QED ha!

With due deference do DNA of HHGTTG fame for the inspiration to try this.

Statment: Black = White

Posit: The colour white is a combination of all other colours of the spectrum.

Posit: Light can be viewed as a waveform as well as a particle form.

Posit: The absence of light can be viewed as Black.

Posit: The waveform of Light can be viewed as a sine wave

Proof:

1) A sine wave is the mirror image of itself and if it meets an identical sine wave out phase with itself by 180 degrees then the 2 sine waves cancel each other out.

2) So if White Light is the combination of all the colours of the spectrum that should include all the different sine waves of Light which would cancel each other out leaving an absense of Light ie Black.

Black = White

QED

SANEAlex

PS I will be careful on the next zebra crossing

This is an old one and a little bit evil, but ... i like it

Ok, we want to proof that: Girls are evil.

We know:
Girls require time and money (very obvious), therefore:
[code]
Girls = Time * Money
[/code]
Moreover everyone knows that time is money:
[code]
Time = Money
[/code]
So we can simplify our first equation:
[code]
Girls = Money * Money = (Money)^2
[/code]
Another well known fact is: Money is the root of all evil:
[code]
Money = sqrt(Evil)
[/code]
And therefore:
[code]
Girls = (sqrt(Evil))^2
[/code]
So we are (sadly ) forced to conclude that:
[code]
Girls = Evil
[/code]

Q.E.D.

nice...I like this topic.

her's one (and i did paraphrase) reputedly by Euler when arguing with diderot about the existance of god

"Sir, n=mx/0 therefore god exists! reply!"

I heard of it, but in my version he used the sentance " e^(pi * i) + 1 = 0 "...either way, his opponent ran from the argue-field:)
I liked the girls proof
Here's a proof I like that proves that a supreme and all-powerful entity exists (not nessesarly the god/gods we know of):

Proof by contradiction.
Consider a world without triangles. Even there, when people think about triangles, they must have 3 sides, 3 corners, so on.

Now:
Consider a world without a supreme and all-powerful entity (it's got all the good attributes that can be). Lets call him X from now on, cuz the name's too long as it is:)
When people think about X, it must have all sorts of attributes. Put them all in a list, the good ones on the right and bads on the left.

[b]Bad........| Good[/b]
Ugly ......| Beautiful
Stupid....| Smart

and so on, till we reach the pair (non-existance, existance). With all the above traits, it's clear that existance is good, and non-existance bad. Therefore, becuz X has all the good attributes, X must exist

Not sure I've followed all of those, but I can prove conclusively that 0.9999999 (recurring) = 1
(I'll refer to 0.999999999 etc as 0.9R, cos I cant do the little dot)

let a = 0.9R
therefore 10 x a = 9.9R
10a - a = 9.9R - 0.9R
9a = 9
a = 1

MS

[quote=Sergeant Lettuce]nice...I like this topic.

her's one (and i did paraphrase) reputedly by Euler when arguing with diderot about the existance of god

"Sir, n=mx/0 therefore god exists! reply!"[/quote]

Here are 2 replies.

Posit: Occam's razor is often paraphrased as "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one."

Posit: For us to be aware of and interact with an Omniscient and Omnipowerful Deity(I go for the double O Deity as self respecting priest would would wish to worship a second class one ) it must have some interaction with the Universe as we know it.

Posit: For that Deity to be Omniscient and Omnipowerful it must be at least as complex as the Universe as we know it as a part of that deity would be needed to watch each and every fluctuation in the quantum foam.

Posit: For a Deity to come into existence there has to be at least one universe for it to come into existence in.

Proof: From the above posits a Universe with a OODeity in it will be at least twice as complex as a Universe without an OODeity in it therefore from Occam's razor you select the simpler solution.

Where you may ask is the joke in the above proof well it strikes me as being ironic that William of Occam was a Franciscan friar.

For a more funny proof i refer again to DNA of HHGTTG fame.

Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [the Babel fish] could have evolved by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED"
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
-- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (book one of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series), p. 50

ahh, good old DNA. im pretty sure that in one of the HHGTTG books there was a proof that nobody really exists, but i cant remember how it went. instead, heres an old math gag:
lets say a=b
then a^2=ab
add to each side of the equasion a^2 - 2ab, so a^2+a^2-2ab=ab+a^2-2ab
and then 2(a^2-ab)=a^2-ab
divide by a^2-ab
therefore 2=1

QED

Quite nice ones on this topic. I shall go and find the axiomatic proof for the existance of God that Kurt Gödel did (at least I think Gödel did the proof).
Let me here proof that there are no uninteresting numbers:

Assume, there are. Then there is a least one, which is quite an interesting fact. QED.

if a a=b
a^2-ab
a^2-a*a
a^2-a^2=0
you can not divide by zero.

Is this fun loving critisism, or am I being a dick?

[quote]
Not sure I've followed all of those, but I can prove conclusively that 0.9999999 (recurring) = 1
(I'll refer to 0.999999999 etc as 0.9R, cos I cant do the little dot)

let a = 0.9R
therefore 10 x a = 9.9R
10a - a = 9.9R - 0.9R
9a = 9
a = 1

MS[/quote]

another nice proof for this fact is:
1 = 1/9 + 8/9 = 0.1R + 0.8R = 0.9R

[quote=Dibbler]I heard of it, but in my version he used the sentance " e^(pi * i) + 1 = 0 "...either way, his opponent ran from the argue-field:)
I liked the girls proof
Here's a proof I like that proves that a supreme and all-powerful entity exists (not nessesarly the god/gods we know of):

Proof by contradiction.
Consider a world without triangles. Even there, when people think about triangles, they must have 3 sides, 3 corners, so on.

Now:
Consider a world without a supreme and all-powerful entity (it's got all the good attributes that can be). Lets call him X from now on, cuz the name's too long as it is:)
When people think about X, it must have all sorts of attributes. Put them all in a list, the good ones on the right and bads on the left.

[b]Bad........| Good[/b]
Ugly ......| Beautiful
Stupid....| Smart

and so on, till we reach the pair (non-existance, existance). With all the above traits, it's clear that existance is good, and non-existance bad. Therefore, becuz X has all the good attributes, X must exist [/quote]

reminds me of the ontological argument:

God is defined as the most powerful being in the universe.
A thing which exists is more powerful than one which doesn't
therefore by definition: God exists

'course this only provides that in order fo and entity to be termed "God" it has as a prerequisite: existence.

also if you read science 3; a good one involving watches and watch makers

[quote=Grani]if a a=b
a^2-ab
a^2-a*a
a^2-a^2=0
you can not divide by zero.

Is this fun loving critisism, or am I being a dick?[/quote]

thats the whole point!

[quote=SANEAlex]Posit: For that Deity to be Omniscient and Omnipowerful it must be at least as complex as the Universe as we know it as a part of that deity would be needed to watch each and every fluctuation in the quantum foam.[/quote]

Not sure this one holds - can you show conclusively that an observer must be at least as complex as the observed?

[quote=SANEAlex]Posit: For a Deity to come into existence there has to be at least one universe for it to come into existence in.[/quote]

And that's definately counter to even very basic Christian theology - which I'm using simply because no-one's put a lot of effort into a theology for a hypothetical and generalised deity... a) the deity didn't come into existance; b) it's a standard assumption that the deity is outside both time and space.

Coat -> Mr Scrub -> Taxi
MS

[quote=Bill Door][quote=Grani]if a a=b
a^2-ab
a^2-a*a
a^2-a^2=0
you can not divide by zero.

Is this fun loving critisism, or am I being a dick?[/quote]

thats the whole point![/quote]

it's an excercise they do at uni or high school ot make ppl realise that you can;t just go around dividing stuff without notating that it must be not zero.

[quote=Mr Scrub][quote=SANEAlex]Posit: For that Deity to be Omniscient and Omnipowerful it must be at least as complex as the Universe as we know it as a part of that deity would be needed to watch each and every fluctuation in the quantum foam.[/quote]

Not sure this one holds - can you show conclusively that an observer must be at least as complex as the observed?[/quote]

Well i did specify an Omniscient deity therefore you would have to have a part of that deity observing each smallest part of the the Universe to qualify as being Omniscient and if you reduce the Universe to information the smallest part of the Universe will be a bit and to observe the state of a bit the smallest an observer could be would be another bit so an Omniscient deity would have to be at least as complex as the Universe just to observe it let alone to have created and manipulated it.

[quote=Mr Scrub]
[quote=SANEAlex]Posit: For a Deity to come into existence there has to be at least one universe for it to come into existence in.[/quote]

And that's definately counter to even very basic Christian theology - which I'm using simply because no-one's put a lot of effort into a theology for a hypothetical and generalised deity... a) the deity didn't come into existance; b) it's a standard assumption that the deity is outside both time and space.

Coat -> Mr Scrub -> Taxi
MS[/quote]

The argument holds even if the the deity did not come into existence and has always been there it would still have to be at least as complex as the Universe to have created and observe it. And a Universe creating deity could not be entirely outside time and space for that deity to have created time and space at some point the deity or some part of it would have interacted with time and space by the process of creating it.

[quote=SANEAlex]Well i did specify an Omniscient deity therefore you would have to have a part of that deity observing each smallest part of the the Universe to qualify as being Omniscient and if you reduce the Universe to information the smallest part of the Universe will be a bit and to observe the state of a bit the smallest an observer could be would be another bit so an Omniscient deity would have to be at least as complex as the Universe just to observe it let alone to have created and manipulated it.[/quote]

I'm sorry, I probably shouldnt have started arguing in theological terms on a thread where people were focussing on scientific argument. Cos what I would say now is that you are artificially limiting yourself to what you can currently understand in full detail - just because we can't conceive of a way something quite simple could observe a large chunk of space/time and see everything there is to see about it, doesn't mean it's not possible for an omniscient deity. (Although this is probably irrelevant, since most theologians would say that the deity doesn't consist of matter as we're aware of it, so a concept of how complex the matter of the deity is would be unnecessary).

[quote=SANEAlex]The argument holds even if the the deity did not come into existence and has always been there it would still have to be at least as complex as the Universe to have created and observe it. And a Universe creating deity could not be entirely outside time and space for that deity to have created time and space at some point the deity or some part of it would have interacted with time and space by the process of creating it.[/quote]

Yes the deity would have had to interact with space and time, but that does not mean that the deity would have to be governed by, or within, those parameters.

MS

[quote=Mr Scrub][quote=SANEAlex]Well i did specify an Omniscient deity therefore you would have to have a part of that deity observing each smallest part of the the Universe to qualify as being Omniscient and if you reduce the Universe to information the smallest part of the Universe will be a bit and to observe the state of a bit the smallest an observer could be would be another bit so an Omniscient deity would have to be at least as complex as the Universe just to observe it let alone to have created and manipulated it.[/quote]

I'm sorry, I probably shouldnt have started arguing in theological terms on a thread where people were focussing on scientific argument. Cos what I would say now is that you are artificially limiting yourself to what you can currently understand in full detail - just because we can't conceive of a way something quite simple could observe a large chunk of space/time and see everything there is to see about it, doesn't mean it's not possible for an omniscient deity. (Although this is probably irrelevant, since most theologians would say that the deity doesn't consist of matter as we're aware of it, so a concept of how complex the matter of the deity is would be unnecessary).[/quote]

The thing about matter i also covered as i was willing to reduce the Universe to information and the lowest form of information it a bit and as i say whether the information is stored in everyday matter or some kind of ethereal stuff you would need one bit of OODeity to observe one bit of matter for that deity to be Omniscient.

[quote=Mr Scrub][quote=SANEAlex]The argument holds even if the the deity did not come into existence and has always been there it would still have to be at least as complex as the Universe to have created and observe it. And a Universe creating deity could not be entirely outside time and space for that deity to have created time and space at some point the deity or some part of it would have interacted with time and space by the process of creating it.[/quote]

Yes the deity would have had to interact with space and time, but that does not mean that the deity would have to be governed by, or within, those parameters.

MS[/quote]

For it to interact with space and time part of that deity would have to be subject to a common set rules with space and time otherwise there could be no interaction even if the bulk of the deity was not subject to the rules and again for it to observe a bit of the Universe a bit of deity that could interact with space and time would be needed.

The only way a believer can get around the above is to have faith in a deity that is beyond logic and if the deity is beyond logic you cannot invoke logic as a tool for the belief in that kind of deity. You can only use faith believing without any possible proof (well at least until after you die if your religion has a heaven/hell ) what the priests of which ever religion you subscribe too have told you.

And from personal point of view if you view the various historical documents the various major league religions seem to have evolved as humanity has become more civilised in the old testament there was smiting with rivers of blood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah where as in the sixty's priests of various factions of those religions were going on ban the bomb marches and today a fair and just deity would just give Sodom and Gomorrah an ASBO and noise abatement order rather than opening up a sulphur volcano and killing all men,women,children and animals in a 2 city area.

For me logic is the only tool i have to understand the universe around me i understand that there is a place for "belief" as pTerry says in Hogfather belief in the Hogfather and the Tooth Fairy are good practice for believing in things like Justice and Human Rights etc. but to me they are a shorthand which is easier for most people to understand than the long chains of logic needed to understand why doing things in certain ways is better for the group and therefore the individuals of that group(the greater majority of the individuals in the group for most of the time anyway) mankind being a kind of social animal these ideas can work in species interest and/or subgroups of our species(on occasions for some subgroups but against other subgroups interests). For me logic is a tool that can be used to examine and re-evaluate commonly held beliefs. Abdicating reason as some theologians would have us do because over the years as mankind's collective logic has asked lots of awkward questions pushing them into a corner where the only way out for them is to say that their deity is beyond logic is not something i can subscribe too, for instance some fundamentalist religious groups adhere to the thought that our world is only about 4 thousand years old there is no way i could prove that a deity that is beyond logic could not have faked 15-16 billion years of the Universes history along with evolution and a lot of fossils but i could not in good conscience worship a deity that had given us 16 billion years of lies to 4 thousand years of truth i would consider myself and a lot of those i have met thru the years morally superior to such a deity, i am also dubious about any being that has the need to be worshipped being worthy of worship.

Updated to correct spellings and expand on some points 29/10/07

I thought after the recent serious stuff i would prove that the smallest polygon has 5 sides.

A Polygon is a closed plane figure bounded by three or more line segments.

Which in common parlence is a triangle known for its three sides but an triangle also has and inside and and outside making 5 sides QED.

All that stuff really WAS heavy, couldn't bear to read it all...

Not really this topic, but today during physics I managed to prove that pi [b]aproximatly[/b] equals pi. I then proceeded to feel really stupid

It went this way:

I tried to calculate the area in a circle ( S ), the radius is R. I divided it into perfect polygons ( n of them), calculated the area of each one, and multyplied by n. Then I did lim n-->infinity. It turned out to be this:

A = (R^2 * sin (2*pi/n) / 2) * n = pi* R^2 - divide by R^2
sin (2 * pi / n ) * n / 2 = pi - now I use the approximation " sin x = x " that holds when x is small
2 * pi / n * n / 2 ~ pi - divide by stuff
pi ~ pi.
-_-

the greeks tried a similar approach. didn;t work

I'm not going to go into much detail on this, for various reasons. First is that I'm not sure how many people are interested, secondly cos I'm not 100% compos mentis today. But most of all because we can probably get to an end of the debate by reaching common ground:

[quote=SANEAlex]The only way a believer can get around the above is to have faith in a deity that is beyond logic[/quote]

YES! As you said yourself (or quoted Douglas Adams saying), that belief in a deity is essentially not a matter of logic.

[quote=SANEAlex]and if the deity is beyond logic you cannot invoke logic as a tool for the belief in that kind of deity.[/quote]

I wasn't trying to - I was trying to argue that you couldn't disprove the existence of God with logic.

(When it comes to things like the fossil record, I agree with you - I prefer to believe in the fossil record than in a God that plays tricks. So personally I believe that large chunks of the old testament is, errrr, not literal truth).

Anyway, hope that gets us to a neutral point.
MS

[quote=Mr Scrub]I'm not going to go into much detail on this, for various reasons. First is that I'm not sure how many people are interested, secondly cos I'm not 100% compos mentis today. But most of all because we can probably get to an end of the debate by reaching common ground:

[quote=SANEAlex]The only way a believer can get around the above is to have faith in a deity that is beyond logic[/quote]

YES! As you said yourself (or quoted Douglas Adams saying), that belief in a deity is essentially not a matter of logic.

[quote=SANEAlex]and if the deity is beyond logic you cannot invoke logic as a tool for the belief in that kind of deity.[/quote]

I wasn't trying to - I was trying to argue that you couldn't disprove the existence of God with logic.

(When it comes to things like the fossil record, I agree with you - I prefer to believe in the fossil record than in a God that plays tricks. So personally I believe that large chunks of the old testament is, errrr, not literal truth).

Anyway, hope that gets us to a neutral point.
MS
[/quote]

Yep i think common ground has been reached even if we are on opposite sides of it i am still willing to share a pint with you at the next Discworld event we are both at I find these kinds of discussions an interesting exercise of the neurons. Anyway if i am wrong maybe i will have been a good enough Samaritan on occasions for somebody to let me in the back door if not thru the pearly gates

[quote=Dibbler]All that stuff really WAS heavy, couldn't bear to read it all...

Not really this topic, but today during physics I managed to prove that pi [b]aproximatly[/b] equals pi. I then proceeded to feel really stupid

It went this way:

I tried to calculate the area in a circle ( S ), the radius is R. I divided it into perfect polygons ( n of them), calculated the area of each one, and multyplied by n. Then I did lim n-->infinity. It turned out to be this:

A = (R^2 * sin (2*pi/n) / 2) * n = pi* R^2 - divide by R^2
sin (2 * pi / n ) * n / 2 = pi - now I use the approximation " sin x = x " that holds when x is small
2 * pi / n * n / 2 ~ pi - divide by stuff
pi ~ pi.
-_-[/quote]

Actually i think you could be correct in saying that pi is only approximately equal to pi as if you believe we live in a quantised Universe with Planck's length being the smallest unit of length then pi would depend on the size of the circle as the closest thing to a circle in a quantised Universe would be polygons with sides of Planck's length with the smallest circle being a triangle and the second smallest being a square thus making the square a second rate circle

Yes but then pi wouldn't even be constant - it would depend on the size of the circle, which further complicates things. Lets stick to the Euclidian for now...

Edit: Not to the Euclidian, but maybe to mathematical models with no digusting things such as "smallest length lying around" becuz we all know we can divide it into a few parts and it'll become smaller. Alright, it might hurt physics a bit, but mathematically it's sound...and that's the important part;)

[quote=SANEAlex]

Actually i think you could be correct in saying that pi is only approximately equal to pi as if you believe we live in a quantised Universe with Planck's length being the smallest unit of length then pi would depend on the size of the circle as the closest thing to a circle in a quantised Universe would be polygons with sides of Planck's length with the smallest circle being a triangle and the second smallest being a square thus making the square a second rate circle
[/quote]

GOOD GOD MAN! DO YOU DOUBT OUR FATHER OF PHYSICS!?

and dib;

try taking the polygons, and measure not the area but the circumference as n->inf. as a function of the radius.

It's practicly the same (simpler a bit), but what I did was try to figure pi out just from theory, without measuring anything. That's why I came to that stupid conclusion

well pi is like irrational, so it's only natural that your value would be an aproximation

personally I just use 3.14159265358 cos i never need anythign more than that...if I'm lazy I use less.

In fact, pi, as well as Euler's e, are called transcendent numbers. Which means that they don't add up to 0 in polynomials over rational numbers. (Which is quite an interesting fact, as reals are usually defined by "add any number that makes polynomials over rationals go zero and anything else that's needed to make this a field", speaking in non-mathematical language.)

I talked a bit earlier about Gödel's proof for the existance of god. Instead of re-typing it, I just link to the article on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_ontological_proof

so if P(T)=(k1)xT^0 + (k2)xT^1 + ... + (kn)xT^n

where k is any constant, T is the ...whetever the function depends on and n is the number of ...we call it a "Tag" (member) ..things.

then you mean to tell us what?

[u]P(T)[/u]
R

is not equal to 0? what role do the transedent numbers play? I'm lost.

um, ok, so since I did not understand any of that (well, half of it but he didn;t define his letters clearly...how is that useful?) and I don;t want to read the translation on the hungarian version cos it uses big scary words, is there a simple tralslation available?

[quote=Sergeant Lettuce]so if P(T)=(k1)xT^0 + (k2)xT^1 + ... + (kn)xT^n

where k is any constant, T is the ...whetever the function depends on and n is the number of ...we call it a "Tag" (member) ..things.

then you mean to tell us what?

[u]P(T)[/u]
R

is not equal to 0? what role do the transedent numbers play? I'm lost.[/quote]

Transedent numbers are those that if you take your P(t) (t is a transedent number) then whatever k1, k2, ..., kn you take then P(t) isn't zero (assuming k1, k2, ..., kn are rational). That doesn't happen with all unrational numbers (for example, sqrt of 2).

Everything's got an end. A sausage has even got two.

Sausages! Hot sausages! Inna bun! Meat pies! Get them while they're hot!
... Hole food! Hole food! Rat! Rat! Rat-onna-stick! Rat-in-a-bun! Get them while they're dead!

ah. so you mean the polynomial which is a function of a transendent number cannot equal 0...gotcha

Heh I've got an easy one (probably one some of you have heard before too) that makes the kinda of sense that anyone can understand;

Girls = Evil
First we state that girls require time and Money
Girls = Time x Money
As we all know, Time = Money
Therefore
Girls = Money x Money (Money)^2
And everyone knows that "money is the root of all evil"
Money =√Evil
Therefore
Girls = (√Evil)^2
And so we are forced to conclude that Girls = Evil

i think SA did that before

naa, twas trix, 2nd comment.

well the point remains that it was prior art

That's not art! That science! Don't insult!

I meant it in the least insultingway possib...oh...bugger

Damn, I did try to check if anyone had done it but I was too lazy to check them all. May my laziness ever colour me with shame =(

oh, it will

i didn't feel like reading that all,could someone explain

not really, you need to be one of us like sciency ppl

well then i guess i'm not welcome here then...

quite