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.
Steve3007
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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 »

Suppose, for the sake of argument, we do adopt this concept of "frames asserting things" and therefore abandon the standard definition of a reference frame as simply a set of coordinates against which observers make measurements. We then adopt David's idea that at least one of two mutually moving reference frames is "misrepresenting reality", with these assertions, because it is not stationary with respect to the aether. But since, in this worldview, as I understand it, it's absolutely impossible, in practice or in principle, to discover by measurement whether we are moving WRT the aether, the chance that the assertions of any frames are correctly "representing reality" is vanishingly small, regardless of the accuracy of their measurements. Every single measurement of movement that's ever been made is deemed to be "misrepresenting reality". And this reality thing is something whose nature can therefore never be probed by measurement.

So it seems to me that this new way of thinking throws out the idea that physics is empirical - that it is about finding the invariants (the patterns) in different observers' different measurements. Every measurement that anyone ever makes is deemed to be an assertion that "misrepresents reality". All observers (also known, in this worldview, as "frames") are deemed to be a bunch of liars. (misrepresent = give a false or misleading account, aka a lie.)

I personally don't find that worldview particularly useful to me.

Discuss?
Steve3007
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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:I hope Steve takes it upon himself to get in touch with all the people behind those sites to tell them to read physics textbooks because they don't understand what SR is.
If I knew specifically who you were talking about and could have a conversation with them, I expect I'd probably have a discussion in which I'd try to probe in more depth what they mean by their statements, as I would with anyone if there's a chance for conversation. Hopefully, as the basis for the language used in that conversation, we'd both consult standard reliable sources of information, such as physics textbooks.

As I said earlier, if Einstein himself uttered to me the simple isolated statement: "you can't tell if you're moving", since I know that statement taken in isolation is demonstrably false (assuming the standard definition of "movement" (change in relative position WRT time) and "tell" (discover by observation)), I'd discuss in more depth what he meant by it. I think what would emerge is the actual definition of movement that I was assuming, along with the Galilean Principle of Relativity.
(Sorry about the long delay between posts - I heard some amazing things about Salisbury Cathedral and just had to take a couple of days out to go and see its spire and clock.)
Good satire. Having recently arrived from Moscow on a 2 day trip whose sole purpose was to see the sights of Salisbury, but not actually stay at a hotel in Salisbury, did you decide to abandon that purpose because, being Russian, you weren't prepared for the snowy whether of southern England? (My attempt at satire is perhaps a bit more clumsy.)

It's interesting to speculate as to why they came up with such a self-evidently absurd cover story. But I guess that's a whole different topic.
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: September 12th, 2018, 9:39 am I think a good thing to agree on would be the question of whether the Theory of Special Relativity proposes this:
All the laws of physics are the same in all inertial reference frames.
Does it propose that? Yes or no? I think "yes". The reason I think "yes" is because I've read it in books about Special Relativity. We can try to agree on this regardless of whether we think SR is correct to propose that.
It's ambiguous. For LET, the correct wording would be "All the laws of physics provide the illusion of being the same in all inertial reference frames". (If you're using the absolute frame, for example, then the laws of physics and the action are a perfect match. If you're using some other frame though, what you have is an apparent match rather than an actual one, because the way the laws are being applied to the apparent action do not match the actual action.) If you don't word it in such a careful way, you imply that all frames provide true accounts of the action, and most people in the SR camp appear to take it to mean exactly that (because that makes the laws of physics match up to the actual action). If you don't intend it to mean that all frames provide true accounts of the action though, a wording such as "All the laws of physics provide the appearance of being the same in all inertial reference frames" would be far better, warning people not to misinterpret it. So, do you have a problem with that alternative wording (which is specifically designed to avoid backing the dogma)?
Steve3007
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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:It's ambiguous.
It's not ambiguous. It quite clearly says that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial reference frames. What is a law of physics?
Steve3007 wrote:Laws of physics are generalizations which we have created as a result of various measurements and observations.
viewtopic.php?p=319573#p319573

In the sequence of questions in that post, I suspect we diverge at the first question.
..."All the laws of physics provide the appearance of being the same in all inertial reference frames" would be far better, warning people not to misinterpret it. So, do you have a problem with that alternative wording (which is specifically designed to avoid backing the dogma)?
Yes, because it misrepresents what a law of physics is. I think an even worse wording is the one you used at the start of the paragraph when you used the word "illusion". An illusion is a phenomenon which is suggested by one set of senses but which is contradicted by another set of senses. The classic example (used by Bertrand Russell) is Macbeth's dagger. He can see the dagger but he isn't sure if it's really there so he tries to touch it. He tries to confirm the evidence one sense using another. He tests the proposition that the objective presence of a dagger is the invariant which links two different "observations". He can't touch it so he concludes that it is an illusion. He could also have called in the senses of another observer and asked them if they can either see or touch it.

The laws of physics, as discovered by the observations of one observer, are found to be the same as those discovered by the observations of another observer. This is what is found to be true (not "asserted"). There are no observations which contradict this. So the Principle of Relativity establishes invariant between different observations. That's what physics is about.

The problem appears to be that you don't accept that physics is empirical. This appears to lead you to the odd position that all measurements are misrepresentations (a.k.a. lies) and that there is some concept of "reality" which is forever beyond the reach of any senses; beyond the reach of any possible measurement. Clearly that second one may be true, since there's no empirical way to refute it, but it's not the concern of science. It sounds closer to concepts like God. Following Bertrand Russell again, it sounds a bit like the teapot in orbit around the sun.
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Eduk »

David just to be clear. Do you have some special meaning of dogma which you are using without telling anyone? What do you think dogma means?
Unknown means unknown.
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Burning ghost
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Burning ghost »

IT WOULD BE HELPFUL IF THIS THREAD PRESENTED SOME QUESTIONS BUILT UPON WHAT HAS BEEN DISCUSSED UP TO NOW

I WILL BE LOOKING TO LOCK THIS THREAD BEFORE IT GETS PAST 20 PAGES.

No intention of shutting down the discussion and will provide links to this “mother thread”. Just want to keep the discussions moving in some direction rather tha going over the same ground again and again.

So, see what progress has been made in the is thread and the think about what questions and ideas have developed.

Thanks :)
AKA badgerjelly
Steve3007
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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 »

OK, I've created a new topic to continue this discussion here:

Does Special Relativity contain contradictions? : viewtopic.php?p=319816#p319816
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 »

Halc wrote: September 12th, 2018, 11:30 pmOh, you classify growing block as 3D block. I hadn't considered that, but it makes sense. That is a viable metaphysical model, but it is still asserting a preferred moment, so not the Minkowski model that lacks any preferred moment.
4D models can have it too. It may be though that the Minkowski model itself is specifically a mode zero model which is also an eternal static block model which accounts only for a universe that is never generated in order of causation, in which case the 4D mode 1,2 and 3 models are distinct from it.
Of course it does - it only shows the construction phase and leaves it to your imagination to deal with the persisting block being left in its wake.
That would be two kinds of time, not just the one. I know of no named interpretation that proposes two kinds of time, but they're probably out there.
It looks as if you're pinning everything on 4D mode zero then, and that means we should return to discussing the fake causality written through the block.
You can attempt to find this 3D version contradictory, but few hold the position. Your unorthodox description is apparently that all events are in the past of a present that has long since gone on, but that is not a model of the universe since we're at the present in any model that has one. We experience flow, and the model explains that with a flowing present, not a flowing future.
Which 3D version? If it's a block version of mode 3, there's no contradiction - just two phases running under different physics, one to generate the block and another for imaginary physics within the block. If it's mode 2, there's contradiction there during the construction phase which invalidates the model before we even look at the block. If it's mode 1, there are event-meshing failures which are eliminated over time, but it's still far-fetched, and if it's 3D mode zero, an eternal static block, then the causality written through it is fake. None of the block models simplify anything - they just add complexity, and in some cases depend on magic for their creation as they lack a rational construction phase).
Steve clings to it because he isn't interpreting the depicted positions of the objects as representative of the sole valid state of the system, but rather interpreting the simulation as what would be measured in the depicted frame. But your verbal description of the simulation does not describe it that way, so I see it wasn't intended to be a representation of what is measured.
It is a representation of what is measured, but it is also depicting a proposed version of reality at a moment in time. Anyone who clings to mode 2 is tolerating contradictions and needs to recognise that they are doing so. If they don't want to tolerate contradictions, they need to shift to a different model (and have the courage to name it).
Maybe you could program in the block interpretation, hmm??? Your list of modes is hardly the only options.
I suspect you will not do it because doing so would not serve your purposes.
All the modes if treated as 3D generate the same shape of 3D block, and if treated as 4D generate the same shape of 4D block, and those two blocks are mode zero models if you want to miss out the construction phase and remove all trace of movement from them. If you want to include a construction phase for a block in order to make the causation real, you need to choose between modes 1, 2 and 3 - otherwise, you depend on magical construction.
The article takes a very defensive tone. I was amused by a section entitled: "LORENTZIAN RELATIVITY IS THE ONLY CORRECT ONE" which is immediately followed not by a discussion of how other theories are wrong, but this: "The goal of this page is to show that Lorentz's Relativity is easily explainable." Since it makes all the same predictions as 'standard' relativity, I don't see why it would be required to show this, instead of what the title proclaimed. As I said, quite the defensive tone.
I pointed you to LaFreniere to show you what you asked for, and that is someone in the LET camp and the kind of language typically used by such people.
This is not much of an endorsement. The real physicists don't hang out in them.
One of them worked at CERN, but he used the language of SR. He had no trouble understanding other people's use of LET language though.
A lot of the work was based on establishing that LET is still viable - I linked to Doug Marett's site from my page: http://www.conspiracyoflight.com/Conspiracy.html
A conspiracy site. Lovely.
He is referring to the way light conspires to hide the fabric of space from us.
I see it claims that LET makes different predictions than Einstein's work and Einstein's relativity is thus falsified by Sagnac effect and others, linking to interesting deeper pages full of invalid physics.
Your interpretation skills are a bit off there - it doesn't say anything of the kind. He shows that LET predicts the results of those experiments and investigates whether SR does likewise. If SR makes different predictions, it is SR that is falsified by those experiments. Naturally enough though, SR folk like to claim that SR fits the experiments too, which means they may twist things in places to make it fit them or just ignore the parts that don't fit, and that's why they don't get a tick in every box. Perhaps you could point to some invalid physics on his site (other than the invalid physics that he's attacking).
That you link to this page doesn't surprise me, but it really doesn't do much for your credibility. It's like reading a flood geology site. Is LET that poorly done that it needs this sort of support?
It is a high-quality site with high-quality information. Show me where it's broken. In some places, the wording is ambiguous and can lead to it being misinterpreted by those who just glance at it. For example, he says: "The fact that light is perceived to be exactly C (on Earth) in all inertial frames suggests that either: 1) relativity is correct, which leads us to a series of paradoxes and contradictions regarding time, or 2) That the speed of light C can change, but this change is somehow hidden from our view." In the second of those points, he isn't talking about light moving at speeds other than c, but the speed of light relative to objects.
Lorentz seemed never to have posited this passing time in his theory. The first site you link makes no mention of it. I didn't find it in the conspiracy place either, but I didn't look hard since the site doesn't seem to conform to Lorentz's ideas.
Lorentz didn't need to - it was just a continuation of the way time had been viewed previously. Marett's page absolutely conforms to Lorentz's ideas.
My page does say that the modes can all be regarded as 3D or Minkowski (4D)
Your verbal description of each mode describes them otherwise, so no, they cannot be regarded as Minkowski, which has no concept of 'has happened' for instance.
If you want to consider the 4D interpretation, drop the terminology from a different interpretation.
Regardless of what the text local to the diagram says, they can be regarded as 3D or 4D. The 4D structure in each case is identical to Minkowski's, and any of the 4D modes generating a block universe would result in something with the exact same geometry as a Minkowski Spacetime block.
Yes, no running. But the +/- buttons should still function, so the simulation could still be used to show it.
It could be used to show it, but the graphics capabilities of JavaScript aren't up to it - it can only show moving points and not lines (unless you create the lines as photos and then switch one photo for another every time you change the slant of a line.) The dots that I use are just large pieces of punctuation.
There would be just the lines, and no current positions of the objects. You've not included mode 0 in the available modes. The picture above is the closest we get, but it lacks the frame transformations. You've not shown mode 0 to make predictions inconsistent with empirical observations, or inconsistent with its own premises. You've only shown it to be inconsistent with premises of mode 3.
Running time with any of the modes will give you slices through the block, so it's easy enough to run time and imagine all the positions for each moment connected up to the next and the one before. If you have clear plastic and a marker pen, you can produce full drawings from it that way for a specific frame, then compare drawings based on different frames.
and by all three other modes if you imagine them building the block as they go.
That is not Minkowski spacetime.
Absolutely identical geometry.
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: September 13th, 2018, 2:58 amIf you don't do that and jump straight in at the deep end, trying to analyze the words of a bunch of people on the internet who appear to regard themselves as experts, you're extremely likely to misunderstand what they're trying to say. Then you argue with them. Then they criticize you. And, even with the best will in the world (but frequently without it), the conversation quickly degenerates into mockery. And you come away from the whole thing convinced that you've discovered loads of people who are clinging to a dogma and using mockery and evasion to maintain it. When what might (just might) have actually happened is simple mutual misunderstanding.
There was no misunderstanding. At the Open University's science forum the experts were genuine enough and were left looking like monkeys. The entire forum was then deleted to hide the demolition of SR.
If the dogma is genuinely not part of SR, it should be possible to get the establishment to accept that all four mode 2 models are broken (3D and 4D block and non-block versions), that all four mode 1 models suffer from event-meshing failures but that block versions can correct them by having a Newtonian time added to the model (even though that's contrived), that mode 0 models (static blocks that were never generated, one 3D and the other 4D) are invalidated by their inability to support real causality, and that two mode 3 models remain fully in play, one of which is the 3D LET while the 4D equivalent should be regarded as a version of SR with an absolute frame (and the block versions of both of these are possible but entirely superfluous).
Hold your horses. Forget the whole concept of dogma. Concentrate on learning the subject from reliable sources first...
Are you rejecting all the models that I've provided? Just cut to the chase. Which is your model? Is it a 3D or 4D model? Is it a block or non-block model? Is it a model with real or fake causation in it? And if you have more than one model, which models do you count as yours? We can save a lot of time if you just lay your cards on the table.

Now, to your list:-
1. Laws of physics are generalizations which we have created as a result of various measurements and observations.
Laws of physics are actualities of nature. Proposed laws of physics are attempts to reproduce them within theories. If you want to refer to the latter just as "laws of physics", that's going to be confusing due to the ambiguity.
2. The laws of Newtonian (classical) mechanics are examples of these laws of physics. They resulted from observations of various objects (relatively large objects, on a human scale, from pebbles to planets) moving around, sliding across each other, bouncing off each other, going round each other etc.
Fine.
3. A "reference frame" is a set of coordinates that we can use to measure distances and times. if we think of an object, like a ball, then we can imagine 3 axes (X, Y, Z) sticking out of it at right-angles to each other. The position of any other object, relative to that ball, can then be expressed using those 3 coordinates, measured along those axes. The ball, and any other object whose position relative to those axes is constant, is considered to be "at rest" WRT (with respect to) that reference frame.
Fine.
4. For our purposes, a "clock" is often thought of as a thing that sends out a continuous sequence of pulses, perhaps in the form of light or other EM waves. These pulses are referred to as "ticks". But in its most general sense it means any continuously repeated event. It could for example be the biological processes in our bodies, the oscillations of a pendulum, the energy state changes of a caesium atom, the radioactive decay of a collection of unstable particles or the spinning of a planet.
Fine
5. The only way to measure time is by consulting a clock. The only way to assess whether the ticks of a clock are coming at regular time intervals is to compare them to those of another clock. The only way to decide whether we think of a clock as running fast or slow is by counting its ticks, counting the ticks of another clock and seeing which number is bigger.
The only way to attempt to measure time is...etc. There is no way to determine whether a clock is ticking faster or slower than another (if they both tick at the same rate when co-moving).
6. We can think of clocks fixed to the axes of a reference frame at regular intervals. We can detect the pulses sent out by these clocks. We can also think of objects as having clocks attached to them. In this case we think of the spatial distance between that clock and that object as "arbitrarily small" (i.e. for any given distance we can always imagine a smaller distance) and we therefore "neglect" any time taken for a tick from that clock to reach an observer on that object. ("Neglect" in this context means consider it to be insignificant enough to the results of measurements that it can be ignored, for simplicity.)
Any thought experiment you want to do where a clock and local observer are not at exactly the same location, you can scale them down to reduce the separation and scale everything else up to reduce the significance of the separation further (until the difference is too small to matter), or you can build the clock round the observer and have multiple read-outs of the time which have to be averaged to determine the time exactly where the observer is.
7. These reference frames (conceptually: balls with 3 sticks sticking out them and clocks stuck to the sticks) can move relative to each other.
Fine.
8. A reference frame that is not accelerating is referred to as an "inertial reference frame".
Fine.
9. Within any one of these reference frames, we can use the (X,Y,Z) axes and the clocks to measure the behaviour of objects.
Obviously.
10. We can use these measurements to postulate physical laws, as stated in step 1.
Great.
11. When we do that, we find that the laws of classical mechanics (2), when expressed in their simplest form, are the same in all inertial reference frames. We call this "The Principle of Relativity".
You find that they provide the appearance of being the same in all inertial reference frames. In all but one frame though at any location, all those frames are asserting that the speed of light relative to them is c in all directions, but the actual physics cannot conform to more than one of those frames. If you're tied to a 4D model though, all paths taken by light are of zero length, so there is no speed of light, so that particular objection doesn't apply. This is why the models are important - when you try to set out your stall, you need to do it for a specific model and not try to cover them all in one go. If you claim the speed of light is c within a 4D model, you are actually mixing in other models which are incompatible with the 4D geometry. 4D models merely have an apparent speed of light. Each model represents a different theory, so if SR has more than one model, it must be more than one theory and should be treated as such with these questions being asked separately for each model.
12. There are more laws of physics than just the laws of classical mechanics.
There are certainly more proposed laws of physics - each theory has its own set, though some may be shared across theories.
13. Measurements and observations of electricity and magnetism allow us to formulate laws of electromagnetism, in the same way that we did for the laws of classical mechanics. But in this case we use such objects as wires with electric current running through them and magnetic lumps of iron.
Lovely.
14. One of the postulates of the Theory of Special Relativity is a generalization of step 11. It states that ALL the laws of physics, when expressed in their simplest form, are the same in all inertial reference frames. That means that it includes the laws of electromagnetism.
Also lovely, but it contains ambiguities as I've already pointed out, and your obsession with electromagnetism merely leads to the generation of a constant which doesn't tell you the speed of light relative to an experiment, so it's a waste of time bringing it up here when the argument you're supposed to be trying to find a fault in isn't affected by it in any way.
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: September 13th, 2018, 6:05 am The slightly longer version of this: "People noticed that they couldn't tell the difference between stationary and moving (first recorded in relation to being inside a moving ship), and that kicked things off." would say: "people couldn't tell if they were stationary or moving relative to the Earth".
Originally it was relative to the Earth, but I was including other cases where a tree might or might not be moving, and that makes it immediately obvious that I'm referring to the Earth moving through space and the possibility that the tree is moving more than the person who's walking past it. People aren't so stupid as to fail to understand that.
Missing this part out may seem trivial if it weren't for the fact that you then go on to build this concept of "stationary", without saying what you're stationary relative to, into most of what you subsequently say.
I leave it entirely open for them to think for themselves about what the tree might be moving relative to and what the person walking past it might be stationary relative to. I don't treat the reader as a moron.
So you build in the concept that you're seeking to demonstrate as an assumption. The process of magnifying this initially (apparently) trivial omission occurs within the first two paragraphs:
David Cooper wrote: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.
By this point the reader is imagining the Earth moving round the sun at a much higher speed than anyone walks past a tree, so they understand it fine. You should ask them what they imagine the Earth to be moving relative to.
David Cooper wrote:Albert Einstein's theory of relativity says that it is impossible to work out whether anything is really moving or not, and that does indeed seem to be the case (although he wasn't the first person to say this), but he went on to claim that it is perfectly correct to say that everything is both stationary and moving at the same time: you can claim that you are stationary while everything moving relative to you is moving, but it is also right for someone else to claim that they are stationary while everything moving relative to them is moving, including you: it's all relative! Both beliefs are valid not just because neither can be proved or disproved, but because he asserts that both claims are true, and that both claims are equally true.
The second sentence in the first paragraph misleads a bit more. It should say something like "When you are walking past a tree it is, strictly speaking, more accurate to say that you and the tree are moving relative to each other, but the tree is stationary relative to the Earth."
If you want to help reword it, then I'm up for that, but you're trying to leave out the very thing that the paragraph is there to say: you're trying to cut out Einstein's dogma, but the paragraph is about the dogma. If I change the wording to say that Einstein didn't actually mean that there's no absolute frame, no one would believe that because a flat denial of the absolute frame is fundamental to SR. You are actually trying to make me misrepresent SR in order to make the problem go away.

However, if you're actually taking SR to be specifically a 4D block model and ruling out modes 1, 2 and 3, that changes things a bit, because in the block it becomes irrelevant whether there's an absolute frame or not (until you try to work out how it's generated). A lot of the dogma only really applies to mode 2 versions of SR which arguably aren't officially SR any more because SR moved on to being a 4D eternal block, but it wasn't that in its original form, which means it was either a 3D block or one of the non-block models shown by modes 1, 2 and 3. We know it wasn't 3D version of mode 3 though, because that's LET. That's why you need to spell out which models you accept as SR. You need to tell me which of the models is Einstein's original version of SR, and which other models also count as SR. If you don't like the models the way I've set them out, you need to show me what the heck the models are if they aren't in the set of models which I've laid out for you. Show me your models, because until you do, most of your points are simply lost in a well stirred pot of different SRs where it's hard to say anything valid about the collective mess as a whole. That's why it's so crucial to compartmentalise the models properly, name them clearly, and then keep them well apart. On my page, I have to refer to SR, but it's a hotchpotch of different incompatible ideas which haven't been separated out - your criticisms of what I'm saying are actually the result of that mess which is not of my making. Your lot have created a maze of incompatible junk where you can move the goalposts around to deflect criticism, but I won't stand for that. You need to spell out how many models you're counting as SR, what they are, and what they do.
And all of this gradual escalation of the incomplete or misleading statements, starting from that apparently innocuous beginning, leads to this much more clear-cut falsehood:
Albert Einstein's theory of relativity says that it is impossible to work out whether anything is really moving or not,...
It does - there is either no answer in SR, or any answer will do.
It does not say that. Neither does the older more restricted Principle of Relativity. What they both do is to draw our attention to the way in which movement is detected/observed/measured.
The dogma is there in the wording - most people interpret it in a way that produces the dogma. A few people may not, but they are going against SR as it is normally recognised.
This is the process by which a simple omission can build to something that genuinely misleads.
Well, let's see where we can take this with improved wordings that eliminate ambiguities. Will the new version of the Principle of Relativity be acceptable to the establishment? That would be a good place to start cleaning things up.

(Pigs might fly.)
Steve3007
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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 »

This thread is winding down so I'll be brief. The subject continues in a different thread.

David Cooper wrote:Are you rejecting all the models that I've provided?
As I've repeatedly said, I'm trying to persuade you to get the foundations straight before looking at the roof. By that I mean I'm starting with the foundation on which SR is based and then on the basics of SR.

The first item in my list of propositions from an earlier post:
Steve3007 wrote:1. Laws of physics are generalizations which we have created as a result of various measurements and observations.
David Cooper wrote:Laws of physics are actualities of nature. Proposed laws of physics are attempts to reproduce them within theories. If you want to refer to the latter just as "laws of physics", that's going to be confusing due to the ambiguity.
As I said earlier, we diverge from the very start. What does "laws of physics are actualities of nature" mean? If you don't agree with the basic definition of the laws of physics and their fundamentally empirical nature, I think it's difficult to build anything.
...your obsession with electromagnetism...
This is just bizarre. You might as well have referred to my "obsession with Special Relativity". That's the subject we're talking about isn't it?!? Why do you consider it "obsessive" to bring up the subject we're discussing?
Steve3007 wrote:The second sentence in the first paragraph misleads a bit more. It should say something like "When you are walking past a tree it is, strictly speaking, more accurate to say that you and the tree are moving relative to each other, but the tree is stationary relative to the Earth."
David Cooper wrote:If you want to help reword it, then I'm up for that, but you're trying to leave out the very thing that the paragraph is there to say: you're trying to cut out Einstein's dogma, but the paragraph is about the dogma
No I'm not. I'm correcting a mistake in the second sentence of the first paragraph.
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Burning ghost
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Burning ghost »

May I throw in one point yet to be shaken down when it comes to any topic regarding physics and time.

It’s all entropy. Time is pathetic way us tiny humans manage to perceive entropy.
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Eduk
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Eduk »

BG I think that is a common conception of time?
It still doesn't explain what caused entropy.
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Burning ghost
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Burning ghost »

Eduk wrote: September 18th, 2018, 3:27 am BG I think that is a common conception of time?
It still doesn't explain what caused entropy.
I think you’ll find that question to be essentially meaningless and/or open to any possible imaginable interpretation/fancy. I’d rather let the mathematicians and physicists deal with it abstractly than try and ponder such wholly removed unimaginable questions.

It’s the realm of mysticism in philosophy as far as I can tell. The plus being it’s potentially a creative ground for new ideas - but it involves 99.9999% nonsense and luckily gripping something meaningful is a rare thing and so dilute in meaning it probably doesn’t register in any mind other than a geniuses.
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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 »

Burning ghost wrote:It’s all entropy. Time is pathetic way us tiny humans manage to perceive entropy.
If we were going to talk about entropy then I think we'd have to introduce the laws of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics from which the concept of entropy comes. There have been past threads in which this has been discussed, but I can't see a particularly good one at first glance.
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