Can 'binary' and 'spectrum' both be extremes of a single..

[Today]

not sure, but i think i actually learned here...

[Genevieve]

It seems to me that it would hard to quantify "everything". Basically, if you look at a certain "quality" (can't think of a better word for it), for example good and evil, then you have a spectrum of different positions, but all of them sit between two absolute points (in the case absolute good and absolute evil). Those points don't change, and a human will never be able to reach either of those points (they are essentially theoretical). Each "quality" will have it's own spectrum, with it's own absolute points.

What I'm trying to say is that there are the binary absolutes, the spectrum is just what's in between them.





Obviously for this I'm talking about a fairly loose interpretation of binary.

Yeah but what you're using here are extremes that are apart of a spectrum. A binary implies 2 absolutes with nothing in between. A spectrum implies two absolutes with something in between. Like in computing, there's a 0 and 1. But no 0.5, is there?

But this thread and some of the replies did make me think and spectrums do only seem to exist within human constructs. There is a 'light spectrum', sure, but light exists in a binary (there either is light, or there isn't). The spectrum is in the nature of light, but not light itself.

If reality is a culmination of binaries, what's the purpose of evolving a more spectral perception? I guess it enables us to open our mind and think creatively. To see things that are not there.

[collige]

It seems to me that it would hard to quantify "everything". Basically, if you look at a certain "quality" (can't think of a better word for it), for example good and evil, then you have a spectrum of different positions, but all of them sit between two absolute points (in the case absolute good and absolute evil). Those points don't change, and a human will never be able to reach either of those points (they are essentially theoretical). Each "quality" will have it's own spectrum, with it's own absolute points.

What I'm trying to say is that there are the binary absolutes, the spectrum is just what's in between them.





Obviously for this I'm talking about a fairly loose interpretation of binary.

Yeah but what you're using here are extremes that are apart of a spectrum. A binary implies 2 absolutes with nothing in between. A spectrum implies two absolutes with something in between. Like in computing, there's a 0 and 1. But no 0.5, is there?

But this thread and some of the replies did make me think and spectrums do only seem to exist within human constructs. There is a 'light spectrum', sure, but light exists in a binary (there either is light, or there isn't). The spectrum is in the nature of light, but not light itself.

If reality is a culmination of binaries, what's the purpose of evolving a more spectral perception? I guess it enables us to open our mind and think creatively. To see things that are not there.

Well, technically, in computing there could be a 0.5, but the hardware has to make a choice about whether it's a 1 or a 0. That's why transmitting data over long distances has transmission errors. I would argue that reality is a culmination of spectrums and that binaries are human constructs.

[Genevieve]

Yeah I thought of that after I posted but I'm not sure. It's kinda hard if not impossible to look outside of human perception because, well, we're humans.

[exfox]

because 'everything' implies the sort of black and white thinking that negates the idea of a 'spectrum'.

I don't really think "everything" implies such binary thinking, so I wouldn't say it's a contradictory notion really

[nowaysj]

Spectrum is the scale of the binary.

[noam]

in mathematics a spectrum would be the contents of a set

you can have sets, of sets

and sets, of sets, of sets

you can quantify stuff for fucking ever

[Today]

it's like, when you pitchbend down an octave, you go in between all the notes, gliding all the way down (or up) , but at the same time, you are never "in between" any actual pitch. Every single fraction of a second, it's oscillating at a distinct, quantifiable frequency. But at the same time, I don't feel liek the same thing's true, especially when you do it on, for example, a guitar string ... i know it's always true, but when you think about it in terms of feelings -- in the human mind, emotions sliding along "pride v. shame" and "fear vs. love" , etc. that stuff feels more like a real mixture of mixtures and of absolutes.

[BLAHBLAHJAH]

DEVIL IS IN DA GAPS; DA TYRANNY OF DISCONTINUITY! 666! LOL DID YE KNAR DER IZ AS MANY INFINITE NUMBERS BETWEEN 0 AND 1 AS THERE IS BETWEEN 0 AND 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

"Your message contains 2298082 characters. The maximum number of allowed characters is 60000."

[Artie_Fufkin]

To answer the OP, no. There's no "inbetween" for discrete and continous variables. What would it be?

Take numbers, for example. You have real numbers (spectrum) and you have integers (binary). Sure you could count by .5, .25, etc, but it's still a bunch of distinct, enumerable steps (assuming there's an upper and lower bound).

This reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Long_I ... Britain%3F

So you're saying at the smallest possible level, something will be rounded off?

[nowaysj]

No, at the smallest level there is nothing to round off, there is nothing in between. Pi isn't a number, it is the boundry between all numbers before pi, and all numbers after.

[collige]

I'm saying there is no smallest possible level. See BLAHBLAHJAH'S post.

[mks]

00000111 00000111 00000111

The neighbor...

[Ricky_Spanish]

There is a smallest theoretical level which is the planck length (10^-33 m). The reason is because in order to probe smaller than this scale you would have to use so much energy that you would create a black hole. The LHC i think goes to 10^-17 which is like 16 orders of magnitude bigger.

There are a number of physicists (like Penrose and Tegmark) who think that the universe (in a mathematical sense) is an imperfect representation of a platonic realm, where there is an infinite resolution.

Which kinda makes sense to me. I feel that for something to 'exist' in what we call 'reality' it has to be computable. Infinite resolution is not computable, and so cannot 'exist' in our conception of 'reality'.

[Artie_Fufkin]

I come back to this thread and see sonika's avatar...

[Phigure]

sorry if i'm coming off as dickish, but honestly, this whole thread seems silly and full of odd little misconceptions and weird semantic exercises

I mean it sort of depends on what definition of "binary" we're working with, so for the sake of the discussion, let's put forth what we really mean:
• For binary, don't really think you can mean anything but the classical definition of representing values in a binary system (0 or 1).
• And for a spectrum, the common definition is "a condition or value that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary infinitely within a continuum", in other words, basically a continuous number line, with infinite points, that extends infinitely in both directions.

A binary implies 2 absolutes with nothing in between. A spectrum implies two absolutes with something in between

I think that view of binary is somewhat flawed. It's not really just two absolutes - it's even more basic than that. It's nothing (0), and something (1). I keep seeing people try to ascribe this system to physical things though, which is foolish since number systems are entirely a human construct. Binary is nothing more than the most basic way to represent a quantity.

That view of a spectrum is somewhat incorrect as well, it's not two absolutes (although often you do think of spectrums in that way for practical purposes), since a spectrum technically extends infinitely in both directions.

These seem like pedantic details, but I think they make a big difference.

There is a 'light spectrum', sure, but light exists in a binary (there either is light, or there isn't). The spectrum is in the nature of light, but not light itself.

The "light spectrum" is a representation of the frequency of the photons behaving as a wave, ie, a property of the photons. Yes, these photons either exist, or they don't, but it's meaningless to call that binary, since, again, binary is really just a method of representing values, not as much something to be applied to physical things. I don't really believe you can say ____ is binary, since it's much more complicated than that.

Matter, energy, etc. does not simply just boil down to "it exists, or it doesn't". Even if you were to choose to represent the existence of something as a binary quantity, particles that do exist have various properties which can not be so simply represented, such as the frequency of a photon, for example. Or how about it's velocity, acceleration, etc. Which brings me onto another point - it's not just a matter of binary or a spectrum either. Let's take the speed of something, for example. You can't represent it as a binary quantity, but you can represent the speed in a spectrum somewhere from -infinity to +infinity (ignoring the limit of c since it's pretty much irrelevant). The velocity however, can't be represented by a spectrum, since velocity consists of direction as well.

In a way, I suppose you can say that binary systems are one dimensional, spectra are two dimensional. But the real world has far more than that, and not all quantities can be represented "two dimensionally". You will never be able to represent the direction of something in a real space (as opposed to a 2d space, like a number line), for example.

[Today]

....buzzkill

[Genevieve]

In my defense, I was manic and took a double dose of this stuff and it didn't make complete sense in my head from the get-go. As the effects wore off I started to get embarrassed to come back in my thread. >.>

[fractal]

What I'm trying to say is that there are the binary absolutes, the spectrum is just what's in between them.

interesting thoughts, but this would only hold true if spectrums ended, which they may or may not since we simply can't perceive past what we have discovered so far

what if we were able to view all spectrums? not just in our tiny 4D world, but utilizing all 11 dimensions... There are parts of our bodies that exist and interact with dimensions that we are not consciously aware of, a "dark matter" of our own... given that we only experience and understand small slivers of the audio and visual spectrums in our own dimensions it would seem like we are only experiencing a tiny portion of what is "real" maybe, idrk

[Ricky_Spanish]

I keep seeing people try to ascribe this system [binary] to physical things though, which is foolish since number systems are entirely a human construct.

EVERYTHING IS DIGITAL, EVERYTHING! Space/time, matter/energy. It's ALL digital and so can be expressed in binary terms. The only exception to this is when something exists in quantum superposition, in which case you need an extra binary function 0 AND 1 (a qubit).

Take a proton: You can describe the position of a single proton in a 28 billion light-year diameter of spacetime in 50/60 bits (+1 for spin) of information (Seth Lloyd M.I.T). Its velocity will be less than c so it's velocity will be less than 19 bits. So you know where it has been and where it wil be until it interacts with something else, then you simply have more to calculate. (I dont know how many bits of information you need to describe its kinetic energy, ask a physicist, but it will be one number). These numbers change at any give time interval, the smallest possible unit of time being the planck time 10^−43sec.

Life = DNA = two bits per base pair. BITS BITS BITS! The universe is computing particle interactions via the laws of physics.

since number systems are entirely a human construct.

The shape of the number 3 is a human construct, but the concept of one thing, AND another thing, AND another thing, is not.

Matter, energy, etc. does not simply just boil down to "it exists, or it doesn't". Even if you were to choose to represent the existence of something as a binary quantity, particles that do exist have various properties which can not be so simply represented, such as the frequency of a photon, for example. Or how about it's velocity, acceleration, etc. Which brings me onto another point - it's not just a matter of binary or a spectrum either. Let's take the speed of something, for example. You can't represent it as a binary quantity, but you can represent the speed in a spectrum somewhere from -infinity to +infinity (ignoring the limit of c since it's pretty much irrelevant). The velocity however, can't be represented by a spectrum, since velocity consists of direction as well.

particles that do exist have various properties which can not be so simply represented, such as the frequency of a photon

Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. So that is ONE number.
wiki: 'Frequencies range from 2.4×1023 Hz (1 GeV gamma rays) down to the local plasma frequency of the ionized interstellar medium (~1 kHz).

Or how about it's velocity, acceleration, etc.

er... a photon's velocity will allways be c, there is no acceleration, it is always c. c in binary is 0101101011010010000, so that is 19 bits of information.

it's not just a matter of binary or a spectrum either.

I've already pointed out that everything is digital (see quantum mechanics) and continuousness is an illusion.

Let's take the speed of something, for example. You can't represent it as a binary quantity,

Of course you can. Why not? Even a muppet like me can tell you that a photon#s velcocity is is 0101101011010010000.

but you can represent the speed in a spectrum somewhere from -infinity to +infinity

In this universe something's velocity will range from 0mps to 186,000mps.