Theos-Talk Archives (March 2005 Message tt00195)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, John <GodLovesEveryone.org@g...> 
wrote:
22761

> She'd probably be the first to admit she doesn't know
> everything, even if she wouldn't admit it in print.

Don't know. She did make the public statememt that people write in 
and ask questions and of course she knows the answers, but the answer 
is not of general interest, blah, blah. The implication was that she 
could not possibly be stumped.

> Years ago, I, and many other people caught her on one particular
> mistake.

I have caught her in more than one mistake. Her understanding of 
probability theory is pretty meager. I am not impressed with her.

> Someone wrote in and asked if she could put 50 pennies into ten
> envelopes, so that there would be a different number of pennies
> inside each envelope. (with at least one penny in each envelope).

You would have to have one penny in the first envelope, then two in 
the second, three in the third, and so forth. There would have to be 
a minimun of ten pennies in the tenth envelope, so that the minimum 
number of pennies required is the sum of the numbers one to ten, or 
55. That of course presumes all the envelopes are separated from 
each other in space. The only way you could do it with fifty pennies 
would therefore be to fold one of the envelopes (stuffed with 
pennies) and put it inside another envelope (also stuffed with 
pennies.) Some of the pennies would therefore be "inside" more than 
one envelope. Using that dodge you could do it with ten pennies. 
Marilyn couldn't figure that out, eh? Heh, heh. Now how do I get my 
own newspaper column and proclaim myself to be some sort of smartass?

Here is a related story someone might find amusing. To solve the 
aforementioned problem you have to begin by adding the first ten 
numbers. In an elementary school class years ago the teacher decided 
to take a personal break by asking her students to add the first 1000 
numbers. Most of the students were sweating away exceot for one kid 
who started staring out the window after a few seconds. Naturally 
the teacher was outraged, but she changed her mind when she found out 
the wiz kid had the right answer.

He did it by thinking outside the box. The other kids took the 
number one, then added it to the number two, and so forth until they 
reached 1000. This one started with the reality that if you add 1000 
and 1 you get the same number as if you add 999 and 2, and the same 
as if you add 998 and 3 and so forth. So if you take 1001 and 
multiply by 500, you get 500,500, which is the correct answer. The 
kid, whose name I forget, turned out to be a mathematical genius, but 
there is no money in intelligence, so do not bother envying him.

22765From: Bart Lidofsky <bartl@s...> 
Date: Thu Mar 10, 2005 4:50pm
Subject: Re: Theos-World Re: Pi as a fractional number?

> What you described is what happens at the "event horizon";
> inside, we are not quite sure what happens. Or are we? The
> Schwarzschild radius is actually a measurement. Given a certain
> mass, you can calculate a radius where, if the mass is entirely
> within that radius, the escape velocity is equal to or greater
> than the speed of light. This is what is specifically termed as
> "Schwarzschild radius."

Some have argued that since objects behave as if all their mass were 
centered in a mathematical point called the center of gravity (which 
point has no dimensions) therefore there is a Schwarzschild radius 
within every star. It only becomes interesting, of course, if the 
radius is OUTSIDE the star.

> Now, here's the fun part: We can only roughly estimate the mass
> of interstellar matter. At the moment, scientists believe that
> they have an accuracy within a factor of 10 of the entire mass of
> the known Universe. However, it appears that 70% or so of those
> estimates put the Schwarzchild radius as greater than the radius
> of the known Universe. This supports the "steady state" model,
> where there is a Big Bang, the Universe expands out to a point
> where the fastest moving objects (e.g. the quasars, which are
> moving at near-light speed) get attracted back to the center,
> recreating the macro-molecule. This would tend to confirm what is
> written in THE SECRET DOCTRINE, and it would mean that we are
> currently inside a "black hole".

That assumes that there is something "outside" the universe from 
which perspective no one can look in. That at least affords us some 
privacy, but Einstein argued that at the end of the universe space 
simply ends. That is an interesting little brain teaser, because as 
Kant pointed out, our brains are so wired that we cannot imaging a 
wall with nothing on the other side of it. Ditto with time. We 
cannot imagine a moment which is not followed by another moment. 
Since it is impossible to test either of those ideas empirically Kant 
labeled them a priori (i.e., prior to any demonstration or 
experience) as distinguished from a posteriori contents of 
consciousness.

My suspicion is that time and space vanishing completely is a limit 
condition which can be approached but never arrived at. So that time 
and space never actually vanish in nature, even in the vicinity of a 
neutron star, although the contraction in both dimensions may be so 
severe that the limit is nearly approached. That solves the paradox 
of where the neutron star's mass is located. Marilyn of course knew 
that but did not disdain to respond.

Blavatsky was right in declaring for the nebular hypothesis, since it 
has been discarded several times since 1888 and yet scientists keep 
coming back to it, But where did she speculate on quasars? She 
claimed her mahatmas did not know diddly about anything beyond our 
solar system.

Based on his comments (discreetly edited out of later editions of The 
Inner Life without the editors honestly telling the reader 
embarrassing flubs had been eliminated) Leadbeater could not even see 
as far as Mars, the closest planet to earth.

> As far as the statement "This statement is not true." it can
> be explained by the fact that words are not reality, but symbols
> of reality, and symbols can be arranged in a way that removes
> meaning.

That is an interesting argument. In their Principia Mathematica 
Russell and Whitehead used this as a springboard for their theory of 
logical types. If we replace the phrase "this statement" with "x" 
the sentence becomes "X is not true," so that if "x" is a statement, 
the statement that "X is not true" is a statement about a statement. 
This is called a metastatement (by definition a statement about a 
statement.) The paradox in the sentence comes from the fact that the 
sentence is phrased in such a way that the metastatement seems to be 
collapsed upon the statement about which it is made. Consider the 
following:

(1) George W. Bush is an honest man.
(2) This statement is not true.

"This statement" in the second sentence relates to the statement that 
Bush is an honest man, so that (2) is true given than (1) is 
obviously false.

Russell and Whitehead posited that there could be an infinite number 
of logical types (I am repeating from memory) so that if (1) is a 
statement of type n, (2) becomes a statement of type n+1, etc.

Princpia Mathematica is interesting bedtime reading, by the way, if 
you get to the point that books like Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind 
cease to challenge you. You are not likely to find anything much 
more challenging.