Thread: Mathematical Numbers are Theoretical; Not Proven

Once again; it's an extremely good approximation on human scales, but on larger scales, it is completely wrong.

For fuck's sake...

Originally Posted by Xei

For fuck's sake...

They are not taught as approximations. They are taught as FACTS. Why??????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????

Why do they work so well as "approximations"?

Explain your assertions when you think you are ready.

An implication of Einstein's theory of general relativity is that Euclidean geometry is a good approximation to the properties of physical space only if the gravitational field is not too strong.

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Originally Posted by Xei

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That is an appeal to an appeal to authority, not an explanation. You are playing some major dodgeball in this discussion.

The formal theory is extremely complicated and requires several years of study to understand, but it is so important that it has been covered extensively in layman's terms. Just Google it. As I said, it has been empirically verified many times.

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Originally Posted by Xei

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If it has been covered extensively in "layman's terms", let's see you cover it a bit.

You have dodged a ton of my questions.

Essentially gravity is not a force in the traditional sense; what really happens is that space is bent by mass, and then objects travel through this bent space. The most popular analogy is of placing a heavy ball like a bowling ball on a rubber sheet so that it bends, and then pushing a marble across the rubber sheet so that it orbits the bowling ball. In the traditional Euclidian model space would just be some kind uniform straight grid which the ball would intersect without resistance and then it would pull the marble by a 'force'.

There is no known 'reason' for this, it is just how nature works; in a non-Euclidian fashion.

All the questions I can see are repetitions of things I've already explained a couple of times or just nonsenses (like 'I was just taking a guess at what you could possibly be talking about since you are not telling me' - when I'd already explicitly told you that it was general relativity, not special relativity. You clearly just didn't know the difference.).

Originally Posted by universal mind

I don't deny the existence or truth of general relativity. I just don't accept that it negates the rules of geometry.

Hyperbolic geometry is just doing geometry on a surface of which it's not flat but curved. Euclidean geometry is kind of useless if we look at the surface of a sphere as it's not flat, even worse you can't really smooth out a sphere so it's flat.

Originally Posted by universal mind

Why would schools (worldwide) keep teaching them as fact if they are wrong? I have taught out of a lot of geometry books, and I have never once come across even a footnote that says the rules are outdated or just approximations. They are taught as factual, which they are.

You can't really teach children a third year topic at uni or even get somebody in school to understand it. Alot of geometry is not taught in school for example mobius geometry, wild geometry, algebraic geometry, non communative geometry and communative geometry. I think you should stop reading school books and maybe pick up a uni book on geometry.

Saying, that I heard it's general view of Physicist that the universe at its tiniest scale is euclidean.

Originally Posted by universal mind

If the rules turned out to be wrong, which they did not, they would have been revised.

Actually they did. Look up the work of Hilbert.