Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by ThomasHobbes »

SimpleGuy wrote: August 13th, 2018, 11:18 am By the way if this doesn't suffice i refer to the hitchhikers guide though the galaxy this explains everything.
Do you mean "The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy"?
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Thinking critical »

Time must exist as more than a concept in order for us to observe and experience change.
In regards to "constant time" this was in the context of how the observer measures time, it was proposed that time was constant at any point in the Universe, regardless of the rate of speed the observer maybe travelling in the specific region. Obviously Einstein went on to prove this to be incorrect by demonstrating that time is relative.

Tommarcus said
Time only exists when two physical objects move relative to each other.
This is not accurate, it is the measurable observation of motion (speed) which is relative between objects. Time is the measurement of how long the objects took to travel between two different locations in space - from point (A) to point (B).

As for why nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, this is because photons are essentially are massless particle, to be more specific they have no rest mass therefore light is not effected by gravity the same way particles with mass are. Because E=MC2 once matter gets closer to light speed due to the energy needed to move it mass also increases, as mass increases more energy is required again, then mass simutianeously increases and so on and so on until the maxs was so large it would collapse under it's isn gravitational force into a black hole, hence light speed is never reached.
This cocky little cognitive contortionist will straighten you right out
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Thinking critical »

Tommarcus said
But it is not time itself which is changing but the physical objects which we use to measure time. As they approach the speed of light, they can't surpass it, therefore their relative motion to each other is slowed down. That is, it appears that time itself as an object is slowed down.
I'm not quite sure you understand time dilation correctly.
To the observer in their own frame of reference time doesn't appear to change, 1 second still fees like 1 second regardless of speed. Fot an observer in local time watching a clock go past at almost the speed of light the clock would almost appear stationary and can be demonstrated to be actually moving slower than the local clock.
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

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A mechanical device can not represent Time effectively
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Barely existing »

Time is only a measuring tool Like every other measuring tool there has to be an accord by others an acceptance to [validate ] it
David Cooper
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by David Cooper »

tommarcus wrote: August 14th, 2018, 4:47 pmBy treating time as a variable, Einstein was able to develop his theory and make predictions which would have been inconsistent with a constant arrow of time.
Not so - the predictions are consistent with a constant flow of time, as shown in LET (Lorentz Ether Theory) which makes the same predictions as SR and GR using the same mathematics but with a very different interpretation. LET also has the advantage of not generating the contradictions that Einstein's theories do.
That is, it appears that time itself as an object is slowed down.
Not at all. When a light clock moves through space, the photon is unslowed, moving at c all the time, but it takes longer to complete round trips within the clock, thereby slowing the functionality of the clock, but time hasn't really slowed for anything in the clock - it's just the compound functionality that slows due to increased communication distances.
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Steve3007 »

In reply to tommarcus:
David Cooper wrote:LET also has the advantage of not generating the contradictions that Einstein's theories do.
What contradictions do Einstein's theories generate?
Not at all. When a light clock moves through space, ...
What do you mean by "moves through space"? Moves relative to what?
... the photon is unslowed, moving at c all the time, but it takes longer to complete round trips within the clock, thereby slowing the functionality of the clock, ...
Takes longer according to which observer? An observer who is stationary relative to the clock? An observer moving relative to the clock? or both?
... but time hasn't really slowed for anything in the clock - it's just the compound functionality that slows due to increased communication distances.
"Time hasn't slowed" according to which observer(s)?

---

The photon bouncing up and down in the clock moves at speed c as measured by all observers. In a reference frame moving with the clock (i.e. stationary relative to the clock) the length of the path taken by the photon is shorter than it is in any reference frame which is moving relative to the clock. So the observer in any such reference frame sees the clock ticking more slowly; sees time measured by that moving clock slowed down relative to time measure by an identical clock which is stationary relative to him.
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by David Cooper »

Steve3007 wrote: August 29th, 2018, 9:25 amWhat contradictions do Einstein's theories generate?
There are four theories to deal with: three versions of SR and one of GR. GR depends on 4D Spacetime with non-Euclidean geometry, and two of the SR versions also have that. (The original version of SR lacked it - it was added by Minkowsky.) The original version is the one that produces an infinite number of contradictions - different frames of reference make claims about events which contradict the claims of other frames. For example, if you are at point A and want to speculate about a scheduled event at point B, some frames of reference will assert that it has already happened while other frames will assert that it hasn't happened yet. They can't all be right.

The other models attempt to cure that through lorentz invariance, but one of them suffers from event-meshing failures and the third requires an eternal block universe to eliminate event-meshing failures by having a pre-built future, but with the cost that the block can never be generated in order of causation as that would bring the event-meshing failures back in during the construction phase. GR has the same problem as those two versions of SR. All four models have been invalidated, although a modified version of one of them can work if you are prepared to tolerate the event-meshing failures and allow them to disappear as events change at individual Spacetime locations over the course of a Newtonian time that has to be added to the model to make it work.
Not at all. When a light clock moves through space, ...
What do you mean by "moves through space"? Moves relative to what?
Relative to the fabric of space (which is often called the aether).
... the photon is unslowed, moving at c all the time, but it takes longer to complete round trips within the clock, thereby slowing the functionality of the clock, ...
Takes longer according to which observer? An observer who is stationary relative to the clock? An observer moving relative to the clock? or both?
The observers are irrelevant as they are unable to tell if they're moving or not. A clock that's moving through space (and thereby moving relative to the fabric of space) will have its functionality slowed by the increase in round-trip distances for all the movements of its components.
... but time hasn't really slowed for anything in the clock - it's just the compound functionality that slows due to increased communication distances.
"Time hasn't slowed" according to which observer(s)?
Again the observers are irrelevant as they are unable to tell if they're moving or not. A moving observer's functionality is slowed, so his measurements produce misleading results which merely appear to fit the facts by dint of the fact that relativity always hides the absolute frame from him.
The photon bouncing up and down in the clock moves at speed c as measured by all observers.
Different observers disagree as to how far the light travels to complete a tick and how long it took to complete that tick. Whenever they disagree, some of them must be wrong.
In a reference frame moving with the clock (i.e. stationary relative to the clock) the length of the path taken by the photon is shorter than it is in any reference frame which is moving relative to the clock. So the observer in any such reference frame sees the clock ticking more slowly; sees time measured by that moving clock slowed down relative to time measure by an identical clock which is stationary relative to him.
Welcome to relativity (the real one: Lorentz's relativity) - the maths of how the universe works makes it impossible to measure your speed relative to the fabric of space, and all the experiments which supposedly proved that there is no aether have been systematically debunked - they are incapable of detecting what their experimenters incorrectly asserted them to be capable of detecting.
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Steve3007 »

David Cooper,

Your comments appear to me to misunderstand one of the basic requirements of any statement that claims to be scientific: it must relate, directly or indirectly, to something that can be empirically observed. You say later on "the observers are irrelevant". No. The observers, and what is observed by individual observers, and what general principles result from those observations, are all that is relevant. Any concept, whether it's space-time or the aether or anything else, is useful only insofar as it helps to describe and predict observations that can be made by observers.
David Cooper wrote:The original version is the one that produces an infinite number of contradictions - different frames of reference make claims about events which contradict the claims of other frames. For example, if you are at point A and want to speculate about a scheduled event at point B, some frames of reference will assert that it has already happened while other frames will assert that it hasn't happened yet. They can't all be right.
No, different frames of reference do not make claims that contradict the claims of other frames of reference. Frames of reference do not make claims at all. Observations are made from within those frames of reference. It is found that observers in frames of reference which are moving relative to each other disagree as to the simultaneity of events. This is counter-intuitive. That is not the same as saying that it is illogical or contradictory.
Relative to the fabric of space (which is often called the aether).
How is this aether moving? Is it stationary relative to the surface of the Earth? Or is it stationary in a different reference frames? How do I measure my velocity relative to the aether? If there is no way to measure it, why is this aether concept useful? (Recall my comments about the central place of observation in science at the beginning of this post.)
The observers are irrelevant as they are unable to tell if they're moving or not.
Unable to tell if they are moving relative to what? Relative to the aether? Is there any observer that can observe/detect this movement? If not, in what sense is it relevant to science?
A clock that's moving through space (and thereby moving relative to the fabric of space) will have its functionality slowed by the increase in round-trip distances for all the movements of its components.
Slowed according to whose observations? Certainly not according to the observations of somebody moving with the clock. You have to remember that a statement like "a clock is slowed" only makes sense if you specify who is observing the clock. If a clock moves past me at a large fraction of c, then I observe that clock to be slowed relative to my clock (that is stationary relative to me). But an observer moving with that clock observes my clock to be slowed because, to him, it is me that is moving. There is no contradiction in this unless you forget the truth about the central role of observation and cling to a notion that there is an absolute, observer-independent notion of who is "right" and "wrong".
Again the observers are irrelevant as they are unable to tell if they're moving or not.
Again: unable to tell if they are moving relative to what? Relative to the aether? Who can measure their movement? If nobody, then your concept of movement is not science.
A moving observer's functionality is slowed...
Slowed, as measured by whom?
...so his measurements produce misleading results which merely appear to fit the facts by dint of the fact that relativity always hides the absolute frame from him.
What do you mean by "the facts"? Which observations, by which observers, are you referring to?
Different observers disagree as to how far the light travels to complete a tick and how long it took to complete that tick. Whenever they disagree, some of them must be wrong.
No. Different observers (being different observers) make different observations. You haven't defined what you mean by the word "wrong". You can't be referring to inaccurate observations or mistakes in the observation process. If I, as an observer, observe somebody else's clock running slow relative to my own clock, it is not because I've imagined it or made a mistake. I really have made that observation.
Welcome to relativity (the real one: Lorentz's relativity) - the maths of how the universe works makes it impossible to measure your speed relative to the fabric of space, and all the experiments which supposedly proved that there is no aether have been systematically debunked - they are incapable of detecting what their experimenters incorrectly asserted them to be capable of detecting.
If you have a concept of speed which is impossible to measure/observe then you have to explain why it's useful to a discipline (science) which is all about describing and predicting the patterns in observations. You have to explain which observations it successfully describes and predicts which are not successfully described and predicted by rival theories.
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by David Cooper »

Steve3007 wrote: August 29th, 2018, 7:59 pmYour comments appear to me to misunderstand one of the basic requirements of any statement that claims to be scientific: it must relate, directly or indirectly, to something that can be empirically observed. You say later on "the observers are irrelevant". No.
They aren't fundamentally irrelevant - they're only irrelevant in the contexts where I said they're irrelevant, and they're irrelevant in those cases because the mechanics of relativity ensures that they can't know if they're moving or not, but there is a fundamental underlying reality in which there are absolute answers (which we can't identify). Where the observers are relevant is in showing us that they can't determine whether they're moving or not - their observations show us that relativity is a genuine phenomenon. We must then apply reason to test theories as to what's going on with relativity, and we can reject any theories that are irrational while continuing to try to test any remaining ones.
No, different frames of reference do not make claims that contradict the claims of other frames of reference. Frames of reference do not make claims at all.
Whenever you select a frame of reference, you necessarily base it on an assumption that light moves at c relative to that frame. That frame is therefore necessarily making an assertion about the speed of light relative to itself, and in asserting it to be c, it disagrees with every other frame of reference. All frames are incompatible with all other frames (ignoring the infinite number of versions of each where you merely angle your axes differently).
Observations are made from within those frames of reference. It is found that observers in frames of reference which are moving relative to each other disagree as to the simultaneity of events. This is counter-intuitive. That is not the same as saying that it is illogical or contradictory.
When they state that they are stationary and that the other player is moving, they are contradicting each other. If they both refuse to make such claims, they are not committing to any specific frame. The contradiction only comes in when they assert that the statements they generate by using their frame as a base are true.
How is this aether moving? Is it stationary relative to the surface of the Earth? Or is it stationary in a different reference frames? How do I measure my velocity relative to the aether? If there is no way to measure it, why is this aether concept useful? (Recall my comments about the central place of observation in science at the beginning of this post.)
If there's a box which might or might not have something inside and which is impossible to open or see inside by any method, does that mean there's nothing in the box? No. Not being able to detect the fabric of space doesn't mean it isn't there. Also though, what supports separation of objects (distances between them) if there is no space fabric? You can get away with that to some degree in virtual reality where things are located virtually just by assigning coordinates to them, but if the universe isn't virtual, that won't work - there must be a fabric. In the same way what limits light to c if it isn't travelling through a medium that imposes this limit upon it? Nothing can't do that job. The fabric of space is essential to any rational mechanism that doesn't involve the universe being virtual (i.e. a simulation).
Unable to tell if they are moving relative to what? Relative to the aether? Is there any observer that can observe/detect this movement? If not, in what sense is it relevant to science?
The maths of relativity makes it impossible to measure your movement relative to it. Its relevance is that it enables you to have a rational theory that describes a possible universe rather than an irrational theory that describes an impossible universe.
Slowed according to whose observations?
Slowed according to the observations of any observers not co-moving with it, but many of those observers may actually be slowed more than that clock, so their observations shed no light on the issue beyond confirming that relativity hides the truth from them.
Certainly not according to the observations of somebody moving with the clock. You have to remember that a statement like "a clock is slowed" only makes sense if you specify who is observing the clock.
No. It only makes sense relative to the fabric of space. If the fabric of space was able to observe and generate data about what it's observing, it's statements would be the ultimate authority, providing absolute truths about what's going on. No actual observers are in that privileged position.
If a clock moves past me at a large fraction of c, then I observe that clock to be slowed relative to my clock (that is stationary relative to me). But an observer moving with that clock observes my clock to be slowed because, to him, it is me that is moving. There is no contradiction in this unless you forget the truth about the central role of observation and cling to a notion that there is an absolute, observer-independent notion of who is "right" and "wrong".
Why have you allowed the herd to brainwash you? Buying into their mentality is a failure to reason properly. There is an absolute reality, but we can't pin it down because the maths of relativity prevents us from doing so. You cannot measure the speed of light by using light as the measuring device, but that's what we're actually trying to do whenever we carry out any experiment relating to relativity because everything is fundamentally made of stuff that moves about at c. As soon as you pick a frame of reference to use as the base for your measurements, you are working on the basis that "if this frame is the absolute frame", and it if isn't the absolute frame, many of the numbers that come out of it are wrong, but there will be some results that are guaranteed to be right regardless of which frame you choose, and that gives the illusion that the wrong ones were right too.
Again: unable to tell if they are moving relative to what? Relative to the aether? Who can measure their movement? If nobody, then your concept of movement is not science.
It is not science when you reject something's existence on the basis that you can't detect it, and it's all the worse when reason tells you it must be there because it's needed to support the things you can detect and the way they behave.
Slowed, as measured by whom?
Slowed in absolute terms - no observer has access to the truth, so demanding an observer with impossible capabilities is idiotic.
What do you mean by "the facts"? Which observations, by which observers, are you referring to?
You're obsessed with observers. With reality, there is no observer capable of seeing what nature hides from all the occupants of the universe. If you were to create artificial intelligences inside a computer and hid the reality of the computer from them, would you be impressed by them if they denied that the computer exists on the basis that they can't detect it? (That wouldn't happen, of course, if those intelligences are sufficiently intelligent - they would not make such a monumental error in their reasoning, and we shouldn't make that kind of error either, or call it "science" to think in such a naive manner.)
No. Different observers (being different observers) make different observations.
...and many of the claims they make about those observations will be wrong if they try to attribute speeds or slowed functionality to them.
You haven't defined what you mean by the word "wrong".
I've defined it more than clearly enough - if it misrepresents reality, it's wrong. If you are dealing with two frames of reference, they are both claiming that light moves at c relative to them and only one of them can be right (though both will be wrong in most situations).
You can't be referring to inaccurate observations or mistakes in the observation process.
Indeed - the measurements are what they are, and the numbers are all conditionally true (on the basis that the chosen frame is the absolute frame).
If I, as an observer, observe somebody else's clock running slow relative to my own clock, it is not because I've imagined it or made a mistake. I really have made that observation.
Yes, but you would be a fool to assert that you have a true account of the action, and you would also be a fool to deny that there can exist a true account of the action.

Think about the Twins "Paradox". The travelling twin either accelerates or decelerates at the start of his trip, so his functionality either slows down or speeds up. (Or it could be a mixture of both - a deceleration to zero and an acceleration beyond that which means his functionality could end up running at the same rate as the stay-at-home twin during the first leg of the trip.) What is actually going on mechanisitically though? Is he accelerating and decelerating at the same time? Is his functionality slowing down and speeding up at the same time? No. It's either doing one thing or the other - there is an absolute reality underlying the action in which contradictions are not tolerated in the mechanism. To imagine that the mechanism can support an infinite range of such contradictions is idiocy, and all the more so for the fact that we have a fully sound theory of relativity (Lorentz's) which accounts for all the experiments without tolerating contradictions.
If you have a concept of speed which is impossible to measure/observe then you have to explain why it's useful to a discipline (science) which is all about describing and predicting the patterns in observations. You have to explain which observations it successfully describes and predicts which are not successfully described and predicted by rival theories.
Lorentz's theory makes all the right predictions without tolerating contradictions. SR, by contrast, rests on infinite numbers of contradictions which people are simply brainwashed into ignoring. I'm referring there to Einstein's original version of SR though. If we move to Minkowsky Spacetime, we can eliminate the contradictions to a degree, but with other fatal consequences (fatal in that it always leads to the theory being invalidated). If you want to explore this further, there's a thread on Cambridge University's science forum which you might like to read through: https://www.thenakedscientists.com/foru ... ic=74095.0. This is one of those rare cases where a science forum of high status has allowed such a heretical thread to stand, and they've done it because no one there was able to refute the refutation. It remains open for anyone to revive if they can find a fault in my argument. I found a thought experiment that proves that the speed of light relative to some of the material of the apparatus (based on actual experiments like Michelson-Gale-Pearson) must be greater than c (and that some frames of reference are therefore misrepresenting reality), and that proof is robust. This only relates to Einstein's original version of SR, but the other versions can be invalidated in other ways, as I set out here: http://www.magicschoolbook.com/science/relativity.html. In both of these places, I've provided lists of simple questions which take yes/no answers, and I tell everyone what the right answers are too, but even the "experts" refuse to commit themselves to answers even though it is ridiculously obvious what the answers must be (as required by mathematics). They won't answer, because they realise that to do so, they either have to agree with me (and with my conclusion) or provide an answer that would show them to be ridiculous.

The mainstream has built heavily upon an invalidated theory (or set of theories), brushing all the contradictions under the carpet and just blundering on regardless, although the work they're doing is still just as useful even if their interpretations are woefully wrong in places. As a result of this though, someone who might turn out to have been one of the greatest physicists of all time (Gabriel LaFreniere) recently died without receiving any recognition because his work was all based upon Lorentz's theory and people simply didn't even look at it. I've only just found it recently, and I'm still examining it to see how much of it holds up, but a lot of it fits the facts so well that I'm increasingly convinced that he was on the right lines.
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Steve3007 »

David Cooper wrote:You're obsessed with observers.
...but there is a fundamental underlying reality in which there are absolute answers (which we can't identify).
I think possibly these two quotes best exemplify our different views of what science is about.

To me, science is, at heart, a simple activity. It is the act of finding logical patterns in our observations and using those patterns to describe those observations and predict future observations, using the assumption (known as Induction) that the patterns will continue to be exhibited. The language in which the patterns are expressed is mathematics. So without observation, there is no science. And a proposed phenomenon that cannot be linked, either directly or indirectly, either in practice or in principle, to a possible verifying or falsifying observation is not the concern of science. That's not to say it has no value for other human purposes. But it is not the concern of science.

To you, it seems to me, this is not true. You appear to find it useful to believe in some kind of unobservable underlying reality which has no bearing on any possible observations and is not required to be in any way useful for describing and predicting observations better than rival ideas. This general belief seems to inform a lot of your interpretations (that I would regard as misinterpretations) of scientific theories. For example, towards the end of your last post you cited an article written by you entitled "Understanding Relativity". In the first line of that article you said this:
Relativity came out of the simple idea that you can never tell whether you are moving or not. When you think you are walking past a tree, it is quite possible that the tree is actually moving past you and that you are having to walk along just to stay still. However, because the Earth is moving as well, it is much more likely that you and the tree are both moving, though there is still a question as to whether you might be moving faster or slower than the tree.
In my view, you have got it fundamentally wrong in that very first paragraph; from the very first sentence. Relativity emphatically did not come out of the idea that you can never tell whether you are moving or not. If that were true, then the concept of movement would be of no use to science. It came out of the idea that the concept of movement only makes sense if you define what you are moving relative to. Living as we do on the surface of a huge solid object (the Earth) we can usually forget this, because the Earth's surface provides us with our common reference frame for most observations. So if I say "I am moving north" I usually omit the implied "...relative to the surface of the Earth" because it is assumed. But, for completeness, it only makes sense to talk of an object moving relative to another object.

Obviously it's possible to tell if you are moving relative to another object. If I am walking past a tree, then the tree and me are moving relative to each other. The tree is moving relative to me. I am moving relative to the tree. There is obviously no contradiction in saying this, and it's pretty basic stuff. When you say things like "it is much more likely that you and the tree are both moving" you illustrate the problems with your concept of an absolute reference frame whose movement relative to us you say cannot be detected. What do you mean "much more likely"? How do you assess this likelihood if, as you have claimed, there is no way to know the way in which this mythical absolute reference frame is moving? Is this reference frame stationary relative to the surface of the Earth? Is it stationary relative to the Sun? Is it stationary relative to the centre of the Milky Way? Is it stationary relative to my cat? If one of those, what makes those particular objects so special? If none of those, then what?

---

OK, having established what I believe to be the underying difference in our worldviews, I'll deal with some of the details of your post in my next post.
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Steve3007 »

David Cooper wrote:They aren't fundamentally irrelevant - they're only irrelevant in the contexts where I said they're irrelevant, and they're irrelevant in those cases because the mechanics of relativity ensures that they can't know if they're moving or not
No, Relativity states that movement is a mutual activity between two objects.
but there is a fundamental underlying reality in which there are absolute answers (which we can't identify)
If we can't identify these answers in any way, at any time in the future, then they are not relevant to us in our goal, as scientists, to describe and predict observations.
Where the observers are relevant is in showing us that they can't determine whether they're moving or not - their observations show us that relativity is a genuine phenomenon. We must then apply reason to test theories as to what's going on with relativity, and we can reject any theories that are irrational while continuing to try to test any remaining ones.
We can reject theories that are irrational (i.e. that contain logically contradictory statements), and which describe and predict observations less accurately than rival theories, or which predict future observations incorrectly. If we have two rival theories which describe and predict observations equally well, we can use the principle of Occam's razor to select the theory which makes the fewest unnecessary assumptions (often characterized as the "simplest" theory). The assumed existence of a universal reference frame whose movement relative to objects can never be known, but which must actually be stationary relative to some arbitrarily chosen object, counts as one of those unnecessary assumptions.
Whenever you select a frame of reference, you necessarily base it on an assumption that light moves at c relative to that frame.
No you don't. The idea that light (or rather, massless particles) moves(s) at c relative to all observers is not an assumption. It is a necessary consequence of other laws of physics which are themselves confirmed by observation.
That frame is therefore necessarily making an assertion about the speed of light relative to itself, and in asserting it to be c, it disagrees with every other frame of reference.
No. Frames of reference do not make assertions. People do. Saying "c is observed to be the same for all observers" is not self-contradictory.
All frames are incompatible with all other frames (ignoring the infinite number of versions of each where you merely angle your axes differently).
I disagree.
When they state that they are stationary and that the other player is moving, they are contradicting each other.
They are not contradicting each other because they are not saying that. They are not simply saying "I am stationary" any more than I am simply saying "I am moving north". You incorrectly assume they are saying that because of your attachment to the concept of an absolute, observer-independent reference frame. (See my previous post). Reference frames don't talk, but observers moving with those reference frames are aware that their movement makes sense only relative to the movements of other objects. They are, by definition, stationary relative to other objects moving within the same reference frame and moving relative to other objects in different reference frames. As I touched on in the previous post, this is basic fundamental stuff about Galilean Relativity that you must understand first before tackling Einstein's Relativity.
If they both refuse to make such claims, they are not committing to any specific frame. The contradiction only comes in when they assert that the statements they generate by using their frame as a base are true.
No. If I refuse to say "I am moving north" without also stating, implicitly or explicitly, what object I'm moving north relative to, it doesn't mean I'm "not committing to any specific frame".


I'll take a breather there and continue later.
David Cooper
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by David Cooper »

Steve3007 wrote: August 31st, 2018, 6:48 amSo without observation, there is no science.
That's correct, but science is not banned from exploring what cannot be observed where observations suggest that something must exist that can't be observed directly, and it certainly shouldn't be ruling such things out or backing theories which become irrational in order to avoid including the necessary unobservable thing.
And a proposed phenomenon that cannot be linked, either directly or indirectly, either in practice or in principle, to a possible verifying or falsifying observation is not the concern of science. That's not to say it has no value for other human purposes. But it is not the concern of science.
Cobblers. You're describing bad science which accepts bad reasoning in order to ban good reasoning.
To you, it seems to me, this is not true. You appear to find it useful to believe in some kind of unobservable underlying reality which has no bearing on any possible observations and is not required to be in any way useful for describing and predicting observations better than rival ideas.
It has a crucial bearing on the observations in that it makes sense of them. Not having the fabric of space leads to absurdities which invalidate theories which lack it.
This general belief seems to inform a lot of your interpretations (that I would regard as misinterpretations) of scientific theories. For example, towards the end of your last post you cited an article written by you entitled "Understanding Relativity". In the first line of that article you said this: ...

It's an introduction aimed at readers who don't necessarily have any pre-existing knowledge of relativity. In the interests of simplicity and being concise, certain things are not told with absolute precision or with complete elimination of ambiguity. However, it is as correct as it needs to be - the aim is to get people to the point where they can see what it is, what it does, how it can do it, and how it can't do it.
In my view, you have got it fundamentally wrong in that very first paragraph; from the very first sentence. Relativity emphatically did not come out of the idea that you can never tell whether you are moving or not. If that were true, then the concept of movement would be of no use to science. It came out of the idea that the concept of movement only makes sense if you define what you are moving relative to.
If it was possible to tell what's moving and what's stationary, we would not have relativity - we would still talk about things moving relative to other things, but there would be no phenomenon of relativity.
When you say things like "it is much more likely that you and the tree are both moving" you illustrate the problems with your concept of an absolute reference frame whose movement relative to us you say cannot be detected.
When people read that bit, I imagine them to be thinking about the sun moving round in the galaxy at high speed and the galaxy potentially moving along at even higher speed as it heads towards merger with M31.
What do you mean "much more likely"? How do you assess this likelihood if, as you have claimed, there is no way to know the way in which this mythical absolute reference frame is moving?
If the reader is thinking about the speed the sun/galaxy is moving at and imagining the Earth to be moving along with it, they aren't going to be thinking that they or the tree are stationary.
Is this reference frame stationary relative to the surface of the Earth? Is it stationary relative to the Sun? Is it stationary relative to the centre of the Milky Way? Is it stationary relative to my cat? If one of those, what makes those particular objects so special? If none of those, then what?
And that's what the reader should be wondering at that point. I don't imagine you need the introduction to get into the subject, so your job (if you want to take it on - there's obviously no obligation to do so) is to get to the crunch points and try to break the argument apart. I refer you to the "interactive exam" where you are invited to pin down the point where the maths or reasoning breaks down. A long string of self-proclaimed experts in relativity and professional physicists have been unable to do so.
David Cooper
Posts: 224
Joined: April 30th, 2018, 4:51 pm

Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by David Cooper »

Steve3007 wrote: August 31st, 2018, 7:30 am
David Cooper wrote:They aren't fundamentally irrelevant - they're only irrelevant in the contexts where I said they're irrelevant, and they're irrelevant in those cases because the mechanics of relativity ensures that they can't know if they're moving or not
No, Relativity states that movement is a mutual activity between two objects.
Why did you start that sentence with "No"? What I said is correct.
If we can't identify these answers in any way, at any time in the future, then they are not relevant to us in our goal, as scientists, to describe and predict observations.
The goal of science goes beyond describing and predicting observations - it aims to explain how things work. Any theory that's been invalidated should not be given precedence over a theory that hasn't and which makes the same predictions. In any case though, Spacetime is a space fabric too, providing the same basic functions of separation by distance, direction, controlling the speed of light, etc. Spacetime is a highly complex aether, and in GR it also bends.
If we have two rival theories which describe and predict observations equally well, we can use the principle of Occam's razor to select the theory which makes the fewest unnecessary assumptions (often characterized as the "simplest" theory).
In such a situation, a more complex theory should not be labelled as wrong, but as less likely to be correct because its extra complexity is superfluous. We aren't dealing with rival rational theories though - none of Einstein's are rational.
The assumed existence of a universal reference frame whose movement relative to objects can never be known, but which must actually be stationary relative to some arbitrarily chosen object, counts as one of those unnecessary assumptions.
Having an aether is not an additional piece of apparatus. Einstein's theories have an aether too called Spacetime which Einsteinist's deny is an aether, even though it provides many of the services of an aether. It is also a much more complex aether in that things are able to be stationary relative to it and to move relative to it in all directions at all possible speeds at the same time. If you want to apply Occam's razor, you should be using it against SR and GR rather than to LET.
Whenever you select a frame of reference, you necessarily base it on an assumption that light moves at c relative to that frame.
No you don't. The idea that light (or rather, massless particles) moves(s) at c relative to all observers is not an assumption. It is a necessary consequence of other laws of physics which are themselves confirmed by observation.
I repeat: whenever you select a frame of reference, you necessarily base it on an assumption that light moves at c relative to that frame. If you don't make that assumption, you could have light move through that frame at speeds other than c, but that is banned. If you have an object moving through the frame, you can then measure the speed of light relative to that moving object as values other than c. To measure the speed of light relative to that object as c, you have to change frame of reference until you find one where the relative speed between light and that object becomes c, at which point the object will be at rest in your new frame.
That frame is therefore necessarily making an assertion about the speed of light relative to itself, and in asserting it to be c, it disagrees with every other frame of reference.
No. Frames of reference do not make assertions. People do. Saying "c is observed to be the same for all observers" is not self-contradictory.
Frames make assertions. Frame A says that light is moving at c in all directions relative to my dog. Frame B says that light is moving at some directions at <c and some directions at >c relative to my dog. The maths of relativity ensures that all frames make the same claim about the speed of light relative to themselves, but they also all make the claim that all other frames are wrong (unless you are using a Minkowsky Spacetime model in which case the speed of light is always 0 or infinity, depending on which way you look at it - all the paths that light follows in such models are shortened to zero length and covered in zero time).
All frames are incompatible with all other frames (ignoring the infinite number of versions of each where you merely angle your axes differently).
I disagree.
If one frame says light is moving at c in all directions relative to my dog and another frame says light's moving at 0.999c and 1.001c relative to my dog in two opposite directions, those frames are disagreeing with each other. Extend that, and all frames disagree with all other frames. This is fundamental to how frames of reference work. People are brainwashed into believing incorrect things about frames of reference by the mainstream, but the mainstream is plain wrong, as shown by the measurements. The speed of light relative to my dog varies depending on which frame you use to make your measurements. If you measure the speed of light relative to the frame and get the value c, and then switch frame to that of the dog to measure it there (again getting the value c), you have cheated by not sticking to the same frame for both measurements. If my dog is moving through your frame of reference and you were to measure the speed of light relative to it as c in all directions from that frame, you quite simply wouldn't be measuring correctly - you would be making an appalling basic error of a kind that no self-respecting scientist should ever make.
They are not contradicting each other because they are not saying that. They are not simply saying "I am stationary" any more than I am simply saying "I am moving north". You incorrectly assume they are saying that because of your attachment to the concept of an absolute, observer-independent reference frame.
That's mere propaganda. They are making assertions which conflict, and the fact that they conflict shows up when you have a situation where an event scheduled to happen at point B is discussed at point A with one person using a frame of reference which says it hasn't happened yet while another person's using a frame that says it has happened. As soon as they say their frames are equally valid and that one of them isn't wrong, they have bought into contradiction and made the incompatible assertions that I have accused them of. And in SR, they absolutely do claim that their frames have equal validity. That is why I am fully entitled to spell out what frames are asserting (within SR - in LET it's different, because frames merely make proposals and fully recognise that they are likely wrong, so your claims about frames not making assertions would be valid if you were applying LET, but they are not valid when you are applying SR).
Reference frames don't talk,
People make claims about what reference frames represent and about their validity. If a theory demands that no frame is superior to any other, none of them are allowed to be any more right or wrong than any other, and that means the contradictions have to be tolerated with all contradictory claims being labelled as equally true. That is a necessary consequence of the SR ideology if you apply its own rules to it.
but observers moving with those reference frames are aware that their movement makes sense only relative to the movements of other objects. They are, by definition, stationary relative to other objects moving within the same reference frame and moving relative to other objects in different reference frames. As I touched on in the previous post, this is basic fundamental stuff about Galilean Relativity that you must understand first before tackling Einstein's Relativity.
What you have to understand is that SR asserts that all frames are equally valid and that none are superior in any way. This means that their contradictory claims must be accepted as equally true. However, if you use a Minkowsky Spacetime version of SR, you can get away from the contradictions, although they are broken in other ways. Incidentally, I made an open challenge years ago for anyone who thought they could do it to create a simple simulation of SR (any version of it at all) covering something like the twins paradox which doesn't cheat by smuggling in an external time to control the unfolding of events. No one can meet that challenge for the simple reason that it is impossible - all SR simulations have to cheat.
If they both refuse to make such claims, they are not committing to any specific frame. The contradiction only comes in when they assert that the statements they generate by using their frame as a base are true.
No. If I refuse to say "I am moving north" without also stating, implicitly or explicitly, what object I'm moving north relative to, it doesn't mean I'm "not committing to any specific frame".
In your analogy, if you say you're moving north and someone else says you're not because you're moving south, he's doing this because you aren't agreeing on the same things as being north and south, so there is no real contradiction. For your analogy to be apt, you would have to have both players using the same north and south with one of them saying, I'm moving north and the other one saying you're not moving north - that would be an actual contradiction, and one of them would be wrong. If one person says that light is moving at c in all directions relative to my dog and another person says that it isn't, at least one of them is wrong. Anyone who says that both those frames are equally valid may be right, but if the speed of light relative to my dog really is c in all directions, those frames cannot be equally valid because one of them misrepresents reality and the other doesn't.

Did you read through my first link? (The science forum one.) It isn't my thread (so don't mistake me for the person who initiated it), but I join in on the first page and set out a thought experiment which resolves the issue more than adequately. If light was moving at c relative to every part of the ring that light's being sent round in opposite directions, the results of MGP and Sagnac would not be the ones that actual measurements record. That thought experiment shows that you cannot be allowed to get away with changing frame repeatedly to measure the speed of light relative to different objects that are moving relative to each other in order to make out that the answer is always c. It demonstrates that some frames (and by extension, all but one frame) are misrepresentations of reality because there has to be some material present in the ring which light is moving past at >c relative to it in some directions and <c in opposite directions, so any frame that represents that material as having light move relative to it at c in all directions is not valid - we just can't tell which frames aren't valid. It is a proof that Einstein's original SR is not viable. Later in the thread, I provide a short list of simply questions which take yes/no answers, so if you want to take issue with the argument, you need to have the courage to answer those questions differently from the provided answers (and as soon as you do that, you will have parted company with mathematics). Alternatively, if you realise that all the answers have to be the ones stated there, we can move on to looking at the other versions of SR and home in on the points where they are broken.
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Halc
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Halc »

Steve3007 seems to be holding his own, but I'd thought I'd contribute a couple points.
David Cooper wrote: August 30th, 2018, 6:02 pm When they state that they are stationary and that the other player is moving, they are contradicting each other. If they both refuse to make such claims, they are not committing to any specific frame. The contradiction only comes in when they assert that the statements they generate by using their frame as a base are true.
You do seem obsessed with finding contradiction where there is none. It is not contradictory for two people to each say they are stationary in their own frames, with the other moving in them. They would both be true statements, despite both statements being "generated by using their frame as a base" as you put it.
All frames are incompatible with all other frames (ignoring the infinite number of versions of each where you merely angle your axes differently).
Merely angling the axes in some arbitrary way is exactly what you're doing by selecting a frame, so if you don't count these arbitrary orientation differences, then there are not multiple frames to be supposedly incompatible.
Why have you allowed the herd to brainwash you? Buying into their mentality is a failure to reason properly.
If we've been brainwashed, then the we're brainwashed into something that is entirely consistent despite a century of falsification attempts. Inconsistencies would have been pointed out by smarter people than the armchair types (like myself) that post on these forums.
Not being able to detect the fabric of space doesn't mean it isn't there.
It isn't there in SR, but SR doesn't correspond to reality. There is a detectable fabric in GR, but that fabric is not stationary in any inertial frame. There cannot be a preferred inertial frame because no inertial frame foliates all of spacetime. A given frame is only meaningful locally.
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