Rusty's Postulate

How does science work? And what's all this about quantum mechanics?

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Re: Rusty's Postulate

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surreptitious57 wrote: Sat Nov 25, 2017 5:49 am
EchoesOfTheHorizon wrote:
How do we really know what parts of the brain are doing abstract thinking or not how it relates to consciousness
We have a very good mapping of the different parts of the brain and what functions they perform
The part of the brain that is specifically responsible for abstract thinking is the pre frontal cortex
I think what we know is actually different. What we know in creating the map, is what functions are happening while a part or another of the brain gets higher than normal bloodflow, and / or simulating one or another part of the brain causes this or that illusion or reaction.

But we actually don't know, despite doing it ourselves, what parts of the brain are doing abstract thinking; and we absolutely have no clue how brain functions relate to consciousness.
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Re: Rusty's Postulate

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Dapplegrim wrote: Sat Nov 25, 2017 4:57 am
RustyBert wrote: Fri Nov 10, 2017 7:29 pm Rusty's Postulate: Any mathematical system that is used by both physicists and economists cannot be considered as reflecting the real world.

I've been reading up on advanced physics. I claim zero expertise other than a general knowledge of vectors, matrices, etc. from college. I do know that both physicists and economists used many of the same advanced mathematical tools, such as vectors, tensors, "spaces", and so on in their work. Both groups talk as if those tools actually correspond in some real way to the thing they are investigating - the physical world in one case, and human behavior in the other, and that they have predictive value.

No matter how complex the math may be, at some point it has to refer back to the things being modelled.

SO...how can it be that the same exact tool can relate to say particles in space AND humans buying stuff at malls?

(Of course I'm being a little tongue in cheek calling it my postulate. But hopefully I've explained the question.)
Good point!

Mathematics, as a pure logical system, is entirely abstract. In order to apply it to the real world, a mapping is required between the elements of the abstract system and the elements (or objects) of the real world. This mapping is somewhat hit and miss. Some mappings make sense and are useful, while others are not. For example calculus is useful for predicting planetry orbits. Mandelbrot sets are not useful for counting sheep.
Right, it's in the mapping. And that's where I think things go off the rails. It's perfectly ok to say we can map the state of a system to a vector. Fine. But now when they talk of multiplying vectors, or taking the eigenvalues of this or that matrix, or talk about various advanced operations you can perform on a matrix. Well then they're talking AS IF these things have a correlation with physical systems. But how can that be if the same "state vector" could be the result of mapping some biological groups properties, say, onto it? How can the advanced operations have physical meaning when we're talking about particles in a collider in one case say, and elephants on the tundra? I'm saying they can't, and that physicists are fooling themselves. Matrices, vectors, etc. are just blunt tools with no actual relationship to the physical world.
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