E = mc²
E = mc²
This is the most famous formula of the 20th Century.
It was invented by Albert Einstein.
It means:
"Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared."
Thesis
I think that the formula is true.
Lead in
Do you agree, or disagree with it?
This is the most famous formula of the 20th Century.
It was invented by Albert Einstein.
It means:
"Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared."
Thesis
I think that the formula is true.
Lead in
Do you agree, or disagree with it?
Comments (156)
I mean that I think that it has a truth value (T, F) of "T".
what would that mean to think it's true? You know what I mean?
Thinking something is true is more than just saying "I think that it has a truth value (T, F) of "T"". If I say that about "Garbledy bombley goo", then someone really has no idea what I mean when I say it's true.
If you said "I think this weight is twice as much as that weight... and I think that's TRUE", then I understand what you mean. I understand what it means for one weight to be twice as much as another weight. Even if there's elements of abstract-ness to it, I can translate it into real meaningful things.
"Garbledy bombley goo", however... I can't. I'm not sure what someone means when they say it's true.
E = mc2 also. I'm not sure what you mean when you say you think it's true.
So saying "it's true" just means "I think someone else has proven it"? There's no requirement for understanding? Even if they have no idea whatsoever what any of those symbols means, you think it's meaningful to say "I think that's true"?
I think it's at least debatable if it's meaningful to say something is true, if you don't understand the meaning of that "something" you're saying is true.
Invented or discovered? Maybe a quibble, maybe not.
Is the following a fair reconstruction of your argument? Let's start with that.
(1) There is no ontologically significant difference between E = mc[sup]2[/sup] and "Garbledy bombley goo".
(2) If so, then: if it is not necessarily the case that "Garbledy bombley goo" is T, then it is not necessarily the case that E = mc[sup]2[/sup] is T.
(3) It is not necessarily the case that "Garbledy bombley goo" is T.
(4) So, it is not necessarily the case that E = mc[sup]2[/sup] is T.
Is that your point? If not, then what is it?
nope.
I simply asked what he means. I'm not saying "there is no meaning". I AM saying, "IF there is no understood meaning of e = mc2 THEN there is no difference between E = mc2 and Garbledy bombley goo"
It's a conditional.
There are people in the world for whom e = mc2 has a specific meaning. For those people, E = mc2 and Garbledy bombley goo are not equivalent. Is OP one of those people?
You up for an experiment?
But that's what premise (2) says:
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Quoting flannel jesus
I am the OP. I don't know if I'm one of those people or not. Why don't you tell me?
Ok, sure, why not?
????????????????????????
Now, your second instruction is this: BELIEVE ME. Understand that, despite the fact that you don't know what it means, I'm telling you something that is true to people who do understand those symbols.
And I really am, by the way. Those symbols represent a truth whether you understand them or not. I'm not tricking you.
Can you follow the above instructions? 1. Don't look it up, and 2. Believe me that it represents something true to people who understand the symbols?
And please confirm that you don't understand the symbols. This won't work if you actually do lol.
my bad. I didn't notice that lol
Ok, but given the above set of instructions and nothing else, how do I know that you're not tricking me?
Quoting flannel jesus
No, I don't understand them, I don't read any Asian language. I know at least that much. By looking at them further, they could be Japanese, or Korean, or Chinese. Or perhaps they're from Southeast Asia. They could be Mongolian for all I know. Maybe even Russian. See my point?
So when I asked you, "what does it mean to say e = mc2 is true?", I'm looking for some UNDERSTANDING from you about the actual meaning of e=mc2.
And maybe you think it's true without understanding it. There's a way to make sense of that too. Is that the situation your'e in? Do you think e=mc2 is true without understanding any actual meaning of e=mc2?
(and I think it's worth pointing out that understanding each of those symbols in isolation is very different from understanding them all together as a single equation. I'm not asking you if you know that e means energy and m means mass - of course you do. that's trivial.).
I'm not sure if that's how I'd phrase it, but whatever.
Quoting flannel jesus
Why would you find that interesting, if such was the case?
Quoting flannel jesus
Well, I already told you my understanding of it, it's in the Original Post:
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Quoting flannel jesus
No, I think it's true regardless. It doesn't matter if I understand it or not.
Quoting flannel jesus
I'm all ears.
Quoting flannel jesus
No, it isn't, but please be my guest, and tell me why you think I'm wrong, about my own Original Post. I say that as the Original Poster of this specific Thread.
Quoting flannel jesus
No, I don't. I think it's true because I understand it's actual meaning.
How would the universe be different if energy wasn't equal to mass times the speed of light timees the speed of light? What if energy was mass times the speed of light cubed? Does that have meaning? What would that mean?
I already told you its actual meaning. It's in the OP:
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Quoting flannel jesus
It means the following, first and foremost:
E = (mc[sup]2[/sup])
What's changed? You introduce brackets "(", ")". Why? because it allows you say the following:
Something, "E", in this case, is equal to something else: "(mc[sup]2[/sup])", in this case. It's a basic algebraic formula: a = b.
Quoting flannel jesus
That part is, first and foremost, a mathematical formula by itself. It has the following form:
x . y[sup]2[/sup]
First you calculate y[sup]2[/sup], then you multiply x by y.
Quoting flannel jesus
I already told you how I would proceed: you first calculate the speed of light squared, "c[sup]2[/sup]", and then you multiply that by "m".
Quoting flannel jesus
How is that question relevant to E = mc[sup]2[/sup]?
Quoting flannel jesus
Again, how is that question relevant to E = mc[sup]2[/sup]?
Quoting flannel jesus
I don't know, you tell me.
Quoting flannel jesus
I don't know, why don't you tell me?
It's all good dawg.
Quoting flannel jesus
Quoting flannel jesus
But I don't think that's a demonstration that you *actually* understand what e=mc2 means.You keep saying you already showed it's meaning - you didn't. You replaced the symbols with the words that the symbols refer to. That's not understanding.
I think there's a deep sense of TRUST when you say you believe it's true. You don't know what it really means for it to be true. You couldn't devise an experiment to detect if it were true, or some other formula instead were true.
Sure, you understand that e means energy and m means mass.
Above all it's TRUST. That's what I think. I think you believe first and foremost that the people who are qualified to know what e=mc2 actually means, have determined that its meaning in some sense is both testable, and closely matches test results.
Which is why I asked you to try to believe ????. If you were able to do that, I believe that would be a similar kind of belief to your belief that e = mc2.
Are you sure about this?
Not entirely, no, but it seems to me that someone who can't tell me what it means to multiply mass by a speed would have a hard time testing if multipying a mass times a speed, twice, were "true".
And I asked you, if is a fair reconstruction of your argument, and you said .
I'm also not making an argument so much as just spinning ideas.
Then what is your point?
But you told me not to look it up. Why would you even give me such a bizarre instruction to begin with?
Quoting flannel jesus
Why would I even do that? If I don't know what it means, then the only sensible thing to do is to find out what it means. But you told me not to do that. So how could I know what it means?
Quoting flannel jesus
But you told me not to do that, so how could I?
Quoting flannel jesus
No, that's not how science works. At all.
I know what it means to multiply a Time by a Speed. If you have a car going x miles per hour, you can multiply that by the number of hours they were going that speed to find out how many miles they travelled. I get the meaning of that deeply.
I don't know what it means to multiply a mass by a speed, twice. Do you?
Artificial Intelligence is not Human Intelligence. This surprises you, somehow?
Do you know what it means to multiply a mass by a speed, twice? What does it mean? Not numerically, conceptually. Why would you ever multiply a mass by a speed twice?
Most people intuit why you would multiply a Time by a Speed. That makes intuitive sense. Why a mass?
I already told you the procedure: 1) solve the square of c, then multiply that by m. It's not that difficult.
Quoting flannel jesus
I'm all ears.
Quoting flannel jesus
Sounds great.
Quoting flannel jesus
I've already said my piece about this, flannel jesus.
"we" as in "who"? You and me?
Quoting flannel jesus
Why don't you tell me?
Quoting flannel jesus
Again, why don't you tell me?
I'm not the one claiming to understand it so I wouldn't know.
Any truth value I put in e equal mc2 is based on trust that people who do understand it are competent enough to test for it and experimentally show that it works.
I'm not claiming understanding. I'm explicitly saying, I have no idea what it means. I don't know why anyone would multiply a mass by a speed and then by a speed again.
Given your answers here, I don't think you do either.
Any 6 year old could plug numbers into a calculator. That's all your procedure is. That's not understanding.
It's okay if you don't understand. I don't either. I think we could have an interesting conversation if you just admitted it. You don't know why it's meaningful to multiply a mass by a speed twice.
Yeah man, I hear what you're saying, but you're sorta talking past me. I mean, think of it like this:
Who needs to know what x and y are, when you say something like: x = y + 3
Do you really need to know what x and y are in that case?
And if your answer is "yes", then consider this other formula: a = a,
Or this other one: a = b
Do you really need to know what they mean? No, you don't. a = a is T, while a = b can be T or F.
And if I say "it is not the case that a=a", then I can represent that as "not a=a", or I can even say something like !(a=a), or maybe a!=a, or stuff like that. Or maybe ¬a=a. It doesn't matter, all of those are F, because contradictions are always F, tautologies are always T, and contingencies can be either T or F.
Again, why is it that you don't understand it? That question makes no sense, because you do understand it!
So why are you giving me such a tough time with Einstein's formula? It's a super basic formula, what's your actual difficulty with it? You don't need to understand it, it's just a formula!
So when I asked what does it mean to say it's true, you could have actually said, "it means that I believe that if I take the speed of light in meters per second, square it, and multiply by mass in kilogrammes, that will be equal to the energy in joules.". That's more meaningful than what you said, because everything you said is unitless - but there's still one important thing missing from that - that calculation equals the energy OF WHAT?
Plugging numbers in isn't meaning. Replacing letters with the words they stand for isn't meaning. Even using the proper units is only a step towards meaning, but there's still a final unanswered question, it equals the energy of what?
I'm giving you a tough time because I think it's interesting! I think it's interesting that people can say something is true, without being able to say anything about what that something is.
Imagine a child who is around his dad a lot. He heard people say about his dad that his dad is very Fargle. He knows Fargle is a good thing, but he doesn't know what makes one person Fargle and another person not-fargle.
So he thinks his dad is Fargle, and he also doesn't know what Fargle means. I think that's interesting. If anybody asks him if his dad is Fargle, he'll give the "correct answer", but when it comes out of his mouth there's almost a sense in which it's not correct. He doesn't MEAN the correct thing by it when he says it's true. He's just saying sounds.
I think that's interesting.
Einstein's formula, from a purely mathematical point of view, does not require them.
Again, why don't you tell me?
It's the energy of an ordinary object, such as a stone or a table, for example.
Quoting flannel jesus
You're calculating the relationship between energy, mass, and the speed of light.
Quoting flannel jesus
Again, the energy of an ordinary object, such as a stone, or a table, for example.
Quoting flannel jesus
Yet I do know. And so do you. It's super obvious.
Quoting flannel jesus
Whatever, man. When someone asks me if a=a is true, I say yes. When they ask me if a=b is true, I say that it depends on the case. And when someone asks me if a=a is false, I say no. And when they ask me if a=b is false, I tell them that it depends on the case.
You've been saying how obvious it is, I don't think you're really taking seriously how extremely non obvious all this is. You think it's obvious but you have the wrong answers.
You don't know what it means.
And that's okay, but I think you could have a more interesting exploration of it all if you stopped calling it obvious and acknowledged that a bit.
It's the same as rest mass. And since you have rest in both cases, you can simplify it, so that you're actually talking about energy and mass. Again, this isn't rocket science.
Quoting flannel jesus
Ok, then why don't you tell me what it means?
Quoting flannel jesus
Acknowledge what? Its a formula, dude. There is nothing to understand about it!
Something that's just a formula has no truth value whatsoever. It doesn't make sense to call a formula "true".
A = dx + ey - z^3 true or false?
I disagree. For all formulas, there are three kinds: those that are T, those that are F, and those that can be either T or F, depending on the case.
Quoting flannel jesus
It has a truth value: T or F.
How would I know? I'd have to calculate it.
I never said that it does. There's no difference between kinetic and potential energy. Just as there's no difference between energy and heat. It's really just the same thing: energy. And that, is equal to mass, times the speed of light, squared. And that is a property that every material object has.
You didn't say that it does? Are you kidding?
Where did I say "plus"? Oh that's right, I didn't say it. You said it:
Quoting flannel jesus
Oh, it's pedantic? So you would say that 2 + 5 is the same formula as 2 - 5?
What you just said is a contradiction.
It could mean the logical "and". As in, "p and q".
:roll:
Quoting flannel jesus
Good for you :up:
:roll:
If I tell you that a + b is an algebraic formula, would you object to that by saying "a and b are letters of the English language?"
No, I don't. Have I actually said that? No, I didn't.
:roll:
Then why did you even ask the question in the first place?
What else is there?
About what?
Let's just say that what you're selling as medicine is just snake oil, how about that?
You don't have to be embarrassed. Just say what it means
Oh, and you expect me to do something about that?
Quoting flannel jesus
I already told you what it means, it means:
Energy (potential & kinetic) = physical mass, defined as a Newtonian force, multiplied by the speed of light, squared.
See .
That's like you asking me what an apple is, and I say "it's the thing you're eating when you're eating an apple".
What's &? What's And?
When I calculate the numerical value of e, then you say "that's kinetic and potential energy", what's and?
What other options are there?
Why not?
Quoting flannel jesus
Which is a perfectly OK thing to say.
Quoting flannel jesus
It's a logical conjunction. This isn't rocket science, it's propositional logic, dude.
Quoting flannel jesus
It means that they're the same property: E.
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
That's just objectively false
As opposed to what? Subjectively false?
They do if if they're tautologies.
Then you have the wrong impression about me.
I mean, there's some good research programs, but that's about it. The most legit one is probably Quantum Field Theory. But that Theory can't explain the initial moment of the Big Bang itself, when Time (as in, "t") is equal to Zero.
In the Preface to the Second Edition (1787) of The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant says:
Quoting Kant
Nevermind, I found simpler solution to that.
Quoting RogueAI
Neither invented nor discovered. It was popularized by him, but it was there before him. Poincare for instance said it before Einstein did.
The formula is a special case since energy is frame dependent.
A more general version is E = mc²/?(1-(v²-c²))
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Do I agree that you actually think what you claim to think? Seems to be a shallow question.
The truth of the formula seems to be related to the working of our physics and not something objectively true, the way the question is worded.
Quoting flannel jesusmv is momentum, something reasonably intuitive. KE is half mv², which is also intuitive to some, and is the same units as the mc² thingy. But those two formulas (momentum, KE) are newtonian concepts that work only at low v. c is not just another speed, but a universal constant, and mc is not the momentum of a rock moving at light speed. So we're back to exactly what you're trying to convey: What does mc² mean anyway? People (without understanding) say "ooh, that explains why such a big bang when mass is converted to energy", since c seems to be a pretty big number. But in natural units, c is 1, reducing the formula to E=m which doesn't sound very bangy at all. Energy is proportional to mass, but has different units.
I didn't read the whole thread. After a whole page+ of posts I could not figure out what the OP was trying to say that was any deeper than "hey, the sum of 3 and 5 is said to be 8, do you really believe that?".
Nonsense.
If you think about it, the principle of momentum is really not at all intuitive. It's based in an assumption of constant velocity, which is not at all real, due to the influence of a multitude of factors. The constant velocity assumption is provided by Newton's first law, but this is just an ideal which is not at all representative of reality, due to that fact, that there is always an influence of a multitude of factors, constantly altering a body's velocity. In reality, velocity is always changing.
So Newton's first law is stated as a principle from which we can address the multitude of factors which are always causing velocity to change, as forces. It doesn't provide a truth about anything, but it provides a principle of utility, from which we can establish a perspective on changing velocity. However, since it negates the observed reality, that velocity is constantly changing due to the influence of a multitude of factors, which is the truth, and replaces it with an ideal fiction, designed with some specific purpose in mind. it is very counterintuitive. It is a denial of intuition for the sake of purpose.
Quoting noAxioms
Kinetic energy is not a Newtonian concept, it is derived from Leibniz' "vis viva". Newton and Leibniz were at odds as to what was the best way to express an ideal (law) representing the conservation of motion. Leibniz insisted that his vis viva (kinetic energy) provided a better (more accurate) representation than Newton's momentum. Application demonstrated Leibniz to be correct. However, the second law of thermodynamics indicates that energy is never really conserved, and such principles are just fictional ideals anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vis_viva
It's Reality Itself.
I like your Forum Name, by the way. Very European-Asian sounding, Eurasian perhaps?
Anyways. Reality itself cannot be known. Only its appearance can be known. But Reality Itself can be studied scientifically. More importantly, as philosophers, we can speculate about its nature. And if it just so happens that intellectual intuition is a real faculty of the human mind, if not the brain itself, then it follows that we can know Reality Itself: and we have direct, unmediated intellectual access to it, all of the time. And necessarily so.
It just so happens that we forget about it sometimes.
Don't you think that if we had this faculty it would not be necessary to make theories about reality? I mean, any theory would be true insofar as reality is given to us in its truth and we simply have to intuit it.
What kind of logic takes you to a conclusion which contradicts your premise?
A contradictory one. Paraconsistent logic, for example.
Like I said, sometimes we forget our connection to reality, just as we sometimes forget our connection to Nature.
And to Culture, I would add.
OK.
That's your argument?
Then here's a counter-point to it. I declare that I am the creator of the Philosophy to be called "Argentine Realism" (Realismo Argentino).
How that refutes what I just argued?
That sentence is not grammatical, to begin with. It's not a well-formed formula.
I could, if I wanted to. For example, you should have included a ? sign in your reply number 969740. Cool?
And for your other comment, why should I help you, even if I can?
You should if you want to have a debate with me according to your conditions.
And if I don't want to have a debate with you?
Well, tell me if you want or don't want to have a debate with me.
I want you to tell me the Absolute Truth about Reality Itself. In comparison to that request, debating is worthless. Why would anyone debate anyone, if someone where to say the Absolute Truth about Reality Itself?
But what if I am wrong? I can at least give it a try.
Well, the request I made is quite a tall order, so there's no problem if you say the wrong thing. Who cares? Not even you should care about that, as a speaker or writer.
Quoting JuanZu
Go for it.
Quoting JuanZu
Quoting Arcane Sandwich
Truth = Reality
What it means:
It meas that Truth is identical to Reality.
Good enough?
:100:
Quoting noAxioms
This, on the other hand, is excellent evidence of someone who does know what they are talking about. And therefore it is ignored. Those interested in understanding something of natural units might try looking at this: https://www.seas.upenn.edu/~amyers/NaturalUnits.pdf but please don't ask me to mark your homework.