. Heh.
6. That poster was hung in our office for a year or so.
7. Armenia again.
8. What moroons. And more of the same.
9. Context. Context matters.
10. Of wealth and power.
11. Killer shrimp.
12. Hanging out in Dorking.
13. Of person and God.
14. Time on their hands.
15. Another quote from the Pope.
16. Make music via flash. Sort of.

Is this a worrisome slip? Via a “Podium Pundit” a ex and current political speechwriters blog, a Mr Walsh offers “congratulatory” remarks regarding Mr Obama’s “deft” handling f the AIG bonus kerfuffle. Mr Obama had said:

Listen, I’ll take responsibility. I’m the president. So — we didn’t draft these contracts. And we’ve got a lot on our plate. But it is appropriate when you’re in charge to make sure that stuff doesn’t happen like this. So we’re going to do everything we can to fix it. So for everybody in Washington who’s busy scrambling trying to figure out how to blame somebody else, just go ahead and talk to me. Because it’s my job to make sure that we fix these messes, even if I don’t make them.

Now this Mr Walsh offers his take (which I freely and almost fully excerpt):

This is perfect on two levels. First, Americans love that kind of bravado from their leaders. “The buck stops here,” someone once said. Don’t go fussing with deciding who to blame; just blame me and let’s move on. Grrrr.

Second, the president manages to accept responsibility while making it clear he didn’t actually have anything to do with the issue. “Didn’t draft these contracts.” “Fix these messes, even if I don’t create them.”

In other words, “I would like you to credit me for taking responsibility for this issue, without actually blaming me for being responsible.” Masterful.

This isn’t anything at all like the buck stops here. The “buck stops here” is a phrase intended to give two messages (and that someone was popularized by “Give ’em ‘ell ‘arry” Truman). First and foremost that phrase means that “I’m the man in charge and therefore anything that goes wrong is my fault.” As Mr Walsh notes, Mr Obama is specifically not doing that here and is specifically and clearly pointing out that this is not his fault. That is exactly the opposite of the “buck stops here” meaning. And the Administration didn’t “draft” these contracts as it is being pointed out clearly and pointedly protected them with loopholes in the carefully read and considered stimulus bill. But … it wasn’t the Administration’s fault. Yeah right.

What Mr Walsh calls “masterful” sounds more to me like more of the same ducking and weaving. Just more of the same beltway operatives piling it higher and deeper on the rest of us. And it’s beginning to look like a continuing regular pattern of deceit. Many (and not just on the right, e.g., Mr Greenwald) have noted that for example on torture, just as in this case, Mr Obama’s rhetoric feints in one direction while moving in another. Torture is denounced, yet provisions for its continuation remain. Or here, I’m responsible but it’s wasn’t my fault. Or with any other of issues one could make similar accusations in which one thing is said and another is done. Rhetoric used as smokescreen to deceive.

Henry Neufeld and Timothy Sandefur (here and here) have both blogged about the NC divorce case that I highlighted yesterday.  Both point to a PDF of the judges ruling in the case, and note that there is more to the ruling on schooling.

Mrs. Mills has joined the Sound Doctrine church, a church that many who have “escaped” from it (that’s the term they, in fact, use) say has anything but sound doctrine.  After reading excerpts of the affidavits in the ruling, I would have to agree.

The concerns that Mr. Mills had to homeschooling included misconceptions that those don’t homeschool typically have about the practice; that it did not expose the Mills children to “the real world” and didn’t give them a “firm foundation for their future social relationships”.  Some of their extra-curricular activities are listed, and it sounds like they could easily find socialization in those.  He also said that it was his understanding was the the homeschooling was temporary.

At the end of the section about schooling, he does mention that some of this included religious training from this Sound Doctrine church, which he was concerned about.  Fair enough, but here is where we find ourselves at a decision that could, contrary to Mr. Neufeld’s and Mr. Sandefur’s thoughts, have widening influence.  The judge finds that it would be in the best interest of the children to pull them out of a schooling situation where, the judge agrees, the children have “thrived academically”.  There can be only two reasons for this based on what’s in the ruling; either it’s the “only temporary” issue or it’s the religious issue.

If it’s because the understanding was that homeschooling was to be only temporary, then perhaps some other education needs to be done to make sure that this isn’t being nixed by the husband because of misconceptions about homeschooling.  The whole “real world socialization” idea has been thoroughly debunked.  And on page 7, point #5, the judge “clearly recognizes the benefits of home school”.  So this appears not to be the main reason.

Which brings us to the religious issue.  After conceding the benefits of homeschooling, the judge, in the same point, then agrees to Mr. Mills’ request to “re-enroll the children back into the public school system and expose them and challenge them to more than just Venessa Mills’ viewpoint.”  This is where it gets dicey.

Others cited in the ruling consider the Sound Doctrine church to be a “cult”, and I’m not in a position to disagree with them.  The behavior of Mrs. Mills tends to back up their assertions.  However, if this ruling is made specifically to expose the children to other viewpoints, than any homeschooler of any religion or philosophy could have their choice annulled by a court for that reason, cult or not.  (I imagine, indeed, a judge that took children out of an atheist homeschooling situation to “challenge” that viewpoint would find all sorts of “friend of the court” briefs from the ACLU.)  The mother could lose custody of the children based on her religious beliefs and how those beliefs translate into abuse, but, while even that is a difficult thing for a court to decide, that is not, as I read it, the reason that the children are being sent to public school.

There’s that poem that has lines “First they came for ___, and I did not speak up because I wasn’t a ___.”  It’s been used and misused over the years, but I think it applies here.  I don’t think we can see this ruling and not feel some concern over perhaps government coming for Christians or Jews, or whatever other religion that a judge thinks needs to be “challenged”, on the say-so of an aggrieved spouse.  Whether the grievance is valid or not, or whether the religion is a cult or not, it should be cause for concern.

1. Insert your own reference to Bill Clinton’s example here.
2. The pope and his quote on AIDS in Africa described here.
3. More on Benedict here as well.
4. How indeed can you love the other without listening.
5. OK, that ‘splains it … or not.
6. The shoes.
7. Is that how American’s learn about other cultures?
8. As long as super-model doesn’t actually mean super-model.
9. Not impressed by a modernist heritage.
10. Liberals now accuse Mr Geithner of being a GOP stooge.
11. Ezekiel.
12. When in Rome (take pictures).
13. A letter on chastity.
14. Penal substitution under attack … rightly so from my point of view.
15. A film recommended.
16. Don’t get thrown under that bus.
17. A Diebold kerfuffle germinating.
18. Another argument against abortion.
19. Obama’s four riders of his economic apocalypse.
20. the “Buck stops here” not seen here.
21. So … “gets better mileage than the one it replaces” … when will any automaker make a car that I can buy that improves on the mileage my 2001 Insight? I’d likely buy it.

Last week, a judge in North Carolina was ruling in a divorce case.  The husband was an admitted adulterer.  His wife was going to get custody of the kids. 

However, the husband decided he didn’t want to pay for the expenses of continuing to homeschooling the children, so his lawyer drew up a request, and the judge granted it.

Even with abundant evidence showing the Mills children are well adjusted and well educated, Judge [Ned W.] Mangum ruled overwhelmingly against Mrs. [Venessa] Mills on every point. He stated the children would do better in public school despite the fact that they are currently at or beyond their grade level.  Evidence showed two children tested several grades ahead.

When issuing his verdict Judge Mangum stated his decision was not ideologically or religiously motivated. However, he told Mrs. Mills public school will "challenge the ideas you’ve taught them."

Typical big-government mentality.  Never mind results, you gotta’ get with the program.

More details here.

1. Ms Midgely praised.
2. A question, does a breaking of campaign promises haunt a candidate.
3. Rugged Yankee (?) individualism and the fall.
4. From somewhat left of center, two from the Moderate Voice … one piece having buyers remorse and another piece which doesn’t seem to understand Mr Limbaugh is a government official and “approval” is not the rating that matters one whit.
5. On suffering as martyrdom (and as a reminder martyrdom etymologically means witness).
6. A smooch.
7. AIG money trail. More here (of course they didn’t read the bill … they didn’t give themselves time).
8. A prayer request.
9. One key to happiness.
10. Doing sums.
11. Mr Fareed Zakaria has a post which is being discussed … I read one of his books and found it horrible, filled with any number of little and large factual errors which continually distracted from and diminished any larger points he was trying to make. So, instead of “Is Fareed Zakaria Serious” (the lede of the linked post) one might ask, why does any one take Mr Zakaria seriously.
12. Fear of children.
13. Le tour.
14. Verse.

This weekend while listening to the Chicago Symphony accompany pianist Valentina Lisista performing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto #5 it occurred to me that music and art in general composed, performed or created today rarely strives to improve us. It rarely strives for to push us to push us to strive for and to see ideals of good and beauty but instead more often reaches (down?) for “authenticity” and to touch or arouse our raw emotional responses. What can be learned from probing the change in our motives and aims of our art?

Again I want to write more about this … and will work on it but time didn’t permit developing a longer essay last night. This essay has ideas which I think are not unrelated to the probing of that matter as well.

These days, the same park is filled with people: families with children, women in jeans, women walking alone. Even the nighttime, when Iraqis used to cower inside their homes, no longer scares them. I can hear their laughter wafting from the park. At sundown the other day, I had to weave my way through perhaps 2,000 people. It was an astonishing, beautiful scene — impossible, incomprehensible, only months ago. – NYT

ABCNews video here.

HT: HotAir