No Infinities Principle: Proof

1. Physics can be described mathematically,
   
2. Therefore every phenomenon corresponds to an equation.
3. Equations with infinities in them are not meaningful
4. No variable can ever be infinite.
   

QED

So yeah. That's how bad modern physicists are at thinking. The proof really is that short.

Remember, they already use this principle. They simply don't recognize its full implications.

For example, as I said before, space and time are considered to be infinite by some, and this is socially accepted.

Nevertheless it is not mathematically acceptable. If space is infinite, then consider the very simple equation of constant motion in a straight line.

x=Ct That is, every second, the particle goes C meters further away from the origin.

So at t=9, the particle is at 9C. Simple.

Because space is relative, we can redefine the origin.

x - 12=Ct.

So at t=0, the particle is already at x=12.

Because space is infinite, we can redefine the origin to be infinity.

So at t=0, the equation reads

∞-∞=0

The problem is that ∞ - ∞ is undefined.

To show this mathematically, consider t!=0.

x-∞=3

x=∞ +3

Infinity + 3 is infinity

x=∞

Ergo, the particle hasn't moved. This is inconsistent. If we take any infinity to be physically meaningful, any equation with the infinite constant becomes meaningless.

The physical interpretation of this is that if space is infinite, then a particle can't ever reach a local area through finite movements. Ergo, it doesn't actually exist.

Therefore, either space is not infinite, which means the universe must have some sort of edge, or it is infinite but all the infinite space doesn't exist.

These statements are exactly equivalent under physics.

Ergo, the universe isn't infinite. It has an edge. Well...it can also wrap around in the manner of a video game world, or indeed the Earth's surface.


The proof for every other relative physical variable follows similarly.

And, out of curiosity, do you think absolute variables can be infinite? Infinite charge? Infinite mass? Infinite density? Infinite force?

Incidentally, this inevitably means that infinitesimals also cannot exist.

Because of this, I can NIP string theory right here.

1. No infinities or 1/∞ exist.
   
2. Strings are one dimentional.
3. One of their physical properties, such as width, is infinitesimal.
4. Strings do not exist.
   

QED

Now that's sad. Pathetic and tragic. Twenty years of string theory and the proof that it was mostly a waste is four lines long.

Four lines.


Similarly, we know for a fact that particles are not point particles.

A point particle has infinitesimal length, width, and depth, and therefore doesn't exist. But, particles do exist. Ergo they are not point-like.

Now, I can hear one objection. What equation uses the width or whatever of a particle?

Luckily, there is a separate proof. Given these two proofs are consistent, I use Axiom Two, say self-consistency is sufficient evidence for truth.

Here it is.

Assume our world has three dimensions of space, just as it appears to.

Assume a two-dimensional object exists. A plane, much like the thinnest piece of paper ever.

Now, according to cartoons, if you view it from the front, you'll be able to see it. However, if you view it from the side it will disappear.

We can verify that from the side, it disappears. Without width, it will not impede the flow of information from one side to the other.

But this leads to a contradiction! If the object does not exist from one angle, then it cannot exist from ANY angle! This is the principle of relativity.

To check this, ask; 'as a three-dimensional object passes through the plane, what part of the object will the plane intersect?' None. The intersection will have a volume of zero.

Look at this another way. If you stick your finger into the edge of the plane, it won't exist. It forms no barrier to entry. What happens if you now move your finger sideways? Well, it still can't form a barrier! That's relativity.

As such, true zero-dimension particles cannot exist. Therefore, they must have at least infinitesimal volume. But they cannot have infinitesimal volume, by the NIP.

As such they must have a regular amount of volume. And indeed the uncertainty principle ensures that the exact position of the 'point' particle can never be known. It always has some spatial extent.

Similarly, two colliding electrons cannot ever actually touch and produce infinite force. Either there must be a limit on their velocity to prevent them from exceeding their limited ability to produce force, OR when their maximum repulsion force is exceeded, their interaction will change them into some non-electron.

Or, you know, something completely surprising.


NIP has at least one surprising consequence. Nothing is continuous, at least physically. Everything must be quantized. Space, time, energy, everything. This is because the definition of continuity is that infinitesimal changes are allowed. However, infinitesimal changes are physically meaningless, and therefore continuity is physically meaningless. Physically meaningless things do not exist.


Also of interest is that NIP is equivalent to causality because it's equivalent to the fact that we can describe physics mathematically.

Consider any physical variable. It can vary, and it can only vary in quantum jumps. If the universe can be described mathematically, then these jumps will follow a formula. Each jump will be directly dependent on the position reached by the previous jump.

This is causality. Each cause has a unique set of effects. I say set because there is some leeway in the quantum jumps, but these are described by fixed averages, so you can't really say that causality is weakened by randomness.

(There is just one tiny problem. Particles are actually conscious. We can tell because we have brains. More on this later.)


On a human note, would you like to know how I discovered the NIP? I was considering fundamental particles one day, and how quarks are more fundamental than protons. I was wondering if it were logically possible for quarks to be made up of yet more fundamental particles.

After all, we've already gone from atoms to protons to quarks. Could we keep going? Yes, we could keep going, in principle. However, we cannot keep going indefinitely. Eventually, there must be a most fundamental particle. Otherwise it's turtles all the way down. Infinite regression.

(Note that this isn't just logically repugnant, it also violates Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. An infinite regression, if true, would technically be able to prove its own consistency. For any particle you wanted to prove was consistent, you could go one level deeper and use those particles as proof.

Because you can make the level arbitrary, this proves it for all levels. (Infinity is weird.) Godel proved that any such theorem can only prove itself by being inconsistent, and thus false.)

In short, Zeno was right, in a sense. However, he wasn't applying his theory in the right domain.

Also, he didn't know space and time are quantized, and so at some point the arrow will be touching the soldier, and one Planck-time (approx 1/10^43 s) after that, it must be at least one Planck-length (approx 1/10^35 m) inside the soldier.

Mathematically you can do continuous calculations. However, physically, you cannot.


I just found out about Compton wavelengths. These are minimum uncertainties in particle locations. These cutoffs satisfy the NIP.

Also, reading about de Broglie wavelengths, I just realized that the wavelength of a person is smaller than the Planck-length. This is why people never display, say, quantum tunneling behavior, not even really really rarely. The wavelength of a person isn't really really close to zero, it's actually indistinguishable from zero.


Notice again that physics has already discovered many of the predictions of the NIP, and yet has somehow failed to discover the NIP itself. I really do find this boggling.


So yeah. Take that, government-funded physics. Accept your ignorance lest I have to do it for you.

The Stock Market and Government Intervention

Inspired by an article on the new recession.

The stock market is not, as this and every other article treats it, the economy. It's not even like the economy. The economy is a heart - it drives the entire body. The stock market, by contrast, is the spot on my wrist that I can use to take my pulse. In fact, exactly like that.

Because of this fact, when the government tries to 'inject liquidity' into the stock market, it's exactly like injecting blood into my wrist, from another part of my body...as a strategy for increasing my blood pressure.

Naturally, this is, compared to its objectives, unfathomably harmful.



The economy is about the exchange of objects to accumulate value.

Notably, there is no objective way to define value. It's totally subjective, but it does exist. Because it's subjective, it doesn't have to be conserved, which leads to the real difference between the wealthy and the poor. While it's true that wealthy people generally have more objects than the poor, the real difference is because the wealthy have more things they value, and these things happen to be objects. They have taken advantage of the nonconservative nature of value by trading things they value less for things they value more, reciprocally. Wealthy people simply do this more effectively.

Notice that these trades do not, in themselves, significantly change the physical world. A camper is traded for some dollars which are traded for some building materials, say. Now, the dollars, camper, and two-by-fours are in a different place, and could easily be moved back, but suddenly the total wealth and value of the arrangement has greatly increased.

(This is, naturally, one reason government redistribution never works. There's no way for the government to determine who really values what, which means it will inevitably destroy wealth on a disastrous scale, compared to anything it tries to do.)

(The only way (we know of) to determine what people really value is to put it up for auction on the free market. Government is simply the manifestation of the idea that people want the wrong things. )

(Also, don't forget that ownership isn't physical in any sense either.)

It's these trades that actually increase wealth. Production is quite separate. Production is merely motivated by the future possibility of these trades; without that production would halt.

This is the basic truth of a recession. The expectation of future trades diminishes, and so production declines, ensuring that through normal wear and tear, wealth declines, and everyone feels the pinch.

What does this have to do with the stock market? In a healthy society, nothing you'd ever need to worry about. Why not?

Because the stock market does not trade in anything of real value. No one values stock in and of themselves, but only as a means to obtain new things they do value.

Similarly, dollars are not true wealth. The only real value to dollars is that they facilitate trade, they are never an end, a value, unto themselves, unlike campers and two-by-fours. Also unlike similarly intangible but truly valued things like communication or the various types of security, or a feeling of well-being from a massage or similar service.

Stock is, actually, very like the banknotes that, way back, actually preceded fiat currency, back when banknotes were in fact notes from the bank. Both are, in a very real sense, merely currency.

Currencies all take their entire value from the fact someone will agree to trade that currency for something of real value.

So, the stock market is a big currency exchange. This gets a bit complicated and subtle, so I'm glossing over some things. Regardless, like all currency exchanges, a stock market cannot truly create or destroy wealth. Every dollar 'lost' to a portfolio is merely gained by another portfolio.

And, like all currency exchanges, it can tell you something about the conditions affecting the underlying real values backing the currencies. It cannot, or rather should not, affect those underlying values.

It doesn't matter what happens to your money. If you value huge, delicious steaks, the only reason you value your dollar is because it represents, to you, huge, delicious steaks. The association cannot run in reverse.

As such, the stock market can tell you stuff about the issuing entities - the corporations. (A word that just means 'reification of legal arrangement,' in this case reifying through a corpus - pretending that the legal arrangement is a body, a person.) It cannot, however, work in reverse. Indeed, if I own a factory that makes huge, delicious steaks, does that factory care what its stock price is? Do the buyers of my steaks? My workers?

That would be hilarious actually.
"Crap! I bought this steaks, but the corporation's stock price crashed yesterday and now it tastes terrible. Ugh."
"Urgh! Cheap stock steak! Gross! I hate it when that happens."

The stock market is the pulse of the market - not its heart.

In short, the Great Depression wasn't caused by a stock price collapse. That's preposterous. The stock price collapse was caused by the Great Depression.


There is, of course, one problem with this analysis. It's pretty clear that our economy is affected by what happens in the stock market. Why is this?

Basically, because of the government.

Through various, generally unrelated intentional corruptions, government regulation is now supporting a situation where the actions of America's Wall Street account for, I'm not making this up, half of all American economic activity. The situation is similar in all wealthy countries.

And even this wouldn't be a problem. It doesn't matter if Wall Street accounted for 90% of the economy, it still can't break logical truths. The currencies are valuable because they can be traded. For steaks.

However, the basic support government is providing, without which Wall Street would have to contract drastically, is risk protection. Some institutions have been perceived as too big to fail. There's an actual policy named after it.

Since the people in these institutions aren't dumb, and higher risks generate higher payoffs, this has naturally lead to a drastically blase attitude to high risk. After all, if an investment fails, the government is going to bail them out. They can't lose.

I suspect this is due to a basically voodoo association between the stock market and the economy. The stock market suffers when the economy tanks. It's hard to see the economy, but easy to see the stock market. Therefore, the association gets made between recessions and stock market failures.

As a result, lobbyists can successfully convince lawmakers to prop up the stock market as a method of controlling the economy.

Is my little sub-theory true? Is this voodoo? Well, the opposite is surely false. The Americans are right now pumping vast sums of 'liquidity' into their stock market...but the economy is still tanking.

But wasn't the tanking economy due to the subprime thing? Isn't that simply an extention of the stock market? Yes! So how, according to my theory, did it affect the real economy?

Ask yourself: "Where does the money for these 'liquidity injections' come from?"

The simple answer is, "From the money-printer."

But value cannot be created out of nowhere. Despite being subjective, and nonconservative, it still exists. As I've repeated already, money is valuable only in relation to real values.

Creating more money only causes...drumroll...inflation. Or, for those who read the John Law piece, debasement. The philosopher's stone of taxation.

And this is how the stock market affects the real economy in diseased societies, like ours.

All these 'liquidity injections' represent massive tax levies at the expense of anyone who has a positive asset balance. And while the dollars aren't value themselves, they do represent someone of value that has been previously traded. It's value waiting to be realized, except now it's being realized at Wall Street, by investment bankers, instead of by the person who actually created the value.

Naturally, their store of excess value depleting, these people start sending signals that they won't be engaging in future trades. Which causes stock prices to fall, in addition to various other financial instruments. Which means the bad investments are going to get worse. Which means there will be more 'liquidity injections.' Which means there will be more debasement. Which means these people will start sending signals that...

When I said unfathomably harmful, I meant it. As said in Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, we never see all the things we would have made with the destroyed wealth. We only get to see the protected wealth on Wall Street. Cuz you know, that's where it's needed most.

Because, obviously, government has only our interests at heart. It is our mommy, after all. Or we own the thing, or something like that? We vote, right? This is a democracy, right? Yeah, something like that.

In short, another day, another reason to be an anarchist.