Set theory - gotta love it

One of my Uni friends, Ben, was much better at this sort of thing than I was, he could talk very enthusiastically about why people introduced set theory at all (it was something like a rigerous approach to mathematics a few decades ago, when previously mathematicians had been more like physicists, "it works, it's good enough).

Anyways, set theory is way of representing maths, but not in the most intuative ways. They don't define how to do a function, such as addition, they define it's relationship. Why I like it is that it's logically sound, but a very counter intuative way of looking at maths. For example, addition

Addition: Addition is a function from a pair of numbers to a number. So it's a set of ordered pairs, whose first element is an ordered pair. So it's a set of pairs of the form {((x,y),z) where:

1. if x=0, then z = y
2. if y=0, then z=x
3. otherwise, let x' = successor(x) and let y' = predecessor(y) then z = Add(x',y').

This statement, by the relationship between z, x' & y' defines the function that gives z from x & y, which can be done because all numbers have known predecessors and successors (numbers were defined earlier, in similar ways). So it fully defines addition - if you think about it, which is probably worth some thought.

Of course, if this was just a counter intuative way of solving maths, then it'd be a bit silly (well, in my opinion), but the way of defining these fuctions and sets is really powerful - if applied to physics, things like rotations in Newtonian space and quantum mechanics all relate to each really impressivly, if I can't quite remember how.

Learning it for Undergrad was bizarre, fun and challenging. Utterly impratical, but it was good :)

Autoignition temperature

This is how to calculate the time it will take for a substance to autoignite (from wiki, where else?)

Of course, this doesn't tell how Tig is calculated, which is perhaps a pity - as it says in the article, it depends on a bunch of factors, including the oxygen content of the air around, the thickness, what else has been done to the material, surface area to density. I suspect that this time calcualted is under the same conditions which autoignition temperature is calculated at, though I may think about the k, rho, and c, because it seems a little odd to have those things wandering around. The T at the steady state, and the form of answer seems to imply an integral, but which one... I need to think some more about this, I reckon it should be pretty obvious. But not at 10 in the evening, that seems like hassel.

edit: Of course I don't recognise the formula - if it's derived from other systems, it's non-equilibrium thermodynamics, which I never studdied. Now I'm not sure if it's worth me examining it. Still might be worth a trip to the British Library to look up the referenced text, though.

Do they not watch movies?

Well, they're launching satellites again. They've called it "Skynet". Terminator, anyone? Seems like it's asking for trouble to me.

Cultural views of women

I have sometimes been known to react in a negative fashion to the writings of people who think that it is still sensible, in a primarily skills & knowledge based economy, as opposed to manual labour, to view women as subordinate to men. What I only just realised was I writing from a very British point of view and also from the point of view of a scientist. Thinking about it now, the culture of in the United States in general does seem to view women as generally subordinate, much more so than British society. I hadn't realised that, consciously at least, up until just a few minutes ago. I always knew that in religious groups, women tend to be viewed as below men in the heirarchy, but it's always been implicit that in the wider culture that women are, mostly, recognised as as intrinsically qualified as men for any particular task required nowadays.

But in the US, "wider culture" is, generally, the traditional religious one. Not in my experience - living in northern California, near San Francisco, silicone valley way, almost 100% knowledge driven, all a lot more liberal than the rest of it. So I will have to adjust my thinking a little on that and related subjects, so I can understand the points of view more accuratly.

Nothing particularly significant, but there are some interesting statistics about the decreasing influence of christianity in the US that I might write about. And yes, I am having a bit of an America-orientated thinking time - spent the last few weeks reading a book on the abuses of science by Republicans, big business and religion, which was astounding. I'm sure I'll get over it now I've finished the book

topher

So I systematically remove what I think is all references to that nickname from all these blogs, and it turns out it's still the nickname that appeared on comments.

I must do more careful work. And actually read the screen in front of me as opposed to skimming over. Or at least do a better job of selecting the important information.

Is it me, or is the modern Christian God quiet deistic?

Yeah, it's been a while. Over a year in fact, but I quite like this blog.

Someone was posting on a discussion board, "Prove that God doesn't exist?". I read down for a little while, and it struck me that no-one was asking "which God?" Because to disprove a deist god is a bitch of a task, on account of it doesn't do very much, but, on the other end of the scale, to disprove the God of creationists is dead easy, because either (a) it didn't happen like that, so they're wrong, or (b) their God is a decietful git who made the world look like it's really old, but it isn't, which makes their God internally inconsistent (the assumption that God isn't internally inconsistent is made, which is perhaps a risky one).

And this led me on to thinking about a claim Dawkins made in one of his books, that if God existed you would be able to see consequences of His existance (for example, if He was good, the world wouldn't have such a capacity for bitchiness. There are other ways one could concieve of having the world which would significantly reduce it's nastiness, which one would hope would be an aim of a Good God). The theological counter to this is that such things are not required, that the way God works is via people, and it is only required that God is internally consistent, any of his external effects, the stuff that would be empirically observable, can be written off to natural causes, because that's how God does it.

That is almost identical statement to believing in a deistic God - that the God is there, but he doesn't do anything significant (that we can understand of percieve), is very distant, and lets the world work out on it's own.

What seems to be the significant difference is that the Christian God then goes on and interacts with people on an individual level, which is very observable for the individual, but not really very observable for anyone else (quite a lot experiential, and having an intrinsic knowledge of God's existance). So both the deistic God and the Christian God let the world run according to the natural order of things, but then the Christian God has a capacity for interacting with individuals.

Therefore, Christian God = deistic God + personal interaction.

Which is interesting - the modern Christian God works on the very broadest scale of establishing the rules of the universe and insuring it runs, and then on the scale of the person, but not at all in between. He used to - He seemed quite interested in politics and theocracies and things like that, but going by what Christians so, not so much anymore.

Okay, by working with a person, and those people interact, He would be effecting large groups of people, but it seems to be a round about way of going about things.