The Place Holder

[janekane (imported)]

What is the three-space volume of the set of all infinitely nested sets of all sets of four-space singularities which contain themselves as members?

Perhaps in contrast with some of the Archive young-uns members, I was born while the world could reasonably be thought to make some sort of usefully intelligible sense. So much sense, in fact, that a slide rule was adequate for most engineering and science calculations; with things like a Victor Comptometer or a Monroe IQ213 mechanical calculator when three "sig figs" were not enough.

I remain decently proficient in slip-stick. Having reached into the center drawer of the desk at which I am computer keystroking, I got out my Dietzgen Microglide (TM) Vector Type Log Log slide rule, Dietzgen catalog number N1725.

That slide rule has the following list of scales: LL01, LL02, LL03, DF, CF, L, CI, C, D, LL3, LL2, LL1, and, on the flip side, Th, Sh2, Sh1, A, B, T<45 degrees, T>45 degrees, ST, S, another D, DI, and K.

If one allows that subtracting a positive number is equivalent to adding a negative number, all a slide rule actually does is to add one-dimensional distances. What the distances mean is a property of the markings (or rulings) of the various scales. Glancing at the L and D scales, it is obvious to me that the log base 10 of 1.00 is 0.000 plus or minus 0.0025, the log base 10 of 2 is 0.301 plus or minus 0.0025 and I could, were I so to choose, do more slip-stick number crunching.

What seems to have been set aside during the recent reign of digital calculators and digital computers is a clear sense of the significance of measurement accuracy.

For those who have Windows XP up and running, it may yet be possible to find Microsoft Power Toys for Windows XP. PowerToyCalc, which is one of the toys, can do something like 512 digit calculations, which is identified in that program as "Extreme Precision and is identified as "very slow" and so I fired up a Winows XP Pro system with PowerToyCalc and decided to demonstrate that doing an ~500 digit calculation of the approximation of Pi which is 355 divided by 113 is an absurd calculation, as only the first 7 digits (3.141592) are significant..

So, if I decide to find the value of Pi (the ratio of circumference to diameter of a plane circle), using PowerToyCalc and Extreme Precision, by dividing 355 by 113, using "copy and paste," I end up with:

355 113 /

3.141592920353982300884955752212389380530973451327 43362831858407079646017699115044247787610619469026 54867256637168141592920353982300884955752212389380 53097345132743362831858407079646017699115044247787 61061946902654867256637168141592920353982300884955 75221238938053097345132743362831858407079646017699 11504424778761061946902654867256637168141592920353 98230088495575221238938053097345132743362831858407 07964601769911504424778761061946902654867256637168 14159292035398230088495575221238938053097345132743 3628318584071

In my view, none of those zeroes are place holders because none of them are significant digits, and none of them are numbers in terms of the actual value of Pi because they are not significant.

Has this posting already gone down the bit bucket overflow drain? Or down the binit bucket overflow drain? How many bits can a binit bucket hold before it overflows?

Did they learn me right when I was an engineering student; a binit may hold any number of bits? If so, does not the zero binit have infinite capacity?

Please do not zero out my Archive participation because I may have zero understanding of zero and have zero awareness of that.

Then there is that book by Susan Sheehan, "Is There No Place on Earth for Me." I do have some sort of slight sense of identification with Sylvia Frumkin.

Will I ever need a place holder with the Archive, the better to be not completely zeroed out because I am out?

Please pretend I never asked, unless necessary.

Is that why Zero, in Beetle Bailey, seems to me to be the smartest of all that comic strip's characters? More than anyone else, Zero gets that no one, including himself, gets it.

[transward (imported)]

W

I remain decently proficient in slip-stick. Having reached into the center drawer of the desk at which I am computer keystroking, I got out my Dietzgen Microglide (TM) Vector Type Log Log slide rule, Dietzgen catalog number N1725.

What seems to have been set aside during the recent reign of digital calculators and digital computers is a clear sense of the significance of measurement accuracy.

For those who have Windows XP up and running, it may yet be possible to find Microsoft Power Toys for Windows XP. PowerToyCalc, which is one of the toys, can do something like 512 digit calculations, which is identified in that program as "Extreme Precision and is identified as "very slow" and so I fired up a Winows XP Pro system with PowerToyCalc and decided to demonstrate that doing an ~500 digit calculation of the approximation of Pi which is 355 divided by 113 is an absurd calculation, as only the first 7 digits (3.141592) are significant..

So, if I decide to find the value of Pi (the ratio of circumference to diameter of a plane circle), using PowerToyCalc and Extreme Precision, by dividing 355 by 113, using "copy and paste," I end up with:

355 113 /

3.141592920353982300884955752212389380530973451327 43362831858407079646017699115044247787610619469026 54867256637168141592920353982300884955752212389380 53097345132743362831858407079646017699115044247787 61061946902654867256637168141592920353982300884955 75221238938053097345132743362831858407079646017699 11504424778761061946902654867256637168141592920353 98230088495575221238938053097345132743362831858407 07964601769911504424778761061946902654867256637168 14159292035398230088495575221238938053097345132743 3628318584071

In my view, none of those zeroes are place holders because none of them are significant digits, and none of them are numbers in terms of the actual value of Pi because they are not significant.

.

On the contrary every number there is significant (and many are zeros. ) They are significant as the digital representation of 355/113, which is what you asked the computer to do. It is your human choice to use that fraction as an approximation of pi, not anything inherent in the numbers themselves, that renders the digits after the first seven insignificant for your purpose. You can specify any finite number of significant digits and a fraction can be generated that will give you pi to that number of places. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximat ... e_formulae

The continued fraction representation of pi can be used to generate successive best rational approximations. These approximations are the best possible rational approximations of pi relative to the size of their denominators. Here is a list of the first of these:

3/1, 22/7, 311/99, 355/113, 99733/31746, 312,689/99,532 .....

Of all of these 355/113 is the only fraction that gives more exact digits of pi (i.e. 7) than the number of digits needed to approximate it (i.e. 6).

Just dug up my old slipstick. K&E Deci-Lon in it's original leather scabbard. (not as expensive as yours) Also have my original HP-35, the world's first scientific pocket calculator. Battery is dead and a few segments of the display don't work, but thing still works fine on AC.

Transward

[janekane (imported)]

On the contrary every number there is significant (and many are zeros. ) They are significant as the digital representation of 355/113, which is what you asked the computer to do. It is your human choice to use that fraction as an approximation of pi, not anything inherent in the numbers themselves, that renders the digits after the first seven insignificant for your purpose. You can specify any finite number of significant digits and a fraction can be generated that will give you pi to that number of places. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximat ... e_formulae .

Just dug up my old slipstick. K&E Deci-Lon in it's original leather scabbard. (not as expensive as yours) Also have my original HP-35, the world's first scientific pocket calculator. Battery is dead and a few segments of the display don't work, but thing still works fine on AC.

Transward

Alas, I upgraded my HP 35 to an HP 45, and my HP 45 to an HP 55 (the one with the electronic stopwatch function), which I yet have and which, with replacement ni-cad cells, functions like new. And I have the aluminum Pickett Model N-515-T "Electronic" slide rule made for the Cleveland Institute of Electronics, and at least a dozen more diverse slide rules, including the Ohmite Ohms Law Calculator and the Ohmite Ca;pacitor Calclator,a K&E Duplex Log Log Decitrig, and whatever else.

So what? My having a gaggle of slipsticks does not of me a better or worser person make.

It is my essentially lifelong observation that observation has two main aspects, those of recognition and noting, and that what is noted (such that it can be shared with others) consists entirely of interpretations of what was recognized. Neither the object of recognition nor the recognition of the recognized object can be communicated to any other person, nor, for that matter, can they ordinarily be communicated to the conscious awareness of the observer.

Perhaps because of contrasting life events and contrasting life event sequences, what one person experiences as being significant, another person may experience as being insignificant. So I have long observed.

When one person informs me of what I "asked the computer to do," and said person incorrectly informs me of of what I "asked the computer to do," I have a sense of the presence of some variation on the theme of "theory of mind." To the best of my ability, here and now, to give an account of my understanding of "theory of mind," it is socialization-trauma-generated mistaken understanding of selfhood as existential process.

When, before I got to the age of 18 months, I was presented with opportunities to develop a theory of mind, I invariably found every "theory of mind in other people" encounter of my life to be about one or another aspect of existential deception; therefore, having never, during my entire life, having met with a single instance of a theory of mind encounter which I have experienced as other than of a tragically addictive form of dishonesty, I have never allowed myself to develop the first trace of any aspect of theory of mind.

I never impute or infer any person's beliefs, purposes, intentions or values. To know of another person, I have to ask the person to tell me what about the person the person is willing to tell me.

Consider a typical form of Miranda warning, as copied and pasted from Wikipedia:

"You have the right to remain silent.

Anything you say or do can and will be held against you in a court of law.

You have the right to speak to an attorney.

If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.

Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?"

I have never been arrested by a police officer and have never been "Mirandized." I fervently hope that I am never arrested and/or Mirandized by a police officer. However, should some police officer attempt to Mirandize me, the results will likely be profoundly peculiar.

To final question of the above quoted typical Miranda warning form, "Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?" I will, without relent, answer, at least until after my dying breath, "No," unless someone can actually demonstrate the actual happening of one or more actually avoidable events, such that the event or events having already been actually demonstrated as having happened, can be demonstrated to have actually been avoidable through the demonstration of the event or events not having been actually demonstrated to have actually happened when they had been actually demonstrated to to have happened.

I wonder whether the foundational principle of existence is to be found in the laws of intelligible thought, to wit: The law of identity (A is A), the law of non-contradiction, also known as the law of contradiction, (A is not non-A), the law of the excluded middle for actual dichotomies (A is not partly B), the law of the included middle (A is partly B and B is partly A), and the law of rational inference (If A is the same as B in certain particulars, and if B is the same as C in those same particulars, then C is the same as A in those same particulars).

The apparently (to me, if to no one else) commonplace belief that people make mistakes which they could have avoided is a belief contrary to the law of identity and contrary to the law of non-contradiction; therefore, I find the belief that people can actually make avoidable mistakes (such as infractions or violations of law that they could have avoided making) is inextricably an eternity-transcending existential fallacy.

The significance of zero or 0 to me is simple. I find that the number of actually avoidable mistakes that can ever be actually made, actually made, even in an infinity of infinitely parallel universes, is identically 0.000 (infinitely repeating decimal).

I hold in unbridled contempt the "adversarial system of law and jurisprudence," not merely because I find it to be incorrigibly dishonest and deceptive, I especially find it so because I observe that believing in the adversarial system of law and jurisprudence causes dastardly physical human brain damage in the form of the "pruning" of neuronal connectivity that is absolutely essential for genuine honesty and truthfulness.

I am willing to give an explanation of my view of existential reality here, but am not willing to engage in a dialogue in depth here because of ethical concerns; to go past what I am willing to post on the Archive boards requires that I specify my actual name and actual licensed professional standing; doing that is,I understand, contrary to an Archive tradition of not "outing" people who may be harmed by being outed.

[transward (imported)]

I

When one person informs me of what I "asked the computer to do," and said person incorrectly informs me of of what I "asked the computer to do," I have a sense of the presence of some variation on the theme of "theory of mind." To the best of my ability, here and now, to give an account of my understanding of "theory of mind," it is socialization-trauma-generated mistaken understanding of selfhood as existential process.

.

I merely quoted what you said in your previous post. You said

so I fired up a Winows XP Pro system with PowerToyCalc and decided to demonstrate that doing an ~500 digit calculation of the approximation of Pi which is 355 divided by 113 is an absurd calculation, as only the first 7 digits (3.141592) are significant..

So, if I decide to find the value of Pi (the ratio of circumference to diameter of a plane circle), using PowerToyCalc and Extreme Precision, by dividing 355 by 113, using "copy and paste," I end up with:

355 113 /

3.141592920353982300884955752212389380530973451327 43362831858407079646017699115044247787610619469026 54867256637168141592920353982300884955752212389380 53097345132743362831858407079646017699115044247787 61061946902654867256637168141592920353982300884955 75221238938053097345132743362831858407079646017699 11504424778761061946902654867256637168141592920353 98230088495575221238938053097345132743362831858407 07964601769911504424778761061946902654867256637168 14159292035398230088495575221238938053097345132743 3628318584071

It would appear that you used the computer to calculate the fraction 355/113 to a ridiculous number of decimals, then said it was absurd because it was only valid as pi to seven places, but 355/113 is not pi. It is a useful approximation when you don't need more than seven significant decimals, which of course is the vast majority of times. Should you need more significant digits, there are a large number of formulas that will converge on pi to however many decimals you need. In those cases you would not use 355/113.

You have an unusual way of expressing yourself, that takes great concentration to work through and understand. You ascribe this to your autism. About 80 years ago a Trans-Caucus Greek in France wrote a three volume book called Baelzibub's Tales to his Grandson . He deliberatly wrote it in a style that was almost impossible to read without absolute and constant concentration. The book, which proposes the most satisfactory "theory of the mind" I know, reads almost exactly like your writing style. The book, while obscure had considerable influence. Frank Lloyd Wright set up his Taliesin Fellowship on similar lines.

Transward