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Devac  ·  3027 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A fun challenge. How to answer the "Why" kid.

    Whatever we call it, there can only be one absolute absolute, right?

Why?

Possible self-consistent list of absolute absolutes:

- 0 is a natural number.

- Each natural number is equal to itself, so for any natural n, n = n.

- For any natural numbers n and m, if n = m then m = n.

- For any natural numbers m, n, o if m = n and o = n then m = o.

- Every natural number n has its successor succ(n) and the successor is itself a natural number.

- For all natural numbers n and m, m = n if and only if S(m) = S(n)

- There is no natural number n with a successor succ(n) = 0.

You can't bend these, all of them are absolutes and I have never even mentioned what exactly natural number is. But with the above guidelines you can always check if a given number is a natural number. It's a minimal set of rules to make them exist, they don't contradict one another and you can be damn certain that they are not in any way relative to each other as far as 'laws' or 'absolutes' go. None of them is more or less important for that matter, but because they are all equally 'absolute', if one of the criteria is not met you are not using it for natural numbers, yet it does not negate the possibility of existence of integers in general. So you have something that does not interfere with other mathematical structures while giving you a complete recipe for any valid natural number.

    There only one possible value that satisfies the aforementioned example. 1000 10mm cubes. So doesn't it follow that there must be one and yet may be only one, absolute absolute?

Banach-Tarski Paradox would beg to differ. For out physical universe and under assumption that I can't meld, solder, change shape or apply sufficient ammount of hammer strikes… you are correct. In a purely theoretical/consistent with mathematics approach, you are not. There's actually a whole branch of modern mathematics that deals precisely with this issue and it is called measure theory.

    So doesn't it follow that there must be one and yet may be only one, absolute absolute?

No, as shown by contradiction above. Look, you seem to have a conclusion and reasoning that you share here, but I'm getting more and more convinced that it works only under your own paradigm that you didn't share.

Let's get further, because I can actually buy your reasoning under a properly defined paradigm where it can be applied. For what I care, you can simply say that you now create a universe where exists one and only one absolute, and this will be your paradigm but you'll have to show me how and why it should result in anything even close to our universe. If the internal logic of such construct is sound, it works and I will have nothing but praise for you. If you want to apply concept of one absolute law to our physical universe then it's subjective (example: I can't agree as almost every counterexample that I gave, each of which working without assuming any will, sentience, sapience, capability for making decision and existence of set direction seems to exist perfectly without any allowance. As in it did not need to be allowed and nothing seems to suggest that it had to be in the first place), and even if true… how would existence of one absolute absolute explain the fact that there is only one? That's an open question that can go either:

a) Allowance is infinite, and this is the only absolute truth, hence anything that follows from this fact does not have to depend on something being allowed, since by definition everything is allowed. Here I would pose a question "why exactly do we need allowance as the one law above all others?" or "If allowance is infinite, why can it allow for more absolutes?"… which was my original question. Answer that results with a possibility of asking same question again, without any change to the form of the question, is not an answer. So we have to assume…

b) Allowance for one and only one absolute that is not Allowance itself implies that Allowance is not infinite, thus theory is false.

Don't ask me if I can agree for X or Y, present paradigm you want to work with before you will go further or I'll end up looking like a complete douchebag who uses freshman mathematics to shot it down before it began to fly. ;) I can work with abstraction that you create, but as long as I have to assume that you talk about our physical universe, we'll be in an infinite loop where you are reformulating your bit and I'm shooting it down. And believe me, I don't take any pleasure from it. Far from it, I feel kinda bad now to be honest. If it's philosophy, define your grounds/paradigm properly. If it's about our universe… you get my point, right?