Could 1+1=3?

[Thanatos]

I was posting a reply in the creation thread when a question occurred to me. Someone had asked why physical laws are the way they are.

I began to explain that F=MA because that's how F, M and A are defined and for it to do otherwise would require math to be different.

But why is math the way it is? Could you create a logically consistent (although highly idiosyncratic) place where things behaved as if 1+1 was in fact 3? Could e^(πi)+1 not be equal to zero? What would the world be like?

[Zhavric]

Quote by: Thanatos But why is math the way it is?

"Why" is the wrong question. There are millions of gramatically valid yet completely nonsensical sentences in the english language that begin with "why" and end in a question mark. Why implies intent which we have no evidence of. The laws are the way they. Finding out how they work is a much better question.

Could they be different? *shrugs* If you go with a multiverse theory then they are different in other universes.

[Technosoul]

In a abstract reorganization of counting perhaps, for example one male and one female could multipy twins, so 1 person plus 1 person would be 3 persons if they had a collective baby. And 1 plus 1 would be 4 if they had twins. That would happen in a mathimatical scam where each number can self duplicate with another number to produce a 3rd number. It takes a bit of imagination to grasp that idea.

One tiny nut can contain the sum total of a forest of trees each bearing hundreds of nuts once you progress in the speculative counting that momentum would enforce.

Where as in standard math you are counting individual items (symbolically). If you add another apple to the one you already have then you got two apples. But if you view each apple as a potential tree and if both apples came from the same tree, then you three trees in the picture, in which case that 1 tree is now 3 trees. Being that the first tree also is a grown apple.

The error was they counted only the two apples they had and not the source where those two apples really originated from.

Does that make any sense?

Math is both about counting the knowns but also about assuming some unknowns which might not yet be materialized physically or which no longer are physically detectable. That is why we have both physics and meta-physics. The relative abstracts that template the visiable reality.

Using the I Ching orginated in China as a three dimensional form of mathimatics Terrence McKenna came up with the Novelty Theory. If you wish you can check this out and see if it represents the alternative to our normal processes of deduction via numbers.

Novelty theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Let me know what you think of that if you do check it out.

[Morality Games]

Quote by: Thanatos I was posting a reply in the creation thread when a question occurred to me. Someone had asked why physical laws are the way they are. I began to explain that F=MA because that's how F, M and A are defined and for it to do otherwise would require math to be different. But why is math the way it is? Could you create a logically consistent (although highly idiosyncratic) place where things behaved as if 1+1 was in fact 3? Could e^(πi)+1 not be equal to zero? What would the world be like?

As Zharvic already noted, in theory such places exist. Just not here.

Math grew the way it did because it is "here". Or more precisely, because of the aptitude of the human brain for sensationally-quantitatively comprehending and expressing symbolically real or imagined amounts of substance pertinent to 'physical' processes in this world. Although time and space (distance) only pass for substance in certain theoretical approaches, they are given the same mathematical treatment as substance ... their ontological status is irrelevant to the practicality of science.

[Technosoul]

Also, using math as a measurement can be odd.

It takes x amount of days for earth to orbit the sun, and by thoses orbits we determine a calendar. and a day is how long it takes the earth to spin around on it's axes to face the sun. Which time expands and contracts depending on the season and the location you are at on earth.

But let us imagine the Lord is an alien living on a 12th planet that orbits the earth in a 32.000 year cycle instead of in just 1 year (earth time). According to the Lords calendar a 7 day week would be thousands of years earth time. A day might be a thousand years if you made your calendar based on the wider orbit of the 12th planet that circles in close to earth every 32 or 36 thousand years. (whatever?). Therefore the 7 day creation could be a lot longer then 7 days (earth time) if we did not use our calendar but used that other "star teck style" calendar. Bringing the the time suggested by evolutionists closer to the time suggested by a 7 day creation myth. eh?

Zecharia Sitchin - Genesis Revisited

A spin off --- which is interesting.

Planetary Dynamics of the 12th Planet

[Thanatos]

There's one thing about our math that would not be featured in any other math. 1+1 can equal three if every time you bring two objects close to eachother a third appears. 1+1 can also be zero if they both vanish.

Our math is the only possible math that does not violate conservation of energy. That's the prime rule which gives all the other equations their shape.

[Milton Bradley]

I suppose if you were rounding generously, and added 1.49 + 1.49, you could sort of justify that to yourself as 1 + 1 = 3


Short of that, I offer a resounding no.

[RealRockingham]

1+1=2 only theoretically.

Frex, money has only theoretical value.

Even if you have 2 coins, and say 1 coin plus 1 coin equals 2 coins, thats fairly arbitrary(grouping two groups of atoms into 2 objects).

In my opinion, maths is a process of the human brain, the purpose of which is to be able to firmly group things into groups, categories or "bundles", to qualify and give value.

What the "real" world is like is debatable, but its my POV that its more "fluid" without arbritary categories, values and qualities.

[Kuldeep]

What I wanted to write about 1+1=3, Technosoul has already very lucidly put forth. Nothing more for me to add at moment. Beauty was his bringing metamaths into metaphysics and then both into physics & maths !!!