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..spectrum?

It's a random thought that popped into my head but I can't do much with it yet. But I thought about how everything exists in a spectrum rather than a binary, but that itself I think is self-defeating and contradictory notion, because 'everything' implies the sort of black and white thinking that negates the idea of a 'spectrum'.

I have no idea where I'm going with this yet, so I'm either just babbling, but something in me tells me it's an interesting thought. I may be completely off, though. I've not read on this before, so if 'this' has a name, could anyone link me to it?

I need an idea.

Or is existence itself one huge bridge between 'binaries' and 'spectrums'? I mean, if 'binary' is one axis on a graph and 'spectrum', the other? Do you need both a binary and a spectrum to determine the position of an idea? Are binaries 'absolutes' and spectrums the opposite of absolutes and do spectrums place dots on binaries?

Just about sums up my feelings when I think abotu this.

I dont understand a word.

I was starting to write a long winded analogy relating to XYZ geometric constraints in a 3D world but I lost focus so just posted those pictures.

Yeaah, I knew it would be vague. It's vague thought I'm trying to, I don't know, give more shape. I feel like I'm on to something but I don't know what.

Or I'm just trying to bridge two entirely unrelated concepts that can't be bridged.

Electric_Head wrote:but I lost focus so just posted those pictures.

Wurd

i really enjoyed reading this OP
I'm always trying to visualize spectrums for different shit in life

See! That's what I do too. I don't see spectrums in anything. But I think the idea of 'spectrum', like, the notion, is part of a binary. Spectrum and non-spectrum, right? So rather than say "binary and spectrum" maybe it's better if I phrased it "spectrum and non-spectrum".

Basically, the idea of SPECTRUM itself should exist in a spectrum. If it doesn't, the idea of 'spectrum' negates itself, right?

i think every dichotomy hosts a spectrum of samples, and the width of every spectrum can be plotted on a spectrum where zero = binary and the other end goes forever toward infinity

so every dual-sided concept has specimens with an identity both blended and having a degree of absolution. easiest example being human sexuality. gays are mostly totally homo, straights are mostly totally hetero, bisexuals/pansexuals are very much non-absolutes and identify as such. but everyone's got a blend in them

only difference being those identifying as a total absolute are merely in denial (imho of course)

I like how everything on DSF lately has been related to the complexity of sexual orientation(s)

neway, I think you're thinking about it incorrectly
something has a designation as one thing at the exclusion of all other things
I consider this a binary system
so the complete set of things is a group of binary relationships or a spectrum
but this breaks down too

for instance, the color spectrum ends where it begins encompassing the totality of our visual perception which is incomplete as we recognize the limited scope of our visual senses
what seems complete and neatly round is way imperfect

I don't really understand...

What about quantum mechanics: can't their be multiple states in existence at the same time? That's supposedly how quantum computing works, making use of multiple simultaneous states

tuckerlinen wrote:I like how everything on DSF lately has been related to the complexity of sexual orientation(s)

neway, I think you're thinking about it incorrectly
something has a designation as one thing at the exclusion of all other things
I consider this a binary system
so the complete set of things is a group of binary relationships or a spectrum
but this breaks down too

for instance, the color spectrum ends where it begins encompassing the totality of our visual perception which is incomplete as we recognize the limited scope of our visual senses
what seems complete and neatly round is way imperfect

this is a much better explanation of binary

but something's designation as one thing could be of a thing that lies on a spectrum, which only excludes it from being anything lying on a different point on that spectrum, or from anything whose set doesn't intersect with that particular set.

i.e. waves of white light are not micro/gamma/infared/ultraviolet/etc. waves, but have a quality of cool, bluish-white light or warm yellow-white light, for example, and as the waves expand or contract in frequency, that could shift. But energy is not exclusively light, or any of those wave types, it can also be potential energy

is energy either potential or kinetic, would that be a true binary system? or does it move along a spectrum as it's converted from one to the other (launching a spring-loaded object, or re-loading the spring... dropping a boulder or hoisting it back up to a given height)

I'm not sure what exactly you are getting at so generally speaking:

Fundamentally everything is digital, or quantum binary if you like, either 0 or 1 or 0 and 1. Even space is quantised. Continuousness is an illusion.

What the h3ll is thread actually about?

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).

Electric_Head wrote:

this x Over9000

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.