geordief

Well,I was brought up in England at the time was it was being decriminalised.At school my French teacher used ( it was said) to get treatment for this.(he did organize "tea parties" for us pupils and we used to mock him for this (and those who accepted the invitation). But we did mock every single teacher we thought we could get away with doing so. Teaching in our class was almost a paramilitary exercise. This was (still is?) a time when after my sister was dumped by her boyfriend my brother's friend suggested we go around and beat him up.

I think we all have a "repulsion/attraction" to the "other" I think that must be an instinct that goes back to the beginning of our species(maybe all species) I remember my very first encounter with the idea of homosexuality.It was ,as must be more than common a conversation between adolescent friends about a story one of us had heard. I found it incredible that such people existed and the conversation turned into banter as to whether we were "one of them" A horrifying idea since how could you know? (obviously you denied it) It was the possible ostracisation that gave it its force. Ironic since I quite soon come to like the idea of being other and learned to look down on those I thought were conformist (esp the bourgeois which "thankfully" I was not even though I still assumed I was middle class -again ,ironically I wasn't) I think one cannot.

@Genady does it look like those people who have a wish to learn from the educators (and by their own initiative) are ,with current trends less likely to be successful academically than has been the case in the past? Have the lazy ,disinterested students amongst us been given a "get out of jail card" and a passport to prime position in the jobs market ? Or will the degrees that will be issued in future come with a warning that they may not be particularly representative of the bearers' actual worth(quote function playing up ?)

Found in England on an archaeological site. A lollipop.lady with an unusual hair style? https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-shropshire-64426061

Just came across this (at 30 mins 28 sec) where Guth says that "inflation crates mass". If true ,does the created mass create particles?

Nobody likes squid?

Does the shadow only exist on its border (where things do happen)? If you try to observe the interior of the shadow, doesn't it disappear(if it is a total shadow)?

To be fair,I was claiming that something has to happen at those "points" If someone moves across the room there is no shortage of points where things are happening A practically infinite number.But the starting and ending point need ,in my mind to be the site of a real event and not part of a mathematical model Those mathematical points do exist ,but are of a different nature (I am not claiming proof of any kind ,just that it is how I like to see those things)

1 you don't(need to) 2 ditto But I do accept that unless there are consequences to my "claim" then it is just an "article of faith" and part of my hard drive. It is easy I think to show that your argument has all the advantages of consequential weight.

@MigL I said the above earlier in the thread. If that was the case would that mean particles could be continuous throughout a finite system? Does that clarify what you are asking from me or do I have a foot in both camps?

OK.That is just the way I see things.

I am getting boxed in but I could respond by saying that your two fingers are pointing at something that (if it did exist) no longer does. Plus on grounds of accuracy we would need to be talking about two lasers and they would have to be produced until they met -where if we saw that intersection (which we wouldn't) that point would again be in the past and probably inaccurate anyway. Do you not like (or just accept as a valid pov) my assumption (maybe an act of faith) that points need to be a site of interaction to be called points?(otherwise they could be called something like "meta points")

How can you point to a point without something happening there? You can only see it ,for example if a photon has reflected off it. If I just follow the direction of your finger the point could be anywhere between the end of your finger and ,say the moon.

That is not self evident ,is it? I am predisposed to believe that a point in space only exists when something happens there. Is that wrong?

Well expansion is described as space (that is not bound by gravity -ie the space between galaxies I think) increasing uniformly with time. In relativity it is said that time dilation is accompanied by a corresponding spatial contraction(if I have that right). Would the same apply in inflation or expansion? (Not that I can detect a frame of reference to apply it to if it was applicable)

I don't think General Relativity predicted either ,did it? So ,when thinking about them is GR of any import? For example ,with inflation it occured to me that with the enormous activity occurring it might be represented as space stretching and time stretching less(or contracting?) But then I thought "Maybe GR has nothing to do with this?"

Some people (I think I have heard) claim that the universe may be made of numbers. Think that may be an ancient(pythagorean or similar ?) belief but I think that the hologram view of the universe says something similar. If that were the case then it would be trivial to say that the universe "contained numbers"(well maybe numbers do contain other numbers, both larger and smaller,) I prefer to think that numbers are abstractions and that the universe contains abstractions. By the way ,(and back to the OP) if events and particles are very closely related(particles only manifesting when interacting) and particles are not local but spread out like waves,then maybe events likewise are spread out and so are not finite even in a finite system?

(I have to apologise first for my inability to go through your and others' links in anything like a rigorous way as I am not equipped for that degree of intellectual inquiry-I may once have been and I hope I still retain some curiosity and openmindedness) That said and in my own mind the question in my OP has been answered in the negative but you seem to be looking at it in a different way and to try and ddress what you are saying (your bottom line) you seem perhaps to be saying that the number of relations between the set of finite spacetime events in a hypothetically finite universe can be infinite. On reflection perhaps so .My first scenario was actually just the number of actual events.They would be (in my mind anyway) physical whereas the relations would be mathematical or geometric. Have I understood some of what you were saying?

Yes. (Not that I was claiming that the universe is actually either finite or infinite .I don't think there is any way to know)

I looked up Berkenstein bounds (very cursorily as befits my weak mathematical and physical brain) and it seems to say that for a given finite system it is possible to describe it (presumably with a number) in only a finite way. If that is a correct interpretation then one can extrapolate that finding to a system that is the entirety of a finite universe** and so it is possible to create a number that is larger than that number. I think that is what I was trying to say.(not in the OP itself because my assumption there seems to have been incorrect and I changed my tune thereafter) **ie describe it with a finite number

Yes ,that is what I was asking.(perhaps I was trying to shoehorn my understanding of the map/territory ,it model/modeled idea into the discussion since I find it very important in it's own right) Perhaps ,but I don't see it.I don't have that expertise.

Is it unbounded?If we start with ,say 3 events then the set of all relationships is still a finite number. And if we increase 3 to a number representing the set of all events in the spacetime of a finite universe then the corresponding set of relationships is still also another finite number. So ,if we have a theoretical number larger than that ,it will not have its "territory " will it?

(Actually, I anticipated your line of thinking if I am not deluding myself) So the set of these potential causal relations is still finite in a finite universe and if we call the new number derived from E , E2 then there will be another number ,say N(new) where N(new)>E2 What happens?A black hole? But just creating a number is not the same as storing information(in my mind the mapping was just theoretical.)

So if the number of events in the real world is E and a number,N >E then you are saying that N can be mapped to E?

Even if the real world is finite?