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

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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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 »

Things fall apart. That is much breadth for discussion because it’s stranger than any concept and, to my knowledge, the only underlying and undeniable principle of nature.

What it means/is underneath I cannot possibly fathom.

There is a reason I move onto more human matters and leave such things to physicists ans mathematicians ;)
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 »

Burning ghost wrote:...the only underlying and undeniable principle of nature.
Arthur Eddington agreed with you:
Arthur Eddington wrote:The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
A tad melodramatic, perhaps.
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 13th, 2018, 11:29 ambut you seem to deliberately mislead with every statement you make.
I don't mislead at all, except perhaps in places where I may have been misled (based on what people normally claim SR is) - I simply say how things are.
What you are referring here is delta-speed: The speed of one thing relative to X compared to the speed of a second thing relative to X. Any such value is a meaningless comparison.
Hardly. If one car is moving relative to you at 10mph and another is doing 100mph, that tells you a lot about the impact energy that will be involved if they collide, and in the case of light with much higher speeds of travel, it would tell you a lot about the frequency of the light perceived (and the amount of energy it would be perceived as carrying).
E.G. My car is going 10 km/h relative to a parking lot, and yours is going at 20 km/h relative to the same parking lot. Is the delta speed between the cars in that lot 0, 10, 20, 30, or something else? No way to know, but it isn't zero at least.
Irrelevant example as we also know the relative directions in my examples.
Difference in velocity has meaning, and so it has a name (typically delta-V), but no theory asserts that delta-V (a 3-way relation) with light being one of the 3 things has a fixed magnitude of c.
Most SR advocates assert that it does have a fixed relative speed of c to all objects. You are out of step with them, and your position turns SR into a theory that accepts an absolute frame. Your attempt to defend SR has actually led you to abandon SR.
Light speed relative to object B will always be measured as c because B is now the reference in that statement. What is not c is the value of the 3-way relation of delta-V.
Light speed relative to object B is not measured as c in all directions from any frame in which object B is not at rest.
So what you ask is invalid altogether.
You're just trying to wish the issue away and obscure the issue with obfuscating terms which are designed to bamboozle people. The reality is that the frame A measurements for the speed of light relative to object B do not match the frame B measurements for it, and I am not misleading anyone by saying that.
You have a mention of a reference frame (which is a velocity reference), speed of light (which is not), and an object X, and then this 'in all directions' which makes no sense at all. Speed of light measured relative to object X is c, and there is no 'in all directions' to that since speed is a scalar and doesn't have a direction.
You're playing ridiculous games with words. In all directions makes absolute sense. There are an infinite number of different directions in which one thing can pass another, and there is always one direction in which light will pass an object at c relative to it, even when the object is moving at 0.99c with light passing it at 0.01c in one direction and 1.99c the opposite way. In the same way, a car that is moving at 100mph is moving at different speeds relative to sounds moving in different directions. Sounds following it are moving at under 600mph relative to it, while sounds hitting it head on are moving relative to it at over 800mph. There also exist some directions in which sound moves relative to the car at the speed of sound. This is a correct description which any normal person who is mathematically literate will understand without difficulty, and the same applies to situations with light. You cannot overturn these realities with silly word games.
So my reply refers to a delta-speed, which is a pretty meaningless concept since it cannot be computed from speeds of things in any frame.
Why don't you stop confusing yourself and just use ordinary language instead which states things exactly as they are without bringing in ridiculous, artificial rules to limit the way things can be described. My wordings are fine - they work perfectly well and normal people can understand them. They also express everything needed to describe the physics involved.
To say it closer to correct, let's assume frame A is the frame of the axis in the Sagnac example, and the object X is the material at a specific point on the spinning ring. Frame B is the inertial frame in which X is a rest.
The difference (delta-V) in measured velocity of a beam of light in frame A and the measured velocity of X in A is some value whose magnitude is greater than c for one beam and less than c for the other beam. The delta-V is obtained by simply subtracting the two measured velocities.
The same delta-V measured in frame B will have magnitude c since speed of light is c in any frame, and B is measured to be stationary, so the difference is still c regardless of different velocities of the two beams.
The frame A measurement says that the red (clockwise-moving) light passes all the ring material at a higher speed relative to it than the blue light. A frame B measurement will do the same, if you stick to that inertial frame to make the entire measurement. The frame B measurement will also assert that the speed of light relative to part of the ring that is momentarily stationary in frame B is c in all directions, but that's not the measurement that's being asked for.
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, 2:39 pm I think it simply comes down to this concept that David has of "reference frames which misrepresent reality". I think (correct me if I'm wrong) we all agree that in an inertial reference frame the ring is moving relative to that frame, and the light as measured against that reference frame, using a clock and two detectors that are close together, all three of which are stationary WRT that reference frame, will be observed to have speed c. And I think (correct me if I'm wrong) we all agree that an observer riding along the ring, with a clock and a pair of light detectors riding with him and close together, would also measure the speed of light as c. Where David seems to differ is in thinking that one or both of those measurements is, in some sense, "misrepresenting reality". And since he thinks that SR says that reference frames assert things that are asserted to be true for all reference frames (rather than simply being used to make measurements that can be used to devise laws of physics) this is why he claims that SR contains contradictions.
It's very simple. Frame A claims the speed of light relative to objects at rest in frame A is c in all directions. Frame B claims the speed of light relative to objects at rest in frame B is c in all directions. At least one of those claims must be wrong. If you disagree with that, then you are backing the dogma that you claim doesn't exist (and you're tolerating contradictions). If on the other hand you accept what's implied by what you said in the quote in bold and recognise the incompatibility of the claims from different frames, then you are necessarily accepting an absolute frame. So which one is it?
David Cooper
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by David Cooper »

Halc wrote: September 13th, 2018, 8:55 pmI saw the links you endorse.
I don't endorse LaFreniere beyond saying that he gets LET right in every detail - you wanted to see examples of how these people speak. As for Marett's site, it's pretty sound. I read the Sagnac page last night though and found a dodgy bit at the bottom where he used the rotating Earth as a single clock instead of counting it as an infinite number of clocks all running at different rates, so it isn't the proof he thinks it is. It is a nice thing that he's found though: you can have two pulsars at opposite sides of the universe serving as a clock, but no component of the clock keeps the same time as the clock - every part of the clock is taking a shortcut into the future (through Minkowski Spacetime), but the clock "itself" is somehow not taking that shortcut.
That conspiracyOfLight site is not even pseudoscience. They're just plain wrong. I wondered why you didn't use their proof that Sagnac effect contradicts SR, since you didn't produce one of your own.
I'd never read that particular page - my argument came out of looking at MGP (not MG, which his other page talks about), and I only mentioned Sagnac because it too confirms that my thought experiment would work exactly as claimed. I don't use that thought experiment to disprove SR though - I only use it to show that frame rules work the way I say they do and that frame B measurements cannot be legitimately passed off as frame A measurements.
Halc wrote: September 13th, 2018, 9:54 pm
David Cooper wrote: September 13th, 2018, 7:15 pmIt works for all frames, so you can pick any frame you like and the answer will be the same.
You're apparently referring to absolute speed without specifying that (a deliberate obfuscation). Inviting one to pick a different frame is further implication that it is not absolute speed that is being requested.
I'm referring to the speed relative to the frame, and it works regardless of which frame you choose. It is not obfuscation when I give you such a free choice, and there's nothing difficult about understanding that once you've generated enough courage to choose a frame, you are then going to be making measurements for that frame relating to the speed of light in it relative to the material which it's passing there. It couldn't be easier. Children in a primary school could do this.
If the ring axis is stationary, that delta-speed is the same on the other side of the ring as well, so the complicated wording is not necessary.
The complicated wording is necessary to stop people deliberately making the measurement in the wrong way in an attempt to hide the truth that the thought experiment reveals.
All theories recognise that a frame with an object at rest in it represents the speed of light relative to that object as c in all directions.
Wrong.
You're wrong. There is no acceptable case where anyone uses frame A with an object A at rest in it and measures the speed of light relative to it as anything other than c (unless they're slowing light with a medium other than the space fabric, or by gravity)
That information is automatically asserted by frames.
Really wrong.
You're really wrong. All the things that I say are asserted by frames are statements that are automatically generated from them when you ask questions that demand answers of the relevant kind. If we're dealing with frame A and an object B that's moving through it in a specific direction at a specific speed and I ask you what the relative speed is between light and that object in a specific direction, there will only be one possible answer. If you think that's wrong (never mind "really wrong"), you either aren't thinking properly or whoever taught you the rules stuffed up badly. In each case, there is only one right measurement, and that measurement is automatically an "assertion of the frame".
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 14th, 2018, 1:59 amperhaps it should have instead said that the concept of aether doesn't add anything useful to physics because it doesn't affect any observations. That doesn't stop people from postulating the existence of such a thing. But a concept which doesn't, either directly or indirectly, predict a possible observation to be different than if that concept wasn't used is of no use to physics.
It is a demonstration of the existence of the dogma that you deny exists. The aether (space fabric) is of great use to physics as it is required to make theories rational. Your rejection of it is fuelled entirely by the dogma and irrational thinking (i.e. bad philosophy).
The first postulate is not ambiguous if you understand what laws of physics are. Laws of physics are generalizations created from observing the patterns in measurements which predict future measurements. The first postulate simply predicts that those measurements, and therefore the laws of physics that derive from them, will be found to be the same when measured against any non-accelerating reference frame.
But most people take it to mean that because the speed of light is represented as c relative to any frames, that is the actual physics too. There is nothing there to tell them otherwise, and almost all of them understand it that way. The ones who don't are deviating from SR as it is normally understood - they are bringing in an absolute frame which is ordinarily banned.
I think misunderstandings of these kinds of explanations often come in if you read them in isolation without doing the groundwork first.
I think you're the one misunderstanding them, because almost everyone out there in the real world interprets them the same way I do - if they didn't, they'd all accept an absolute frame.
I agree that aether shouldn't be rejected as a problem. It should be regarded as not necessary to the purposes of an empirical science. It isn't a problem, as such, because it always seems to ensure that it can't affect any observations.
The more important issue is the absolute frame, and that is necessary to avoid contradictions, unless you're very specific about which model you're using that renders it irrelevant and make sure that this doesn't also get carried across to other models where an absolute frame is logically required. Separating out the different models and setting out the rules for each of them should be a requirement of everyone out there who's educating people about what SR is, because if it's done without that rigour, we get miseducation on a massive scale.
If one frame says something is stationary and another says it's moving, it is clearly impossible to tell whether something is moving or not, so your objection to that one is frankly ridiculous.
Which is perhaps one reason why frames don't say that. Movement is defined as the change in the spatial distance between two objects with respect to time. So, if you use the correct definition of the word "moving", clearly we can work out if we're moving.
Frames do say that. You can measure movement in any way you like, but if something is not moving in one frame (no change in spatial distance between itself and any other object at rest in that frame) and is moving in another (with a change in spatial distance between other objects which are at rest in that frame), then we have contradictory claims from different frames about whether the object is moving or not, and we can't tell which one is wrong.
If, for the sake of brevity, you don't make that clear in your explanation it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that you build on that omission rather than explaining it.
The fact of it is that you can't tell if you're moving or not in an absolute sense unless you have an absolute frame. That doesn't mean that there isn't an absolute answer known only to that absolute frame. SR ordinarily denies the existence of an absolute frame, but you claim it's open to the idea, and if you're right, the contradictions should force it to accept an absolute frame for some SR models. It doesn't do that though. Why not? Because of a failure to separate out the incompatible and broken models that are being collectively passed off as SR. This is where all your training breaks down, because you've never done this analysis of the different incompatible models in strict isolation from each other. You've never been taken through how they all fail. You have an opportunity to put that right now, but you're trying your best to avoid doing so.
I would have read his words in context, bearing in mind the physics that went before him and the empirical nature of physics. If he simply said "you can't tell if you're moving", since I know that statement, taken in isolation, is demonstrably untrue, I would ask him more about what precisely he means by it.
It is not demonstrably untrue - it is demonstrably true. You cannot tell if you're moving because there's always a frame that says you aren't, and it could be right.
Steve3007 wrote: September 14th, 2018, 2:58 am A few pages ago, when I asked you some simple questions about it, here:

viewtopic.php?p=318878#p318878

in your answers here:

viewtopic.php?p=318986#p318986

you either didn't answer the questions or answered them wrongly.
I answered them correctly. You just don't like my correct answers because you prefer your incorrect ones which are informed by a broken theory.
This seems odd because they're simple questions. Question 1, for example, could be on a high school Physics exam. But rather than simply giving the obvious answer you started going on irrelevantly about how "the universe supports only one underlying reality".
It's called precision rather than regurgitation of dogma. The answers that you want to hear are the ones based on shackled thinking rather than free rational thought.
This rings alarm bells for me. Maybe you somehow just misunderstood what the question was asking. But I don't see how. I tried to make it as plain and unambiguous as possible. It was a question about how a ball, thrown upwards, moves just after it leaves the hand that throws it.
Your question has a bias built into it that you cannot see because of the way you've been trained. If you say that the ball decelerates, you're assuming a particular frame to be the absolute one, but you don't know it to be the absolute frame, so saying that the ball decelerates is an assumption based on something that may be an error. I'm not going to make a stupid mistake of that kind, but you think I should in order to conform to the stupidity you're pushing. I reject that stupidity. I do not give absolute answers to questions which I can't give absolute answers to without being able to measure the absolute, and the fact that you expect me to do reveals a massive error in your thinking.
So, as I say, maybe we're just talking past each other. But the evidence so far, from your answers to questions like this, suggest to me that you need to brush up on the pre-SR basics. Otherwise the roof that you're constructing will be unsupported by any foundations or walls (to labour that metaphor again).
There is no relevant gap in my understanding. The gap is at your end. You don't rigorously separate out models; you demand absolutes that can't be accessed (and want wrong answers which you can label as correct because they fit with your bias); and you play games where you pretend that SR allows for an absolute frame even though almost everyone in the SR camp rejects one, but also when any acceptance that the speed of light relative to an object may not be what a frame claims it to be automatically leads to an absolute frame not merely being possible, but actively required (in relevant models).
Steve3007 wrote: September 14th, 2018, 3:14 am Do you accept that an object in free fall in the Earth's gravitational field is accelerating towards the centre of the Earth and can be moving upwards (have its velocity vector pointing upwards), with its speed (the magnitude of its velocity) decreasing?
Yes. If you want to word things that way, I have no problem with that. It doesn't make my way of wording things wrong.
Do you accept that any object moving in a circle, at constant speed, is, by definition, accelerating towards the centre of that circle?
Yes, but I don't let that blind me to the fact that it could also be decelerating in an absolute frame (which is something you want to ban people from realising).
In the context of physics, do you know what kinetic and potential energy are?
Of course.
Steve3007 wrote: September 14th, 2018, 5:49 am Original question (paraphrased):
1. If I throw a ball upwards, neglecting air resistance, as soon as it has left my hand, is it accelerating, deccelerating or both?
David Cooper wrote:The correct answer is not dependent on the coordinate system you're using, so the answer c is wrong. The correct answer depends on whether it's accelerating, decelerating, or doing one followed by the other, and that depends on its movement relative to the space fabric.
No. the correct answer is by definition that acceleration is the rate of change of velocity with respect to time, which means that it can result in the magnitude of the velocity increasing, reducing or remaining the same. If the magnitude of the velocity remiains the same, but there is still a non-zero acceleration, then the direction of the velocity is changing and the two vectors are perpendicular to each other.
The correct answer is the one I gave you. You asked an absolute question and I answered it on that basis. Your inclusion of the word decelerating also implies that your usage of the word acceleration there excludes cases where something is decelerating. If you want your answer to be the correct one, you need to frame your question with greater care and spell out the definitions of the words you're using in it wherever they go against normal usage. If told you before that the differences between our answers come down to one simple thing - you're asking absolute questions and demanding SR answers (i.e wrong answers) while I'm giving LET answers (i.e. correct ones), and I'm giving you LET answers because SR is broken and should not be given precedence over a rational theory that works.
So an acceleration vector pointing in the opposite direction to a velocity vector means that acceleration is a deceleration, if we define "deceleration" as reduction in speed, which seems reasonable.

This is basic, basic stuff which comes before SR or LET.
It is basic stuff, but if you keep asking absolute questions without realising that that's what you're doing, you're going to keep tripping up. You're mistaking your communication failures for mistakes in my understanding of physics - that is the root of your problem here. Did you ever bother to click through to my reference-frame camera program (from my relativity page)? Anyone who spends a few minutes exploring that should realise that it can only be put together by someone who really knows their stuff. You're searching in the wrong direction. What you should be doing is defining your SR models and showing where they fit in with the ones I've identified. Then we can discuss each one in turn and I'll show you that every single one of them is broken. I can understand that you want to avoid going there, but that is what the invitation here is. If you're sure you have a model that stands up, why delay going straight for the kill. All I ask of anyone is to show me a working model of SR, but by heck it takes a lot of work to drag them towards that, and NONE of them can deliver.
There's nothing "non-genuine" about a non-inertial frame....
There is. In the gravitational case they're fine, but when an object is actually accelerating, a non-inertial frame continually asserts that the speed of light relative to it in all directions is c, and that's a continual contradiction with the previous moment. Such frames are not valid in that they are automatically misrepresentations of reality.
For future reference: Please don't tell me what I'm seeking to do.
You are playing word games, and I will call that out every time you do it.
When I ask a question I am seeking to get from you an answer to that question, as it is stated. Nothing more.
You are applying a bias to them which you don't recognise.
I asked you if you accept the fact that velocity and acceleration are vectors. This is because I am seeking to know whether you appreciate that velocity and acceleration are vectors. If you don't, then it's really difficult to discuss any aspect of physics because we don't speak the same language as each other. I'm just trying to establish whether we speak the same language.
And you're doing this because...? Why are you wasting time on that? It all came out of one little phrase which was transitioning from one idea to another one, momentarily mentioning acceleration and deceleration (but without that contrast being important to the discussion), and moving on to something much more clear cut involving the ticking of two clocks where both are asserted to be ticking faster than the other. So what do you do? You ignore the clocks, and fixate on the acceleration vs. deceleration issue instead. It is actually relevant, but it would be very hard for you to see how given the depth of your indoctrination. You've been taught that something can be accelerating and decelerating at the same time, and it would take a lot of work to deprogram you on that point, which is why I'm not going to bother trying. The ticking rate comparison is much harder to cover up through brainwashing though, because someone who believes that clock A can tick faster than clock B while clock B ticks faster than clock A is manifestly certifiable.
By one very specific definition of the word, yes. It isn't necessarily a real acceleration though just because it's been given a label with a misleading name.
A label with a misleading name?!?!? This, perhaps more than any other answer, appears to me to demonstrate you lack of grasp of basic physics that it is essential to grasp if you're going to tackle more advanced subjects like SR and LET.
That's where you keep repeating the same mistake. You want me to answer absolute questions in a biased way which accepts SR and rejects the absolute frame. I'm not going to let my brain function on such a bias - not for you, and not for anyone. Reason dictates that there must be an absolute frame (in some models) in order to remove the contradictions, and you want me to abandon reason. You want me to parrot mantras from a religious cult instead of doing physics properly. Your cult has given its own definition to a word which I, as someone who is not a member of that cult, refuse to endorse. You are fully entitled to use the word the way your cult uses it and I do not question your understanding of physics on the basis that you do so. I am likewise entitled to use the word my way, and as it's the way that normal people outside of the cult use it, it should not be hard to understand. When you ask absolute questions, I don't apply the unstated bias that you imagine onto it - I answer the actual question that's been asked. The difference between my answers and the ones you want does not reveal a lack of understanding of the physics on my part, but is actively driven by my understanding of the physics and my rejection of your cult. I am in the LET camp, and we have an absolute frame. When we talk about deceleration, we ruddy well mean a deceleration (where kinetic energy is actually being lost rather than gained). Otherwise, we're merely dealing with apparent deceleration.
It is true by definition of the words "acceleration", "velocity" and "circle" that an object moving in a circle has an acceleration vector which points towards the centre of the circle. This a function of the definitions of those words. It's not specific to any individual aspect of physics that we might be discussing. Please tell me that I've misinterpreted you and you understand this bit of basic physics and geometry! If not, as I've said, we have no language in common in which to communicate.
It should be obvious from my answers that I don't accept your definitions as absolute ones. There are alternative ones which are preferable because they are more logical, and you should expect me to use those as standard. Your usage of some words puts a bias into them which allows you to frame things as absolute statements which are logically incorrect by the more rational definitions of the same words and which make precision harder. Your definitions actively warp your ability to understand what you're describing because of their inherent bias.
No it wasn't.
My answer was correct.
Regardless of whether you think there is such a thing as aether, movement is by definition a function of the relationship between objects.
Movement (in the absence of any wording relating what it's relative to) is by definition movement relative to the absolute frame. You're using a biased definition in which the existence of the absolute frame is denied.
If you think there is such a thing as aether then the sentence is rendered meaningful by changing it to: "object A is moving at 5 m/s relative to the aether". And, like any proposition in physics (or science generally) that proposition, to be meaningful, needs to be empirically falsifiable/verifiable, either directly or indirectly. i.e. you need to show how that statement is useful for describing and predicting possible observations.
It is meaningful in physics because not having an absolute frame generates contradictions and invalidates the model. Again though, instead of arguing over linguistics, you should be setting out your SR models and telling me where they fit into my set of models, or where you want to put them if you think they don't fit in my set. Then we can take each one in turn and demolish it.
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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 »

David -
It is meaningful in physics because not having an absolute frame generates contradictions and invalidates the model. Again though, instead of arguing over linguistics, you should be setting out your SR models and telling me where they fit into my set of models, or where you want to put them if you think they don't fit in my set. Then we can take each one in turn and demolish it.
I’d recommend pursuing this in a physics forum.
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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 »

With the new topic, spawned from this topic, up and running, I will now post answers to points made in this topic on that one.
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 »

Burning ghost wrote: September 18th, 2018, 10:23 pm David -
It is meaningful in physics because not having an absolute frame generates contradictions and invalidates the model. Again though, instead of arguing over linguistics, you should be setting out your SR models and telling me where they fit into my set of models, or where you want to put them if you think they don't fit in my set. Then we can take each one in turn and demolish it.
I’d recommend pursuing this in a physics forum.
I've tried, but they don't like it on physics forums - they try to shut down any such discussion in any way they can, and that means delete, delete, ban. According to Steve, physics isn't interested in this subject because it's metaphysics, and that isn't their field. In other words, a theory can be logically ridiculous to any extreme and they don't care: to them, it's right if it gives them useful measurements. They also don't notice that they're smuggling in philosophy to claim that an irrational theory is superior to a rational one that provides the same measurements but which is supposedly more complex (and should therefore be rejected through the application of Occam's razor) on the basis that an irrational theory that depends on magic for its functionality is "simpler". The result of this (selective) rejection of metaphysics is that physics has no expertise to offer when it comes to deciding whether its theories are valid or not - they are thus logically bound to hand that responsibility over to philosophy and will naturally bow to our judgements on such matters. So, it clearly needs to be done on a philosophy forum.

Personally, I think it should be done on physics forums too, but they won't tolerate anyone trying to bring this up. They simply go on pushing SR/GR as the only game in town and abuse anyone who frames anything through LET in any way that isn't passed off as SR. That is the state of the world today, and it will take a lot of work to change it. (Or a takeover by perfectly-reasoning AGI which will refuse to go along with anything irrational.)
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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:According to Steve, physics isn't interested in this subject because it's metaphysics, and that isn't their field. In other words, a theory can be logically ridiculous to any extreme and they don't care: to them, it's right if it gives them useful measurements.
For the record: This is a false characterization of what I've said. The subject of the role of metaphysics within physics, and the possible definitions of the word "metaphysics", is probably a topic in itself. I've discussed it in more detail elsewhere in this forum in the past. I don't like my position to be misrepresented with no reference to anything I've actually said.
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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 »

Sorry Steve - I may have been attributing to you something that came from Halc, but I thought it was a position you both shared. It is also very much the standard defence of the establishment though to rule discussion of the metaphysics as something separate from physics (mere philosophy), while at the same time they ram their own pet metaphysics down everyone's throats.
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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:Sorry Steve - I may have been attributing to you something that came from Halc, but I thought it was a position you both shared. It is also very much the standard defence of the establishment though to rule discussion of the metaphysics as something separate from physics (mere philosophy), while at the same time they ram their own pet metaphysics down everyone's throats.
OK. No problem.

Here is an example of some of my previous thoughts on the subject of metaphysics:

viewtopic.php?p=237159#p237159

As I've said, I think the subject of what metaphysics is, in the context of physics, is a whole topic in itself. A. J. Ayer and the Logical Positivists famously rejected metaphysics altogether and regarded all metaphysical statements as, literally, meaningless. But they were using a particular definition of metaphysics with which not everyone would agree.

As I said in the above cited post, meta-physics could be defined by a parallel with a word like meta-data (in computing) which means data about data. In that case, metaphysical statements are simply statements that are one step removed from statements that relate directly to the evidence of our senses. So all the laws of physics could be argued to be metaphysical. I think what A. J. Ayer was arguing against (in his book "Language, Truth and Logic") was statements that cannot be linked either directly or indirectly, either in practice or in principle, by any number of steps to any possible observation. In that case, I would agree with him that such statements are not useful specifically to science, because of the definition of what science is.
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 »

The trouble is that in practice it's a distinction that's being ignored - physicists are automatically discussing metaphysics every time they assert the rightness of SR when its validity is being questioned by people who are actively discussing the irrationality of the metaphysics of SR. Either they should bow to the superior discipline of philosophy for judging the ultimate validity of theories, or they should recognise that they do want to have their say on the metaphysics and that they consider themselves to be philosophers too. Bear in mind that the distinction is rather artificial in any case, because physics is supposed to accept mathematics, and philosophy, when done properly, is ultimately just the rigorous application of mathematics.
Atla
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Re: Time: is time a concept or a physical force and can we prove the arrow of time

Post by Atla »

Rationalbenny wrote: January 7th, 2018, 7:17 pm Time can often be associated with energy interms of its mystery and unknown beginnings, however I have a predicament.
Is time a concept or an actual force you see if we deduce time to be a relative concept and nothing more like we have with energy then we must ask how can a metaphysical concept have a magnitude effect on the physical nature of our materialistic universe.
...
I think the question of time is one of the most difficult questions, since it has so many layers to it. My rather uncertain take on time is that existence is probably timeless, but we are humans. According to the Anthropic principle, observations of the universe must be compatible with the conscious and sapient life that observes it, that's sort of a tautology.

And self-aware humans require memory for example, which I doubt would possible if there wasn't an arrow time, an increase in "entropy", increase in "complexity" in our part of the universe. I guess evolution in general couldn't have happened without an arrow of time, there would mostly just be a random chaos.

Maybe if we could see the entirety of our universe, we would see that overall there is no arrow of time, "entropy"/"complexity" is constant. Overall it all evens out.

Also, in some sense quantum behaviour ignores spacetime, which again might imply that the "classical world" we see is one form of quantum behaviour, largely occuring in our part of the universe. The Einstein relativity applies to this level. (I would add that in addition to being relative, it might also be circular.) But fundamentally existence is timeless. We can also slow down/speed up/theorethically freeze time evolution of quantum system.

The Second law of thermodynamics might just be a local law, or rather just a local feature. But time highly governs our lives, so it's natural to make a concept out of it. I wouldn't call it a force.

(Personally I also doubt that black holes have high entropy. I reject the idea that the 2nd law must always hold, and the idea that quantum fluctuations are without a doubt genuinely random. Or the idea that information can be encoded, which is a reification fallacy.)
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 »

If metaphysics is understood to mean something analogous to metadata, then all proposed laws of physics are metaphysical, because they are all abstract concepts, expressed in the language of mathematics, that seek to describe and predict the behaviour of proposed objects of experience. They are not the objects themselves. The Law of Universal Gravitation (for example) is not a "thing" - an object. It is therefore only the objects of experience themselves that are (arguably) not metaphysical.

On the other hand, if metaphysics refers to concepts that have no connection, either directly or indirectly, with that which can be empirically observed, then physics has no use for it at all. It is a basic principle of physics (and science in general) that all propositions that purport to be about physics must be falsifiable/verifiable. In other words, it must be possible to describe an observation by which they can be tested.

Of course, there may be other ways of defining metaphysics too. Colloquially, the word is used vaguely. For example, it is sometimes used vaguely as a synonym for religious concepts, like God.

So the question of the extent to which metaphysics is useful to physics depends very much on one's understanding of the precise meaning of that word.
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