Hello again. Life is a bit hectic for me at the moment, so I won't be able to respond to everything. Luckily some posts don't seem to relate to me but are discussions between others.
"It seems to me the vertical ones could be to do with how the object is perceived, so they must relate to sensory data in the environment, generated from EM interaction with the object. The horizontal changes are those that are the alteration of the arrangement of the universe, the sequential real changes of the material object or arrangement generating passage of time, (independently of the experienced time generated from the sequence of received and processed data.)''
The second sentence is correct. The first is not quite. If you fix a triangle somewhere in a room and then look at it from different points of view, you will get the changes of appearance that you correctly describe Georgina. However, this is not what I mean by the vertical changes. They are nothing to do with how one and the same triangle will be seen by an observer from different viewpoints. They can be likened to all the different ways a mathematician can imagine the triangle placed in the room (and also its size changed). This and a recent email exchange have made me realize how much care must be taken to get across abstract ideas. To make things really clear I fear I would need at least a few pages. Sadly other commitments and post limitations make that well nigh impossible.
Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 21:35 GMT
Tom,
thank you for explaining. I completely get that there are no "triangles in the sky" -as fixed objects or arrangements-. When I said "Assuming the observer is able to position himself anywhere around the triangle object" that was short hand for "object or arrangement of objects forming the triangle shape", which I had said a number of times in my previous comments to Julian Barbour.I...
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Tom,
thank you for explaining. I completely get that there are no "triangles in the sky" -as fixed objects or arrangements-. When I said "Assuming the observer is able to position himself anywhere around the triangle object" that was short hand for "object or arrangement of objects forming the triangle shape", which I had said a number of times in my previous comments to Julian Barbour.I get that -only the relationship of the angles, and constant separations, are taken as THE SHAPE. There is no reference to the observer or a spatial or space-time co-ordinate system when saying what the shape is, so its an arbitrary choice.
I think you are underestimating how I am thinking about this-
For any relationship of points (or angles) there are two ways in which the shape can change. Either the points move ( angles change) because there has been an alteration of the relationship between the things that are the points (forming the angles) OR the relationship with the observer has altered (while the relationship of the points (and angles) themselves is unaltered). Both could occur together.
I was comparing the abstract horizontal shape alteration to the first scenario and the abstract vertical set of shapes, (which are not really alterations of the shape itself) to all of the possibilities given by the potential sensory data in the environment enabling the second scenario. Moving up and down the abstract fibre would be moving around the object, getting different sensory data input and generating an output with a different appearance. Moving horizontally along the plane would be obtaining data from an altered relationship of (points/) angles.
So for any arbitrary relationship of angles giving a shape there is a -complete set of variants- which are alternatives that could be seen but have not been, as the shape can only be resolved, by the observer, into one image, out of the many possible alternatives. That is because incomplete data is received at what ever position the observer is positioned. However within the environment will be the potential sensory data to form outputs that are all of the other possibilities. This connects to the QM wave-function and how a multi-verse of possibilities co-existing in the environment can become one macroscopic reality for the observer. The whereabouts and when the data to give those possibilities exists is the result of the physical process of sensory data production and transmission.
This is not IMHO a trivial misunderstanding on my part. As I mentioned in another comment to Julian Barbour this ties in with what I said to J.C.N. Smith about the Truth. That it is "the whole elephant" seen in every possible way not just partially or a glimpse. All of the possibilities not just the one that the observer selects from the data within the environment.
I haven't given a great deal of thought to mechanics but what Julian is describing makes sense to me in the way I have described and I think is easily accessible to visualisation rather than just is abstract mathematical representation.
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 8, 2012 @ 09:33 GMT
As I said, Georgina, just my two cents. I'm a lot less concerned with what reality is, than I am with how we can understand it objectively. I find no other means to that goal than abstract mathematical representation.
Tom
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 8, 2012 @ 12:26 GMT
Tom,
Your interest and expertise is mathematics.I'm particularly interested in the interface between the external physical world and the biological fabrication of experience, that Prime Reality Interface. My degree is in biology not physics. How the physics and biology work together is important to me. If the interface between the two, and what reality is on each side, is not properly understood it stands in the way of an objective understanding IMHO.
No one can -understand reality- if the mathematics is not correctly interpreted. Something can be incorrectly interpreted like GR, though it gives correct answers.Or something can give correct calculations, fitting with experimental results, when certain quantitative facts are input; even though it is abstract and has been unrelated to reality,like QM. (Israel Perez's current essay talks about these kinds of problems.) If the model works the important question is why? Why does it work? How is the mathematics related to the physics of the external reality or the output fabricated by the observer. The correct answer to those questions is IMHO understanding.
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 8, 2012 @ 13:41 GMT
Hi Georgina,
You say that "No one can -understand reality- if the mathematics is not correctly interpreted."
A mathematical model isn't ambiguous. The proper application of a mathematical model to physical phenomena may be debatable; however, it's the whole purpose of mathematical physics (or biology or economics or any other science) to provide an objective description of physically observed events. That's why most quantum theorists emphasize strict calculation over the various philosophical interpretations of experimental results -- the calculations match the results, regardless of what one thinks they mean. To me and many other theorists, the need for interpretation only underscores the opinion that QM is not mathematically complete, and therefore cannot represent the foundational principles of nature.
One can compare this "interpretive" science to a mathematically complete theory, such as general relativity, which is a complete theory of gravity in the classical domain. It incorporates closed logical judgments; i.e., nothing outside the theory is needed nor can be imposed, to interpret its predictions and results. Both Joy Christian's framework and Julian Barbour's aim for completeness, too -- an objective 1 to 1 correspondence between mathematical theory and physical result.
Perhaps you believe that no complete theory of biology is possible. One will find, though, that if it is possible, it is only a mathematical theory that makes it objectively so.
Tom
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 8, 2012 @ 22:41 GMT
Tom,
People interpret objective mathematical descriptions. They give a meaning to it even if they claim not to. Then use the mathematics to justify their interpretation. That's why we have the mainstream acceptance of the space time continuum -idea- and all of the associated nonsense. Such as talk of time travel. Along with that acceptance comes the -extremely vile- consequences of the space-time continuum interpretation, that people seem oblivious to or mentally brush under the carpet, if it has ever come into mind. We have the -curved space-time idea-, not just the alteration of light paths, affecting when data is received. We have all of the weird and wonderful speculation about the singularity idea, the big bang idea, the inflation idea. Mathematics is not stand alone objective calculation, it is related, by people, to -ideas- and related to what is imagined to have occurred, is thought to be occurring or is thought might occur.Caught up in the whole confusion over temporal matters.
I expect very few are content to think in the following ways: "this works, I don't know why or what it might mean, or how it relates to the universe that exists,or relates to other ideas and understanding, I'm not going to think about it, I mustn't think about it because I mustn't contaminate the objectivity of the mathematics with subjective analysis .... but because the calculations work I have an objective -understanding-(!)-of reality-(!)". A scientific calculator has no understanding of reality though it can give correct objective answers. IMHO we need better interpretation not no interpretation.
(I do realise there are 3 different kinds of alteration of the triangle that are represented by the vertical fibre in the diagram. So talking about moving around the object alone would not cover it, there will be the other kinds of changes in relationship. It was short hand because it would have taken too long to be thoroughly precise.)
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 9, 2012 @ 11:52 GMT
Georgina,
"People interpret objective mathematical descriptions."
Objective statements don't need interpretation. "Objective" means that we agree on certain fundamental assumptions, definitions, theorems. Mathematics is not a science, in the context of the physical sciences, such that one can open-endedly (inductively) compare a logical judgment to some phenomenon and gather...
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Georgina,
"People interpret objective mathematical descriptions."
Objective statements don't need interpretation. "Objective" means that we agree on certain fundamental assumptions, definitions, theorems. Mathematics is not a science, in the context of the physical sciences, such that one can open-endedly (inductively) compare a logical judgment to some phenomenon and gather consensus about what is "really" happening in the world. The point of mathematics as the language of science is to acquire a closed logical judgment such that obviates interpretation, and compare it to the phenomenon. If I may try to explain in terms of natural language (since any mathematical statement can in principle be translated to natural language), as native English users we agree that the sequence of symbols, C-A-T represents some class of animal that we all recognize in common. That statement is not true because any (rational) person believes that the symbols and the creature are the same thing -- it is true because we agree on the rules and definitions that make it true. One can interpret the symbols to mean D-O-G; however, wouldn't you agree that either the person is irrational, or that the symbols are therefore meaningless and useless for communication?
"They give a meaning to it even if they claim not to. Then use the mathematics to justify their interpretation. That's why we have the mainstream acceptance of the space time continuum -idea- and all of the associated nonsense. Such as talk of time travel. Along with that acceptance comes the -extremely vile- consequences of the space-time continuum interpretation, that people seem oblivious to or mentally brush under the carpet, if it has ever come into mind. We have the -curved space-time idea-, not just the alteration of light paths, affecting when data is received. We have all of the weird and wonderful speculation about the singularity idea, the big bang idea, the inflation idea. Mathematics is not stand alone objective calculation, it is related, by people, to -ideas- and related to what is imagined to have occurred, is thought to be occurring or is thought might occur.Caught up in the whole confusion over temporal matters."
Scientists as a rule are quite careful to differentiate speculation from objective judgments. Some of the things you mention are speculation, and others are firm predictions of rigorously argued theories. I won't debate the merits of any of them -- and you make a good valid point that because mathematics is simply what mathematicians do (and scientists and engineers interpret for their own purposes) that human failings can blur the distinction between what is objective and what is personal belief. By the same line of thinking, though -- isn't English what English speakers do? We made the rules. If a non-English speaker wants to tell us that C-A-T means D-O-G, are we obliged to agree?
It isn't the mathematics that lacks the capacity to convey meaning in objective terms. Mathematics is practiced in the same way whether one speaks only English or only Urdu. The fault of misunderstanding and the burden of misinterpretation lies with the individual's capacity to understand the language. I expect that not all "mainstream acceptance" is bad, and not all non-mainstream ideas are good.
"I expect very few are content to think in the following ways: 'this works, I don't know why or what it might mean, or how it relates to the universe that exists,or relates to other ideas and understanding, I'm not going to think about it, I mustn't think about it because I mustn't contaminate the objectivity of the mathematics with subjective analysis .... but because the calculations work I have an objective -understanding-(!)-of reality-(!)'. A scientific calculator has no understanding of reality though it can give correct objective answers. IMHO we need better interpretation not no interpretation."
I have often taken pains to explain that what's at stake is not "reality," as an imagined ideal. If what you say were true, one could interpret reality into existence. I don't think that's what you really mean to say (science would be pointless otherwise); however, the correspondence between an objectively closed judgment and physical phenomena would not be possible unless it were possible to make objectively closed judgments.
"(I do realise there are 3 different kinds of alteration of the triangle that are represented by the vertical fibre in the diagram. So talking about moving around the object alone would not cover it, there will be the other kinds of changes in relationship. It was short hand because it would have taken too long to be thoroughly precise.)"
As Pascal said, "I regret that I do not have time to make this brief." :-)
I understand.
Often, I get the impression that you think my defense of mathematical objectivity is an attack on other modes of reasoning. On the contrary, I recognize that, to borrow from Hilary Clinton, it takes a village to raise an idea. When an idea has matured -- such as relativity in the past 100 years -- it is not because we haven't done our darndest to keep it from growing up. We've tested it, criticized it, "boiled it in sawdust and salted it in glue" and found it to preserve its "symmetrical shape." Lewis Carroll was a mathematician, you know. The consequences of the theory may scandalize some, yet wouldn't you agree that an idea that survives rigorous testing shouldn't be abandoned simply because it is inconvenient to what one believes is true? Perhaps you want to boil it and salt it a little more -- that's wonderful, and no scientist would discourage that. At the end of the day -- how will you objectively demonstrate that its purported symmetrical shape is actually limp and formless? Will you have a mathematical model that contradicts the closed logical judgments of relativity, or will you simply declare that no amount of boiling and salting can trump your intuition of what is true?
All best,
Tom
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 9, 2012 @ 13:59 GMT
Tom,
I have read your message. You make lots of good points and I don't intend to argue. I mostly agree.
I know objective statements don't -need- interpretation. If however I choose to see the objective mathematics as a possible representation of something physical, that I would like to be able to express mathematically I can't really see the objection to asking whether that could be done and whether it is in any way useful. It would be useful to me.
I would not be altering the mathematics at all,it remains objective. A problem arises though if the mathematics is incapable of being that representation because it just does not do what I require it to do. Which is why I asked Julian Barbour if there was any way the triangle could be oriented such that an observer could not see it like that. I asked early on about the case of an observer seeing the triangle as a line, I don't know if that is a part of the vertical group or not because it isn't a seen triangle any more, even though the angles and separations have not altered. Which might sound a stupid question if you know all about gauge groups but I don't.
Re.relativity: I have no intention of contradicting relativity.I haven't said get rid of it because I don't like it. You've read lots of my posts and you've read my essay. It just has to be correctly interpreted which is not altering what it is but understanding it in a different context. In order to have that kind of relativity it is unnecessary to have a space-time continuum containing everything from a hypothetical bang to a hypothetical crunch ( Which comes with all of its inherent theological and philosophical horrors).The explanatory framework gives the alternative and it does not contradict relativity. Perhaps you haven't really noticed how it functions. I have been talking to you on FQXi long enough for you to know that my ideas have changed over time becoming better.If something doesn't work then I'll change it so that it does. If another problem arises, such happened regarding differences of opinion over terminology, then I will deal with that too. Its not just stubborn intuition.
I can't really help what you think I think about your writing.I mostly feel I'm being told off for being silly. Though you can't help what I think you think about my writing either : )
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 9, 2012 @ 15:02 GMT
Well now, this is really the crux, isn't it? -- "I can't really help what you think I think about your writing.I mostly feel I'm being told off for being silly. Though you can't help what I think you think about my writing either : )"
What you think I think is probably not what I think. Don't be insecure, Georgina -- the variety of ways in which we approach a problem, and the ways in which those ways combine, all contribute to constructive dialogue and new insights. There is one thing you can always be sure of, however: I am not one to spend time responding to things that I think are silly. That's the truth.
All best,
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 9, 2012 @ 18:18 GMT
Georgina,
One avenue to consider in this conversation is complex systems analysis, with math being the closed set, ordered side of the spectrum. What is interesting about this comparison is the wave patterns which emerge when ordered systems become increasingly complex and dynamic, but than break down and reset when they become overly chaotic. This is the basic pattern physics goes through, as the clearly ordered models become increasingly complex. Often any particular logical thread can be, or at least seem, entirely consistent, but if viewed from another angle or perspective, be chaotic and inconsistent. What appears as a circle from one angle, can be a spiral from another angle. Escher's sketches of stairs and waterfalls are such an example of how a spiral and a circle can be the same thing, but only in two dimensions. I have had the impression this dynamic plays out in various of the physics discussions, where what seems consistent from one perspective, is inconsistent from another. We exist in a complex, anthropocentric reality and while there is a need and tendency to isolate simple, closed systems and models, it is rarely completely successful.
Tom,
Gravity waves? Wormholes? How far can that "complete" model be pushed, before it does break down?
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 10, 2012 @ 10:10 GMT
John,
"Gravity waves? Wormholes? How far can that "complete" model be pushed, before it does break down?"
We've known from the beginning that general relativity breaks down at the singularity. It is only complete in the domain of classical gravity.
Predictions of gravity waves and wormholes do not constitute a breakdown of the theory. I find it necessary to keep making the point that a scientific theory is not judged by what scandalizes one's personal intuition, common sense, or belief. Almost everything we know, objectively, is counterintutive.
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 10, 2012 @ 10:38 GMT
Tom,
Wouldn't a singularity be one end of a wormhole, as in the cyclical universe models?
If you think physics as counterintuitive, why is it so difficult for you to consider time, not as a vector from past to future, as it's been treated since the dawn of history, given that "history" is a narrative vector, but as the changing configuration of what is, turning future potential into past circumstance?
We still see the sun moving across the sky from east to west, but have known for five hundred years that it's not just like a bird or cloud passing overhead. Similarly we will always personally experience time as a sequence of events, but does it really need to be modeled that way in our primary understanding of reality?
Or does "counterintuitive" only refer to what is already written in the physics texts?
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Anonymous replied on Aug. 10, 2012 @ 12:04 GMT
John,
"Wouldn't a singularity be one end of a wormhole, as in the cyclical universe models?"
Singularity means space collapsed to a point. So, no.
"If you think physics as counterintuitive, why is it so difficult for you to consider time, not as a vector from past to future, as it's been treated since the dawn of history, given that "history" is a narrative vector, but as the changing configuration of what is, turning future potential into past circumstance?"
Because 1. I didn't say that physics is counterintuitive, which makes no sense. I said that most of our objective knowledge is counterintuitive; e.g., that objects fall at an identical rate in the same gravity field, whether in a straight trajectory or curved. 2. Your statement is self-contradictory; on the one hand, you disallow history a metric continuation forward, and on the other you allow history a reverse metric backward. If you really mean, OTOH, that nonlinear events are independent of a linear time metric (i.e., can be described in a spacetime continuum in the language of the tensor field where past and future and illusions) then your description does not differ from classical relativity.
"We still see the sun moving across the sky from east to west, but have known for five hundred years that it's not just like a bird or cloud passing overhead. Similarly we will always personally experience time as a sequence of events, but does it really need to be modeled that way in our primary understanding of reality?"
Of course not. We could model it as the ancients did, with Apollo driving his fiery chariot across the heavens. Personal experience is not the issue, however -- we're not aiming to describe reality, we aiming to describe the essential foundations that generate our perception of reality.
"Or does 'counterintuitive' only refer to what is already written in the physics texts?"
If you want to get into the physics texts, John, it has to be on the strength of ideas that are objective and noncontradictory -- does it not? -- even if counterintuitive.
Tom
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 11, 2012 @ 00:19 GMT
Hi Tom,
Julian Barbour wrote:"They can be likened to all the different ways a mathematician can imagine the triangle placed in the room (and also its size changed)."
Maybe you can help. Can the mathematician place the triangle in the orientation in which an observer would recognise it as a straight line, ie edge on? I took a look at some stuff about mapping from one orientation to its transformation. Can that be done from a line to a triangle,ie. can the line be a homomorphism of the triangle or does the mathematics deal only down to very skinny transformations but not lines?
That seems an important question to me because thinking of a more complex shape such as a mug, the unchnaged 3 dimensional structure -must- also be related to a whole set of mathematical objects encoded in the potential data emitted from it; that will give images that -look dissimilar- but are still related to the same object. Eg, looking top down into the mug, looking at bottom, looking at handle side , looking at non handle side and at various other directions and angles of orientation and distance from observer.
That continuum of transformations or multi verse of possible observations within the data pool seems to me important for bridging the imagined divide between QM and macroscopic physics.The one definite appearance of the object being the output of data processing of the incomplete data the observer selected from the environment (because of his position and when the observation was made)
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 11, 2012 @ 01:59 GMT
Tom,
" Your statement is self-contradictory; on the one hand, you disallow history a metric continuation forward, and on the other you allow history a reverse metric backward."
That's because the past is determined, while the future is probabilistic. It is the collapse of probabilities which yield actualities.
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 11, 2012 @ 12:11 GMT
Hi Georgina,
You write, " ... Can the mathematician place the triangle in the orientation in which an observer would recognise it as a straight line, ie edge on?"
I wouldn't think so. What you're thinking of is a triangle made of strings. Because a line has zero thickness, however, there is no edge. A line is an abstraction.
"I took a look at some stuff about mapping from...
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Hi Georgina,
You write, " ... Can the mathematician place the triangle in the orientation in which an observer would recognise it as a straight line, ie edge on?"
I wouldn't think so. What you're thinking of is a triangle made of strings. Because a line has zero thickness, however, there is no edge. A line is an abstraction.
"I took a look at some stuff about mapping from one orientation to its transformation. Can that be done from a line to a triangle,ie. can the line be a homomorphism of the triangle or does the mathematics deal only down to very skinny transformations but not lines?"
Are you asking whether a line can morph into a triangle? Sure. A straight line is a special case for a curve. Since a triangle is described by three straight lines connected at 3 vertices, the triangle is the special case of a closed curve. Were one of the vertices disconnected, it would not be a triangle, but an open curve.
"That seems an important question to me because thinking of a more complex shape such as a mug, the unchnaged 3 dimensional structure -must- also be related to a whole set of mathematical objects encoded in the potential data emitted from it; that will give images that -look dissimilar- but are still related to the same object. Eg, looking top down into the mug, looking at bottom, looking at handle side , looking at non handle side and at various other directions and angles of orientation and distance from observer."
Right. Now you're into the generalization of geometry that we call topology (or analysis situs), which describes the smooth (or continuous) transformation of connected surfaces without changing the fundamentally global properties of the object.
What Barbour and company are talking about, however, are not smooth topological transformations, but rigid geometric transformations. That's what I was trying to get across by saying "no triangles in the sky." The transformations describe changes in relations among mass points, so we don't really need a concept of space to do this work -- we only need the abstract geometry to acquire the means of describing these relations. The *real* observed changes are independent of what we imagine those relations to be, but once we have fixed the correct relations, changes in them theoretically describe how nature works in a model of continuous relative transformations.
"That continuum of transformations or multi verse of possible observations within the data pool seems to me important for bridging the imagined divide between QM and macroscopic physics.The one definite appearance of the object being the output of data processing of the incomplete data the observer selected from the environment (because of his position and when the observation was made)"
Now you're really onto something. Some researchers are convinced that Mach's Principle (the foundational assumption of Barbour's research) is the key to solving the n-body problem both for quantum and classical systems. In other words, the universe is a closed quantum system. (No multi-verse needed.)
My own conception (my essay) solves the problem of the incomplete data you refer to, by the observer's relation to a point at infinity. All measurement functions are local and complete, and measures not chosen are metaphysically real, represented in the potential of the source of complete information in the continuous range of values.
Tom
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 11, 2012 @ 12:14 GMT
John, you're still trapped in a contradiction. If the past is determined and the future is probabilistic, the past has no connnection to the future.
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 11, 2012 @ 15:28 GMT
Tom,
Out here in the world that hasn't been distilled down to sequences of abstractions, the connection between past and future is called the present. Say we are at the races and I study the form, which is composed of its own variety of abstract symbology, the purpose of which is to best encapsulate the odds each horse has of winning its race. This is probability. After the day is over and all the races have run, another paper is printed with the results of each race. This is the actual outcome of the actual running of these races, with all the innumerable variables having played out, with one actual winner. Unless it is dead heat, but still there is no going back and changing the results. Only our judgement of prior events is subject to change, as they recede ever further into the past and the amount of information from different perspectives is compiled.
So we have what was in the future, then is the present and ultimately in the past.
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 11, 2012 @ 18:12 GMT
"Out here in the world that hasn't been distilled down to sequences of abstractions ..."
Where is that world, John?
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 12, 2012 @ 02:28 GMT
Tom,
It seems you have become one with your chalk board.
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 12, 2012 @ 04:35 GMT
Tom ,
thank you very much for your helpful reply.I've got a few more questions for you.3 unattached objects in a triangle formation can also appear lined up (changing the way they are looked at) even if there is no physical line there in space. Using the available information and the mental processing of it, the mind puts the line in just like with the Kanizsa triangle illusion.It only requires the points.Q- What happens to the abstract mathematical shape, does it just disappear when it is tipped over too far because it ceases to be a plane view but view of something with no thickness? But if the points are still there then isn't an abstract (line) shape still there?
Do you think the smooth topological transformations could be substituted for the rigid geometric transformations or does that mess everything up? Do the smooth topological transformations require space whereas the other kind do not?
I understood Julian to be using the simple triangle shape because it is very simple but the model would also apply to more complex shapes. The horizontal shape changes are what I imagined them to be and I think I see why best matching is useful, (though Julian Barbour didn't confirm that I was thinking about it correctly.
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 12, 2012 @ 11:49 GMT
Georgina,
There isn't any such thing as a physical line. "But if the points are still there then isn't an abstract (line) shape still there?" There is no such thing as a physical point, either.
The lines and the points that we abstract from physical phenomena are freely chosen symbols for relations between and among things. "Things" are whatever we want them to be. The distinctions among objects using points and lines are in the most general sense our way of describing changes in relations among things.
"Do you think the smooth topological transformations could be substituted for the rigid geometric transformations or does that mess everything up?"
You have good intuition here. Topology shows us how a donut does not differ from a coffee cup with a handle, because we can smoothly transform one object into another. One can describe a specific procedure on the manifold (surface) of either object to perform this global feat.
"Do the smooth topological transformations require space whereas the other kind do not?"
That's a deep question. There's a whole different concept of "distance" in a global transformation than in a local rigid geometric transform. Without getting into specifics, let's say that globally whatever relations between points and lines that we describe, are independent of the distance that separates them, while local Euclidean relations are measurement dependent.
"I understood Julian to be using the simple triangle shape because it is very simple but the model would also apply to more complex shapes. The horizontal shape changes are what I imagined them to be and I think I see why best matching is useful, (though Julian Barbour didn't confirm that I was thinking about it correctly."
I don't think it's as simple as all that. The "simple" part is that no more than three points are necessary to describe a continuous closed system of point relations. That's Mach's Principle reduced to its essentials: all the "complex shapes" derive from changes in dynamic relations among the three that comprise *the* shape of the universe. In Mach's mechanics, the motion of any body depends on the motion of every other body in the universe.
Hard to summarize this stuff. Wish I could do a better job.
Tom
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 12, 2012 @ 13:05 GMT
John,
"It seems you have become one with your chalk board."
Yes. As the yogi said to the hot dog vendor, "Make me one with everything." :-)
Point is, everything we objectively know, and everything we objectively communicate, is abstractly independent of what we know and describe.
With that in mind, I find no way to make objective your claim that " ... the past is determined, while the future is probabilistic," with your clarification that "the connection between past and future is called the present." In fact, there is no connection between past and future when the one is determined and the other is probabilistic. This is an either-or relation, not a both-and. I.e., either past events determine the future we call the present, or not.
"It is the collapse of probabilities which yield actualities."
I realize that this mystical statement derives from the conventional view of quantum mechanics. Your view even diverges from that one, however, in that you allow the logical contradiction of a coexistent probabilistic and deterministic present, while QM is all probabilistic.
Tom
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Eckard Blumschein replied on Aug. 12, 2012 @ 13:28 GMT
Tom,
"If you want to get into the physics texts, John, it has to be on the strength of ideas that are objective and noncontradictory -- does it not? -- even if counterintuitive." My
essay takes issue concerning such putatively objective and noncontradictory intuitions like naive set theory.
Eckard
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 12, 2012 @ 15:44 GMT
Tom,
We can't know what all past events will affect current ones, until the affected events actually happen. All the laws deciding what happens may be entirely deterministic, or they wouldn't be laws, but there is no way to know all input, ie, from prior events, before the event in question happens. For the simple reason that the lightcone of input isn't complete until the event happens. So in order to know all potential cause, prior to effect, you would need superluminal signaling, but if such a possibility existed, then it might also provide input into that event, thus needing even faster signaling, and the problem repeats.
Therefore that which has not yet occurred is probabilistic, as all input cannot be known, while all factors have been factored in what has occurred, making it determined.
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 13, 2012 @ 00:17 GMT
Hi Tom, All,
I don't need do-nuts that become cups but a cup that can be all the cup that it is. So I'm not changing the geometry of the object at all, it is staying rigid, but is just looked at it differently.So maybe the rigid geometric transformations are better. What I think I actually need is not so much various transformations of the object by manipulating a manifold,or an imagined...
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Hi Tom, All,
I don't need do-nuts that become cups but a cup that can be all the cup that it is. So I'm not changing the geometry of the object at all, it is staying rigid, but is just looked at it differently.So maybe the rigid geometric transformations are better. What I think I actually need is not so much various transformations of the object by manipulating a manifold,or an imagined rigid shape but the parent object's projection onto an imagined sphere that surrounds it. That sphere being all of the correlated data from one iteration of the parent object, that has cascaded out from the parent object to the position in space it now occupies. Each projection is a homomorph of the parent object from that observer position and there is a homomorph for every possible observer position.
So this correlated data is rather like a hologram because every image produced from the data appears to be a complete object, there is no part obviously missing. Although the complete image is "the everything" that the cup can be (which is not how we normally see objects)it is not any one viewpoint. Again tying in with the concept of Truth being everything that something can be.The complete image, it seems to me is like - a -spherical-!! (not just circular) panorama, looking in at the object rather than out at the landscape.
Found this:"Spherical Correlation of Visual Representations for 3D Model Retrieval" by Ameesh Makadia and Kostas Daniilidis. Quote: "In this paper we present methods for 3D shape comparison and retrieval that are built upon a visual representation of models. Specifically, similar to [1],our representation is a collection of silhouette images rendered from various viewpoints on the sphere surrounding the model.............Conclusion We showed how an analysis in the spherical Fourier domain provides a flexibility to all components of our formulation, and can also lead to a very intuitive and effective coarse-to- fine 3D model retrieval system.A thorough evaluation on multiple benchmarks shows our proposed methods combine the discriminative power of a visual model representation with efficient computation." End Quote
They are doing this for the purpose of creating 3D animations but I wonder if it has relevance to foundational physics. Couldn't all of those different silhouettes be like the abstract fibre bundle? Represented on a sphere though rather than a fibre.
Incidentally if the parent object is two coloured and two observers on opposite sides each see just one colour, and they are unaware of the other observer, they might think they have seen different objects. Though the observations are of the same parent object as it was at a particular time (single iteration).The observations are correlated even though it seems they are not. That might have some relevance to the observations of the image universe,explaining the apparent symmetry; in that same objects might be identified as different objects because different parts of the same whole image of the object("inverted spherical panorama") have been selected by the observer.
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 13, 2012 @ 01:35 GMT
John,
" ...that which has not yet occurred is probabilistic, as all input cannot be known, while all factors have been factored in what has occurred, making it determined."
As Julian asked, "How do you know backward from forward?
Unless future events are 100% determined by past events, a model cannot be said to be deterministic. If future events are realized in the past, a model cannot be said to be probabilistic.
If you are wrong you are right, and if you are right you are wrong.
Tom
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 13, 2012 @ 01:40 GMT
Georgina,
I don't think we're on the same page in this dialogue -- tell you what, though -- Lev Goldfarb is an expert in recognition algorithms and is formalizing a computer language (ETS) to replace conventional mathematical programming. So maybe that is something you might want to look into.
Personally, I think Lev is on to something, though I can't yet wrap my mathematical mind around it (the hole gets in the way).
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 13, 2012 @ 02:36 GMT
Tom,
Events are not "caused" by past events, but that the output from prior events is input into subsequent events and there is no way to fully factor this input prior to the occurrence of the event. Without this dynamic, there are no events. There is no "God's eye view" to objectively "see" everything from subatomic particles and all their actions, to the myriad emergent effects of this activity. Perception requires a frame and focus, be it a single photograph, to a mathematical model, to a map. When different perspectives intersect, it might well create a broader perspective, but at the expense of some detail in the originals.
A math to rule over all the other maths would defeat the purpose of math, which is to provide the most efficient description of a complex problem. Just as a map as complex as the territory would defeat the particular purpose of a map, so would a math as complex as what is being modeled would defeat the particular purpose for which it is necessary.
An entry in the contest you might find challenging is
Misinterpreting Reality: Confusing Mathematics for Physics by Robert H McEachern. He does a much better job than I, in describing the uses and serious limits of math in understanding physical reality.
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 13, 2012 @ 02:46 GMT
John,
You have to explain to me how your universe, which you call dynamic, works without causality. I don't think one needs math for that.
Tom
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Geoorgina Parry replied on Aug. 13, 2012 @ 03:11 GMT
Tom,
I think you are right about us not being on the same page. Its a pity. Spheres of potential data cascading out from the source makes me think of Roger Penrose's quaternion light cone model and I thought it could also have some correlation with what Joy Christian has been talking about, as I mentioned in my essay.
I've seen a little of what Lev is doing as he asked on FQXi blogs for a review of his draft book intro. I can't quite see how it is relevant to what I am currently talking about. Though it may have its uses. I have only seen simple forms linked in his language as far as I recall not whole correlated families of data generated from every singular object.
Julian Barbour's fibre bundles of all of the possible transformations associated with a singular shape (and that paper I just mentioned) are the only examples I have come across of the idea of multiple forms all belonging to a singular identity. Or at least the only ones to have caught my attention.
A whole family of data, the entirety that might be observed is the important thing IMHO for linking macroscopic observations to QM multiverse, probability of a particular observation, and the idea of Wave function collapse or de-coherence upon observation. It is clear that it is a switch from considering what exists as a whole family of data in the environment unobserved,( multiple possibilities), to a definite singular manifestation that is experienced. Those are in the two different facets of reality on diag 1. of the explanatory framework;the data pool being part of the Object reality.
I would really like Julian Barbour's shape dynamics to be able to fit with that but I think it would require the family of transformations to be the mathematical abstraction representing the potential data in the environment.I'll watch the second lecture and see if that helps me decide if there is any hope or whether Julian Barbour and I do have really incompatible explanatory strategies.
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 13, 2012 @ 07:59 GMT
Tom, John,
I think its possible to have a domino cascade occur sequentially rather than having all of the fallen dominoes and every arrangement of dominoes, between all standing and all fallen, already in existence as part of a continuum of arrangements.
The "initial conditions" are the youngest (most recent) arrangement of the dominoes which is input to the next arrangement, the change is the minimisation of potential energy as one domino falls (a change of relationship controlled by the laws of physics) which alters the arrangement. That new arrangement is the initial conditions that are input for the next, the new change being the minimisation of the potential energy of the domino that was struck and so on. That minimisation of potential energy is part of the Action of the domino as it progresses along its universal path, moving with the Earth. John, you might like to say it in your own way but I think we are probably thinking about it in a similar way.
It seem that both Tom and Julian would rather the complete continuum of arrangements exists. It causes the problem of the sheer mass of tea cups in the universe if there is another tea cup mass for every fraction of a second that there is a cup, because there has to be that cup mass in every position in the universe that the cup has occupied spread over time. As well as the red hat problems I talked about in my essay.
Rather than that situation if only data, showing former positions when processed, persists in the environment it is still possible to have Einsteinian relativity-but without the problems. By the way, someone just asked my husband if anyone else has noticed a significant drop in cat deaths since Curiosity left the planet.
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 13, 2012 @ 15:37 GMT
Tom,
I'm not arguing against causality, but just trying to clarify it.
Is one event in a sequence the cause of the next, or are they both surface descriptions of deeper process? Does it really make sense to say yesterday is the cause of today, or would it make more sense to say they are both the effect of the earth spinning relative to the light coming from the sun?
If I was to hit a nail with a hammer, it makes sense to say my swinging the hammer is the cause of the nail being driven into the board. So what happened here? There was a direct transfer of energy from my arm, to the hammer, to the nail. My output of energy became input for the nail.
So why doesn't yesterday cause today, but the rotation of the earth and light of the sun does? Energy. There is no direct transfer of energy from yesterday to today, but there is both the momentum energy of the rotation of the earth and radiant energy of the sun, which does go to create this event we call a day. So causation is a function of the transfer of energy, rather than to a direct sequence of events.
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 13, 2012 @ 20:56 GMT
John,
If yesterday was the ready mixed ingredients, today is the cake, the specified time and temperature in the oven is what turned yesterday into today- Ingredients into cake. I agree energy is a requirement. Energy to my mind -is- change. However unless you have a clever trick up your sleeve you can't make today's cake with tomorrow's ingredients.
For a space-time continuum containing material things the energy was applied when the continuum was formed in a hypothetical event breaking the rules. Without that continuum something else is required to cause alteration of arrangements. The vacancy can be filled with default continual motion and minimisation of potential energy of all matter and particles with mass (unless a force, altering the path, is applied )-that would include the rotation of the Earth you mention;together with change of the arrangement of the data pool,including the radiation of EM- ( your Sun-shine example).
I think your point about the Sun light is a very important one because often the change in distribution of the photons/light correlated to events that have occurred is over looked when changes to material structures and arrangements are focussed upon
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 14, 2012 @ 02:09 GMT
Georgina,
I'm not saying I can make todays cake with tomorrows ingredients. What I'm saying is that while the energy goes onto succeeding events as cause/input, the cake, ie. resulting effect, recedes into the past. Today's cake shortly becomes yesterday's cake. The future is wherever the energy goes. The information of the present configuration of the energy is replaced by the next and recedes into the past.
The energy is conserved, because it is present, while the information is created and consumed. What we measure as the passage of time is this creation and consumption of information. The events happen, then recede into the past.
Our eyeballs consume information, as the energy manifesting it strikes them. Just as we consume the cake, in order to use its energy to sustain and propel ourselves to the next event.
If our eyes consume too much energy, it's not just information overload, it burns the retina.
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 14, 2012 @ 03:50 GMT
Dear John,
thank you for your reply. I see it as a problem that energy is often regarded as some kind of substance or essence that is akin to mass.IMHO its the manifestation of a changing relationship of or within things, or the potential for such change to occur. In a space-time continuum model where change isn't really happening, as everything is already in fixed relationships, energy has to be thought of as a something possessed and "changing hands" between one arrangement and the next. If the universe is instead sequentially self organising the energy is the changing relationships of and between parts. Whether the moving of a medium of transmission of light or cascading photons or change in separation of two or more material objects.
IMHO inertia is due to resistance of the environment to alteration of the universal path of a material object. With increasing acceleration there is more resistance. The additional energy needed to overcome that resistance is not a property of the material object but the relationship between the mass and the environment. It appears to get heavier because the relationship is changing.
I said all that to explain why I don't think energy is an ingredient as such, even though it is necessary to go from one arrangement to the next. (Though in which ways changes can occur ie are permitted by nature, may be included among the rules of physics that control the output produced from the input arrangement.) It is instead the change in relationships itself, the happening, that doesn't happen in a static space-time continuum but instead just is. That artificial space-time continuum model makes the energy into something it is not, because the model is static, (like the jelly that solidifies in a cold pork pie).
I don't agree that the future is wherever the energy goes because I don't think the energy goes any where in time , there is no time dimension in Object reality, no future to go to. It just is in the relationships, some of those relationships hold the potential for change , which we call potential energy and others are able to release that potential and form new relationships, which we indirectly see happening and call kinetic energy. The energy is conserved because as relationships alter it affects other neighbouring relationships. So the change or potential for change is perpetuated.
Though I don't personally agree with what you said I do think that your focus on the role of energy is good and helpful because it is a phenomenon that needs more attention.
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 14, 2012 @ 05:00 GMT
Actually John,
its nothing like the jelly in a cold pork pie! Its what the idea of the "frozen" energy of the space-time continuum makes me think of right now; and I think you will understand exactly what I mean, though many other people wouldn't.
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Thomas Howard Ray replied on Aug. 14, 2012 @ 10:07 GMT
"My output of energy became input for the nail."
No it didn't, John. The energy that did the work of driving the nail into the wood is continuous. The input-output function describes what happens to an isolated system. New energy input to the system would be when the nail is pried out. The actions are symmetric and discontinuous.
Trying to steer the discussion back to the subject of Julian's blog, from which it has run far afield:
The continuous energy function that is the basis of Mach's Principle (the motion of every particle in the universe is dependent on the motion of every other particle) recognizes that there are no isolated systems -- that the universe is itself a quantum. The symmetry of all action -- nail driven into wood and then being pried up -- as a continuous function, substitutes for your concept of time as past and future, the concept of the symmetry of motion. Operational definitions are replaced by foundational phenomena.
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 14, 2012 @ 10:20 GMT
Georgina,
Keep in mind that the reality, ie. what is present, is whatever the energy is doing, be it being transfered from the hammer to the nail, or shining on one particular rotation of the planet. So yes, for the energy, there is no time, it just is. It is the changing relationships which creates the effect of time.
Obviously another effect of the energy in the changing relationships is temperature. Hitting a nail can make it quite hot. The sun shining in your eyes can burn the retina, even though it is carrying a lot of information. So the energy is foundational, while the information, being created and destroyed, is emergent. Physics is the energy. Math is information.
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 14, 2012 @ 12:01 GMT
Tom ,
I don't think there is a problem with considering a whole series of changes as continuous, but it is imaginary -if- it is material objects or arrangements of material objects that are being considered.( Julian Barbour is considering abstract shapes so the imaginary series of shapes is not a problem.)
That horizontal path in the diagram is an imaginary non physical thing because in unseen physical Object reality any shape is only ever the shape that it is. It has a singular complete foundational identity, not many identities co-existing spread across space. ( Julian is considering it as purely abstract, so thats not a problem.) Even though the parent shape has a singular complete identity it also has a whole family of transformation offspring ( which is the potential sensory data in the environment which could produce various different observer viewpoints of the object)
There are many reasons why the whole sequence of changes of material arrangement can not exist as a continuum and energy, that is those changes, can not exist as something continuous like a string , though it can be thought of in that way and it may be useful to do so. That is different though from EM data emitted or reflected from objects that can exist spread out within the environment and might reasonably be considered as a physical continuum. Differentiation between actualised objects and data that can give manifestations of objects has been missing from the physics models.
I still intend to read more about what Julian Barbour is doing because I think it is very interesting, useful and he is IMO certainly right to try to get away from describing things according to an artificially imposed dimensional background. Especially a space-time one that relates to the output of sensory data processing, not the foundational reality.
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 14, 2012 @ 15:13 GMT
Tom,
Since I'm describing output from one as input to another, I'd say it qualifies as continuous. As would prying the nail out also be part of that continuous motion/energy.
So we have this universe in continuous motion and motion causes changing configurations of the universe. Nails in and nails out. Prior and subsequent configurations do not physically exist, but the present one is constantly changing. So it is not that the present moves from prior to subsequent configurations, but that the configurations come into being and are replaced. The effect is called time.
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 14, 2012 @ 22:05 GMT
John, I regret that you cannot see your contradiction. To say that "Prior and subsequent configurations do not physically exist, but the present one is constantly changing" is equivalent to saying that time does not exist. Which is what in fact Julian claims (i.e., time exists only as an abstraction). But then you claim that "... it is not that the present moves from prior to subsequent configurations, but that the configurations come into being ..." which requires time to have a physical effect independent of its abstract meaning. I know you will probably come back with another self contradictory statement to explain your position, but I am out of ways to make it obvious.
Georgina, "Differentiation between actualised objects and data that can give manifestations of objects has been missing from the physics models ..." because it isn't necessary; interpreting data is the only way in which we perceive what objects are doing, and that is all that physical reality fundamentally consists of -- changes in relations among objects. That's how Julian can theoretically describe reality in terms of geometry alone (changes in relations among points). Einstein did the same.
Tom
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 15, 2012 @ 00:09 GMT
Tom,
it is necessary IHMO in order to have a completely reasonable explanation of relativity and QM that are completely compatible with each other rather than contradictory. You are talking about changes in relationship among -objects- but also, it seems to me, denying that those objects exist.??
Einstein gave us the space-time continuum which is, unbeknownst to him, the potential sensory data correlated to different iterations of the Object universe spread over uni-temporal space.( That interpretation overcomes many problems.) If Julian has just taken away the space-time he now only has the -data-, not the source object. That is I think important. Though his horizontal line on the plane did seem to me to relate to an actual fixed relationship giving a particular shape, which I was identifying with an actualised arrangement or object.
I think it will be helpful if scientists know what they are dealing with and making their models from; (Source) Object/arrangement in external foundational reality ; potential data in external foundational reality; or fabricated image of an object/arrangement..an emergent reality output.
Why not take a look at this
"What is transformative research and why do we need it?" on "Backreaction", member Sabine Hossenfelder's blog.
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 15, 2012 @ 10:36 GMT
Hi Georgina,
Because I work for the government, I understand the high risk-high reward research that Bee is talking about. It constitutes an appropriate percentage of every grant funding organization. Optimally, it would be 25%, though I doubt that many come close to that. Most will favor the low risk-high reward projects of the kind that FQXi largely underwites.
I think it's ironic, though, that you would bring up a philosophy of "Let the experts decide for themselves what they want to do," when the complaints I hear most often in this forum is that the experts are wasting their own time and other people's money. Or is that not what you mean to suggest when you say, "I think it will be helpful if scientists know what they are dealing with and making their models from ...?"
As Bee makes a point of saying, " ... assessment of tolerable risk is subjective." Those who assess risk still base their calculations on the current state of objective knowledge, not their own opinions, or the grantee's promise that their research is "transformative." Take the case of Joy Christian: not only is FQXi probably the only funding agency that would take a chance on financing a physical model made from topology, the decision hinges on the fortunate availability of reviewers who know enough topology and analysis to make an informed decision. As I have learned in the past couple of years (to my great amazement) that is apparently an extremely small pool. It's Joy, actually, who assumes the high risk in getting to be an expert -- and it's this way with every research program that strays outside the norm. Julian Barbour's, too. Point is, before a research program even gets to the funding request level, the grantee will have to have demonstrated that he or she is expert in the subject.
So if you want to let the experts decide what to do, don't tell them that they're doing it all wrong unless you are an expert in that subject.
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 15, 2012 @ 10:39 GMT
Tom,
There is a fundamental difference between an abstraction and an effect. A dimensionless point is an abstraction. Time and temperature are effects.
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 15, 2012 @ 12:04 GMT
"A dimensionless point is an abstraction. Time and temperature are effects."
Since degrees of time and temperature are described by dimensionless points on a line of length 1, I can't make a distinction between your statement and just plain hot sir.
Tom
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 15, 2012 @ 13:18 GMT
Tom,
The differentiation is very important to what I have been doing for a considerable amount of time and -I- do not consider it entirely irrelevant and unnecessary!! Transformative ideas can go against best judgement of experts based upon how things are currently seen and done. You quoted my sentence" "I think it will be helpful if scientists know what they are dealing with and making their models from " I meant specifically whether they are dealing with actualised objects,IE material objects or fermion particles or manifestations formed from received and processed EM data. It is important in -my- opinion.
Eg. An actualised cat is an arrangement of atoms that is only ever is dead or alive, a manifestation can be either depending upon which data is received and processed. Which depends upon position of the observer and when the detection is made. (It would be better if the cat were not in a box but the observer was blindfolded and could decide when to remove the blindfold.) That might sound like pointless unnecessary nonsense to you but it makes sense to me.
On the basis of Bee's article I went to the NSF link and read what they actually want to fund and I was very surprised by how open the recommendations were. I felt that they were asking for the same kind of open mindedness and creativity that I was arguing in favour of in my essay. You said that you thought you understood me for the first time when you read my essay. You really don't!
I am trying to understand what Julian Barbour is doing -as well as- doing my own thing. He has given very helpful answers that are helping me understand how his work fits with my own ideas and my mis-comprehension of what he is doing. Its possible that if he explains really well I will accept my naive mistakes to date, why I am wrong about time and reality, the utter futility of my work and all of the time I have spent explaining it over the last couple of years. Your saying science just doesn't need what I have been doing is just annoying.
I am not going to tell any experts how they should be doing -their own work-. However I -am- an expert with regard to my own explanatory framework and because of that I feel that it gives some very helpful insights that I would like to convey and apply and develop.I get that you don't get it and don't think it is at all important.
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 15, 2012 @ 13:46 GMT
OK I realise death will not be instantaneous. The cat is either fully well or has undergone a lethal change. One or the other are the only options for the flesh and blood actualised cat. However the data in the environment can encode both options if live cat subsequently falls ill. There can be super position due to data from live and dead cat coexisting in the uni-temporal environment. (The box complicates matters.)
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 15, 2012 @ 16:07 GMT
Tom,
"Since degrees of time and temperature are described by dimensionless points on a line of length 1, I can't make a distinction between your statement and just plain hot sir."
That is necessarily due to the extreme conceptual limits which you operate within. Time and temperature are not just their measurement. If I put my hand on a hot stove, I don't need a laboratory grade thermometer to tell me I burned myself. In fact the very notion of temperature as being described as a dimensionless point is nonsense, since temperature is an average level of activity.
As for time, if it were only a regular measure of duration, there would be no entropic arrow, it would be just a constant repetition, measuring nothing other than its own process.
As I've pointed out many times, a dimensionless point is a mathematical contradiction, since anything multiplied by zero is zero. A truly dimensionless point would be as real as a dimensionless apple. It is just a convenient abstraction from reality, because giving it volume would cause more confusion than treating it as dimensionless.
Time and temperature are effects, not just the abstract measure of these effects.
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 15, 2012 @ 19:22 GMT
Georgina,
"I feel that it gives some very helpful insights that I would like to convey and apply and develop.I get that you don't get it and don't think it is at all important. "
And why should that matter?
Tom
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Georgina parry replied on Aug. 15, 2012 @ 21:34 GMT
Tom,
I was explaining my motivation for saying what I have been saying as you seem to be misinterpreting my motives.I am not anti science or anti what other people want to do. I'm not telling grant winning experts what they should be -doing-. They can also think for themselves and they do not require my approval to carry on with their work.
As well as presenting my explanatory framework to answer the essay question, my essay was about many different ways in which we can think. It only deals with one strategy, Edward de Bono's thinking hats- but its an introduction to the concept that black and white confrontational thinking is not by itself particularly helpful.
Its not just black and white Tom. Rather than I'm right so they are wrong, its how can these ideas work together; what do I need to change or look at differently, for -me- to be able to accommodate them. For me, that requires going right back to basics because I'm not an expert in what they are doing.I'm not asking questions and trying to explain my current comprehension to be antagonistic or offensive but because I want to understand where my thinking stands in relation to these other ideas and ways of working.
I have been working to find solutions which I think will, in the long run, be beneficial to science. I want to think -for myself- and see how -my- ideas work when applied to different situations and compared with what other people are doing. They either do work, will work or they don't and won't and need reconsidering. Your individual opinion does not especially matter to me.
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 16, 2012 @ 00:25 GMT
John,
"If I put my hand on a hot stove, I don't need a laboratory grade thermometer to tell me I burned myself."
You do, however, need the information that your nerve cells relay to your brain cells to inform you of that fact. And you need to know that the degree of burning is dependent on a measure that counts dimensionless points on a 1 dimension line from the nerve endings in your hand to the sensors in your brain.
"In fact the very notion of temperature as being described as a dimensionless point is nonsense, since temperature is an average level of activity."
This fixation that you has you believing that temperature is some independent "thing" is rationally incomprehensible. Temperature is a *measurement.* A ruler is a physical thing, but "one inch" isn't a physical thing. The measurement is not independent of the instrument. Water boils at 212 degrees on one scale and at 100 degrees on another. We made this things up -- they weren't forced on us by a lightning bolt from the brow of Zeus.
Yes, temperature describes the average motion of particles, the energy content of the system. It's the energy content that's a physical thing. If that's what you really mean to say -- then please just say it.
Tom
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 16, 2012 @ 00:39 GMT
I'm sorry, Georgina, I didn't know we were talking about your essay. I've been trying to stay on the topic of Julian's blog. Then you linked me to Bee Hossenfelder's blog which addresses models of funding for risky transformative research, FQXi and elsewhere -- forgive me -- but I thought, apparently mistakenly, that you must be referring to Julian Barbour's source of funding, for which I offered an opinion based on what Bee wrote.
I'm confused. Is this the place to discuss a possible relationship between the Julian Barbour framework and the Georgina Parry object universe? That's something Julian should respond to, not I.
Tom
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 16, 2012 @ 01:38 GMT
Tom,
I was talking to Julian Barbour (and I am very grateful for his replies) and then you offered your opinions on what I was saying. I had been trying to understand what Julian Barbour was saying and trying to see how it fits with my own way of thinking- because believe it or not I actually think that my way of looking at things is worthwhile and useful.As John thinks his way of looking at things is useful. I would very much like to see how my ideas can work with what other people, including Julian Barbour are doing. Rather than just throw away everything I have developed as wrong and irrelevant. I get that you don't care about what I am doing but I do because I'm not you. I have a mind of my own which has given a great deal of thought to the kind of things Julian Barbour is also talking about.
I don't know what you are doing here, are you discussing Julian's work? Or just antagonising John and me. Asking for justification, clarification or relevance of what we have said, and explaining your misinterpretations of our ideas, questions and motives, which then takes us off topic. I was talking to you because I mistakenly thought that you might have some useful contribution to my understanding of what Julian is doing, how my ideas relate to his and the kind of physics that is being described. I should have remembered that are conversations are rarely constructive.
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 16, 2012 @ 02:15 GMT
Correction; that last sentence should have said: our conversations...
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 16, 2012 @ 03:43 GMT
Tom,
When I say action, I'm referring to the energy. By using time and temperature, I'm referring to different effects/perspectives of this action. Obviously I don't see temperature as independent, or I wouldn't keep referring to it as an effect. My point is that time is a similar effect/measure of the effect of action, the change of configuration it creates. It is only when the focus is on the measure from one configuration to another and not the process of creation and change, that it gets confused with notions of linearity and space.
Not that you will see what I'm talking about, as Georgina said, but having someone to bang heads with is still enlightening, since if forces me to think about different ways of explaining myself.
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 16, 2012 @ 10:23 GMT
" ... time is a similar effect/measure of the effect of action, the change of configuration it creates. It is only when the focus is on the measure from one configuration to another and not the process of creation and change ..."
John, in what specific way does a measure of change from one configuration to another (which is what Julian's abstract time means) differ from the measure of a degree of creation and change?
" ... that it gets confused with notions of linearity and space."
How does your claim that 'tomorrow becomes yesterday because the Earth rotates,' obviate linearity and space?
Tom
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 16, 2012 @ 10:36 GMT
Georgina,
"I don't know what you are doing here, are you discussing Julian's work? Or just antagonising John and me."
There doesn't seem to be a difference between those two. If I point out that some of your claims contradict Julian's program, it's antagonistic. If I point out that some of your claims are superfluous to Julian's program, it's antagonistic.
If I have a choice to be non-antagonistic, I'll take it. However, I don't think it serves anyone's interest to ignore Julian (in his own blog, yet) and go off on a tangent to promote something different. I don't personally agree with everything Julian says, but I sure want to make an honest effort to understand it before I launch a counterargument.
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 16, 2012 @ 15:01 GMT
Tom,
"John, in what specific way does a measure of change from one configuration to another (which is what Julian's abstract time means) differ from the measure of a degree of creation and change?"
I know you like to be skeptical about everything I say and I have no problem with that, but do you in fact ever even listen to what I say?
When we measure change from one configuration to the next, we are moving from one event to the next, ie. assuming the traditional past to future vector, but when we view it as a process of change, it isn't that what is physically extant, ie. what is present, moves anywhere. It is the configurations forming and dissolving, ie. the future becoming the past. So rather than there being this fourth dimension, along which either the present moves, or the present is an illusion and it's just a function of which configuration you perceive, it is that the passage of time is the future becoming the past, because of the action of what is present.
Not the earth traveling the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, but tomorrow becoming yesterday because the earth rotates.
Now you are going to push the reset button and claim it doesn't make sense, but even if you don't agree, you can at least make some effort to just try to follow the logic.
As for taking up Julian's blog, he doesn't seem to be participating and we are sticking close to the subject, the nature of time, even if its not a view entirely compatible with Julian's views
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 16, 2012 @ 18:22 GMT
"Now you are going to push the reset button and claim it doesn't make sense, but even if you don't agree, you can at least make some effort to just try to follow the logic."
John, I think the fact that I take the trouble to point out the contradictions in your purported logic is sufficient evidence that I do follow it. Get rid of the contradictions if you want it to make sense.
Tom
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 16, 2012 @ 19:12 GMT
Tom,
Would you kindly repeat where you found a contradiction?
Here we have these divergent models; One results in a view of time as an eternally determined block and the other branches off into multiworlds and you say my view that "tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates," is contradictory?
Maybe you can just supply what your interpretation of the word "contradictory" means.
Would you like my interpretation of "religious myopia?" One where contradictory logic is viewed as only a test of one's faith and to be ignored at all costs?
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T H Ray replied on Aug. 16, 2012 @ 19:36 GMT
"Would you kindly repeat where you found a contradiction?"
14 August, 2205. Two days ago.
15 August, 1204. One day ago.
16 August, 1036. Six hours ago.
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 16, 2012 @ 20:43 GMT
Tom,
black and white thinking is 'this correct' or this is 'incorrect'. Trying to see how ideas might fit together, or be regarded differently, is something else. When I see something I can see all sorts of possibilities that it might be, to me. You, it seems, see something just as it is and any deviation from that is a gross error.
I do want to explore Julian's ideas and play with them. A Portuguese proverb;'An hours play is worth a year's conversation'. I'm still in the 'what is it?' phase. Like the baby that has picked up a new object. Your saying things that are to the effect 'put it down, don't touch it, what do you think you are doing' - before I even understand what I've got in front of me is not helpful.
I'm feeling very enthusiastic about all of the new possibilities that have come to mind from thinking about what Julian is doing. I won't post them here but will carry on thinking about them and the fit with Julian's work. Letting you carry on uninterrupted, doing what you want to do here, stuck in critic mode.
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 17, 2012 @ 02:25 GMT
Tom,
Since it would seem Julian holds views similar to yours, it doesn't seem right to continue our argument on his blog post, so I will post and answer your questions over on my contest thread.
Georgina,
There seems to be a response from you in this thread, showing in the left column, but I can't find it.
Since I seem to have fundamental differences with Julian on this topic and feel it better to drop the subject, you might post the question over at my
entry thread.
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Eckard Blumschein replied on Aug. 17, 2012 @ 02:49 GMT
Anonymous in Lawrence's thread was me.
John,
While we may not agree in all details, I am one of those who agree with you on that Julian Barbour, Thomas Ray, Lawrence Crowell, Philip Gibbs, and many others seem to intuitively believe in the correctness of the very foundational assumption that reality has been built on mathematics.
Eckard
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 17, 2012 @ 10:42 GMT
Eckard,
There is a lot of institutional momentum built up there and many who will ride that wave onto the rocks.
Of the current essays I think
Robert H. McEachern provides one of the most effective rebuttals. It shows the extent to which physics theorists branched off from actual mathematical progress many decades ago, due to some foggy presumptions which were incorporated as gospel.
I don't mind arguing with Tom, as it's like hitting tennis ball off a backboard, good practice, even if the response is entirely predictable. The others with larger reputations tend to pull up the drawbridge to the ivory tower rather quickly, so there is nothing to be gained by pressing the issue.
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Georgina Parry replied on Aug. 18, 2012 @ 01:26 GMT
Dear Julian Barbour,
I apologise if I have caused any offence to you in my previous posts. I have not intended that.
Please may I ask, why it is important to have all of the triangles that the mathematician can imagine? Is it a bit like why all paths that a photon might take must be taken into account for the QE calculations to come out right, as Richard Feynman explains in his Auckland lectures? I mean by that the -why- is not known but it is necessary non the less. Or is there a known why for the fibre bundle of triangles? Is it so you have the -complete set- to choose from for best matching. That would make sense to me.
Having ascertained the changes that are occurring to the object from the initial conditions, describing its motion, how is the transition made from objective unobserved space-less abstract thing to the relative space-time observation of the observer? Or is that jumping too far ahead? Are there some other important considerations to be made prior to that? How it becomes a model of reality, linking what is happening to an unobserved shape to what is seen, is the really interesting bit for me but I can wait if it is necessary to have all the pieces in the correct place first.
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