On 11/11/05, Davdi Silverrock <davdisil at gmail.com> wrote: > On 11/11/05, Jon Lincicum <lincicum at comcast.net> wrote: > > > > However, I would posit that Dragaeran aging is not simply a > > mathematicial formula away from human aging--they just mature at > > different rates and times than we do. > > But that is exactly what a proper mathematical formula decribes! > > It might be a somewhat complicated mathematical formula (so that > perhaps different formulas would be used between different life > stages), or mathematical formulas with some factor that ranges between > certain values, but it should still all come down to math. Kind of, I guess. But describing interacting physical systems is going to involve inventing a lot of new operators and terminology and definitions; you can describe a falling ball's motion with a simple equation, but once it hits a floor and bounces you have to mathematically describe the bouncing and *then* re-run the free-fall equation. To describe it in a single equation you'd need a notation that expresses discontinuities in a function and its several derivatives. Maybe such notations exist, but I don't know them. People seem to be okay with breaking systems up into separate parts, where separate equations apply. Anyway, Dragaeran aging will obviously not really conform to a simplistic formula like my original proposal; which doesn't mean it can't be a decent approximation for *expressing* equivalent ages. > When you have one set of values that goes between 0-100, and another > set of values that goes between 0-3000, and are told that there is a > certain relationship between those values (in this case, age), then a > mathematical formula, with certain accepted limitations, describes > that relationship. A fair point. I might argue that we're less interested in fitting the actual function than in minimizing both error and formula complexity, in a sort of MDL- (Minimum Description Length) ish fashion. Max Wilson -- Be pretty if you are, Be witty if you can, But be cheerful if it kills you.