X-Message-Number: 20964
From: 
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2003 15:22:04 EST
Subject:  more pedantry

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It's tedious, but conceivably I may learn something, if only about expository 
clarity.

1. Michael Price writes:

>If experiments one day revealed extra structure within electrons *enabling 
them to >be subcategorised* they would not all suddenly collapse into lower 
atomic orbitals.  >Ergo we are not talking about what we know about electrons 
when we say they are >identical, but about whether they really are identical 
in an absolute sense.

This seems to imply that subcategorizations could occur, but could not affect 
any type of observation, ever. Yet if they could not affect any type of 
observation, ever, how could they be known or inferred in the first place?

But he also writes:

>This doesn't mean we can't make new discoveries about electron structure
>(e.g. string theory), but we do know that these discoveries will not provide
>a means of distinguishing one electron from another, i.e. of
>sub-categorising electrons further.

So now is says further subcategorization is NOT possible. This seems to 
contradict  what he said above.

2. Also, let's look again at:

>Ergo we are not talking about what we know about electrons when we say they 
are >identical, but about whether they really are identical in an absolute 
sense.

"Absolute sense"? Once more, this means that NO type of observation, 
including currently unforeseen types, can ever reveal any difference. How can 
anyone possibly know that?  

3. He also writes:

>To my mind this [the Bekenstein Bound] also implies that the
>wheels-within-wheels process of discovery has come to an end, since extra
>structure implies extra information not accounted for in the BB.  Of course
>the BB may be revised at some point; it is only a conjecture anyway.

I don't think the BB is a conjecture, unless you think its premises are 
conjectures. Its premises, I believe, are just the currently accepted facts 
about quantum physics and the uncertainty principle in phase space. If that 
phase space is given more dimensions, of course that changes things. As far 
as I can see, this implies nothing about the completeness of current theory.

Robert Ettinger

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