re: #748 gregb

Sure, granted, but that’s not the way logic works. You can’t prove that the 17th century is inside or outside the box. In fact, you can’t prove anything about what is inside the box, and a whole class of things outside. You would have an extremely improbable time trying to find everything that is the 17th century (again, a nonsensical) and prove you had all of it without looking inside the box—which you can’t.

Isn’t that what he’s arguing about faith? It’s indeterminate.

Anything? Do you mean to tell me that one cannot mathematically prove that, say, a solid cube with sides measuring 3 meters (or 3000 miles) could not fit inside a box with sides measuring 2 meters? I really don’t think you’re thinking this through.

You can most definitely state that things that never existed, or which exist no longer (i.e. the 17th century) cannot be inside the box. Or in fact, outside of it, either. The nonexistent is absolutely, universally, determinately absent, and being absent from everywhere, cannot be present anywhere, including inside the box.

But if you’re trying to move goalposts to talk about artifacts (which the example is not), possessing a single one from that era would prevent the 17 century artifact collection as a whole from being inside the box - not to mention the obvious fact that they could never fit.

Heisenberg only applies to the microphysical realm. And the 17th century ain’t Schrodinger’s cat.