Earlier, I mentioned this Templeton Foundation ad that showed some people claiming the universe has a purpose, and others validating the silly question by saying maybe it has a purpose. I noted at the time that no one seemed very interested in saying what that particular purpose might be, or more importantly, how they knew what it was, but now someone has provided the answer.
Tristero has used the power of mathematics to find the answer to life, the universe, and everything, all in one simple, easy-to-remember formula that also proves the Christians are right about everything. It’s a little scary, actually — I may have to go in hiding to escape the plague of boils or locusts or frogs or whatever it is that Jehovah will be sending down on me soon.
Oh Drat, and here I thought it was
N – (8.545317363395833649975457058485)^3
where N = The number of the Beast from the revelation.
Or 666 . Now I’ll have to go back to building
that End-Times bunker. . .
Well if the presence of math is all ya need…
2+2= you should give me twenty bucks and a beer.
As long as he doesn’t manage to actually put in SI validated units for those I’m not to worried, seeing the fun you can have by altering the axioms underlying normal mathematics and see what the results are.
Well that’s it, I’m worshipping Satan. Or Bertrand Russell (didn’t he try to base maths in logic and (nearly) succeed?)
True, Brian, he was motoring right along there until he ran into a paradox called “Russell’s Paradox” dealing with sets of sets. And Russell said to himself “Oh the irony. That my work should be ruined by a me paradox.” and gave up his search.
Slight apologies to Eddie Izzard.
It should also be noted that Godel was the guy who really put the nail in the coffin.
#3: “As long as he doesn’t manage to actually put in SI validated units…”
A propos – I’ve always been wondering why the creationists speak in inches, acres, ounches, and horsepowers, while none of those units can be found in the Bible.
#3: “As long as he doesn’t manage to actually put in SI validated units…”
A propos – I’ve always been wondering why the creationists speak in inches, acres, ounches, and horsepowers, while none of those units can be found in the Bible.
They could have saved themselves a lot of time if they were a little more literate, doesn’t everyone know that the answer is 42?
(Adams is my hero)
In math, with out a proof, it is at best conjecture.
Personally I’m most interested in a good description of the G(h) function, but I’ll have to wait till he publishes a proof.
6 x 9 = 42
Adams is my hero too!
As Blake Stacey recently pointed out to me, many wrongs can make a right in math. And once you start off wrong, you can prove anything! It’s like magic! [Link]
The anthropic principle is going strong today.
Admit it, that is something that runs through your head at times.
I just spent the night playing Portal, so I’m a little out of sorts right now.
Well, I guess if you’re more interested in framing than the truth you won’t have any qualms about stating the universe definitely doesn’t have a purpose.
Those of us more interested in truth have to admit to the possibility that it does have a purpose, however slight that possibility may be, and despite all appearances to the contrary.
Now if we only knew the question …
They forgot to log base 2 their equation to see its information content.
omega=alpha x let there be light squared
How foolish not to have thought of it!
You’d think there’d be more parking spaces in an infinite universe.
Seems Templeton is sponsored by the devil himself.
I can hardly imagine better way to discredit the idea of purpose of the universe than this pseudomathematical farce.
Of course the universe had a purpose. It’s purpose was to make it possible for Man to appear, so cats would have warm laps to sleep on.
I have a special purpose? Does that count?
I complain of that fact every day. Making it worse, I have the favorite lap in our house as I have the longest legs and the cats can really stretch out.
#4/#5, Russell discovered the paradox within naive set theory, and resolved it with his Theory of Types, though Russell’s work is also subject to Gödel’s subsequent incompleteness theorems. It seems to be an open question as to whether or not Gödel’s work actually undermines Russell’s. (That’s my layman’s understanding; learned mathematicians, any clarifications or corrections would be appreciated). Either way, we still have the teapot, and that is good enough for me.
#11, the Anthropic Principle works for us atheists; the “fine tuning” arguments (despite any reason to believe that the physical constants of the universe can take values other than the ones they presently have) are often labeled “anthropic,” which causes some confusion.
And yes, as a few others have remarked, the answer is 42, so relax, it’s a joke (too clever by half, some might say).
Well, I think this equation is about as reliable as the brilliant evidence in THE SECRET. At least this snapper-head is not ripping people off of their cash.
And on a disturbing note, I can’t always tell when someone is being serious about these things as opposed to, say, some of you when you are trying to be farcical.
scienceteacherinexile,
“Well, I think this equation is about as reliable as the brilliant evidence in THE SECRET. At least this snapper-head is not ripping people off of their cash.”
I assure you, the only reason I’m not ripping people off is because I don’t know how to. I’d be perfectly happy to have the income of the people behind The Secret and if it came from P= trB, why would I care? One can make an awful lot of my integrity disappear when one is willing to pay me over 10 million bucks!
love,
tristero (your friendly neighborhood snapper-head)
PS Of course, I’m kidding. My integrity isn’t for sale. Not for 10 million dollars. Make a better offer.
Who needs math to express the universe’s purpose? Its simple english:
The purpose of the universe is to provide space for all the big things floating around in it. Like planets and stuff! Good things it was designed so big!
I’m reminded of Steven Wright’s question: “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?”
Sadly, he missed the obvious answer: everywhere.
Thanks for the link, Zeno. And in other me-promotion, I should take this opportunity to point out that the purpose of the All is clearly to make my site the first Google hit for the query {computers internet blog}.
I used to think that life has no purpose.
Then I joined the true church and found salvation.
Now my life has a deep and serious purpose.
Soon you will all know what it is.
Now that sounds ominous. Are the stars right?
The stars glisten
and they are bright
And I will do
what they say tonight.
You know what they say about parody/reality.
In a given language L, the meaning of the universe is M, where M is the theorem that represents the meaning of the universe in L. Duh.
The Lagrangian of giving Dustin $7,000,000 and a yacht filled with attractive young women in sheer string bikinis has SU(2)xU(1) as its symmetry group.
Make with the money and women and boats. If you feel like spiting me and breaking some symmetry, throw some beer in.
In a scientific desire to discover what “42” really means, I, as a denizen of the super computer we call Earth, decided to answer the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything by pointing randomly at pages in the bible, word-by-word, until I ran into a question mark. I came up with the following question:
WHAT IS THE COMBINED IQ OF WILLIAM DEMBSKI AND PAT ROBERTSON?
Given P = TrB | P = purpose, T = F+S+G(h), r = 2, B = 7.
(I have redefined t to T for the purposes of this exercise.)
I would also like to define t as the variable time.
The equation is not well defined. We can assume that T is either a constant of a variable. Let’s look at the case of T being a constant first.
If T is a constant, it must be equal to 3 (1 father + 1 son + 1 holy ghost). If this is the case:
P = (3)(2)(7) = 42.
Since 42 is known to be the answer to life, the universe, and everything, this is a reasonable assumption. However, if we take this assumption, then the instantaneous purpose of the universe, that is the purpose at any given moment, is 0 since the dP/dt = 0. This means that there isn’t really a purpose to the universe. However, the Purpose over a period of time, P(t), would be defined as:
∞
∫(TrB dt)
0
which would result in:
(42*∞)-(42*0) = ∞
which is a useless result. That is to say that purpose starts out small and grows infinitely large as time moves forward.
Therefore, taking T as a constant produces no useful results. Let us now look at the case of T as a variable.
First, what would T as a variable mean? I propose that T is a measure of the quantity of existence of god, which could range from 0 to 1, with 1 being he exists, and 0 being he does not exist.
Now, the instantaneous purpose of the universe would be:
dP/dT = 14
This result does not mean much at the moment, so let us look at what the purpose in relation to God would be:
1
∫(TrB dT)
0
which would result in:
7(1)² – 7(0)² = 7
This means that at any given moment, the purpose of the universe is significantly higher than the overall purpose of the universe. It also means that eternity is worthless if you don’t live your life.
Q.E.D.
If the universe has a purpose isn’t it rather presumptious, indeed arrogant to assume that we (humnans) are in anyway a part of such a purpose. We are probably just an insignifcant side effect of the universe.
From the Deteriorata “you are a fluke of the universe, you have no right to be here” and “the universe is laughing behind your back”
Divide by zero and the truth will be revealed.
42.
Oh, someone already said it. Sorry.
Fourty-two, then.
Zeno: Except in a paraconsistent logic …
J Myers: IMO, Russell’s program actually founders on the axioms for set theory, notably the axiom of infinity. I am not sure how that is supposed to be “logic”.
Mike N.: That high?