Math Is Fun Forum

One effect of spam is to create a defensive reaction against legitimate communication.

As a Realtor, I can set up automatic email notification for new listings. Sometimes a person who has requested this service does not receive it because their email program or their internet service provider has automatic filtering which recognizes an automatically-generated message and blocks it as spam.

One time I received a very cold "take me off your list" message, which made me feel bad because it was someone who had initiated the contact with me, and had requested automatic notification. He was no longer interested in real estate in Vermont, which was fine, but I did not want to be treated like some annoying scum who was bothering him. I wrote to him, reminded him that I had gone to some personal effort at his request, and said that, while I am happy to comply with his request to terminate the service, I still wanted to be treated with human kindness.

He send back a very nice reply, saying that the internet can make people forget that there is a human being on the other end. He acknowledged that I had treated him well, that I did not deserve to get slammed, and he apologized.

In my business I have to be very careful to document the way I handle contacts, otherwise I can be penalized severely under the do-not-call, do not fax laws. Funny thing is: the real spammers seem to have no trouble getting away with it.

I love the punchline...it describes my cardiologist so well! He is really good at prescribing the exactly correct dosage of medications, and that is great when you actually need the medications. But he also make some ridiculous recommendations because he does not know how to think (well, he does if you really push him, but it never seems to be his initial approach).

I have found that many MDs do things by rote, and it is difficult to discuss medical matters with them, because they blindly follow "Aristotle" and if you question anything from a factually-based, analytical viewpoint, they tell you that it is fine if you want to believe in superstition, "But I go by sciece." Their idea of "science" is whatever the current, conventional formulation that they have memorized happens to be. Jokes (and cartoons) can be really great for exposing nonesense!

I have been reading the comments, interested to see what people would say. But now I think it is time to give some appreciation and support to Dross, who has been contributing clear, analytical, and correct comments.

On this math site, I would have expected precision about how terms are used, and I have actually been quite surprised at the amount of fuzzy "Well, in my opinion..." sort of comments. In a discussion about basic philosophy of science issues, such as causality, all opinions are not equal. An opinion worthy of discussion should be grounded in facts and logic: Not simply, "I feel that..."

Dross has given clear explanations, soundly based on an understanding of the logic structure of science.

The issue that I was raising is not science vs. relition: It is about the place of the concept of causality in our scheme of things.

George Y is completely correct that causality is something we assume. That makes it fundamentally different from an ordinary statement about the world for one very simple reason: As an assumption, in principle there is no evidence which could come along which would falsify the idea of causality. Every scientific hypothesis or theory is subject to being tested. Even a very well confirmed theory, such as Newton's Theory of Gravity, had to give way to another theory -- Relativity -- when the measuring sensitive enough to discern subtle differences in measurement showed that, when put to the test, Newtonian physics did not correctly predict events in the world.

Newtonian physics seems to be in complete harmony with intuitive, common sense, and yet there was a way to put it to the test. But the concept of causality can never be put to the test because no matter what happens, we would always be able to salvage our concept of causality by saying: "Well, we just do not yet know the cause of this particular phenomenon."

And yet, we cannot discount the idea of causality, because it is an underlying foundation of science, which has shown itself to be very powerful and useful.

"Causality," because it cannot be tested, is clearly not a hypothesis or a theory, and yet it is a concept which we rely on. That is why it is consider to be a "leading principle" of scientce. "Leading principle," is just a fancy way of saying that it is something we assume.

What would be a valid test for the idea that every event has a cause? I other words: What test could you set up, the results of which would either confirm the idea of causality, or would falsify causality?

If you accept causality as an article of faith, then any time you are faced with a phonomenum for which you have been unable to discover a cause; then you can always say, "There must be a cause because nothing happens without a cause: We just have not found it yet." In that case, the notion of causality can never be put to the test, it is just something that you have to believe in.

Correction: I did not mean to write "wood pulp," I meant to write "wood fiber."

Some infinities are larger than other infinities.

If you have an infinite number of hands, then the number of fingers on those hands is also infinite, but the finger infinity is five times as great as the hand infinity.

When I was a kid I thought about infinity and other stuff, like does  the Universe come to an end, and if there is a wall at the end of the Universe, how thick is the wall and what is on the other side. I Thought of infinity as an endless trains. You are standing at a train crossing, and there is one care after another going by and they just keep going on forever. You never get to see the caboose.

Then I thought that this train had a beginning, but no end. Suppose, instead, the train never began,  and never ended? It had just been going by forever, and will continue to go on forever. That made me think that there are two types of infinity, which I called "one-tail infinity," and "two-tail infinity."

I wonder, though, if there actually exists any type of population with an infinite number of members? If there is nothing in existence which is actually infinite, then perhaps there really is no such thing as infinity, other than as a concept which we have created with our minds, which would explain how come there can be such paradoxes as infinities which are greater than other infinities.

I don't understand why they couldn't have just dug up some worms?

Was he strung out?

Wow! That is a good one.

I used to work hard and make little money ("Mucho trabajo, poco dinero!"). Now I work much less and make a decent living. I think I must have figured out the theorem by intuition.

Not only that: I used to make intelligent and thoughtful comments and suggestion, which would generally either be ignored, or treated with derision. Now I am on a couple of board, where half the time I don't know what is going on. The other day, a former president of one of those board told me that he always appreciated me being on the board because I always had a unique perspective on matters which came before us, and he learned a lot from me. And I have heard other comments like that. I can only say that it is a tribute to how much appreciation a person can get for being comatose.

In my business it has often happened that a client asked me a question, and while I was stuporously pondering what to say, the client came up with an answer, and then told me what a incredibly clear-minded broker I am. I guess that is a tribute to the power of keeping your mouth shut.

I wonder if there are any theorems for the power of being comatose and keeping your mouth shut?

Ha, ha!

Reminds me of the riddle:

Why did the person with a low IQ lock two of his car doors and leave the other two unlocked?

Answer: Because he figured there was only a 50/50 chance of a robbery.