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.
Post Reply
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: September 3rd, 2018, 1:05 amI often find, in conversations like this, that it's difficult to keep up.
Yep - it's a time-consuming business, and particularly when there's a lot to read through. I'm going to have to stop for tonight after replying to this one.
Halc said this:
Events are separated by a frame-independent interval for instance. That value should be the same regardless of frame in which the measurement is considered.
David replied with this:
You'll need to expand on that, because it doesn't appear to fit with relativity at all (any version). The measured time between events varies widely for different frames.
Halc didn't say measured time. He said interval.
The use of that term has never registered with me before. I came into this subject by independently working out key parts of LET and only then reading up on relativity afterwards. There's a lot that I haven't read, so there are many more gaps of this kind in my knowledge of terminology that will turn up if you press for them. I have only gathered what's needed to explore the models and test their validity.
More generally, your recent comments seem to me to confirm the difference in general worldview that I mentioned in an earlier post. You appear to believe it useful to consider an entirely observer-independent "reality" that renders some observations objectively "wrong" and some objectively "right", as opposed to believing that accurately performed observations are simply observations. Reality is the aggregate of all possible observations of it.
Reality must be doing something that we are observing, and it cannot be doing incompatible things. Take for example mode 2 of the simulation which represents Einstein's original SR. You run the simulation for a certain length of time and various events happen. If you freeze the action and change frame, you can see some events unhappening. The underlying reality cannot be doing that - once things have happened, they've happened. Something has to govern the unfolding of events, and there are several ways of doing that, three of which are explored through the modes of the simulation. Either you have events run with all clocks running at full speed or you have to slow some down, accepting the superiority of the time of whichever frame has its stationary-within-that-frame clocks run fastest. Simulations and the real universe cannot be running all frames as the fastest ones (meaning that their stationary clocks run fastest) and running all others slower at the same time.
The contradictions you claim to exist in Relativity seem to stem mainly from your using this worldview in your choice of language.
The contradictions are made plain by mode 2 of the simulation. Run it until the time counter says 360, for example, and then change frame between A and B. You can see events happening, unhappening, rehappening, unhappening again, every time you change between those frames. The underlying universe is making no such change. The simulation has to recalculate what has happened at the chosen time by running some things forwards and others backwards, and the universe would have to do the same thing if it ran on that model of SR.
You're standing at point A and you know that an event will happen at a certain time at point B. One frame of reference tells you it must have happened by now, but another frame tells you that it hasn't happened yet. If both frames are equally valid, then both are equally true: the event has already happened AND hasn't happened yet. That is a very stark contradiction, and if you can't see that it's a contradiction, you're beyond help.
An observer stationary in one frame of reference can observe events happening in a different order to an observer stationary in another frame of reference if the interval between those two events is such that one event cannot possibly have a causal connection to the other. Neither of those observers is objectively right or wrong about some supposed objective truth as to which event happened first. They have both made accurate observations. If you disagree, then you have to do so by describing a possible observation - a measurement or experiment - that demonstrates one or both of those observers to be wrong. If there is no possible causal connection between the events then you cannot do so. There is no possible observation which will give an objective, single answer as to which event happened first.
You're completely missing the point. If you're standing at point A, every frame of reference exists at that location at that instant, and all of those frames generate claims about what is happening at that moment at point B. It doesn't matter that what's happening at B can't be observed at that moment from point A. An event is scheduled to be happening at point B at a certain time, but different frames produce different times for it by the clock at point A. (The event, incidentally, can be confirmed to have happened on schedule later, so we can take it for granted that it happened at point B when it was supposed to happen at point B.) What we are left with is an infinite collection of claims about the clock A time at which this event happened at point B, and those claims contradict each other. The event at point B could be a pulse of light arriving from point A and a return pulse being sent back to point A. This means that the claims about the time of the "bounce" by clock A could be anything from the moment after the light left point A and the time the return pulse arrived back at point A, so we have a long stretch of time in which each moment is asserted to be the moment of the bounce by some frames. They can't all be right. Most of them are wrong. By accepting them all as right, you have spread out the event at point B across a long stretch of time throughout which it has both happened and not happened, not just at point A, but at point B too. To sustain this contradiction in your head as a viable idea, you have had to vandalise your ability to think - you have ceased to be rational. Go to my simulation, put it in mode 2, set it to 550 and then click on the "+" or "-" button and hold down the Return key to repeat the action. Look at the changes that take place as you change frame at a single moment of time. These frames are making contradictory claims about the current state of the unfolding of events in the universe and they cannot all be true at the same time.
Obviously every acceleration is a deceleration. You will have learnt that in high school physics. A ball thrown into the air and in free fall is accelerating in a coordinate system in which the positive direction points towards the Earth (down). Therefore it is decelerating in a coordinate system in which the positive direction points away from the Earth (up).
You're focusing on the wrong part of that - every deceleration involves a clock running faster and every acceleration involves a clock slowing down. You may be capable of imagining an acceleration to be a deceleration at the same time, even though it can't really be, but can you really go so far as to tolerate the idea that the clock's ticking is slowing down and speeding up at the same time? Maybe you can, but someone has done some severe messing with your mind to get you into that state.
A clock can be observed, by an observer who is moving relative to it, to be running slower than he observes a clock relative to which he is stationary to be running. While the opposite can be true for an observer moving with the first clock. Again if you think this is wrong, then tell me an experiment that an observer can do to demonstrate that. Don't just talk in terms of observer-irrelevant metaphysics.
You're trying to ban legitimate analysis and restrict things to fooled observers who can't see what a magician's doing behind a screen. The important point behind all of this is that the universe has to be doing something and it is either allowing a clock to tick more often or to tick less often - it cannot be doing both at once. If you aren't prepared to think down this fully legitimate path, you have shackled your ability to explore reality, and you've done that by applying bogus rules from really poor philosophers. It is not only the universe that must be doing one thing or the other, but simulations too. When we try to simulate SR, we can't have it both speed up and slow down the ticking of the same clock at the same time - it's a complete impossibility. You have been taken in by a mind virus which is blocking your ability to see reality, and it all comes from nothing more than the authority of a stream of people who have made the same error before you and passed it on down to you as a piece of holy dogma that isn't grounded in reason. You have no logical justification for your position whatsoever. What is the magician doing behind the screen? Is he slowing down and speeding up the same clock at the same time (SR), or is he doing one or the other alone (LET)? Observations do not rule out the latter, but reason rules out the former because contradictions should not be tolerated, so which theory should be treated as superior in this situation?

If they really did share the same maths and make the same predictions then the differences between them would be entirely metaphysical. If it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it is, for all meaningful purposes, a duck.
If the differences are metaphysical, on what basis does anyone have the right to tie the idea that there's no absolute frame to the theory? That would be rendered a metaphysical claim which should be outlawed from physics. But we're dealing here with contrary people who are determined to have their cake and eat it, tolerating contradictions and applying different rules to different claims in an arbitrary manner in order to back an irrational theory (which only produces broken models) over a rational one (which produces a functional model).
Eduk
Posts: 2466
Joined: December 8th, 2016, 7:08 am
Favorite Philosopher: Socrates

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

Post by Eduk »

David as I already said I am not a physicist. I am not qualified to talk about relativity v let. So I have to use other heuristics. I don't believe this is lazy on my part.
The consensus is clear that relativity is the consensus of experts. Other than relativity can you think of a similarly high profile and accepted modern theory which has been shown to be false by sources outside of the mainstream? There are endless modern examples of pseudoscience by contrast.
Likening modern scientific consensus to 17th century religions is a big warning sign that you can't back up what you say logically. For a start science is not an institution, anyone worldwide can partake. There are no heads of science. And there is no dogma. Also times change. It is like saying modern medicine could be wrong about vacinnes because it was wrong about blood letting.
It is interesting that you don't specialise in physics. And yet you feel a large majority of physicists to be quite stupid. I believe this is called the dunning kruger effect. It reminds me of an article I read where a single, well recognised, physicist believed he knew better than all climate scientists. It is easy to make mistakes when you don't know what you are talking about.
Oh and no one is attempting to silence you. It is interesting that you go there. You view your posts as worthy attempts at altruistic education but mine as nefarious attempts to silence. Why do you think that is?
Personally you would have a lot more success with me if you presented let to be a possible theory. Improved but possible. And what that might say about the nature of the world. Not what it does say. It is funny but your stated confidence in the merits of relativity and let actually lead me to believe the opposite. Proportioning belief is the way to go.
Unknown means unknown.
Eduk
Posts: 2466
Joined: December 8th, 2016, 7:08 am
Favorite Philosopher: Socrates

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

Post by Eduk »

Oh I forgot. The Einstein not getting a Nobel prize for relativity thing. Why was that, in your opinion? For me it's another red flag that I'm not dealing with a reasonable person.
Unknown means unknown.
Steve3007
Posts: 10339
Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

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'm going to have to stop for tonight after replying to this one.
If you're going to have to stop replying, no worries. No pressure.
The use of that term has never registered with me before. I came into this subject by independently working out key parts of LET and only then reading up on relativity afterwards. There's a lot that I haven't read, so there are many more gaps of this kind in my knowledge of terminology that will turn up if you press for them. I have only gathered what's needed to explore the models and test their validity.
I appreciate your plane speaking here, about what you have and have not studied.

---

Conversations here (and in other similar environments) very often descend into mutual insults. Perhaps surprisingly (or perhaps not?), this tends to be just as true when discussing physics as it is when discussing politics. It looks to me as though the conversation between Halc and David and the conversation between Eduk and David might both be in danger of heading that way. Maybe the conversation involving me might do that too. I don't think that's necessarily any individual's fault. I can see the points of view of all, and how they might find themselves slipping that way. But I'd like to try to avoid it because it hinders us in our attempts to work out the fundamental reasons why we might disagree with each other. And that's a pity because I think trying to work out the underlying reasons for disagreements, and whether or not they stem from radically different and irreconcilable ways of viewing the world, is philosophically interesting.

Anyway, for now, as far as my own conversation with David is concerned, I'd like to try to find some common ground and then see if we can build on it. To start doing that I'd like to start with the following, and apologise in advance if any of the questions I ask seem patronising or condescending as a result of the answers being deemed to be obvious. That's an inevitable pitfall when you're trying to find common ground with someone about whom you know very little.
David Cooper wrote:You may be capable of imagining an acceleration to be a deceleration at the same time, even though it can't really be
You might regard this as peripheral and not directly relevant to your central point, but the fact that you said "even though it can't really be" suggests to me that we disagree not just about comparatively advanced topics like Relativity or LET but about the building blocks of basic high school physics. And I think, as a general rule, there's no point trying to put the roof on a house unless the foundations and walls have been built first.

So, bearing in mind the above advanced apology, I'd like to ask:

1. If I throw a ball upwards, neglecting air resistance, as soon as it has left my hand, is it:

a. Accelerating
b. Deccelerating
c. It depends on the coordinate system you're using

2. Do you appreciate the difference between an inertial and a non-inertial frame of reference?

3. Do you appreciate that velocity and acceleration are both vector quantities?

4. If an object is moving in a circle (rotating), like a stone on a string, a planet in a circular orbit or the apparatus in the Sagnac Effect experiments that you have mentioned, do you accept that the object is accelerating towards the centre of the circle and is therefore in a non-inertial reference frame?

5. Do you accept that, strictly speaking, the statement: "object A is moving at 5 m/s" has no physical significance because it does not correspond to anything that can be empirically confirmed or denied? Do you accept that in order to give it such physical significance I have to say something like: "object A is moving at 5 m/s relative to object B"?

Note: these are not questions about Relativity or LET. They are not questions about the roof. They are questions about the foundations. As it were. Hence the apology.

I'll leave it there for now and tackle some of what you might think of as your more relevant points once we've confirmed the things on which we agree.
Steve3007
Posts: 10339
Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

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

Post by Steve3007 »

A small error: In the above post I meant "plain speaking" not "plane speaking". We're not just discussing aircraft.
User avatar
Halc
Posts: 405
Joined: March 17th, 2018, 9:47 pm

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

Post by Halc »

David Cooper wrote: September 3rd, 2018, 6:48 pm You may be capable of imagining an acceleration to be a deceleration at the same time, even though it can't really be
I want to correct my reply to this one, since I feel it was wrong.
Deceleration and the acceleration associated with it are references to speed, which is not often referenced in physics. OK, time dilation is a function of speed, but length contraction is a function of velocity since length is used as a vector but time is a pure scalar in that context.

Speed is a scalar value, and deceleration is used to describe a falling speed.
Velocity on the other hand is a vector quantity, and deceleration does not apply. p=mv (momentum = mass * velocity) and Newton's second law F=ma (force, mass, acceleration) use velocity and vector acceleration. There is no vector deceleration. Force is always added to a thing's velocity to accelerate it to a different velocity. Deceleration is a word only applying to a scalar value.
Reality must be doing something that we are observing, and it cannot be doing incompatible things.
Sure, but you are finding incompatibilities where there are none. Several examples:

An apple is green and another is red. That is incompatible by the way you are presenting your argument.
The same apple is green and red to different (objectively stationary if you want) observers if the apple is travelling quickly between them.
The train whistle is tuned to F sharp to one pedestrian, and to D to another.
You are stationary in the frame of the floor under you. At the same time, you are moving at 30 km/sec relative to the sun.

For some reason, you have attributed that last statement to Einstein (it is about 4 centuries old), and decided that only that one is an incompatibility, and not the others.
Take for example mode 2 of the simulation which represents Einstein's original SR. ... If you freeze the action and change frame, you can see some events unhappening. The underlying reality cannot be doing that - once things have happened, they've happened.
The simulation (by your description) depicts a current state of the universe. SR has no such premise. The simulation as a whole does not represent Einstein's SR. It represents SR insofar as it shows which events are considered to be at a uniform amount of time away from one select event (X) relative to any chosen frame. In no frame does an event 'unhappen', so in reality, no unhappenings would be occurring.

SR does not posit that
1) there is but one preferred frame
2) there is one current moment or event, AND
3) that the preferred frame changes arbitrarily.

LET only posits the first of these three, and SR is mute about the first two. It denies the third, as does any theory I've ever encountered.

If all three premises where true (as your simulation and accompanying description above argues), that would cause these unhappenings, and that would be indeed violate a 4th unproven premise (locality) that causes precede their effects. There are QM experiments which can be interpreted as demonstrating otherwise, but I don't personally hold to those interpretations.
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 »

Halc wrote: September 3rd, 2018, 1:16 am I would like to add that if LET makes all the same predictions, it would also predict that each rockets returns home while home is still in the past, as your simulation depicts, so LET would also be disproved by this (invalid) argument.
LET slows down moving clocks and doesn't tolerate contradictions, so it behaves like mode 3 and functions fine - mode 3 theories are viable, but they require acceptance of an absolute frame.
Interesting. Acceleration is a vector rate of change in velocity, not a change in speed. There is no difference between acceleration and deceleration. The ISS for instance is always accelerating, yet its speed remains constant (relative to Earth). This is high-school physics, not even touching on relativity.
It's a contradiction that you've been heavily brainwashed into believing is acceptable, but the part about clocks speeding up and slowing down at the same time takes it a much more obvious step into the irrational.
Speed is defined within a frame, and within that frame, the clock rate is dilated in accordance to that one speed. In a different frame, it might be dilated less. So I suppose a velocity difference would result in a larger and smaller speed in different frames (and corresponding time dilation), but that is not 'in the same way', so not a violation of the law of non-contradiction.
There is one single underlying reality which is what the universe is actually doing. Different frames provide different claims about that underlying reality, and when one frame says a clock's ticking is slowed by a change in speed while another says that its ticking is speeded up, they are both attempting to describe the same underlying event in which the clock cannot be doing both of those things. It is a fundamental contradiction. The mechanism for what's actually going on will either slow a clock or speed it up - it can't do both at the same time.
You seem to be only rotating the spatial axes. OK, your model is a 3D one, so talk of worldlines and such is perhaps speaking to a different interpretation, but you did it in your web page.
Frames of reference are limited to three space dimensions showing events at fixed moments in time (by the time of the selected frame).
In the one diagram for question 2, the worldline of the planet (you drew the worldlines of all 4 objects) that moves to the right was depicted as parallel to the time axis, but in the simulation of the same scenario, the temporal axis was oriented with the left-bound planet. You rotated the temporal axis to be parallel to the worldline of a different planet. The speed of each object were suddenly not exactly the same, since a different planet is now stationary, and the former stationary planet is now moving at .866c to the right.
The time axis is always vertical in the diagrams and represents the selected frame's version of time, so an object cannot be moving parallel to the time axis in any frame that shows that object moving to the right.
Frames don't have positions or origins. They don't have velocities, but they do have velocities relative to each other.
If you are assigning positions to objects in a frame, you give them coordinates based on an origin somewhere. This can be done by multiple observers in different frames, and those origins will all move relative to each other. It is possible for them (the origins) all to be at the same location at one moment, but then they must diverge as they are necessarily at rest within their own frame.
I don't hate it. It isn't wrong. It doesn't contradict relativity. It just isn't the only valid interpretation, and you seem to feel otherwise.
There is a deeply hostile reaction to it almost everywhere, and there are plenty of sources of information including university textbooks which make out that it is a disproved theory, whereas in reality it still stands (unlike SR which has been found to be invalid).
From any other location in space such as A, different frames order events differently, and the event at B may be in the future or past of some event at A. Again, this would violate the law of non-contradiction only if the A before B and B before A were true in the same way, but they're not since they're being considered in different frames.
The point is that you are at A and all frames are represented at that location, but they make different claims about what's happened or not happened yet at B. Those claims are incompatible. SR asserts that they are all equally valid, which either requires contradictions to be tolerated or for all the claims to be equally invalid, in which case none of them would be true representations of reality, so while that's a lot better, it's still pretty dire.
No. The event has already happened in one frame, AND hasn't happened yet in another. Relativity does not use your wording.
The event has either happened or it hasn't. It cannot be in both those states at the same time. SR claims that all frames are equally valid, and that requires them to be equally true (or equally false).
You presume an objective ordering, and if you chose one, then you can happily say that other frames order events in non-objective order. SR does not forbid this. Relative simultaneity is not the same as objective simultaneity, and SR only speaks to the former. I am stationary in my chair here, and at the same time am moving at 1000 km/hr due to spin of Earth. This is not a contradiction in the same way that your example is non-contradictory.
If you run the simulation in mode 2 to the point where the time counter says 360 and freeze the action there, when you change frame you will see some events unhappen, and then you can keep changing frame to make them rehappen and unhappen over and over again as many times as you like. If you were able to freeze the unfolding of events of the real universe in the same way and change frame, the same would have to happen for SR to be correct, meaning that events would unhappen and rehappen at that single, frozen moment in time as you change frame. The real universe should not be expected to behave in such a ridiculous way. If there was no other theory available, we would have to put up with SR and its contradictions as the best of a bad lot and we'd consider it to be weird, but we have an alternative theory which doesn't suffer from that serious defect. Occam's razor tells us to reject the theory that depends on contradictions and which therefore requires magic for its functionality.
How can it be logically dependent on what it doesn't mention?
An incomplete theory which depends on unstated components is not simpler than a theory which includes the necessary components. It merely produces an illusion of being simpler. When you then add the unstated logically-required components and find that its interaction with them is more complex than the theory which stated its components in full, then Occam's razor is applied to the theory that wrongly claimed to be simpler and turned out to be more complex.
As I said, it only has one premise, and that premise doesn't mention a fabric or an objective frame. It seems you need to assert such things to beg your specific interpretation, but SR doesn't assert any particular interpretation.
These theories are attempting to account for the behaviour of a real universe which must be doing something. One theory requires that real universe to be doing contradictory things while the other theory doesn't. The theory that requires it to be doing contradictory things then tries to hide that by detaching itself from the real universe which it supposedly relates to and thereby becomes some independent thing that isn't bound by the rules of reality, but that's a departure from real physics. Real physics is tied to nature - nature is doing something which these theories are supposed to be trying to account for rationally.
Things have a location????
It's an essential service which the universe provides. Without it, how can there be distance between things? Why is one thing within reach while another is a billion lightyears away? What enables that separation if there are no locations?
Less time still passes on Earth in the frame of a ship making a rapid trip from here to some distant star. Fabric of space (or lack of it) makes no difference to that.
Fabric of space provides the speed limit on light which leads to functionality slowing as objects move through that fabric. That is the only rational mechanism for clocks slowing. Without it, you have no mechanism to coordinate the tick rates of clocks on different paths and you are forced to run the universe in mode 1.
You're confusing space with objective space. Things still have relative separation under SR, just no objective location or objective velocity. The fabric is the objective aether-like stuff in relation to which one might be objectively stationary.
There has to be something enforcing that separation, and you have to have a speed relative to that something. With SR, this something is ignored, but it must be there regardless, so to maintain SR you then have to have everything move relative to that something at all possible speeds at the same time,and that's a highly complex aether because it magically supports contradictions.
Different frames set the speed of light relative to them to c as part of the rules as to how frames work, and that dictates everything else they do - they do not confirm the speed of light relative to themselves because they have set themselves up directly on the basis that light travels at c relative to them, and in doing so, they all assert that the speed of light relative to ALL other frames is >c in some directions and <c the other way.
Ouch...
Is this a deliberate misrepresentation? This is in direct conflict with the empirical premise of SR. It describes no known theory, LET included.
This describes all theories - it is fundamental to how frames work. If SR doesn't want to work with valid frame rules, it shouldn't pretend to use frames of reference.
Sharing the same maths sounds like the same mechanisms.
In LET, the mechanism for "time dilation" (which is actually just the slowing of apparent time) is that movement of a clock through the space fabric slows its cycles by increasing the round-trip distances for moving parts. That mechanism does not exist in SR because no clock is allowed to run slow.
Sharing the same predictions sounds like the same theory, but differing on being grounded on a preferred frame. I looked it up, and while it had different roots, the modern version is just considered to be just an interpretation of SR with a preferred frame playing the role of the otherwise undetectable aether. The distinctions with standard spacetime interpretation of SR are all just philosophical, not scientific.
If you looked it up and found the Wikipedia page on LET, that contains a recent attempt by the establishment to pretend that they have backed LET all along. They were forced to do this when they realised it was still valid and that they were going to end up looking very silly if they couldn't find some way to wriggle out of the ridiculous position they'd put themselves in by backing an irrational theory instead of a rational one that accounted for all the same facts. But they're still making the mistake of pretending it's just an unimportant philosophical argument when it's much more than that. Science is about explaining reality, and every time they push the SR explanation of relativity and suppress the LET one, they are breaking their own rule by dragging banned philosophy in and ramming it into everyone's head as if it's a truth. If they want to get rid of the "philosophy", they need to strip all proposed explanation out of the theory and just give people the maths alone.
SR dictates that there is no absolute frame; that no frame is superior to any other
It says there is no local test to detect it. It doesn't assert its nonexistence. In fact, an obvious one is suggested by a non-local test: the frame of the center of gravity of all the stuff within sight.
In that case, all the textbooks need to be rewritten to make it clear that SR and LET are different versions of the same theory, and the LET should then be systematically taught because it is the most rational version.
SR is not a metaphysical model of reality. It is a scientific theory that states that local empirical observations of any test will behave the same in any frame. You seem to confuse this scientific theory with the metaphysical model that there is no objectively more correct reference frame. That metaphysical model does indeed sometimes accompany the SR theory, but SR does not assert it. GR sort of asserts a preferred frame, so in that sense, GR and LET are quite similar.
SR asserts that there is no absolute frame. Einstein was very clear about that, and so are the textbooks, websites and hordes of experts who push SR and shout down LET at every turn. But if they all want to clean up their act and drop the philosophical baggage which they deny they're bringing along for the ride, then that's great. And while they're at it, they can stop attributing the theory to Einstein.
One theory says that "it's already happened" and "it hasn't happened yet" and [* are] simultaneously compatible claims, but the other says they are contradictions.
SR does not claim "it already happened". It claims that it it already happened in a certain frame, which is a relative simultaneity, not an absolute (metaphysical) one. SR does not assert what is. It just asserts what will be measured. The former is metaphysics and the latter is science. You seem to have no capability to separate the two.
You are trying to exclude from science something that has always been part of science and which SR has always been allowed to bring in when it denies the absolute frame. If you want to tidy up SR to get rid of all the metaphysics from it, you've got one hell of a task ahead of you.
Einstein's original SR without 4D Spacetime produces contradictions.
Oh really...
Seems to work fine in 3D. It is instructive to do the standard train/platform example in 3D instead of 4D.
Select mode 2 and freeze the action at 360, then change frame and watch the contradictory claims made by different frames about what has happened yet and what hasn't. That is not SR working fine.
As for LET describing a 'flow of time', constant or not, there is no way to detect a flow (or lack of it) at all. There is not even a unit for it. Seconds per second? That simplifies to nothing, like asserting that distance flows at a rate of meters per meter.
Time runs at the rate time runs - it could run ten times as fast or ten times as slowly and no difference would be detectable, but that doesn't mean it has no rate at which it runs. If you want to try to run it without a rate by having everything happen infinitely fast, then order of events is lost and chains of computations will not compute correctly because it would be impossible to impose the right order on them.
Funny, but I can effortlessly find a causal structure that has no flow.
That is something I'd like to see. No flow --> no possibility of it being real causation.
I don't care to argue eternalism with you. Relativity doesn't assert it, so I'm fine with your biases for the topic at hand. OK, the thread is sort of about it, and not about relativity.
It's highly relevant to relativity, though only to the eternal static block universe (which is where SR goes to try to escape from the contradictions without accepting an absolute frame).
The arrow of time is proved by entropy. Without that, there is no arrow. Past and future are not distinct.
The arrow is clearly there, and so is the flow.
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 »

There's another long post further back which I'll reply to next (probably tomorrow), but I'll get this shortie out of the way now:-
Eduk wrote: September 4th, 2018, 3:45 amThe consensus is clear that relativity is the consensus of experts. Other than relativity can you think of a similarly high profile and accepted modern theory which has been shown to be false by sources outside of the mainstream?
No - I can't think of any, so SR is probably the biggest embarrassment of all time for science, and that's why they squirm about all over the place trying to cling to it instead of just letting it go.
Likening modern scientific consensus to 17th century religions is a big warning sign that you can't back up what you say logically.
Hardly - I'm just comparing a mistake with another mistake of the same magnitude. Okay - this one's worse because scientists should do better than religious authorities, but I can't think of a more apt comparison, particularly as the same methods are used to defend both mistakes with people rejecting reason and just going along blindly with authority.
For a start science is not an institution, anyone worldwide can partake. There are no heads of science. And there is no dogma. Also times change. It is like saying modern medicine could be wrong about vacinnes because it was wrong about blood letting.
Science is usually self-correcting, but sometimes it takes a long time to overcome massive momentum when people have all rushed in the wrong direction. Tell me how it's going to correct this though if the herd just go on sticking their fingers in their ears and asserting that they're right because they're part of the herd?
It is interesting that you don't specialise in physics. And yet you feel a large majority of physicists to be quite stupid.
People are generally stupid even if they're dazzlingly intelligent - it takes a lot of thought to be right about everything, and the normal way to get to the top is to take shortcuts by taking lots of information in at high speed without stopping to question it too deeply. I'm simply inviting people to look carefully at something that doesn't add up.
I believe this is called the dunning kruger effect.
In many cases where someone attacks an establishment position, they are wrong, and the Dunning Kruger effect is highly relevant to them. However, there is also the reverse DK effect where people bask in their established incorrect positions telling themselves that anyone questioning them must be wrong because of DK.
It reminds me of an article I read where a single, well recognised, physicist believed he knew better than all climate scientists. It is easy to make mistakes when you don't know what you are talking about.
It's also easy to be lazy and ignore objections to things that the establishment has accepted and just go with the herd, but if you want to be fair to everyone who makes such objections, your task is to break their argument by showing it to be wrong. With crackpots, that rarely takes long. With most climate change deniers, it's easy enough to show where they're introducing biases.
Oh and no one is attempting to silence you. It is interesting that you go there. You view your posts as worthy attempts at altruistic education but mine as nefarious attempts to silence. Why do you think that is?
You're attacking me on the wrong basis by using lazy methods based on the probability that someone going against the scientific establishment might be right. That approach rejects the correct objections along with the mass of incorrect ones.
Personally you would have a lot more success with me if you presented let to be a possible theory. Improved but possible. And what that might say about the nature of the world. Not what it does say. It is funny but your stated confidence in the merits of relativity and let actually lead me to believe the opposite. Proportioning belief is the way to go.
That's because you don't judge things on the basis of their functionality and whether they're rational or not. You've trained yourself to use slapdash methods of judging things which work pretty well most of the time, but which fail when you come across something like this. Look at what's actually happening here - one of my opponents here is modifying SR to make it more and more accommodating of LET, and maybe it will even end up becoming LET.
Eduk wrote: September 4th, 2018, 3:47 am Oh I forgot. The Einstein not getting a Nobel prize for relativity thing. Why was that, in your opinion? For me it's another red flag that I'm not dealing with a reasonable person.
Are you saying I'm not a reasonable person because I pointed out that no one will get a Nobel prize for disproving a theory which itself didn't earn anyone a Nobel prize? I did read something recently about why Einstein didn't get a Nobel prize for it, but I can't remember the details beyond the fact that he didn't get it for that. If you think I'm not a reasonable person on the weird basis you've set out, then the person here who's showing up as unreasonable here is you.
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 »

(Well, I've unintentionally written another post tonight in the course of reading it carefully.)
Halc wrote: September 3rd, 2018, 6:32 pm
David Cooper wrote: September 3rd, 2018, 4:39 pm Whenever you try to measure the speed of light you get the same value for it if you assume that you are stationary. If you assume you are moving, you measure values other than c for the speed of light relative to you
This is completely wrong.
No it isn't - it's completely right. If you assume you're moving and synchronise your clocks on that basis, you can measure the speed of light relative to you to be values larger and smaller than c.
They initially assumed that they were moving and were surprised at the measurement not changing when 'moving with or against the wind' so to speak. How do you go about measuring light speed that requires assuming one is stationary?
The Michelson Morley experiment doesn't measure the speed of light, so you need to find an experiment that does, and then I'll show you how to carry out that experiment to get values other than c by not basing it on the assumption of the apparatus being stationary.
I've done it myself. Crude, but accurate to a digit at least. It took a laser, power drill, tachometer, and a piece of paper on the wall. All the components had the same relative velocity as each other, but not assumed stationary. Other early measurements used components that were moving relative to each other, so by definition could not have assumed a stationary measurement.
That sounds as if it might be a suitable experiment, so tell me how you timed the light. Where did you time if from and where did you time it to? How did you synchronise your timers. If you only used one timer, how did you get the information to it to tell it when the light set out or arrived? Did you adjust for your timer running slow due to its movement? If you did the experiment properly and based your calculations on the apparatus moving, you should have calculated the speed of light relative to the apparatus as being values other than c. Relativity requires that.
To omit the frame references is deliberately misleading. You are drawing conclusions from that deliberate obfuscation. This makes you an expert at deceptive reasoning, not valid reasoning.
The piece of text in question is this:-

"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."

This is the start of the section about SR, introducing the idea to people who don't necessarily know what frames of reference are. Anyone who does know what they are though will immediately be able to fit them into what they're reading by applying a minimal amount of intelligence. The part "you can claim that you are stationary while everything moving relative to ou is moving" clearly relates to one frame of reference, while "but it is also right for someone else to claim that they are stationary while everything moving relative to them is moving" clearly relates to another. This is introducing the idea of frames of reference without naming them. Einstein asserts that both these views are equally valid, and by extension that means they must be equally true. If this was not what "equally valid" meant, he would have qualified it at some point to make it clear that they are not equally true, and he would not have claimed there is no absolute frame.

You accuse me of being deliberately misleading, event though there is nothing misleading there, and of drawing conclusions from deliberate obfuscation, but there is no obfuscation there - it is a fair representation of what SR claims, backed by countless thousands of sources on the subject which push the same line and use exactly the same kind of wording.
Do you or do you not acknowledge that you have different speeds all at the same time? Einstein did not assert this. It came from centuries before. You whole bit of superior logic seems to depend on this being an inconsistency.
He absolutely did assert it, and he did so by ruling out an absolute frame. You can try to rewrite history if you like, but it's too well documented for you to get away with that. The good thing though is that you're trying to rewrite it in the right direction in an attempt to turn SR into LET so that you can claim that SR is ultimately right because it includes LET.
I agreed up until the flow assertion. Yes, the events in the example should be unambiguously ordered. This has been shown to not be the case in many metaphysical interpretations, but we both seem to hold to the unproved principle of locality. Ordered events don't require flow any more than ordered marks on a tape measure require a flow of a current location along it.
Chains of causation have to run through in order if the causation is to be real. If it isn't allowed to run, it turns into coincidence, and the more complex the chains of causation become, the greater the coincidence becomes, rapidly getting to the point where you are dealing with the most unlikely technically-possible thing ever imagined. All else being equal, a theory that takes you to that position should be rejected in favour of a theory that doesn't. The eternal static block universe model is more realistic than one that produces contradictions though, so it's certainly a step up from that.
Anyway, the point is irrelevant.
The point is highly relevant. People who assert that time doesn't run as an attempt to justify the static block model are selling the most ridiculously improbable technically-possible thing ever imagined - it's equivalent to predicting the result of a tossed coin not millions of times in a row, nor billions or trillions, but something more into googol territory or beyond.
It does that because a time that doesn't run leaves you depending on magic.
This is your answer to every disagreement. I cannot reason correctly. My view requires magic. Blah blah blah... How well reasoned.
When a theory depends upon something so ridiculously unlikely, it requires magic to turn that into something more reasonable. We're talking about one of the most unlikely things ever imagined. [There may be more unlikely ideas than that, so I may be technically wrong when I call it the most unlikely technically-impossible thing ever imagined, but that claim is sufficiently right in this context to justify that description.]
The block and running time models are in fact identical except in the ontological status of one slice (the slice being real, and the rest not), and the slice is not fixed. No magic is required for what is only an ontological distinction of which events are designated as real.
They are not identical. The static block allows things to make imaginary "moves" forward in time without their movement through time being slowed by an absolute frame mechanism, and without event-meshing failures (because the future of other players is already in place and they can't fail to meet up where they're supposed to). The static block cannot be created rationally though (i.e. with acceptable levels of probability) without running time, and when you allow time to run in order to generate the block, you necessarily get event-meshing failures until the slowest player has completed its journey through the block and become set there in stone. The event-meshing failures thus disappear over Newtonian time as events change at individual Spacetime locations, but the existence of that Newtonian time is not allowed in Minkowski Spacetime SR because the only time it allows is that of the time dimension. This means that you either have to accept this additional Newtonian time into SR, or go for the static block and ban its creation, relying instead on something so improbable as to be indistinguishable from magic. Alternatively, you can junk Minkowski Spacetime and return to Einstein's original version of SR and go on tolerating contradictions (which again depend on magic). The reason I tell you that your position depends on magic is precisely that it depends on magic.
I did not deny that time runs. The question asked if time must flow, but I don't know. It works either way. You're asking me to restrict myself to a presentist model (presentism works under relativity also). A proof that forces such a restriction is already begging.
That's easily fixed by rewording the question. The question's only there to pin people down to specific models so that they can't go on passing off multiple models as the same one. The aim is to show them that if they seek to take refuge in the static block model, they're depending on something so improbable that it is directly equivalent to magic. It is still technically possible that that position is correct and that the universe really is like that, but the improbability attached to it makes it a ridiculous position to take up. When faced with two models where one is improbable to a degree that's hard to put words to and the other has no such disability, it is a no brainer as to which model rational people should congregate around.
In this case, you're objecting the the question because you're nitpicking about its interpretation
I did not. The question did not ask if I deny flowing time. If it did, I would have said no, I don't deny it. The reaction to my answer was a conclusion drawn from a different question. Again, that doesn't sound like expert reasoning.
You are precisely nitpicking - you must be able to see that a rewording can fix this issue.
No, I'm talking about the diagram above the simulation, next to the verbal description. That one has the b versions on the vertical axis. It's fine. The two complement each other, showing the same scenario in two different frames.
There are two such diagrams above the simulation, one showing Frame A and the other showing Frame B. The text you're referring to relates to the higher of those diagrams.
The initial mode (1) shows a version of SR in which event-meshing failures occur - we can see rockets reach Spacetime locations before the planets get there, even though they're supposed to be reunited at those locations.
What possible version of SR describes this mode??? Certainly nothing authored by Einstein.
This mode shows SR strictly sticking to the principle that clocks don't run slow because there is no absolute frame with a time which governs all the rest. In the twins paradox, the moving twin's clock can't run slow because the frame in which he's at rest isn't some subservile frame that takes its lead from an absolute frame - it has to run at an unslowed rate. It does the same on the return leg too, so the only way it can do this is by reaching the reunion point in less time than the stay-at-home twin. That leads to event-meshing failure, and that's why you don't see this model being demonstrated - it shows that SR cannot work on that basis (unless you move to a block universe model, but even there you will necessarily get event-meshing failures during the phase where you generate the block). You are seeing a version of SR fail in front of your eyes. You're response is that you don't recognise it. Well, what you need to do then is show me a working model of SR in which you don't slow down the unfolding of events on different paths under the governance of an absolute frame without getting event-meshing failures, and where if you use a block universe, you do this for the generation phase rather than just doing imaginary physics in a pre-built block. There is no such working model anywhere because it's impossible to build one. It's equally impossible for the universe to run that model itself.
You seem to be under the impression that things move through spacetime. They don't. Things have worldlines in spacetime, as the diagram (not the simulation) depicts. All objects are present at all points on their worldlines, so there is no concept of ships arriving while their planets are still in the past. Nothing has a current moment.
You are using a block universe model there in which all objects are like strands of pasta weaved through the block. How do you generate that block? Feed your pasta in at one end and watch it progress through with the leading point of some strands reaching specific Spacetime locations before others which will pass through those points. That is event-meshing failure and it can't be avoided when generating the block by running things on the basis of real causation (unless you use an absolute frame to keep everything in sync by slowing the pasta's progress on some paths). The alternative is to refuse to generate the block and just have it all exist in complete form by magic with all the apparent causation being rendered fake. You can take your pick, but these are extreme models which Occam's razor is desperate to start hacking out and binning.
The presentist model (which is sort of what mode 3 depicts) does have things moving in space, but it has no spacetime.
Mode 3 can represent a version of SR with Minkowski Spacetime and an absolute frame (where the time dimension is a superfluous addition). If you see it as just 1/2/3 space dimensions plus Newtonian time and an absolute frame, it necessarily becomes LET.
The line passing through all the objects is all that exists, the current state of the universe. Mode 3 correctly shows that it is Lorentz invariant. In any frame, the current position of all object like along the one line.
Correct.
Problem is that neither the clocks nor anything else are measuring the flow of time. If the flow slows or stops, it goes undetected by anything in that little universe.
The counter at the bottom represents time: 240 units represents a year, but I didn't bother putting in any code to make the conversion. Press the start/Stop button to freeze the action and the counter stops because you've stopped time running.
(The only other model that's Lorentz invariant is the eternal static block universe, but that kind of universe can't be generated under the rules of SR and is invalidated as a direct result.)
This part I did not understand. I am unaware of SR asserting rules about generation of universes.
SR doesn't mention the business of generating universes, but if a theory is to be rational and depends on a block universe, it needs to provide a way to explain how that block is created. What the eternal block model does is avoid the issues that lead to event-meshing failures and different clock tick rates by jumping past the construction phase and focusing entirely on imaginary physics within the completed block. That is not an adequate theory.
User avatar
Halc
Posts: 405
Joined: March 17th, 2018, 9:47 pm

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

Post by Halc »

David Cooper wrote: September 4th, 2018, 5:39 pm The time axis is always vertical in the diagrams and represents the selected frame's version of time, so an object cannot be moving parallel to the time axis in any frame that shows that object moving to the right.
Agree. I didn't assert otherwise. If your +/- buttons went a bit further, it would allow me to view the situation in the frames of either of the ships as well.
If you are assigning positions to objects in a frame, you give them coordinates based on an origin somewhere.
Indeed, but I'm not assigning positions to anything. Earth has no coordinates for instance. I notice you didn't answer my request for that.
This can be done by multiple observers in different frames, and those origins will all move relative to each other.
Yes, if an arbitrary origin was assigned for whatever reason, those origins in different frames would move relative to each other. I'm just saying that no such origin is needed. Positions are typically given with a relative reference (like N light years left of event X), and not a set of coordinates (100, -20, 15, 75). Not wrong to do it with coordinates, but just less meaningful.

I don't hate it. It isn't wrong. It doesn't contradict relativity. It just isn't the only valid interpretation, and you seem to feel otherwise.
There is a deeply hostile reaction to it almost everywhere, and there are plenty of sources of information including university textbooks which make out that it is a disproved theory, whereas in reality it still stands (unlike SR which has been found to be invalid).
Perhaps LET (especially the older versions) have components that have been disproved. From what I read, the modern version is still in play. So the university textbooks teach that Einstein's relativity has been disproven?? This is quite a claim. No doubt there are some texts that claim this, but it would need to be one taught at a university as fact.
Halc wrote:I am stationary in my chair here, and at the same time am moving at 1000 km/hr due to spin of Earth. This is not a contradiction in the same way that your example is non-contradictory.
Halc wrote:Do you or do you not acknowledge that you have different speeds all at the same time?Einstein did not assert this. It came from centuries before. You whole bit of superior logic seems to depend on this being an inconsistency.
He absolutely did assert it
Yes, Einstein affirmed this assertion that was made at least 3 centuries before his time. It is not his assertion.

Answer the question. You evade this consistently. Are the speed limit signs wrong at the side of the road, because they ask you to decelerate your car to a nearly stationary speed while Earth smashes into you at about 1/800th c?
Things have a location????
It's an essential service which the universe provides.
Another evasion. Tell me your location please, without relating to anything with a location that hasn't been provided. I assert that location is only a relation, and the thing I ask cannot be done. Since you seem to equate location to spatial separation, I also assert that spatial separation is a relation. If there is a universe with just two existents, there is no meaningful way to express the separation between the two things. It requires at least a third thing so that Y might be twice as far from X as is Z.
Different frames set the speed of light relative to them to c as part of the rules as to how frames work, and that dictates everything else they do - they do not confirm the speed of light relative to themselves because they have set themselves up directly on the basis that light travels at c relative to them, and in doing so, they all assert that the speed of light relative to ALL other frames is >c in some directions and <c the other way.
Halc wrote:Ouch...
Is this a deliberate misrepresentation? This is in direct conflict with the empirical premise of SR. It describes no known theory, LET included.
This describes all theories - it is fundamental to how frames work. If SR doesn't want to work with valid frame rules, it shouldn't pretend to use frames of reference.
Classic strawman fallacy then. No physicist would describe things that way. Use their own words if you want to discredit a theory.
In LET, the mechanism for "time dilation" (which is actually just the slowing of apparent time) is that movement of a clock through the space fabric slows its cycles by increasing the round-trip distances for moving parts. That mechanism does not exist in SR because no clock is allowed to run slow.
Again a strawman wording. Moving clocks 'run slow' under SR. The term is dilation, not 'running slow', but I presume you mean that at least.
If you want to pick on something: If there is an objective metaphysical frame, SR asserts that clocks that are objectively stationary are dilated in any other frame. That means that time back on the home planet to either rocket ship (after launch) 'runs slower' than the clock on the rocket. I think your simulation would show this, especially if you could rotate it a bit further to the frames of the ships.
This is not a contradiction since SR does not make any metaphysical claims. LET would simply state that the alternate frame does not represent the ordering of events as per the preferred frame, and so the objective clock is not objectively running slow.
Science is about explaining reality
No, Metaphysics is about explaining reality. Science is about making practical predictions. You really need to understand this distinction. Science produces useful models, and cares not a hoot if the model corresponds to reality or not. The 2 digit speed limit sign at the side of the road is a useful model even if reality is a varying figure with about 7 more digits. The value on the speed limit sign is science. The 9 digit figure is a metaphysical interpretation.
Time runs at the rate time runs - it could run ten times as fast or ten times as slowly and no difference would be detectable, but that doesn't mean it has no rate at which it runs.
Oh good. You acknowledge that there is no distinction between it running faster or slower. I shy away from positing undetectable things, but that's just me. I could find nothing in the LET description that posits this sort of thing. All it proposed was a preferred frame, but nowhere could I find a mention of flow. There was a reference to a presentism article somebody wrote, but the reference was only used to pull one of Einstein's quotes.

Funny, but I can effortlessly find a causal structure that has no flow.
That is something I'd like to see. No flow --> no possibility of it being real causation.
Yes, I noticed you have this bias. You'd not like my example then. Your define causation in terms of flow, so an example without it will not be designated as causation in your opinion.
Steve3007
Posts: 10339
Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

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

Post by Steve3007 »

I'm not getting a response yet to my attempts to establish common ground. So I'll go back and catch up on some earlier posts for now.
David Cooper wrote: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.
For reference, here is that link: https://www.thenakedscientists.com/foru ... ic=74095.0

Yes. I did read through the first few pages of it. The originator of the topic is presumably the poster with the label "dressed scientist". The person with the label "Janus" replied to some of his points with what looks like pretty sensible comments. He discussed such things as non-inertial frames and pointed out the basic fact that a rotating reference frame is non-inertial. You appear to enter the conversation on page 2. I may have missed them, but I can't spot any posts in that topic in which either you or "dressed scientist" address the salient points made by "Janus". You keep talking about establishments, clergy and mind viruses without properly addressing his points.

You also seem very confused as to whether you think GR/SR and LET are mathematically the same or mathematically different. Sometimes you say they're the same. Sometimes you say that SR/GR fails to conform to the rules of mathematics. For example (from page 3 of that discussion):
They most certainly are contradictions, and anyone who doesn't understand that is being plain irrational, failing to conform to the rules of mathematics.
In answer to the question: "So Lorentz came up with all of the same ideas as Einstein?":
An alternative theory using the same maths but with a radically different interpretation.
If they use "the same maths" and one of them "fails to conform to the rules of mathematics" then so does the other.

If you do assert that there are logical contradictions in GR and SR which don't exist in LET, while at the same time also asserting that they are mathematically identical, these two assertions themselves directly contradict each other.

A contradiction is a logical error. The logic of a scientific theory is expressed in the language of mathematics. It is impossible for two theories to say the same things in that language but for one to contain a logical contradiction and one not to contain a logical contradiction.
User avatar
Halc
Posts: 405
Joined: March 17th, 2018, 9:47 pm

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

Post by Halc »

David Cooper wrote: September 4th, 2018, 8:18 pm That sounds as if it might be a suitable experiment, so tell me how you timed the light. Where did you time if from and where did you time it to? How did you synchronise your timers.
We had no clocks. Just the tachometer.

Spin a square prism mirror at a speed measured by the tachometer. A laser hits the mirror and when it is at 45 degrees, it shines the laser down a long hall of known length. When it reflects back, the mirror has rotated a bit. If the mirror turns slowly, the laser continues in a line parallel to the original laser, hitting a zero mark on a target on the wall say 4 meters away. As the RPM speeds up, the mirror has rotated a bit when the light returns and the beam is deflected a bit differently. A little calculation yields light speed. Way too crude to detect differences in orientation as the Michelson–Morley thing was attempting. Point is, the experiment yields the same value even if the whole setup was moving at a very different velocity. It yielded only about 1 digit of accuracy, insufficient to be compared with results half a year later when our velocity is quite different.

So you need to tell me how that setup assumes that it is stationary. We made no such assumption.
Earliest measurement were done simply by syncing a local clock to our view of a significantly distant one, and then varying the distance between the two clocks, and noting how the two no longer appear to be in sync. That method also doesn't require anything to be stationary, but it similarly wasn't accurate enough to detect orientation differences predicted at the time. It wasn't until atomic clocks came along that they noticed the fixed light speed.
The piece of text in question is this:-

"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."
This quote does not omit the relations(which I bolded). The one (italicized) line does admittedly leave it off, because the context provides it.
When a theory depends upon something so ridiculously unlikely, it requires magic to turn that into something more reasonable.
Funny, since the undetectable flow of time seems like magic to me. It solves no problems except ones you make up.
'Magic' seems to just be the word you use to label opinions with which you disagree.


The static block allows things to make imaginary "moves" forward in time without their movement through time being slowed by an absolute frame mechanism, and without event-meshing failures (because the future of other players is already in place and they can't fail to meet up where they're supposed to).
OK, you seem to have no concept of the block model. There are no moves or flow. An objective (preferred) frame is possible in a block. It doesn't imply flow. A frame is not a specific slice of the block, only an orientation. LET has that frame, but it doesn't assert the flow. I found no claims to that nature. You're not describing the claims of LET.
You are precisely nitpicking - you must be able to see that a rewording can fix this issue.
You are drawing conclusions from the misworded conclusion (denial of flow). If that were reworded to match the question, your argument that apparently depends on it would fall apart. I said it doesn't matter. LET asserts a preferred frame. It doesn't assert (or deny) flow.
This mode shows SR strictly sticking to the principle that clocks don't run slow because there is no absolute frame with a time which governs all the rest.
SR does not say this. It says clocks can be measured to run slow in frames in which they are moving. This statement has no dependency on an absolute frame or the lack of it.
In the twins paradox, the moving twin's clock can't run slow because the frame in which he's at rest isn't some subservile frame that takes its lead from an absolute frame - it has to run at an unslowed rate.
It does run at an unslowed rate in the frame in which he's at rest. The part about that frame being "some subservile frame that takes its lead from an absolute frame" just doesn't come into consideration. It makes no difference whether such a thing exists or not.

Remember, this is science. To say it is 'unslowed', it means there is no local experiment that can be done that would indicate that the clock or anything else isn't running normally, but there are tests to demonstrate that clocks moving relative to that frame are dilated.
It isn't a metaphysical assertion about what IS: that the clock measures the actual pace of the universe or something. GR does have that concept: A preferred frame at event X might be the one where the age of the universe is maximized. Measuring the age of the universe is not a local test.
You are using a block universe model there in which all objects are like strands of pasta weaved through the block.
Yes. That's what spacetime is. Your model (not the LET model) is one of space, changing over time. There is no spacetime in that model. You apparently find spacetime to be magic.
How do you generate that block?
The same way you generate the flowing business: Opinions vary. "God made it" seems to be popular, especially with the 'flow' camp. Relativity has about as much opinion on this subject as the theory of natural selection has on the topic of abiogenesis. The theory is about what appears to be going on, but not about how it got there.
Mode 3 can represent a version of SR with Minkowski Spacetime and an absolute frame (where the time dimension is a superfluous addition). If you see it as just 1/2/3 space dimensions plus Newtonian time and an absolute frame, it necessarily becomes LET.
Halc wrote:The line passing through all the objects is all that exists, the current state of the universe. Mode 3 correctly shows that it is Lorentz invariant. In any frame, the current position of all object like along the one line.
Correct.
Well LET doesn't assert a current position of objects. Mode 3 thus doesn't depict LET, but it does at least depict the preferred frame of LET.
Steve3007
Posts: 10339
Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

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

Post by Steve3007 »

If anyone's interested, here's a Relativistic description of the Sagnac effect that I'm currently in the process of reading:

http://www.physicsinsights.org/sagnac_1.html

I don't have any judgments on it yet because I haven't finished reading it.
Eduk
Posts: 2466
Joined: December 8th, 2016, 7:08 am
Favorite Philosopher: Socrates

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

Post by Eduk »

Yes David it would be unreasonable to categorically state that disproving relativity wouldn't earn a Nobel prize without knowing why it didn't earn a prize. Again it is funny that you chastise me for sheepishly following the scientific consensus but you yourself have no issue with conferring authority to a small committee who handed out Nobel prizes many years ago.
Personally I wouldn't say such disproof would automatically warrant a Nobel prize but it would certainly be the biggest news in science that year and stand a very good chance of winning said prize.
By the way I am impressed by your honesty that you can't think of any similar example where science has it so wrong. Most people would simply not answer that question.
Going along with the scientific consensus could be seen as an appeal to authority. I mean I have no understanding of QM. I don't know how to prove it. I can't follow the logic. I can't follow the evidence. I am told that modern computers rely on QM, but I can't prove that. Maybe they rely on a different theory which makes the exact same predictions, but is somehow different. Perhaps I have been lied to my whole life and it isn't the scientific method which is responsible for almost everything I can see but is instead all powered by a different methodology which makes the same methodological steps.
The difference between the church and the scientific community is that regarding the church's God there is no evidence and no authority. As proof you will see the non self correcting nature of the church. The huge number of mistakes and the total lack of anything to show for it all. On the other hand science rather relies on evidence. There is no authority within the scientific community. And personal I would say the results speak for themselves.
Oh and I'm not attacking you either. I just disagree with you. Perhaps you feel these two things are the same?
Unknown means unknown.
Steve3007
Posts: 10339
Joined: June 15th, 2011, 5:53 pm

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

Post by Steve3007 »

In the interests of balance, here's another article about the Sagnac effect that appears, at a brief glance, to put the opposite point of view to the article I cited in my previous post:

http://www.conspiracyoflight.com/Sagnac ... ndRel.html

I haven't looked at this one in detail yet either. But presumably, in theory, if both articles can be understood standalone, without having to refer out to too many other external sources, and if both articles present a lucid argument, it should be possible to read them and make some kind of judgement as to which is most valid. I'll give it a go.

---
Eduk wrote:By the way I am impressed by your honesty that you can't think of any similar example where science has it so wrong.
I am also impressed by David Cooper's honesty. But I like to try to steer the conversation away from all the talk of clergy, and sheep and Einstein-worshippers, and "the establishment" and try to analyse arguments. Over the years, on this forum alone, there have been quite a few posters who appear to have come here after spending a lot of effort looking into a particular subject and they generally arrive here with this same attitude: that there is a conspiracy of vested interests or blinkered thinking that causes most of the specialists in the subject to have got it wrong for years. So far, I've not yet been convinced by the arguments of any of the previous ones. Maybe this one will be different. But I can't help being swayed by the similarity in the language to the previous ones. And one of the things that the previous ones generally seemed to have in common with each other was that they'd immersed themselves in the advanced level of the subject while neglecting the groundwork. Again, perhaps it's different this time. That's what I'm hoping to find out.
Post Reply

Return to “Epistemology and Metaphysics”

2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise

Entanglement - Quantum and Otherwise
by John K Danenbarger
January 2023

Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul

Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness

Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023

The Unfakeable Code®

The Unfakeable Code®
by Tony Jeton Selimi
April 2023

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
by Alan Watts
May 2023

Killing Abel

Killing Abel
by Michael Tieman
June 2023

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead

Reconfigurement: Reconfiguring Your Life at Any Stage and Planning Ahead
by E. Alan Fleischauer
July 2023

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough

First Survivor: The Impossible Childhood Cancer Breakthrough
by Mark Unger
August 2023

Predictably Irrational

Predictably Irrational
by Dan Ariely
September 2023

Artwords

Artwords
by Beatriz M. Robles
November 2023

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope

Fireproof Happiness: Extinguishing Anxiety & Igniting Hope
by Dr. Randy Ross
December 2023

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes

Beyond the Golden Door: Seeing the American Dream Through an Immigrant's Eyes
by Ali Master
February 2024

2022 Philosophy Books of the Month

Emotional Intelligence At Work

Emotional Intelligence At Work
by Richard M Contino & Penelope J Holt
January 2022

Free Will, Do You Have It?

Free Will, Do You Have It?
by Albertus Kral
February 2022

My Enemy in Vietnam

My Enemy in Vietnam
by Billy Springer
March 2022

2X2 on the Ark

2X2 on the Ark
by Mary J Giuffra, PhD
April 2022

The Maestro Monologue

The Maestro Monologue
by Rob White
May 2022

What Makes America Great

What Makes America Great
by Bob Dowell
June 2022

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!

The Truth Is Beyond Belief!
by Jerry Durr
July 2022

Living in Color

Living in Color
by Mike Murphy
August 2022 (tentative)

The Not So Great American Novel

The Not So Great American Novel
by James E Doucette
September 2022

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches

Mary Jane Whiteley Coggeshall, Hicksite Quaker, Iowa/National Suffragette And Her Speeches
by John N. (Jake) Ferris
October 2022

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All

In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All
by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
November 2022

The Smartest Person in the Room: The Root Cause and New Solution for Cybersecurity

The Smartest Person in the Room
by Christian Espinosa
December 2022

2021 Philosophy Books of the Month

The Biblical Clock: The Untold Secrets Linking the Universe and Humanity with God's Plan

The Biblical Clock
by Daniel Friedmann
March 2021

Wilderness Cry: A Scientific and Philosophical Approach to Understanding God and the Universe

Wilderness Cry
by Dr. Hilary L Hunt M.D.
April 2021

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute: Tools To Spark Your Dream And Ignite Your Follow-Through

Fear Not, Dream Big, & Execute
by Jeff Meyer
May 2021

Surviving the Business of Healthcare: Knowledge is Power

Surviving the Business of Healthcare
by Barbara Galutia Regis M.S. PA-C
June 2021

Winning the War on Cancer: The Epic Journey Towards a Natural Cure

Winning the War on Cancer
by Sylvie Beljanski
July 2021

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream

Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream
by Dr Frank L Douglas
August 2021

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts

If Life Stinks, Get Your Head Outta Your Buts
by Mark L. Wdowiak
September 2021

The Preppers Medical Handbook

The Preppers Medical Handbook
by Dr. William W Forgey M.D.
October 2021

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress: A Practical Guide

Natural Relief for Anxiety and Stress
by Dr. Gustavo Kinrys, MD
November 2021

Dream For Peace: An Ambassador Memoir

Dream For Peace
by Dr. Ghoulem Berrah
December 2021