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Questioning the Foundations Essay Contest (2012)
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There May Be a False Assumption in the Minkowskian Geometry That Led to Block Time, Which Disagrees With Quantum Theory on Whether the Future Already Exists - A Short Look Through the Clues About Time by Jonathan Kerr
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Aug. 6, 2012 @ 15:50 GMT
Essay AbstractWork on quantum gravity has highlighted some inconsistencies with time, and there may be a false assumption in our overall view of time. In a short look through the clues, here it is shown that the two levels of time we seem to find in physics, block time and the apparent motion through time, can’t both be real. Given the fundamental unpredictability of small-scale events in quantum theory (widely accepted for eighty years) the two levels disagree over whether the future is already decided, and whether the future already exists. Assuming that only one level is real leaves two possibilities. Both are examined, and the essence of the Rietdijk-Putnam argument, which led from Minkowskian geometry to block time. Some of the clues, such as the permanent age differences between objects left behind by time dilation (which have been measured very accurately recently[1]), are not well addressed in views in which motion through time doesn’t exist. Special relativity (SR) has been extremely well confirmed by experiment, but the spacetime interpretation has not, and because it defines time as a dimension different from the others in some ways, time could also be different in other ways. These two points make a false assumption in the Minkowskian geometry possible. Even a minor one could remove block time, leaving a dynamic universe as in quantum theory.
Author BioJonathan Kerr is an independent British physicist, published in peer reviewed journals, who since 1995 has worked almost entirely on the physics of time. This led to the book ‘The unsolved puzzle: motion through time in physics’ (2012, forthcoming).
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Pentcho Valev wrote on Aug. 6, 2012 @ 20:35 GMT
Jonathan,
I tried to make out whether you regard gravitational time dilation as real but couldn't. So let me ask you a question:
http://student.fizika.org/~jsisko/Knjige/Klasicna%2
0Mehanika/David%20Morin/CH13.PDF
David Morin: "The equivalence principle has a striking consequence concerning the behavior of clocks in a gravitational field. It implies that higher clocks run faster than lower clocks. If you put a watch on top of a tower, and then stand on the ground, you will see the watch on the tower tick faster than an identical watch on your wrist. When you take the watch down and compare it to the one on your wrist, it will show more time elapsed."
Do you also think that the watch on the tower, when taken down, will show more time elapsed?
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Aug. 6, 2012 @ 21:17 GMT
Hello Pentcho, thanks for your post.
Yes, I think gravitational time dilation is real, and a good clue that motion through time is real. I've argued that of the two levels of time - only one of which can be real - motion through time must be the real one. I've talked about gravitational time dilation as leaving lasting traces behind it several times - to point out one of them... "When objects accumulate elapsed time at different rates, permanent age differences remain." That's what you were asking about.
In the places where I've mentioned illusions, I'm only trying them out, and finding that they simply don't fit the clues in all areas. In the 'Conclusions' section at the end it sums up the thread of the argument, shows why only one of the two levels can be real, and then says that motion through time has to be real, not an illusion. I hope that answers your question.
Jonathan
Pentcho Valev replied on Aug. 6, 2012 @ 22:00 GMT
David Morin further claims that the gravitational redshift Pound and Rebka measured was due to gravitational time dilation:
http://student.fizika.org/~jsisko/Knjige/Klasicna%2
0Mehanika/David%20Morin/CH13.PDF
David Morin (p. 4): "This GR time-dilation effect was first measured at Harvard by Pound and Rebka in 1960. They sent gamma rays up a 20m tower and measured the redshift...
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David Morin further claims that the gravitational redshift Pound and Rebka measured was due to gravitational time dilation:
http://student.fizika.org/~jsisko/Knjige/Klasicna%2
0Mehanika/David%20Morin/CH13.PDF
David Morin (p. 4): "This GR time-dilation effect was first measured at Harvard by Pound and Rebka in 1960. They sent gamma rays up a 20m tower and measured the redshift (that is, the decrease in frequency) at the top. This was a notable feat indeed, considering that they were able to measure a frequency shift of gh/c^2 (which is only a few parts in 10^15) to within 1% accuracy."
On the other hand, Banesh Hoffmann suggests that the gravitational redshift "arises from what befalls light signals as they traverse space and time in the presence of gravitation":
http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its-Roots-Bane
sh-Hoffmann/dp/0486406768
Banesh Hoffmann: "In an accelerated sky laboratory, and therefore also in the corresponding earth laboratory, the frequence of arrival of light pulses is lower than the ticking rate of the upper clocks even though all the clocks go at the same rate. (...) As a result the experimenter at the ceiling of the sky laboratory will see with his own eyes that the floor clock is going at a slower rate than the ceiling clock - even though, as I have stressed, both are going at the same rate. (...) The gravitational red shift does not arise from changes in the intrinsic rates of clocks. It arises from what befalls light signals as they traverse space and time in the presence of gravitation."
Who is right - Morin or Hoffmann? Both of them?
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Aug. 6, 2012 @ 22:33 GMT
That's an interesting question. There are two main interpretations for the gravitational redshift. Relativists tend to prefer the version where you can take time out of the picture, because we don't understand it. So they often say that photons climbing out a grav field have their energy sapped by the climb, and try to explain the effect purely in terms of gravity affecting light. But this doesn't fit all the facts.
Clifford Will, in his excellent book about the tests of GR, 'Was Einstein right', asks the key question - if a signal is emitted at one height and received at another (a la Pound-Rebka), does the wavelength change steadily on the way, or is it emitted at a different starting wavelength, and then keep that wavelength? He says there's no way to know, and that it doesn't matter anyway. He says we can only work with observables. That point of view is understandable. But he then mentions that there is a way to find out which is true, but we can only find out indirectly. He then mentions an elapsed time experiment, with two clocks at different heights.
This shows that the starting wavelength is different at different heights, it doesn't change en route, and that of the two interpretations, the one with the time rate included is the accurate one. And yet physics students are very often taught the other version. Morin is right. I hope this helps.
But I should say that there's some ambiguity surrounding this, and it's less cut and dried than I've made it seem when summarising it.
Jonathan
Pentcho Valev replied on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 05:24 GMT
Jonathan,
Although I disagree with your conclusion that "the starting wavelength is different at different heights", I am impressed with the clarity with which you present the problem.
In my view, light falls in a gravitational well just as ordinary material objects do, that is, its speed increases in accordance with the Newtonian equation:
c' = c(1 + gh/c^2)
where h is the distance between the emitter and the receiver/observer. There is no gravitational time dilation. The starting wavelength is the same at different heights and does not change on the way.
Best regards, Pentcho
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Aug. 9, 2012 @ 20:42 GMT
Thanks Pentcho,
I should mention that what I thought you asked me was about how to interpret GR. Both Morin and Hoffman were also talking about that, their disagreement was simply about how GR should be interpreted. It's very often a matter of taste, but in my view motion through time is sometimes rather edited out of the interpretation, where it can be without compromising GR, perhaps because block time leads to the idea that motion through time doesn't exist.
But if you think GR is or may be wrong, then reading their work may not help - it might only help in trying to understand GR better. If you want to go outside GR, then it might be more relevant to look simply at the experimental evidence, and other ideas that have been put forward. I hope this helps, best wishes,
Jonathan
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Georgina Parry wrote on Aug. 6, 2012 @ 20:59 GMT
Dear Johnathan Kerr,
I have read your essay. I too am very interested in the topic of time. It is good that more and more people seem to be taking "the time problem" seriously, taking apart the issues and thinking about it. It is clearly written and comprehensible and relevant to the essay question. So it ticks all those boxes.
I would have enjoyed your essay much more if it was not...
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Dear Johnathan Kerr,
I have read your essay. I too am very interested in the topic of time. It is good that more and more people seem to be taking "the time problem" seriously, taking apart the issues and thinking about it. It is clearly written and comprehensible and relevant to the essay question. So it ticks all those boxes.
I would have enjoyed your essay much more if it was not a topic very close to my heart. After years of concentrating on finding the solution and talking about it extensively and painstakingly here on FQXi blog discussion threads.Countless hours of comments and explanations.(If you are interested a high definition file of the necessary explanatory framework is in my essay discussion thread, what it does is listed in my current essay.)
There are many more people who have not given the topic as much thought, time and dedication as I have, who do not understand the solution, and so will find your essay very thought provoking. Which is a very good thing. A solution can't be readily accepted until the need for it is grasped.
Good luck in the competition.
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Aug. 6, 2012 @ 21:51 GMT
Hello, thank you. I'll read it.
Best wishes, Jonathan
Azzam AlMosallami wrote on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 00:35 GMT
Dear Kerr,
I'm interested in your essay. I hope you read my essay http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1272 . I discussed your topic in a comprehensive sense, and I solved all the contradictions between quantum and relativity depending on the latest experimental result. My latest paper http://vixra.org/abs/1208.0018 solved the contradiction regarded to GR and quantum field theory.
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 09:58 GMT
Hello Azzam,
thanks for your post, I'll read your essay. Best wishes,
Jonathan
John Merryman wrote on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 02:54 GMT
Jonathan,
I've been offering up a very basic solution to these problems, but it hasn't garnered much attention. To quote the abstract of my own essay;
"Time is experienced as a series of events and with its philosophy of measurement as reality, physics treats time as a measurement from one event to the next. I argue that time is the changing configuration of the extant, turning...
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Jonathan,
I've been offering up a very basic solution to these problems, but it hasn't garnered much attention. To quote the abstract of my own
essay;
"Time is experienced as a series of events and with its philosophy of measurement as reality, physics treats time as a measurement from one event to the next. I argue that time is the changing configuration of the extant, turning future potentialities into current events and replacing them. It is not the present moving from past to future, but action turning future into past. While this may seem a fairly basic observation, it means time is an effect of action, similar to temperature, not the basis for it. This would mean the geometry of spacetime is correlation of measurements, not causation of actions."
The reason time flows at different rates is simply because it is an effect of action. Speed of the level of activity, ie. temperature and the rate of change increases. The one twin ages faster because the increased level of atomic activity yields an increased metabolic rate.
As for one event happening in the past of one frame and future of another, that is just a signaling issue. Both the observer frames are in the future of the frame of the actual event.
As for the multiworlds issue, the future is probabilistic and it is the actual collapse of probabilities that yields actualities. Time emerges from the process of stuff actually happening. Prior to a race, there may be ten winners, but after it, only one. The fate of the cat is determined by events.
Admittedly much of the essay is devoted to the psychology of understanding, since
I've been raising this issue for years, to little notice and much argument, so the issue has taken on psychological issues. It also delves into some of the consequences for other physics assumptions, such as the nature of space, but that's a broader issue.
(It's been my experience that it is wise to copy posts before sending them, as about one third seem to not go through. Such as this one, which I did copy, thankfully.)
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 09:39 GMT
Hello John, thanks for your post.
I looked at this kind of view of time in 2002, when Paul Davies mentioned something like that in an article in Scientific American. He says:
“For example, an electron hitting an atom may bounce off
in one of many directions, and it is normally impossible to
predict in advance what the outcome in any given case will
be. Quantum...
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Hello John, thanks for your post.
I looked at this kind of view of time in 2002, when Paul Davies mentioned something like that in an article in Scientific American. He says:
“For example, an electron hitting an atom may bounce off
in one of many directions, and it is normally impossible to
predict in advance what the outcome in any given case will
be. Quantum indeterminism implies that for a particular
quantum state there are many (possibly infinite) alternative
futures or potential realities. Quantum mechanics supplies the
relative probabilities for each observable outcome, although
it won’t say which potential future is destined for reality.
But when a human observer makes a measurement, one
and only one result is obtained; for example, the rebounding
electron will be found moving in a certain direction. In the act
of measurement, a single, specific reality gets projected out
from a vast array of possibilities. Within the observer’s mind,
the possible makes a transition to the actual, the open future
to the fixed past—which is precisely what we mean by the flux
of time.”
I'd say this apparent similarity asks as many questions as it answers, but it's interesting. It would be hard to get it make testable predicitons, and it doesn't seem to address time dilation.
To me, 'the speed of the level of activity' can't explain time dilation. With grav time dilation, it might, if it could explain why there's less and less activity as you approach the mass.
But with motion time dilation, we seem to have elements of illusion and elements of reality all mixed up together. When two people pass each other on the street, each sees the other slowed down in time, but it's impossible for each to have slower metabolism than the other. So this bit looks like an illusion. But in asymmetrical situations, such as the twins paradox, you get permanent age differences. This shows what a strange conundrum it really is.
Anyway, I can't do much online for a day or two as I have to get on a plane tomorrow, but will be back when the jetlagged clocks have worn off. Best wishes,
Jonathan
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John Merryman replied on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 10:47 GMT
Jonathan,
The reason for gravitational and velocity based time dilation is because since nothing can exceed C, as the motion of electrons within atomic structure is close to C, when the frame of this structure is accelerated/gravitationally attracted, the electrons slow down, so the combination of internal action and external velocity doesn't exceed C. So the rate of change within the atom...
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Jonathan,
The reason for gravitational and velocity based time dilation is because since nothing can exceed C, as the motion of electrons within atomic structure is close to C, when the frame of this structure is accelerated/gravitationally attracted, the electrons slow down, so the combination of internal action and external velocity doesn't exceed C. So the rate of change within the atom is slower, thus reduced clock rate. This also causes length distortion, since the shape of the atoms are shortened in the direction of motion.
If we used the concept of temperature expansively, this slowing of activity within the atomic structure of the moving frame is comparable to its reduced rate of change.
This then goes back to the nature of space, because without the dimensional addition of time, it reverts back to an(infinite) equilibrium state, rather than some form of geometric fluid. Consider centrifugal force: What is the basis of the "straight line," other than an underlaying equilibrium? External references wouldn't cause this effect of spin. It would be this element of space against which the speed of light is constant.
As for predictions, I don't see it as a matter of theory, but observation: Does the earth travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, or does tomorrow become yesterday because the earth rotates? I, with the help of thousands of years of cosmological observation, see the later. The former seems highly speculative.
As for passing observers, that goes to blue-shifting of action and therefore clock rates shortened.
We could as logically use ideal gas laws to formulate a "volumetemperature," as we use C to correlate distance to duration and come up with "spacetime," but with temperature, we don't confuse the needle with the scale. Duration always occurs within the context of the present, not external to it. What exists, the "present" is the "scale," not the events, which are highly subjective points of reference.
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 12:57 GMT
Thank you, yes, sorry - there's clearly more to your view than my initial picture of it. Will look some more I have time, rushing to get on a plane tomorrow.
Best wishes, Jonathan
John Merryman replied on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 16:21 GMT
Jonathan,
Thank you very much.
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Eckard Blumschein wrote on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 06:49 GMT
Hi Jonathan,
You concluded "block time and the accompanying picture must be false". You correctly realized that the block-time view is rooted in an observer-dependent perspective considering "the same event in the past for one observer but in the future for an other one".
Eckard
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Edwin Eugene Klingman wrote on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 09:13 GMT
Dear Jonathan Kerr,
I enjoyed your essay on time. It's quite surprising that only in the 21st century are large numbers of physicists addressing this problem, that is, questioning the reality of relativity's block time. Your analogy about the car repair may be the best explanation one can come up with. Only in the last few years have I rejected block time. I assume that before that I just accepted it unquestioned as "implied by relativity", but without dwelling on it or its consequences.
Your arguments are excellent and convincing. You seem cautious, almost hesitant to come to your conclusion. Perhaps because you haven't nailed down exactly the faulty step. I think you've come close. You've certainly demonstrated that "remote NOWs" are an ill-defined and unmeasured (almost certainly unmeasurable, even undefinable?) concept. If you haven't already, I suggest you read Daryl Janzen's essay and Israel Perez's essay. Their view of "cosmic time" within the context of relativity seems relevant.
Good luck in the contest,
Edwin Eugene Klingman
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 09:54 GMT
Hello Eugene,
thank you very much. I'm cautious partly because that's the correct approach when criticising established physics. There are too many people who dismiss long standing ideas with a wave of the hand, and that often shows a failure to look into them properly.
I'll read your essay, and the ones relating to cosmic time that you mention, thanks. Best wishes,
Jonathan
Edwin Eugene Klingman replied on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 18:02 GMT
Dear Jonathan,
Yes, I appreciated why you were cautious, that was not a criticism. As you note in response, so many critics go 'full speed ahead, damn the torpedos' that it was both unusual and refreshing to find caution in overthrowing a century old accepted paradigm.
I am pleased that you will read my essay. Unlike the nature of time (perhaps the final mystery) the nature of the wave function may be succumbing to measurements and even, to some degree, to logical analysis. Just as the implications of block time lead to many hard-to-accept conclusions about secondary issues, the concept of 'superposition and collapse' have led to hard-to-swallow implications, as I note on one of the more recent comments on my thread; 'down the rabbit hole'.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
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Joe Fisher wrote on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 15:53 GMT
Dear Doctor Kerr,
As a layman, I found your splendid readable essay actually compellingly understandable. In my essay Sequence Consequence, I have taken a position diametrically opposite to the Minkowski spacetime one by insisting that one real Universe could only be existing once here and now. You state: “The readings on clocks and the motion of light at short range might give the impression of general simultaneity links across space. But long range simultaneity might be more hypothetical, and not real in any active way.” There is a problem here in that all supposedly separable scientifically fabricated phenomena are automatically corrupted by the insertion of measuring identical unit standardization. Science is a religion that uses numbers.
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Jayakar Johnson Joseph wrote on Aug. 8, 2012 @ 05:49 GMT
Dear Jonathan Kerr
Nature of time differs as the paradigm of universe we assume changes, in that the emergence of discrete time in accordance with plank time varies. In virtue of this, I think, Minkowski space is expressional only in lambda-CDM cosmology, in that the observer is 0-D; and not with paradigms that have premise of cyclic time.
With best wishes
Jayakar
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Jayakar Johnson Joseph replied on Sep. 7, 2012 @ 06:04 GMT
Regret for the spelling mistake on this post. Please read, ‘Planck’ instead of ‘Plank’
Jayakar
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Anonymous wrote on Aug. 19, 2012 @ 13:19 GMT
Dear Jonathan,
As your essay demonstrates the question of time is undoubtedly a major stumbling block when trying to simplify and unify the theories of physics. What if time is not a dimension at all, but is imposed on physics by us, sentient beings with memory who saw the world around us change, and needed a book-keeping method to label the different states of this world? A timeless universe works quite well from the point of view of physics if all changes are local linear and causal as in some models like mine. It is only when we try to measure things that relativity enters the picture, but SR is not the only possible relativity!
For example let Lorentz transformations regulate the length of measuring rods, not of space itself (as in SR) nor time itself contract, just clocks slow down. It can be argued that Einstein did no service to physics by declaring the speed of light constant. This made measurement absolute, but the universe became relative. More sensibly let the speed of light have a maximum but be otherwise variable (measurement is relative) while the universe is absolute - ie a universal 'now' can be imagined. Einstein himself said that a variable speed of light is required in GR.
A timeless universe seems feasible in
Beautiful Universe Theory , and was discussed in
my fqxi essay Fix Physics! - I will be happy if you have a look at these qualitative and speculative papers.
With best wishes,
Vladimir
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Aug. 19, 2012 @ 19:56 GMT
Hello Vladimir,
Good to read your essay, and there's a lot that I agree with there. Also entertaining and funny, the architecture analogy, and relevant as well.
As you say, we need a paradigm shift, with new fundamental principles, from which we rebuild. But how to see which starting point? I can show a few pointers, and that it has to be entirely new.
There are around ten different ways of seeing current physics, and the difference between them is often simply the order in which we put things. This concept is fundamental, while this concept is emergent, and further up the food chain. The speed of light is constant, and we adjust everything to that. Or the speed of light is variable, and we put something else underneath it. These alternatives are often equivalent, and we have a puzzle that can be rejigged into various different arrangements, but none necessarily leads to real progress.
It's easy to say let's cut through the Gordian knot, if we can't decide which of the loose bits of string coming out of it should be worked from. But I say if you look carefully, there are clues as to what the starting point should be, and they should lead (to make a truly mixed metaphor) towards a new set of concepts that will be like a sword to cut through the whole knot.
The deepest cracks in our present picture are the very places where the best clues are to be found about what the real picture should look like. Time is the deepest crack in our picture. Things really don't match up there. This crack has been papered over until recently, but now we're having to look right into it instead, because of quantum gravity.
You say time isn't real, and that only the 'now' exists. Most people who say time isn't real say the opposite - that the 'now' doesn't exist. Block time, which comes unavoidably out of Minkowski's geometry, has led many to think time doesn't exist in the sense that motion through time doesn't exist. Instead, they think every 'now' moment exists at once, and they all sit there alongside each other in a block. That's the standard GR view, in as far as there is one. It isn't talked about a lot, as you need at least one unexplained illusion to make it work.
But the differences in time rate in different places look very real, and are not addressed in either of these views. I've studied the idea of an illusion, it doesn't work, for several reasons. I say that motion through time has to be real, and in my essay I've shown that one of our two pictures of time has to be ruled out, as they can't co-exist.
What I'm saying to you is that if you try ruling out block time, and say that the rules about simultaneity at a distance are slightly different from what we think (which is very possible as we don't understand time, but have depended on assumptions about time in Minkowski's geometry), then you get a picture of a dynamic universe, in which motion through time is real.
So in the deduced picture motion through time is somehow real, and to me this view has been arrived at via a very logical sequence of reasoning, as in my essay - you can test every step on the way. And in this picture time seems to run at different rates in different places, so that should be the starting point, and to me it seems much more likely to lead somewhere than other starting points that lead off from here...
Hope this is of interest, best wishes, Jonathan
Vladimir F. Tamari replied on Aug. 21, 2012 @ 03:49 GMT
Dear Jonathan
I liked your clever explanation above about the order in can which one takes up various assumptions and try to make them fit together. One can term it your Theory of Theories. But surely not all starting points are equal or even will work at all in some cases? The resulting theories are subject to certain criteria - that they work in all levels, obviously, but also that Occam's Razor applies - how simple will the resulting scheme be? And even Beauty (Dirac's own criterion on whether a theory is correct). For example of the latter : SR is beautiful in its own little sphere of applicability, but it becomes ugly when it complicates things like GR for no good reason. Starting out that a speed of light is constant creates complications down the line it is not a good starting point.
The crack about the Gordian Knot was a poetic comment on my article by a friend, but I see that I should have qualified it as such. Physics works well enough now not to attempt to destroy it in one sweep, without building an alternative theory!
About Time: Starting out with Minkowski spacetime is a non-starter for me. I will keep trying to make sense of the starting points I have assumed in my theory and see where it leads. If there is no time dimension one can say that everything is simultaneous - is that what is meant by block time?
Thanks, and with best wishes,
Vladimir
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Aug. 26, 2012 @ 06:44 GMT
Hello Vladimir,
sorry, I didn't find your reply until just now. Thanks. Block time has time as a dimension, and the universe is a frozen 4-dimensional block. This comes out of Minkowski spacetime, and causes so many contradictions that something else may well be needed.
I wouldn't try to remove the Gordian knot of this puzzle without replacing it with something else, as you say. But I've mentioned a few clues about what the starting point might be, and it seems to me that motion through time must be real somehow, so that could be a starting point. This general avenue is comparatively unexplored, as block time has drawn attention away from it. So that's my area of interest... good luck with your work, both artistic and scientific.
best wishes, Jonathan
Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Aug. 19, 2012 @ 20:01 GMT
PS I didn't say that time is or isn't a dimension. I'm just looking at the clues and drawing conclusions, trying to limit the possibilities.
Daryl Janzen wrote on Aug. 20, 2012 @ 20:04 GMT
Dear Jonathan:
I like your essay. I think you present an interesting analysis of a concept that is very muddled. In particular, I was glad to see you repeatedly bring up the problem with the supposed illusion of time in a block universe. You might like my favourite quotation from Milic Capek, which I think expresses this problem beautifully:
"We shall deal only briefly with an...
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Dear Jonathan:
I like your essay. I think you present an interesting analysis of a concept that is very muddled. In particular, I was glad to see you repeatedly bring up the problem with the supposed illusion of time in a block universe. You might like my favourite quotation from Milic Capek, which I think expresses this problem beautifully:
"We shall deal only briefly with an extremely serious epistemological difficulty which arises when time is deprived of an ontological status and reduced to a mere appearance. For in relegating time into the phenomenal world an intolerable dualism is created between the realm of appearances, occurring in time, and the realm of timeless noumena. All static systems from Parmenides to Bradley and McTaggert are plagued by the same problem: If true reality is timeless, *where does the illusion of succession come from?* If time has no genuine reality, why does it appear to be real?
"No solution can be found which would not introduce surreptitiously the reality of time *somewhere*. If the illusory reality of time is nothing but a gradual rising of the curtain of ignorance which separates our mind from the complete and timeless insight, then at least *this process of rising is still a process which unfolds itself gradually without being given at once*; but, by conceding this, we admit the reality of time either in our mind or *between* our mind and the allegedly timeless reality."
For it is this surreptitious element of "time" that enters into the description of a block universe that leads to the intolerable dualism that you've also discussed, which leads to all kinds of paradoxes in working with and interpreting the theory. As you've correctly noted, "in taking that view, the number of phenomena that must be demoted to unreal is large. It amounts to anything that could be called a *process*, and that includes a lot of our world."
But, for this reason, I also think that your description of a block universe doesn't get all the way down to the heart of the issue with it, although I'm certain you do know what that issue is. You described: "The universe is a motionless 4-dimensional block, with no moment called ‘now’ moving through it anywhere. Instead it has many events and equally important ‘now’ moments, all sitting alongside each other in a static spacetime grid. This unchanging object it is just *there*." But the thing is, that although we can't avoid the use of verbs in describing what a thing "is", every verb that is used in describing a block universe actually falsely represents it. It's a true dilemma, and I'm not saying anyone could describe a block universe better than you have, but I think that any description of a block universe, which will inevitably require words like "is", needs to be supplemented by saying something like "although we say that a block universe physically 'exists' in its absolute entirety, from the beginning to the end of all four dimensions of spacetime, 'existence' is clearly the wrong word to use in describing a block universe, because although it contains within it a timelike dimension, it no more 'exists' in a temporal sense than a block of wood that comes in and out of existence in an instant; it is temporally singular."
And this is really why any attempt to reconcile the illusion of time with the block universe, as in perdurantism, is a false-start. And it's also the biggest indication that the block universe theory has to be incorrect, because no matter how we try to avoid it, we do commonly get a sense of temporal existence that can't really be reconciled with that singular block. Since the requirement of a block universe can be deduced directly from special relativity theory, something must be wrong at the heart of the theory.
This is all very closely related to the problem that's at the heart of the essentially paradoxical notion of time travel, in which science fiction writers begin with the idea of things actually existing throughout spacetime, (sort of) as in a block universe, but then allow that the events in that "spacetime" are also able to change. Clearly, the notion of a physically existing spacetime that changes requires another temporal dimension---and this is where that surreptitious Newtonian concept of an absolute time comes in; i.e., because the changes that are thought to be able to occur within spacetime, due to a time traveller's influence, are also thought to simultaneously effect all of spacetime. If you could go back in time and kill your grandfather before he met your grandmother, then you never would have been born, so you clearly can't do that---a well-known paradox. But as I see it, my grandfather doesn't exist before he met my grandmother: the event is no longer real. What's real is my typing this right now, which will be past, and therefore unreal, when you come to read it.
Elsewhere on this blog, you've made comments that indicate to me that you think I haven't carefully thought this problem through, and that you think I've been too quick to suggest what I think lies at the heart of the problem with the relativistic implication of a block universe, when I say it is the problem that, along with the assumption that there can be no privileged observers, it is the interpretation that synchronous events, described by constant values of the time-coordinate in any frame, truly occur simultaneously according to observers who remain at rest in those frames---which is what leads directly to the *inference* "that an event can be both past and future in two different viewpoints". Or else, when I say that there must instead be an absolute (global) simultaneity-relation amongst *all* observers in a three-dimensional enduring (i.e., flowing) universe.
This is a difficult stance to argue for, which involves not only having to reconcile with the principle of relativity and the relativity of simultaneity, but also having to justify the need to forsake the principle that there can be no privileged observers (which seems to agree so well with both the principle of relativity and the Copernican viewpoint), and show that the scientific evidence does actually support this.
This is what I concentrated on accomplishing in my essay; but I assure you that I have subjected the problem of the nature of time to rigorous analysis, dedicating nearly eighty pages of my (184 page) thesis to an analysis of the historical, philosophical, epistemological, and physical factors associated with this great problem. Although it may appear that I have presented something that simply works (I can hope you at least saw it that way), I have by no means simply chosen, without a great deal of thought, to reload assumptions that were previously cast off with good (but I think imperfect) reason. This is my response to your remark that "In relativity I'm often suspicious of views in which the weirdness in the theory is removed by pointing out errors that everyone else failed to see for a century. Usually when physicists allow a theory to be weird for that long, it's because they couldn't go anywhere else, and not from lack of trying."
You also wrote to Edwin: "I felt that unlike many, you were grasping at an underlying reality by looking at the clues. That's what makes a paper of interest to me these days, if it's looking for ways forward for physics - it's not enough for it to be trying to rejig existing theory into something it wasn't before. Like you, in my essay I'm grasping at an underlying reality by looking at the clues, and the real clues are external things like observations, not internal things like elements of existing theory.
"To me, for an approach to be relevant in the present situation it also has to be open to there being bits of the jigsaw missing, that we haven't yet found. Many of the essays I've read have implied within them the idea that the pieces we have are enough to finish the puzzle, if we can only organise them in the correct way. And yet a careful look at the clues shows that this idea is unavoidably wrong - new conceptual elements are needed."
I agree with you here, except for the part where I fear you're considering me with the "many" who are unlike you. To use your analogy, if we think of physics as closing in on the completion of one area of a puzzle (say, just for instance, with about ten pieces left to put together), you know that without fitting the remaining loose pieces into the puzzle correctly you can only jam about half (say, five or six) of them in the remaining space. These few pieces are all connected at points, and touch on the completed part that surrounds them in a number of places, but the picture is obviously imperfect and sparse. However, the pieces that have not been carefully fit into their right places *can* be put there by taking a careful look at their shape; but this may require one or two of the other pieces that were set aside because they didn't fit when the first five or six were jammed in without enough care.
Just because I have, in my essay, attempted to take a piece of the puzzle that I think was out of place, and fit it into its correct spot, that should not be taken to indicate that the argument has implied within itself "the idea that the pieces we have are enough to finish the puzzle." To my notion, space-time is, by the definition I've given of an enduring three-dimensional universe, *not* real. It is a graduating map of the events that occur in the universe, which contains within it the effects of things that occurred in the (absolute; purely *ideal* or mental) past. Now, in general relativity, space-time is described as a four-dimensional physical field that is moulded by mass which in turn follows geodesics, so that there is a reciprocal interaction. "Space and time are now dynamic quantities: when a body moves, or a force acts, it affects the curvature of space and time---and in turn the structure of space-time affects the way in which bodies move and forces act. Space and time not only affect but are also affected by everything that happens in the universe."
In my opinion, this quotation from A Brief History of Time poses just as paradoxical a notion as the theory of time travel---which Hawking also considered realistic enough, according to standard relativity, that in 1992 he invented the chronology protection conjecture. For the idea is the same: four-dimensional space-time exists, and bodies dynamically move through it, shaping it moment-by-moment in their presence. Since it is in fact space-time that's warped in the presence of gravitational mass according to general relativity theory, then according to the cosmological interpretation of relativity that I've discussed in my essay, all that might actually be warped is the perception of that unreal coordinated map of events.
If we choose to postulate absolute time in place of the postulate of the absolute world (according to Minkowski, since the relativity-postulate "comes to mean that only the four-dimensional world in space and time is given by phenomena..., I prefer to call it the *postulate of the absolute world*"), at the sake of having to accept that there *is* a fundamental rest-frame in our Universe, as cosmology came to demand anyway, many of our previous notions will have to fall. But the empirical facts still have to remain the same, so it's true that we will still have to reconcile the physical theory---our interpretation of the mathematics---with the evidence. Therefore, this requires a certain amount of "re-jigging" in order to maintain consistency.
I hope you don't mind this long note: I've found both your essay and your comments to be thought provoking, and I had a lot that I wanted to say in response. I hope you've found my comments to be thoughtful, and that we can continue to have intelligent discussion if you've got anything to add or criticise in response. I think we do have a common goal in mind; therefore, for now, I'd like to leave you with a quotation from Bertrand Russell, which I included in my thesis as an epigraph to the chapter "Against Einstein's Relativity: A Doxographical Analysis":
"I cannot believe---and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable---that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth."
Daryl
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Aug. 22, 2012 @ 05:59 GMT
[As Daryl's post was also added to the discussion on Edwin Eugene Klingman's page, my post is here and there too:]
Thank you Daryl for your kind and interesting comments on my essay, also the same to Edwin. Daryl, I wasn't referring to your essay before, having only flipped through it until just now. I think it's very good, and unlike many of these essays, I agree with you about some...
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[As Daryl's post was also added to the discussion on Edwin Eugene Klingman's page, my post is here and there too:]
Thank you Daryl for your kind and interesting comments on my essay, also the same to Edwin. Daryl, I wasn't referring to your essay before, having only flipped through it until just now. I think it's very good, and unlike many of these essays, I agree with you about some things.
I don't see the linguistic thing you mention as a problem with block time, it might be a slightly different use of the word 'is', but to me the question of whether or not we have the language to describe it doesn't affect the question of whether block time is true or false.
I don't agree with a universal present moment - I think the concept of simultaneity at a large distance is always questionable. In Newtonian time it has some meaning, in Einstein's version it has less. I think it has even less than that - no meaning beyond the light cone. The reason is that in the universe we have different time rates locally. Relating them clearly doesn't work in different frames, as I mentioned in the essay. They're thought to be relatable in the same frame, but we can't easily check that.
Two clocks a million light years apart and not moving in relation to each other might keep the same time and run in sync. But that doesn't prove simultaneity. It just proves that two local time rates at a distance are in step with each other. To me relating the times of events with meaning is saying that an event is before another one if it can affect it by getting a light signal there in time to influence it. That means within the light cone, at short range.
This would explain why block time is wrong - what led to it depends on long-range simultaneity having enough active meaning to allow an event to be in the past to one observer but in the future to another. Without that, there's no block time, and a lot of the confusion about time goes away. Hope this makes sense...
Best wishes, Jonathan
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Edwin Eugene Klingman replied on Aug. 22, 2012 @ 07:14 GMT
Daryl and Jonathan,
Thanks for these comments. I had been tending to take the view that time is 'emergent' somewhat in the sense of
Julian Barbour's essay in which one can simply 'factor out' time and retain only actions and distances as in his equation 5 (page 8) and his final equation. But that seems to reduce everything in the universe to 'local' action, and I now think that that is just not sensible. In fact, I suspect it essentially demands simultaneity. I have not put the effort into this that either of you have, so I cannot defend this idea as well as either of you, but I'm pretty sure that Daryl's 'Cosmic time' or 'flow of time' is on the money. This semi-infinite universe cannot possible hang together as local actions and local distances with time only a way to keep local score.
Best,
Edwin Eugene Klingman
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Daryl Janzen replied on Aug. 22, 2012 @ 21:01 GMT
Hi Jonathan and Edwin:
The local reconciliation of temporal passage that's supposed to come from denying a metrical relation between events that exist outside one's past light cone is Howard Stein's thing. However, as Craig Callender pointed out in "Shedding Light on Time", by positing that "at least one event in the universe shares its present with another event's present", which he...
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Hi Jonathan and Edwin:
The local reconciliation of temporal passage that's supposed to come from denying a metrical relation between events that exist outside one's past light cone is Howard Stein's thing. However, as Craig Callender pointed out in "Shedding Light on Time", by positing that "at least one event in the universe shares its present with another event's present", which he considers to be "the thinnest requirement one could put on becoming", "Stein’s 'possibility' theorem [is transformed] into a 'no go' theorem for objective becoming in a Minkowski spacetime". Basically, what this means is that if we can say that *even just one event* exists at some metrical distance outside the light cone of another event---like, for instance, the emission of a photon by the Sun anytime in the past or future eight minutes---Stein's theorem tells us that the common way of describing what is "present" in relativity theory demands a block universe.
I believe in the existence of Physical Reality, despite the fact that I can't know what simultaneity-relation describes the sapcelike surface that exists at any instant as I'm looking at my watch, because every experience I've ever had in my life tells me it's there. Therefore, although we can't scientifically prove or disprove its existence, I think a pure verificationist way of looking at things is the wrong approach. It doesn't lead to any clear understanding of things, but only allows some people the opportunity to wave their hands or shrug their shoulders.
Therefore, given Stein's theorem, and the fact that I believe the Sun exists now---as in, I believe there's a well-defined spacelike metrical distance between the Sun and me now, which has a different length (and, e.g., isn't synchronous) in different coordinate frames---even though I won't see what it looks like now for another eight minutes---I completely agree with Roger Penrose's remark, when demonstrating his own version of the
Rietdijk-Putnam argument in The Emperor's New Mind, where he notes that whether one uses observers' light cones or their simultaneous spaces makes no difference at all to the conclusions. ("Some relativity 'purists' might prefer to use the observers' light cones, rather than their simultaneous spaces. However, this makes no difference at all to the conclusions.")
As to denying the relevance of coordinating distant spacelike events with a metric, that is not something that should be done lightly, and I think it just leads down a rabbit hole. All of science is based on the use of a metric---rather than a more general abstract topological space---to describe "distances" between two events, and there's a mountain of scientific evidence to support the fact that, regardless of which coordinate system is used, there is a Lorentzian metrical relation amongst all space-time events. This is the very reason why proper times are measured differently by observers in relative motion, and there is indeed a well-defined metrical relation between them according to relativity theory. Therefore, in relation to my above remarks, I think it's just wrong to argue that this metrical relation should somehow only crystallise when events enter one's past light cone, which is what I can only take your comments to mean.
I've already noted elsewhere on this blog a very relevant observation that Tom Ray made in his essay: 'One recalls that prior to Descartes, all geometry was done with compass and straightedge---all "here" and no "there." Only with the development of analytical geometry were we able to identify relations between numerically distant points and a local coordinate system.' I don't understand why you would *want* to reject this. I agree that it seems to be hard to reconcile it with relativity without concluding that there has to be a block universe; but if you'd rather accept instead that it does work---and I'm certain that it does---I think you'd see that the interpretation of the emergence of relativistic space-time that I've described in my essay really works. The key assumption is that the metrical relation amongst events in space-time has to be Minkowskian, just as it is in the block universe theory.
The linguistic thing is essential to forming a clear understanding of the problem, and how the theory works; and there are in fact important distinctions that need to be made between the meanings of *two* words in order to understand how special relativity can be reconciled with a flowing present. First and foremost is the copular verb: as Steven Savitt
argues (see the top paper) it's really through a carelessness with the word "is" that McTaggart was able to show, even from a Newtonian perspective, that the past, present, and future are all equally real. According to presentism (which McTaggart tried to argue against), the past and the future do not "exist" in the same sense as the present, which is all that's supposed to be real. Instead, the past and future exist, according to the presentist viewpoint, *ideally*---i.e., brains, photons, computers, books, etc., existing in the present, carry, or form ideas about what was in the past or will be in the future. This is an extremely important distinction to make, because confusion does arise when one thinks of the real present as somehow flowing through the space-time continuum of events, with any particular event in the future existing as such until it eventually becomes present, then past---even if we're thinking of this sense of "existence" as something abstract---and it's only amidst such confusion that arguments like McTaggart's (or, e.g., those of
Huw Price) prevail.
But when one thinks of the present as enduring, with the ideal past emerging in its wake, as an unreal thing about which records exist in the present, and the ideal future as something that's anticipated in the present, there's no reason to think of McTaggart's argument as anything more than a misuse of semantics. As I noted before, it's also this way of thinking of all events throughout (space-)time as existing in some way that can be travelled to, that leads people to time travel paradoxes.
This presentist thinking makes perfect sense from a Newtonian viewpoint. But relativity throws in another monkey wrench, because what is meant by "time" is---at least in one sense---not universal. Two events that occur at the same "time" according to one observer will happen at different "times" for another observer, and clocks will tick at different rates. For such reasons, it's difficult to see how it could be possible to reconcile a view that everything only exists "now" with relativity theory. The way to do this, I've argued, is to first make note of the distinction between space-time, as a four-dimensional *ideality*, and an enduring three-dimensional *reality*---a flowing Heraclitean present, with an absolute time defining an absolute simultaneity-relation, and associated sets of events that *truly* occur simultaneously, in a Newtonian sense. These events obvously then have to be said to occur at the same "time"; however, as described in different relativistic space-time coordinate systems, viz. those used by observers with non-zero absolute motion, the events that occur at the same "time", in the pre-defined sense of simultaneity, will not occur at constant values of the time-coordinate.
Therefore, along with the distinction that I think needs to be made between the "existence" of "ideal" past and future and a "real" present, I think it's also very important to make a distinction between events described as "synchronous" in a given frame occurring at the same "time", and events that truly occur "simultaneously", at the same cosmic "time".
Best,
Daryl
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Aug. 22, 2012 @ 16:09 GMT
I have read a conversation with Julian Barbour in which he says motion through time must be caused by some sort of psychological illusion. To me that approach fails in trying to interpret gravitational time dilation, and tends to need a second illusion, interacting with the first one, when interpreting motion time dilation. Two interacting illusions does not make for a good explanation.
It is also denying the problem, and rather like marking the unexplored areas on a map with 'here be illusions' (just as the old map makers marked unexplored areas with 'here be dragons'). Barbour says time is 'nothing dressed up in clothes', like the emperor's new clothes. He's looking at it mathematically, but it's a conceptual problem - initially anyway.
To me the thing that is like the emperor's new clothes is the fact that the illusion approach dismisses the laws of physics, and hence physics itelf and much of our world, as an illusion. Some people have simply pretended not to see the problems with block time, because like the emperor's new clothes, it has been the standard view, to be accepted. Only recently have we been questioning it, because we need to if we are to get to quantum gravity.
Best wishes, Jonathan
Daryl Janzen replied on Aug. 22, 2012 @ 21:30 GMT
Jonathan:
I typed up my previous comment before seeing this one, so I added it there. I agree with what you're saying here about people pretending not to see the problems associated with a block universe, and chalking things up to illusions. I think this happens because people don't want to change the basic way they think about the theory. The problem with that, I believe, is that the basic way people like to think about the theory---as dynamical---is demonstrably incompatible with what the physical theory has to say about the way they like to think about the theory.
Daryl
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Aug. 23, 2012 @ 06:08 GMT
Hello Daryl,
in reply to your last two posts, I agree with the latest one, that people don't want to change the way they take SR.
They take SR with spacetime, and yet spacetime may be entirely wrong. It is impossible for anything to move through spacetime, almost by definition. Spacetime distances include imaginary numbers, which people accept in an 'emperor's new clothes' kind of way. But this may have no physical meaning. And, for instance, an event 4 minutes ago on Mars has zero separation in spacetime from right now where you are on Earth. All this may have no physical meaning. And because it leads to block time which requires illusions, spacetime is very questionable.
Spacetime hasn't been tested, and like string theory, it can't be tested. Suppose it's entirely wrong - imagine sweeping it away. We'd be looking for missing pieces of the puzzle in a new landscape. Much of our present conjecture would be irrelevant.
You talk about relating things in space, but the issue is, can we relate things in time? That's what we don't know - we know a lot more about space. We have reason to think we can't relate things in time as we have been doing, because look where it led - it led to block time, which doesn't work with the real world we observe. So time may be different. It may be meaningless to relate points in time at all. We don't know. All out attempts to relate points in time may have failed to work. But within the light cone, light signals give us an alternative method, meaningful, but perhaps just a crude approximation, perhaps also ultimately irrelevant to the way time really is.
Best wishes, Jonathan
Chris Lisle wrote on Aug. 29, 2012 @ 17:25 GMT
It seems to me, an admitted lay observer, that the basic problem you demonstrate between block time and time in motion gets down to causality versus conscious. If the universe follows a set of cause and effect and consciousness is not real, then the future can be predicted - aka block time. If consciousness is real (separated from what we understand to be the physical universe), then it seems to me that consciousness, unpredictable as it is, interjects an unknown factor of causation into a otherwise predicatable cause and effect physics equation, and the future is unknown, thus supporting a time in motion theory.
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Aug. 29, 2012 @ 18:42 GMT
Hello Chris,
thanks for your comment. It seems to me you're talking about the question of whether consciousness affects what happens in quantum theory. As I mention in the essay, I think when you have an unsolved mystery, the first thing to do is to admit it's an unsolved mystery. How we should interpret quantum theory is an unsolved mystery, and like with the mystery of time that I've looked at here, the good thing about facing up to the fact that we don't know the answer, is that you can then start working things out about what kind of answer it might be. That's like looking at the holes in the jigsaw, and allowing for them, and trying to guess what they look like.
With quantum theory, some (such as Eugene Wigner) say that consciousness is involved in the answer at some deep level. Personally, I think not, but it's an open question.
You seem to think that idea and cause and effect can't both be true, and you put cause and effect with block time. But block time removes cause and effect, or threatens to, because without motion through time, and a sequence of events with one event preceding another, it's hard to see how cause and effect can happen.
That's what I've argued, and I think cause and effect is unavoidable - it happens without the intervention of human consciousness. The landscape of this planet was being shaped by natural forces a long time before humans evolved here. And when they did, all of their science was based on cause and effect.
But consciousness is still real, it just doesn't act instead of cause and effect. That's how I see it anyway, hope this makes sense...
Best wishes, Jonathan
Chris replied on Aug. 30, 2012 @ 21:27 GMT
Hi Jonathan, thanks for replying. I don't articulate very well, I apologize. I was actually trying to concern myself with the problem you define, which is block time vs. time in motion (meaning infinite possibilities). As I understand the theory of relativity, speed affects the passage of time, thus I could travel to and fro from past to future assuming that was physically possible. This suggest block time, that there is a set past that can't be changed, but theoretically could be changed if I went back and killed myself. That seems to be a paradox of block time, that all things are set and knowable. It seems block time paradox assumes only cause and effect without allowing for the possibility of conscious as a separate intervening element (because conscious allows for infinite possibilities, parallel universes etc).
It seems to me that motion through time allows for the possibility of conscious as a separate element, unlimited possibilities that can't be "pre-ordained" with block time.
I am very interested in your issue and would like to make sure I fully understand.
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Aug. 29, 2012 @ 19:24 GMT
PS. You seem to think the question of whether or not the future exists depends on whether it is predictable. But it isn't about that (and even a predictable future doesn't necessarily have to exist yet).
It's about whether the future actually exists already for other reasons. In block time, it exists already because all of time is already laid out, like a dimension. I've tried to show by reasoning that this can't be the case.
Anonymous replied on Aug. 31, 2012 @ 16:27 GMT
Jonathan, as a history major, I note this about your ideas, which may or may not be true. I only offer this because it is something that jumped out to me. I know that "bias" is an important part of ascertaining the truth, and that bias plays an important role in scientific experimentation. Thus, I offer the suggestion that you disagreement with the "illusions" of block time may be rooted in a...
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Jonathan, as a history major, I note this about your ideas, which may or may not be true. I only offer this because it is something that jumped out to me. I know that "bias" is an important part of ascertaining the truth, and that bias plays an important role in scientific experimentation. Thus, I offer the suggestion that you disagreement with the "illusions" of block time may be rooted in a cultural bias we in the West have, which is a "linear view" of history.
The "block time" you described, that there is no future, may or may not be new to modern science, but has roots in many old philosophies, sciences, beliefs, such as Taoism. This isn't suprising, as cultures of old had a "cyclical view of history." That view of history no longer exist in the West, and now a "linear" view of history exists, and permeates our religions and I would argue our sciences.
At its core, under a linear view of history, history doesn't repeat, its not knowable, for it is unknown. Man determines his own destiny. This move to a linear view of history was driven in large part by technology, through which man believes he can create a new future, his own destiny. Is it any surprise the, that Quantum dillemmas, very dependent on technology to measure the smallest of scales, sees an open unknowable future? There is probably no better statement showing a "linear view" bias than this: So quantum theory shows us an unfixed world, which potentially "allows us to be affecting events around us, and altering the future, as we seem to be."
In your introduction, you begin by phrasing the problem of time as first being a conceptual problem. I agree. There is a "conceptual" problem of time easily explained in cultural biases of their time. Does this mean your is wrong? No. But I raise this issue only for you to consider, in case you haven't.
"The nature of time may well include elements outside our present ideas, that we haven’t yet found." This statement shows a present bias. By definition, it limits from consideration ideas from other philosophies, written, recorded, and still practiced by some.
You go on to write "A century later we know a lot more about the physical world, but we still don’t understand time." You recognize the limitation of modern experimentation, and even quantum theory as a theory, but refuse to accept "concepts" of time, that time in fact doesn't exist, and thus there is no past, present or future.
I don't share some of your conceptual problems with block time. For example, you write "It’s hard to argue that the future already exists at larger scales, but not at smaller scales. Any causal connection across scales would make that impossible, and (rather like the butterfly effect), a little would go a long way." First, this again is a "linear" view of history/time. It assumes that the future is not certain because we cannot see it. The fact that modern technology allows us to see things at a small scale does not change, however, the concepts of time. You believe it does. You believe that because we can see and measure things so small, and because those things appear to have motion in the third dimension, that both time exist and motion is time exist. As you begin your essay, time is conceptual, and technology has not changed that. It has not dispelled any illusions, but possibly created others.
However, conceptually, the breaking down on objects on an "everyday scale" doesn't create a conceptual problem with "block time." An explanation is again a cartoon. Quantum theorist look at an individual frame, with the inability to see the next frame, and try to predict what that next frame will be, but they can't with certainty, bc they can't see it, they only guess at what it might be with probabilities. Fourth dimensionally, however that entire cartoon exists. Thus "time" is the illusion created by looking at a part and not the whole.
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Aug. 31, 2012 @ 21:43 GMT
Hello. Not sure if it's Chris or someone else, welcome anyway.
There are so many things you haven't understood in your post that it's hard to know where to start. You seem not to understand the physics at all, which would fit with... your having studied history, not physics. So let's talk about history first, at least you'll understand me. I agree that a linear view of history is sometimes...
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Hello. Not sure if it's Chris or someone else, welcome anyway.
There are so many things you haven't understood in your post that it's hard to know where to start. You seem not to understand the physics at all, which would fit with... your having studied history, not physics. So let's talk about history first, at least you'll understand me. I agree that a linear view of history is sometimes a very bad idea. It implies a progression, and that can involve a bias towards various economic views of the world that may not be good for people psychologically. (Some economic systems, for instance, require growth constantly, and that can be unsustainable, which can eventually be bad for the planet and people in a number of ways.) And in a more general way, change for its own sake is not always good.
Then there's what I was saying about physics, which is nothing to do with that, or anything you mention in your post. Every single bit you mention, more or less without exception, you have misunderstood, so it might be better if we just leave it, but I'll try a little.
When I say 'the nature of time', I'm not talking about cultural ideas. I'm talking about the actual physics of time. I'm going to talk about what happens in one room, because otherwise you might start relating it to human history and culture again. If I move my hand past my face at 6 km per hour (about walking speed), I'm seeing it in slightly slow motion. it has been slowed down by a factor very close to 1, 0.9999999999999999845, so very slightly. This isn't noticeable, but we measure it accurately in laboratories.
Nobody knows why - we're trying to find out. We have a lot of clues, and the essay you read is about looking at them, and trying to work out what's going on. One of them is that the present interpretation of special relativity suggests motion through time doesn't exist. But no-one has been able to explain why we still seem to observe a sequence of events every day. In the one room I'm talking about (so you won't start relating this to history again), events appear to happen in an order - one event follows another. This allows cause and effct to happen, and the person in the room seems to be able to affect events. If she puts the kettle on, she can make a cup of coffee, and so on. No-one knows why we appear to experience a flow of time, or if you like, a sequence of events. But the standard view, in as far as there is one, is that it is an illusion. But no-one can explain how such an illusion might work.
Where I say time is a conceptual problem, I mean within the physics. I mean that it's not a mathematical problem initially, it's on the conceptual side - that is, it's a problem with the interpretation, ie. the conceptual picture we use, that is, Minkowski spacetime.
When I say "It's hard to argue that the future already exists at larger scales, but not at smaller scales", I'm talking about a specific problem in physics that you haven't understood, about the difficulty we have relating what happens at a small scale and what happens at a large scale. Each is described by a different theory, and we have trouble making ends meet.
And it goes on, there were several other points you hadn't understood.
Looking at this sentence "The "block time" you described, that there is no future, may or may not be new to modern science, but has roots in many old philosophies, sciences, beliefs, such as Taoism.", this has more than one error in it. Block time says the future already exists, not that there is no future. You can't start relating it to other ideas until you understand it, and even then it's not backed up by experiment, so it's not a good idea to do that. And it doesn't 'have roots' in those ideas. If you must grab things and loosely relate them to other ideas (which you do quite a few times in your post), then at least do that with solid physics that has been confirmed by experiment - there's plenty to choose from.
I hope this helps to make a little sense of it. Physics isn't a loose discipline where you can loosely throw one idea at another and say they go together. If you're interested, I suggest you start looking at physics from the beginning - this isn't the right place to start. Or read more about the cultural side of time, which has plenty of literature about it, and which seems to be your area of interest.
Best wishes, Jonathan
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Aug. 31, 2012 @ 08:47 GMT
Hello Chris,
you have it right where you say that in relativity speed affects the passage of time. Where you mention time travel, I'd say don't think about that for now, it's confusing everywhere you find it, from physics to hollywood. And we don't know if going back in time is possible. Also leave many possibilites to one side, and many universes, which are also confusing ways of looking...
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Hello Chris,
you have it right where you say that in relativity speed affects the passage of time. Where you mention time travel, I'd say don't think about that for now, it's confusing everywhere you find it, from physics to hollywood. And we don't know if going back in time is possible. Also leave many possibilites to one side, and many universes, which are also confusing ways of looking at things, and they're not backed up by experiment.
What we do know, from experiments, is that motion through time has its rate affected by objects moving through space, as you say. The trouble is, the same theory that tells us that, in the way we interpret it at present, also produces a picture of the universe frozen up, called block time, with all of time and history already laid out like a dimension. And that picture seems to tell us that this motion through time (that varies its speed) can't be real.
But we observe this apprent motion every day, or seem to. There's a sequence to events somehow. No-one has found a good explanation for this apparent motion through time, but the standard view, in as far as there is one, is that it doesn't exist, and that it must be some kind of illusion. But physicsts don't normally look closely at the possibility that it's an illusion (it seems to go outside our field), so instead that idea often gets swept under the carpet. In my essay, I've looked at this idea of an illusion, and found that it doesn't work easily at all.
I've argued that only one of the two pictures of time we know of can be real, the frozen universe, and the moving through time universe. Thinking about possible future events, one of these pictures means we're contributing to shaping what happens, as we seem to be. That's the one with motion through time. In the frozen universe of block time, we're not, because all events in history are already set in place, and they already exist.
But there's a lot of evidence for cause and effect, and motion through time. The block time picture goes against an enormous amount of evidence and obsevation, and if only one of the two pictures of time can be true, as I've tried to show, then block time would remove the laws of physics, and really the foundations of science. That's a high price to pay, just to have our present interpretation of relativity exactly right. I've argued that it might be slightly wrong, and that this would remove the problem. It would also mean that we can be affecting events, as we seem to be.
Best wishes, Jonathan
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Pentcho Valev wrote on Aug. 31, 2012 @ 10:11 GMT
Jonathan,
You wrote: "We may have been held back by too often assuming that Minkowski's assumptions about the time dimension are inseparable from SR. But a theory can be absolutely right without its interpretation being right, and only the core of SR has been confirmed by experiment."
Has it? The core of special relativity is shielded by what Lakatos calls "protective...
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Jonathan,
You wrote: "We may have been held back by too often assuming that Minkowski's assumptions about the time dimension are inseparable from SR. But a theory can be absolutely right without its interpretation being right, and only the core of SR has been confirmed by experiment."
Has it? The core of special relativity is shielded by what Lakatos calls "protective belt":
http://bertie.ccsu.edu/naturesci/PhilSci/Lakatos.html
"
Lakatos distinguished between two parts of a scientific theory: its "hard core" which contains its basic assumptions (or axioms, when set out formally and explicitly), and its "protective belt", a surrounding defensive set of "ad hoc" (produced for the occasion) hypotheses. (...) In Lakatos' model, we have to explicitly take into account the "ad hoc hypotheses" which serve as the protective belt. The protective belt serves to deflect "refuting" propositions from the core assumptions..."
Without the protective belt ("contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations") the Michelson-Morley experiment would have unequivocally confirmed the emission theory's tenet that the speed of light varies with the speed of the light source (c'=c+v) and refuted the assumption that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source (c'=c):
http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its-Roots-Banesh-Hoffmann/d
p/0486406768
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether."
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Aug. 31, 2012 @ 12:38 GMT
Hello again Pentcho,
it can be a matter of taste what constitutes the core of a theory, but it is comparatively clear what has been confirmed by experiment. In SR a key part of the core is the time dilation equation, from the Lorentz-Einstein transformations. This has been confirmed many times, a good example being the experiment with muons at CERN in 1976, in which travelling near to c led...
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Hello again Pentcho,
it can be a matter of taste what constitutes the core of a theory, but it is comparatively clear what has been confirmed by experiment. In SR a key part of the core is the time dilation equation, from the Lorentz-Einstein transformations. This has been confirmed many times, a good example being the experiment with muons at CERN in 1976, in which travelling near to c led to the fixed lifetimes of the muons being multiplied by around 29.3.
This looks like time itself being affected, because the lifetime of the muon in its restframe had been measured accurately before then. And as Einstein arrived at time dilation from a fixed speed of light (which was also implied in Maxwell's equations), this looks very much like confirmation for that whole part of SR. There are many other experiments, see
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/exper
iments.html
and for tests of light speed from moving sources
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/e
xperiments.html#moving-source_tests
I always hope people will admit the clues we have and get on with solving the puzzle, instead of trying to deny them, get around them, or just to ignore them. Even clues that look very weird can turn out not be quite so weird once the puzzle is solved, as past experience has shown.
The constant speed of light in relation to motion time dilation seems definite to me, but in relation to gravity it's not so certain. Einstein suggested a variable speed of light in a gravity field well after SR, in 1911, during a transitional phase when he was trying to splice SR with gravity. And others have done the same - experimental results in relation to a constant speed of light within a gravity field are more ambiguous.
But returning to what you mentioned in your post, it's very clear that spacetime hasn't been confirmed, but that the core, or some of the core, of SR has. The spacetime interpretation of SR is untestable, incomplete at best, and a cul-de-sac that has caused a century of confusion at worst.
Best wishes, Jonathan
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Pentcho Valev replied on Aug. 31, 2012 @ 14:32 GMT
Jonathan,
You wrote: "This looks like time itself being affected, because the lifetime of the muon in its restframe had been measured accurately before then."
If you knew how the lifetime of muons "at rest" is measured, you wouldn't be so sure:
http://cosmic.lbl.gov/more/SeanFottrell.pdf
"Experiment 1: The lifetime of muons at rest (...) Some of these muons are stopped...
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Jonathan,
You wrote: "This looks like time itself being affected, because the lifetime of the muon in its restframe had been measured accurately before then."
If you knew how the lifetime of muons "at rest" is measured, you wouldn't be so sure:
http://cosmic.lbl.gov/more/SeanFottrell.pdf
"Experiment 1: The lifetime of muons at rest (...) Some of these muons are stopped within the plastic of the detector and the electronics are designed to measure the time between their arrival and their subsequent decay. The amount of time that a muon existed before it reached the detector had no effect on how long it continued to live once it entered the detector. Therefore, the decay times measured by the detector gave an accurate value of the muon's lifetime. After two kinds of noise were subtracted from the data, the results from three data sets yielded an average lifetime of 2.07x 10^(-6)s, in good agreement with the accepted value of 2.20x 10^(-6)s."
That is, muons bump into the plastic of the detector and their speed suddenly changes from almost 300000km/s to zero. Could such a violent collision cause rapid subsequent disintegration? Or non-colliding muons gloriously live longer because they suffer time dilation, as Divine Albert's Divine Theory has predicted?
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/ugrad/389/muon/muon-rutgers.p
df
"In order to measure the decay constant for a muon at rest (or the corresponding mean-life) one must stop and detect a muon, wait for and detect its decay products, and measure the time interval between capture and decay. Since muons decaying at rest are selected, it is the proper lifetime that is measured. Lifetimes of muons in flight are time-dilated (velocity dependent), and can be much longer..."
A similar wisdom:
In order to measure the lifetime of a driver at rest, one must observe a car coming to a sudden stop into a wall. Lifetimes of moving drivers can be much longer...
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Aug. 31, 2012 @ 15:04 GMT
This page has links to several hundred experiments that have confirmed the core of special relativity:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/
SR/experiments.html
I'm not going to discuss them all with you for many reasons, including some that have exclamation marks. One reason is that I don't know if even that would convince you of what we know clearly from experiment. Some people don't want the clues, they don't want to know what's out there. Instead they want to fit some other idea to the world at any cost.
Being right doesn't make Einstein divine, a lot of people are right about a lot of things. And a lot of people are wrong about a lot of things, and they frequently include people who deny SR. As you can see from my essay, I'm not one to follow blindly - I've questioned many things relating to SR, including Minkowski's work, which Einstein took onboard, and believed. He's not a sacred cow to me, and I think he was wrong about some things. But look at that page with the experiments, you look through them. It just is like that - we don't know why, but it is.
Best wishes, Jonathan
Pentcho Valev replied on Sep. 2, 2012 @ 08:56 GMT
You don't want to discuss fraudulent experimental evidence, Jonathan? Why not? Let me refer you to perhaps the greatest fraud:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AAS...21530404H
Open Questions Regarding the 1925 Measurement of the Gravitational Redshift of Sirius B, Jay B. Holberg Univ. of Arizona: "In January 1924 Arthur Eddington wrote to Walter S. Adams at the Mt. Wilson...
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You don't want to discuss fraudulent experimental evidence, Jonathan? Why not? Let me refer you to perhaps the greatest fraud:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010AAS...21530404H
Open Questions Regarding the 1925 Measurement of the Gravitational Redshift of Sirius B, Jay B. Holberg Univ. of Arizona: "In January 1924 Arthur Eddington wrote to Walter S. Adams at the Mt. Wilson Observatory suggesting a measurement of the "Einstein shift" in Sirius B and providing an estimate of its magnitude. Adams' 1925 published results agreed remarkably well with Eddington's estimate. Initially this achievement was hailed as the third empirical test of General Relativity (after Mercury's anomalous perihelion advance and the 1919 measurement of the deflection of starlight). IT HAS BEEN KNOWN FOR SOME TIME THAT BOTH EDDINGTON'S ESTIMATE AND ADAMS' MEASUREMENT UNDERESTIMATED THE TRUE SIRIUS B GRAVITATIONAL REDSHIFT BY A FACTOR OF FOUR."
http://irfu.cea.fr/Phocea/file.php?file=Ast/2774/RELATIVITE-
052-456.pdf
Jean-Marc Bonnet Bidaud: "C'est ce qu'aurait dû trouver Adams sur ses plaques s'il n'avait pas été "influencé" par le calcul erroné d'Eddington. L'écart est tellement flagrant que la suspicion de fraude a bien été envisagée."
http://www.gravityresearchfoundation.org/pdf/awarded/1979/he
therington.pdf
"...Eddington asked Adams to attempt the measurement. (...) ...Adams reported an average differential redshift of nineteen kilometers per second, very nearly the predicted gravitational redshift. Eddington was delighted with the result... (...) In 1928 Joseph Moore at the Lick Observatory measured differences between the redshifts of Sirius and Sirius B... (...) ...the average was nineteen kilometers per second, precisely what Adams had reported. (...) More seriously damaging to the reputation of Adams and Moore is the measurement in the 1960s at Mount Wilson by Jesse Greenstein, J.Oke, and H.Shipman. They found a differential redshift for Sirius B of roughly eighty kilometers per second."
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 2, 2012 @ 12:28 GMT
Hello Pentcho,
In most areas of science people are simply trying to find out the truth. But there are a few areas where sadly people have a bias about what they hope to find.
In those areas, to put it mildly, you can't believe all you read on the internet. Relativity is one of them. In areas such as that there are people trying to show the standard view to be wrong, for reasons...
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Hello Pentcho,
In most areas of science people are simply trying to find out the truth. But there are a few areas where sadly people have a bias about what they hope to find.
In those areas, to put it mildly, you can't believe all you read on the internet. Relativity is one of them. In areas such as that there are people trying to show the standard view to be wrong, for reasons other than scientific ones. Yes, in the case of relativity there's bias in both directions, so you have to check everything carefully, but the people trying to deny SR are sometimes cleverly distorting the facts.
I think you have been taken in by these websites you read, and they can't be trusted. Whether or not Eddington got a measurement wrong, we know the restframe lifetime of the muon. Modern measurements are where you should look, and there was one made at NIST in 2010, in which they measured the time dilation of a moving object, at a speed of only around 10 m/sec. There have been other experiments recently which confirm SR very accurately, and our conversation is going to be unscientific if you don't look at them. Try this one:
Chou, C. W. et al, Optical clocks and Relativity, Science 24 Sept 2010: Vol. 329 no. 5999 pp. 1630-1633
In fact, I suspect it might not really be a discussion of physics even if you do look at the evidence. But I'd like to warn you about these websites you read, and help you to be more aware of the pitfalls in the landscape. Physics is very hard even if you get all the clues in front of you. If you don't, it's impossible. So you must work hard to get at the real clues, check everything you can, then you can try to solve these puzzles with some chance of success.
The only other thing to say is that as you know, I believe SR to be right but the spacetime interpretation to be wrong. This can explain some of the confusion about SR, but not all of it. Some people are against the physics establishment because of what it represents to them, rather than for better reasons.
Good luck, Jonathan
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Pentcho Valev replied on Sep. 2, 2012 @ 12:38 GMT
Jonathan,
You wrote: "I believe SR to be right but the spacetime interpretation to be wrong."
That's all I need to know, Jonathan. Thank you for the discussion.
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 2, 2012 @ 16:38 GMT
Yes, there are many who take both to be right, and quite a few who take both to be wrong. But if in fact neither of these approaches is accurate, and instead the theory is right but the accompanying picture is wrong, then an interesting new landscape appears, which is comparatively unexplored. It may hold answers that haven't yet been found. Thanks for the discussion,
best wishes, Jonathan
Pentcho Valev replied on Sep. 2, 2012 @ 17:36 GMT
Just a suggestion: Sooner or later you will have to answer the question:
Can Minkowski spacetime be presented as a deductive consequence of Einstein's 1905 two postulates?
If the answer is yes, you will have to question the postulates - the combination "true premises, false conclusion" is forbidden by definition. If the answer is no...
Best regards, Pentcho
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 2, 2012 @ 21:43 GMT
Of course Minkowski spacetime is not a deductive consequence of any part of SR. A good relativist would never claim that it is, but people often imply it. It's just that spacetime looks like it might well be true, and if you make time a dimension as similar to the other dimensions as possible (and it still isn't very similar), then you get what looks like a few things clicking into place. And what...
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Of course Minkowski spacetime is not a deductive consequence of any part of SR. A good relativist would never claim that it is, but people often imply it. It's just that spacetime looks like it might well be true, and if you make time a dimension as similar to the other dimensions as possible (and it still isn't very similar), then you get what looks like a few things clicking into place. And what comes out works very well mathematically, and allowed us to simplify many theories.
But there are probably humdreds of other possible interpretations of SR out there, well - ones that look possible initially. But when you pursue them, you might find contradictions come out around sixty years later, as we did with spacetime.
As I said, physics is full of equivalence. Often more than one conceptual picture can be described by the same mathematics. The mathematics of SR is like Pythagoras' theorem - three speeds are in the same relationship as the three sides of a right angle triangle. No-one knows why.
best wishes, Jonathan
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Yuri Danoyan replied on Sep. 2, 2012 @ 22:23 GMT
Jonathan
I think right time for reading my essay
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1413
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Pentcho Valev replied on Sep. 3, 2012 @ 04:52 GMT
Jonathan,
You wrote: "Of course Minkowski spacetime is not a deductive consequence of any part of SR."
Are you joking, Jonathan?
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/cha
pters/spacetime/index.html
John Norton: "That the speed of light is a constant is one of the most important facts about space and time in special relativity. That fact gets expressed geometrically in spacetime geometry through the existence of light cones, or, as it is sometimes said, the "light cone structure" of spacetime. (...) So if we mean a spacetime that also behaves the way special relativity demands, then we have a Minkowski spacetime."
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 3, 2012 @ 11:01 GMT
Hello Yuri,
thanks, will read your essay.
Hello Pentcho,
It's you that must be joking! You're saying that you can rule out ALL possible interpretations other than spacetime? How do you know? What kind of thinker would say that all possible interpretations, including all as yet unknown and unimagined ones, are ruled out? John Norton certainly isn't saying that, he's a...
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Hello Yuri,
thanks, will read your essay.
Hello Pentcho,
It's you that must be joking! You're saying that you can rule out ALL possible interpretations other than spacetime? How do you know? What kind of thinker would say that all possible interpretations, including all as yet unknown and unimagined ones, are ruled out? John Norton certainly isn't saying that, he's a reputable scientist.
He's also very careful not to say that spacetime is an unavoidable consequence of SR. He implies it, but he doesn't actually say it. Look at his careful wording. First he says SR gets 'expressed geoetrically' that way. That says nothing much at all. Then he says:
"So if we mean a spacetime that also behaves the way special relativity demands, then we have a Minkowski spacetime".
The word 'demands' might seem to imply that it's an unavoidable consequence. But the initial phrase "If we mean a spacetime that..." gets him out of saying that it's unavoidable - he knows very well that it isn't, and there's no way he's going to say that. Because according to what he says, if we mean a particular spacetime that suits SR, then we mean Minkowski spacetime. But of course, if we don't mean a spacetime at all, then we can have another interpretation for SR.
I should say, as I did in the essay, that it's impossible to disconnect block time from spacetime. The Rietdijk-Putnam argument is a rigourous proof that one leads to the other. But it's very possible to disconnect SR from spacetime, although they might not tell you that.
Best wishes, Jonathan
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Jonathan J. Dickau wrote on Sep. 8, 2012 @ 15:27 GMT
Hello Jonathan,
As you know from reading my essay; I also have some problems with the standard formulation based on Minkowski space. I look forward to reading your essay, which is on my short list of what to read next. I have many thoughts about the nature of time question. I find block time to be an inadequate representation, both physically and philosophically, but I'll read through your essay before I say more.
Thank you for your kind remarks on my essay forum page.
Regards,
Jonathan
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 8, 2012 @ 16:27 GMT
Thanks, and for your positive reply there. Look forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes, Jonathan
Gurcharn Singh Sandhu wrote on Sep. 9, 2012 @ 14:54 GMT
Dear Jonathan,
I have read your essay and I appreciate your novel viewpoint. Even though our views regarding SR may not fully coincide, I agree on the main thrust of your argument regarding time. All authors in this contest have presented their viewpoints in different styles. In the grand maze of the unknown it is important to consider all possible alternatives and different viewpoints for...
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Dear Jonathan,
I have read your essay and I appreciate your novel viewpoint. Even though our views regarding SR may not fully coincide, I agree on the main thrust of your argument regarding time. All authors in this contest have presented their viewpoints in different styles. In the grand maze of the unknown it is important to consider all possible alternatives and different viewpoints for building a consolidated common approach. I wish you good luck in the contest.
Recently, I have noticed some wild variations in community rated list of contest essays. There is a possibility of existence of a biased group or cartel (e.g. Academia or Relativists group) which promotes the essays of that group by rating them all 'High' and jointly demotes some other essays by rating them all 'Low'. As you know, we are not selecting the 'winners' of the contest through our ratings. Our community ratings will be used for selecting top 35 essays as 'Finalists' for further evaluation by a select panel of experts. Therefore, any biased group should not be permitted to corner all top 'Finalists' positions for their select group.
In order to ensure fair play in this selection, we should select (as per laid down criteria), as our individual choice, about 50 essays for entry in the finalists list and RATE them 'High'. Next we should select bottom 50 essays and rate them 'Low'. Remaining essays may be rated as usual. If most of the participants rate most of the essays this way then the negative influence of any bias group can certainly be mitigated.
I have read many but rated very few essays so far and intend to do a fast job now onwards by covering at least 10 essays every day.
You are requested to read and rate my essay titled,"
Wrong Assumptions of Relativity Hindering Fundamental Research in Physical Space". Kindly do let me know if you don't get convinced about the invalidity of the founding assumptions of Relativity or regarding the efficacy of the proposed simple experiments for detection of absolute motion.
Finally I wish to see your excellent essay reach the list of finalists.
Best Regards
G S Sandhu
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 9, 2012 @ 21:28 GMT
Hello Gurcharn,
thank you for your kind comments on my essay, I'm glad you appreciated it.
To me, the arguments about relativity are off the point unless they mention existing experimental results. We all know the concepts are sometimes counter-intuitive, that means nothing. Things often 'confound common sense' and still turn out to be true. The stale old debate about how to take SR is a dead argument to me, it has been largely won by SR supporters, who have a lot of experimental results to back up their position. This page has links to several hundred experiments, and I don't discuss anti-SR stuff unless people have gone through them:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/exp
eriments.html
I think much of the confusion arises because the interpretation is wrong. But the actual theory is unavoidably right. How you frame it doesn't necessarily matter, people have been going round in circles with that for most of a century. I'd say look at the experimental results, and try to come up with an interpretation that fits them. But don't criticise it - the experiments show that something like that is true, whether you believe it or not. But we have absolutely no idea what SR is describing. It's describing something, we just don't know what.
Best of luck to you... Jonathan
Yuri Danoyan wrote on Sep. 10, 2012 @ 16:02 GMT
Whether the Future Already Exists....
I think generation #2,generation #3 are the effect of Influence from Future, just hints from the Future.
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9607375
http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1919
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 10, 2012 @ 17:23 GMT
Hello Yuri,
thanks. These papers suggest that there may be influences on the present from the future, but how can one suggest something like that without first putting forward a conceptual picture of time? Time does certain things, we know exactly what it does, but not why. To me something physical is clearly going on, and I think a reliable conceptual picture is needed before anything else - and it must be one that fits the clues well.
Our present interpretation of what we know about time has major problems (see my conversation from today and yesterday with George Ellis on his essay page, who thinks the same, and has argued very strongly that standard block time is wrong). But the spacetime interpretation tends to deflect people from investigating these questions, because what we observe then looks like something unassailable to do with the dimensions, and wrapped up in the nature of the time dimension somehow.
But without a reliable conceptual picture of what the equations are describing, why try to guess what time might or might not do? People who look only at the mathematics might do that, some tend to work as if they have the whole picture in front of them already.
Anyway, that's my take on it. In the second paper you refer to, they suggest drawing a card and using it to decide how to operate the LHC, and they say this might make it shut down totally. I'm not objecting to this on the grounds that it's a form of gambling, but the LHC was very expensive, and if they think that will happen, they shouldn't risk damaging it. There has to be a cheaper version of this experiment.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
Yuri Danoyan replied on Sep. 11, 2012 @ 22:46 GMT
Jonathan
read please also my essay
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1413
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Yuri Danoyan replied on Sep. 15, 2012 @ 11:13 GMT
Superdeterminism is delete all difference between past, present, future.
See my analogy book as Parmenides
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Yuri Danoyan replied on Sep. 19, 2012 @ 16:21 GMT
Jonathan
What is your attitude to Gerard 't Hooft
Discreteness and Determinism in Superstrings ?
arXiv:1207.3612 (replaced) [pdf, ps, other]
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Sep. 19, 2012 @ 17:30 GMT
Hello Yuri,
Thank you, it's fascinating, I'll read it again when I can. But ultimately the cellular automaton interpretation of quantum theory is still a mathematical interpretation, and I'm interested in truly conceptual interpretations, as I see the problems before us as conceptual ones. (John Wheeler thought the same - when asked what the best hope of progress for QT was, he said finding a conceptual basis from which QT could be rederived). And because an interpretation is needed for SR as well as QT, and ideally one should be found that reduces the problems of both, it seems that something very simple is needed. To me, although the CA interpretation is very simple mathematically, it's too complicated conceptually.
Also, I don't agree with his attempt to get out of non-locality. David Albert has argued that Bell's work means non-locality in inevitable in any interpretation of QT, not just in a hidden variables interpretation.
Best wishes, Jonathan
Yuri Danoyan replied on Sep. 19, 2012 @ 17:41 GMT
Have you read my essay?
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1413
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Sep. 19, 2012 @ 18:03 GMT
Yes, will look at it again when I can. I liked your analogy of the book and the audio book - that describes exactly the two levels of time that I compare in my essay. But rather than look at the 'advantanges and disadvantages' of these versions of the universe, I've tried to relate them to the actual conceptual clues we have.
I'm amazed at how people ignore the conceptual clues, and look only at the mathematical clues. (I don't mean you, in fact your essay is refreshingly conceptual). Physics is detective work, and we can use logic to rule possibilities out, and to limit the possibilities about what kind of answer we might be looking for. But people are so absorbed in the mathematics, they can't see the wood for the trees. And yet to get to quantum gravity, it's almost certain that conceptual progress will be needed. The problems with time are in the conceptual department, and no mathematical advance alone would be likely to remove them.
Anyway, best wishes, Jonathan
Steve Dufourny Jedi replied on Sep. 22, 2012 @ 21:46 GMT
Hello thinkers,
It is relevant indeed these cellular automatas. So, if I am understanding well, all the forms can be created under a specific continuity with this method. The strings seem relevant for the 2d and the convergences with the 3D. The cellular automata are relevant. I ask me how the predictions can be purely deterministic considering the finite groups.
The strings in 2d more the datas and informations can be encoded under a specific spherical universal automata of convergences.
We could simulate the universal sphere and its spheres.Considering the central sphere like the most important volume. The universal spherical fractal of uniqueness appears. So the holographic automata can be a reality.furthermore this architecture permits tocreate all 3d pictures furthermore. If the number is known, between 1 and x, so we have the finite group, and so the serie of uniqueness. My equations so permit to converge and to quantize furthermore. The gravitation is porportional with rotating spheres.
Maths and physics are linked, universally linked, unified in the spherization in fact.
Regards
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Member George F. R. Ellis wrote on Sep. 10, 2012 @ 18:44 GMT
Hi Jonathan
I agree with what you are trying to do. As stated on my thread, I don't believe simultaneity is of importance; what does matter is that block spacetime has a future boundary that keeps moving so that the spacetime block grows. It's a way of putting the two times you mention together.
Best wishes
George Ellis
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Daryl Janzen replied on Sep. 11, 2012 @ 16:28 GMT
George:
You're Sleepwalking. You're clinging to an operational definition of simultaneity that's inconsistent with your model, and claiming that simultaneity doesn't matter, and the corresponding argument from special relativity---that the relativity of simultaneity implies a Block Universe---doesn't matter, while promoting a theory that's inconsistent with the definition of simultaneity...
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George:
You're Sleepwalking. You're clinging to an operational definition of simultaneity that's inconsistent with your model, and claiming that simultaneity doesn't matter, and the corresponding argument from special relativity---that the relativity of simultaneity implies a Block Universe---doesn't matter, while promoting a theory that's inconsistent with the definition of simultaneity that you're using. In an EBU, events that occur at the evloving *present boundary*, the surface S(tau), at the same value of tau, can only be defined as *truly* occurring simultaneously, despite the fact that those events don't happen at the same "time" (i.e., synchronously) in the coordinate system carried by an observer who moves through the evolving surface S(tau). An EBU defines an absolute simultaneity-relation amongst the events that occur at the evolving present boundary, which stands in opposition to the operational definition of simultaneity. Therefore, you can't define "simultaneity" operationally *and* claim that simultaneity just doesn't matter in the EBU scenario, because an EBU demands a different definition of simultaneity than the one you're saying doesn't matter. For logical consistency, the EBU's implicit definition of simultaneity needs to be reconciled with relativity, and particularly the relativity of synchronicity.
On your site, you wrote to Jonathan that "Block time is fine if it has a future boundary that keeps changing - that resolves the puzzles you point out in your essay." You also wrote that "What matters is... what happens in terms of interactions between events on different worldlines, which are mediated by timelike and null curves. Spacelike surfaces and instantaneity do not enter into it." What is it---an evolving spacelike boundary S(tau) or not? You can't just have your cake and eat it, too.
Jonathan:
You keep saying that you're only interested in arguments that can be supported by experimental evidence. In your response to Gucharn Sandhu above, you wrote that "To me, the arguments about relativity are off the point unless they mention existing experimental results." You keep saying this, but you refuse to consider my argument which claims empirical support for rejecting the relativity of simultaneity (which leads to spacetime, or a block universe) in place of absolute simultaneity. I've said here repeatedly that, despite common insistence since Newton's time that absolute space and time can't be observed, we do actually observe an absolute state of rest cosmologically, at least as long as the expansion scenario is right. At the very least, we can say that cosmological observations are *far more* consistent with an absolute background rest-frame, and corresponding absolute space and time, than they are with an Einsteinian picture where there is no true simultaneity and time is entirely observer-dependent. But that's just the nature of science: we can never prove the principle; we only determine which principles are the most consistent with the evidence. Just because we can't detect absolute space and time through local experiments, where we only measure relative durations and lengths, does not mean we should deny the former, which *is* evident through the cosmological data that have slowly accumulated over the past ninety years. I've described in detail why this is so in a response I left Peter Jackson on my site on Aug. 30, 2012 @ 23:29.
I'd just like it if you'd stop presuming (e.g., as per your last post to me on Edwin Eugene Klingman's site) that I've not sought empirical support for my argument, and if you do disagree with me that the cosmological data constitute experimental evidence in favour of a cosmic rest-frame, then state why that's so instead.
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 11, 2012 @ 19:52 GMT
Hello George,
Thank you for your kind comments on my essay. My complements again for arguing very strongly for a flow of time in your arXiv paper earlier this year. The Schrödinger type thought experiment you devised comes near to showing that the future has to be unfixed, and that's a real achievement.
Best wishes, Jonathan
[To anyone interested, the discussion has been on George's page, from 9th September, and some of the points in and surrounding my essay get summed up there.]
Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Sep. 11, 2012 @ 21:22 GMT
I should also say that I've set out what I see as a major weakness in the EBU (emerging block universe) picture there, and which hasn't been refuted.
Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 11, 2012 @ 20:28 GMT
Hello Daryl,
I'll say something about the part of your post that was to me. What I meant when talking to Gurcharn in asking him to refer to experimental evidence was that as far as I'm concerned, some aspects (only some) of the criticism of SR make a stale argument. It has been going on for most of a century, and I'm not sure how it's ever going to stop. People go round in circles, and we all see SR slightly differently. There many different ways of seeing it, and a lot of them are equivalent.
But of course, there are areas where the discussion goes on in a meaningful way, and I absolutely believe you when you say that you've taken experimental evidence into account. I found your essay very much more interesting than Gurcharn's, to be honest. To me, the difference between you and him was that he made statements like 'relativity confounds common sense', which is irrelevant, because many things do that are still true.
I think you and he are very different, but you have one thing in common perhaps - you shouldn't ask me. It's between you and relativists such as John Baez. Anyone criticising SR, after so much water has gone under the bridge, should go straight to the people who are seen as authorities on it, I'd say. I've had email exchanges with John Baez, but I think SR is right, so we didn't have to take off our jackets. The page I referred to a week ago or so with a long list of experimental results was one of his. I can't vouch for what's there, but anyone arguing that SR is wrong should certainly look through some list of that kind.
Best wishes, Jonathan
Daryl Janzen replied on Sep. 11, 2012 @ 22:33 GMT
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks very much for the response. I completely agree with you about SR, and not disregarding it just because some aspects are counter-intuitive. I also think it's the correct description of physical phenomena in its domain of relevance, and only wish to reconcile a different interpretation with the mathematical theory, which I see as being more consistent with all the experimental evidence. Thanks for your reassurance that you see my argument as taking experimental evidence into account. I agree with you that the standard interpretation is incorrect, while the physical description may well be right.
I think you've hit on an important point in your comment to George on Sep. 10, 2012 @ 20:33, where you wrote that "Because motion through time is not an illusion (in your view and mine), it needs a physical mechanism to explain it. And that mechanism should fit the clues well - it should show why motion through time is slowed down in certain situations, and why the equations that describe how it is slowed down apply." I've got a different idea about how this explanation can be realistically achieved than you, which I didn't discuss in my essay. I'll maybe try to show it to you sometime. Although our ideas about how to reconcile a flow of time with the theory are different, as we've previously discussed, I do appreciate your opinion.
Regards, and best wishes, Daryl
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Sep. 15, 2012 @ 09:40 GMT
Thanks Daryl,
sorry so late in replying. It has been a pleasure to discuss these things with you (mainly on Edwin Klingman's page), and I do respect your opinion, and your approach to physics in general.
Warm regards, Jonathan
John Merryman wrote on Sep. 12, 2012 @ 02:47 GMT
"But when one thinks of the present as enduring, with the ideal past emerging in its wake, as an unreal thing about which records exist in the present, and the ideal future as something that's anticipated in the present,"
Jonathan, Daryl,
Sometimes the best mysteries are when the answer is hiding in plain sight. It's not that the present "moves" from past to future, but that what...
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"But when one thinks of the present as enduring, with the ideal past emerging in its wake, as an unreal thing about which records exist in the present, and the ideal future as something that's anticipated in the present,"
Jonathan, Daryl,
Sometimes the best mysteries are when the answer is hiding in plain sight. It's not that the present "moves" from past to future, but that what exists changes, creating current configurations out of constant interaction. Not the earth traveling a fourth narrative dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, but tomorrow becoming yesterday because the earth rotates. The present is simply what physically exists and its action. We think of it as a dimensionless point between past and future, but 1) There is no such thing as a dimensionless point. Anything multiplied by zero is zero. It is a mathematical convenience. A dimensionless point is as real as a dimensionless apple. 2) Also if you were to truly freeze time, then the very action causing it would cease to exist. It wouldn't be a snapshot of reality, but a state of absolute zero. It's just that light is very fast and we need to sense it in very brief frames in order to see clearly.
Duration isn't a timeline external to the present, but what is present between measured events.
Clock rates vary because levels of activity vary in different environments. Gravity and velocity slow and warp atomic activity and structure, which explains both time dilation and length contraction. This argues for space as an inertial state as evidenced by centrifugal force, which is the effect of inertia on spin. That is another topic though.
A faster clock isn't traveling into the future more quickly, but into the past, since it is aging faster.
We are not building up an immutable past, as George Ellis and Joy Christian have argued, because with every passing moment, prior events recede ever further into the past, altering any conscious or physical record of them. Remember reality is relativistic! There is no objective perspective, so the past is as much a construct of subjective perspective as any currently observed event! So adding events to the past doesn't push the present into the future. It pushes prior events further into the past!
This argument against simultaneity because perception is relative is nonsense. One might as well argue that since the people of Kansas City learned of Lincoln's death before the people of San Francisco, he must have died earlier from the perspective of KC. All observations are in the future of the event.
That damn cat is not both dead and alive, because it is the collapse of future probabilities which yields current actualities. It is only due to QM using an external timeline that a determined past is projected onto a probabilistic future. While the laws governing any outcome might well be exact(or they wouldn't be laws), the total input into any event cannot be known prior to the event, because the lightcone of input is only completed by the event.
As you read these words, you progress from prior to succeeding words. Much as the hands of a clock move from one mark to the next. That linear narrative is the basis of our intellect. From the dawn of life and mobile organisms, we move along a singular path, encountering sequences of events. Does that mean sequence is fundamental, or only fundamental to perception? Does yesterday cause today? Or is that as sensible as saying one rung on a ladder causes the next? Now my typing on these keys does cause letters to appear on the screen, because there is a definitive transfer of energy from the action to the consequence. Just as it is the energy of the sun shining on a rotating planet which causes the sequence of events called "days." The future is not where the information points, which is only referential to the point of perception, but where the energy goes.
We create knowledge inductively, future becoming past, but use it deductively, projecting the past onto the future.
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 12, 2012 @ 14:44 GMT
Hello John,
I have to say - someone who thinks they have an answer no-one else could find might not have understood the question.
The bits of your post that aren't more suited to a poetry site include a point I refuted two weeks ago in a clear way. You then changed what you were saying completely, but have now gone back to your original approach, and have posted it on my page again....
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Hello John,
I have to say - someone who thinks they have an answer no-one else could find might not have understood the question.
The bits of your post that aren't more suited to a poetry site include a point I refuted two weeks ago in a clear way. You then changed what you were saying completely, but have now gone back to your original approach, and have posted it on my page again. I'll refute the point again, but once I've done that I want no more discussion - thanks for communicating anyway, and I'll wish you all the best.
You said yesterday, and two weeks ago, that local time rates are caused by atomic activity, leading to metabolic rate differences among observers. If you knew the physics you'd know that doesn't fit the facts. The clues to the time puzzle are very specific, and anything that doesn't fit them simply doesn't fit them. I pointed out that two observers moving in opposite directions in a symmetrical way each see the other slowed down, but it's impossible for each to have a slower metabolism than the other. You then wrote back to say that that was caused by a blueshift - you must surely have meant redshift. But you've now returned to your original position. Better to discuss this with someone else.
Best wishes, Jonathan
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John Merryman replied on Sep. 12, 2012 @ 16:36 GMT
Jonathan,
I'm sorry if I missed your rebuttal. Your last comment in the previous discussion thread was;
"Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Aug. 7, 2012 @ 12:57 GMT
Thank you, yes, sorry - there's clearly more to your view than my initial picture of it. Will look some more I have time, rushing to get on a plane tomorrow.
Best wishes, Jonathan"
Since you didn't specify whether the observers were moving toward, or away from each other, only that they were passing, I assumed you meant toward each other.
Apparently I caused some offense and will not bother you further.
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John Merryman replied on Sep. 12, 2012 @ 16:39 GMT
Further note; Yes, you did say "slowed down," so I should have inferred redshift.
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 12, 2012 @ 17:59 GMT
Yes you switched to doppler effect, it was about time dilation. I didn't have time to explain, and I don't now. No offense and best of luck. And doesn't time go fast when you're on this site, I thought it was two weeks ago... best wishes, JK
Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 12, 2012 @ 20:22 GMT
Well, looking at it, there clearly was more misunderstanding than I thought, so sorry. I meant two observers passing each other, moving in opposite directions. There's only time dilation at that point, and each sees the other slowed down. But I can see that it could be taken as being about the Doppeler effect. JK
John Merryman replied on Sep. 13, 2012 @ 03:53 GMT
Jonathan,
I wasn't trying to give offense and if I may seem presumptuous, it is because I do see it as an important point. Having been flipping through the conversations, it seemed as though your discussion with Daryl was circling around this point and I thought I'd offer it up again, since you hadn't seemed to have digested it the first time. Your response though, to take a minor feature...
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Jonathan,
I wasn't trying to give offense and if I may seem presumptuous, it is because I do see it as an important point. Having been flipping through the conversations, it seemed as though your discussion with Daryl was circling around this point and I thought I'd offer it up again, since you hadn't seemed to have digested it the first time. Your response though, to take a minor feature of the larger argument, assert it's wrong without specifying why, than dismiss the entire argument on that basis, is the usual reaction I get from those who think there are no fundamental issues to discuss and only another particle, field, dimension, epicycle, string, membrane, energy, etc. is all that is required. Since you see no reason to enlighten me further and I obviously don't impress you, further conversation would seem fruitless.
I would add though, that the doppler effect is one of those issues physicists like to use, then deny the implications. Specifically, if cosmic redshift is due to recession of the sources, it is doppler effect, but than to say that since we appear to be at the center of this expansion, it must be an expansion of space, not an expansion in space doesn't make sense, because a constant speed of light is still used.
If two galaxies are x lightyears apart and we say that after y billion years, they will be 2x lightyears apart, that uses the speed of light as a stable measure of space. How can there be a stable measure of space, if space is expanding? The train moving away down the track doesn't stretch the track, but the train moves along that stable distance. The same applies to galaxies. If they are moving away in stable units of distance, how can it be said that space is expanding? Of course, when I raise this point, the usual reaction is similar to your response; I'm too naive to understand and the enlightened minds cannot be bothered to cure my stupidity.
That's why I try not to bother the believers and only discuss such issues with skeptics.
Regards,
john
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 13, 2012 @ 22:30 GMT
Hello John,
it seems to me you're not interested in a real discussion, that's why I've given up trying. You say:
"Your response though, to take a minor feature of the larger argument, assert it's wrong without specifying why, than dismiss the entire argument on that basis, is the usual reaction I get from those who think there are no fundamental issues to discuss".
But what...
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Hello John,
it seems to me you're not interested in a real discussion, that's why I've given up trying. You say:
"Your response though, to take a minor feature of the larger argument, assert it's wrong without specifying why, than dismiss the entire argument on that basis, is the usual reaction I get from those who think there are no fundamental issues to discuss".
But what really happens is very different. When I try to zoom in on one area of what you say, and do what we do in physics, ie try to pin something down, and start the laborious and time-consuming task of showing you what no-one else may bother to tell you - that there is nothing substantial underneath this or that idea - then instead of taking my points head on, you dance away somewhere else. You've done this several times. Not interested in really pinning anything down, but without that it's mostly poetry, and not the best I've read.
Your idea about metabolism I've shown to be wrong, in a clear, specific way. If the clues were such that that was possible, it would be simple, and by about 1940 there would have been a theory of that kind, with many adherents. There isn't because that idea doesn't work, nor do many others of yours. I've shown you exactly why with one, but you don't want to know. Perhaps it's more fun thinking the ideas work. Well, I've tried.
Best wishes, Jonathan
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John Merryman replied on Sep. 13, 2012 @ 23:20 GMT
Jonathan,
The story of the twins is analogy. Everything is built up from quantum processes, from chemistry, to biology, to mechanical clocks, so if the quantum rate runs faster, as on gps satellites, then everything emerging from these processes runs faster as well, including metabolism, thus one twin ages faster.
I'm just not sure how my use of a common analogy disproves the observation that tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates.
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 14, 2012 @ 02:27 GMT
If the twins pass each other in the street, walking in opposite directions, then as they pass, each is seeing the other in slow motion. That isn't consistent with your explanation. If the clues were such that they fitted your explanation, it would be a much, much easier puzzle. Now let's leave it, best wishes, JK
John Merryman replied on Sep. 14, 2012 @ 11:14 GMT
Jonathan,
No problem. Life is very complex and we all have varied and varying physical perspectives, both spatial and temporal, as well as the ideas to try to make sense of them.
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Lloyd B. Johnson wrote on Sep. 15, 2012 @ 02:32 GMT
I agree that one must define Time in terms of motion. Additionally, it seems reasonable to assume that similar physical results must have, at their base, common causes. That is the path I've taken in an attempt to determine the nature of Time. So, Gravitational Redshift, Cosmological Redshift, and doppler shifts must result from the same physical cause. To that end I prefer to look at the nature...
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I agree that one must define Time in terms of motion. Additionally, it seems reasonable to assume that similar physical results must have, at their base, common causes. That is the path I've taken in an attempt to determine the nature of Time. So, Gravitational Redshift, Cosmological Redshift, and doppler shifts must result from the same physical cause. To that end I prefer to look at the nature of spacetime for an answer. Since red and blue doppler shifts involve a change of wavelength caused by a position change of the emitter relative to the receiver, I conclude that some manifestation of spacetime must induce a change in wavelength for the other two types. To that end one very convenient model can be postulated wherein spacetime density increases in the presence of matter (along with a time change) For an emitted light ray leaving a gravitational field its wavelength increases as it exits the field(and enters less dense spacetime) The reverse obviously occurs when the ray enters the field. Time must then be a consequence of the relative spacetime density.
If this is valid then motion must be related to the interaction of matter with its local space. Acceleration must have the same common origin and the same common result in interactions with local spacetime. That is, if gravitational acceleration is caused by an increased spacetime density in the direction of motion, then this also implies that an accelerated object must induce an increased spacetime density ahead of itself.
This comes with a lot of ramifications for Physics! Mach's Principle as an explanation for inertia is only the first Foundational Leg to collapse. But, if that goes then what must be concluded about the FLRW model? Matter here cannot have any gravitationaal influence across the Universe!
As for the two apparent types of time, the entire Universe is in motion and matter densities (and spacetime densities) vary throughout the Universe depending whether one considers a perspective from the point of view inside a Void or within the bound nature of Matter Filaments. Time must be Relative according to ones' motion or relationship to local matter.
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 15, 2012 @ 08:55 GMT
Hello Lloyd,
This isn't meant to be a platform for trotting out our theories, though you'd never know from looking at this site. For that reason, in my essay I've just said that I think we need a new interpretation for SR, and set out a rational argument that the existing one doesn't fit what we observe.
So I'm not going into discussions on theories that land here, unless the...
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Hello Lloyd,
This isn't meant to be a platform for trotting out our theories, though you'd never know from looking at this site. For that reason, in my essay I've just said that I think we need a new interpretation for SR, and set out a rational argument that the existing one doesn't fit what we observe.
So I'm not going into discussions on theories that land here, unless the discussion relates to the general one. But I'll throw my Kent Brockman two cents back, in case it's of interest.
To me, you start with a principle that can be shown to be wrong, and then you don't go by it anyway. You say that similar results must have similar causes, and then you say that therefore all wavelength shifts must be caused by the same thing. But there are several kinds of redshift that are well understood, and they have different causes. There's the Doppler shift, refraction shift, and bremstrallung, for instance. We know their causes, and they're all different. So the general principle you start with doesn't look too good.
But then you don't go by it anyway, which actually helps. You then decide that the gravitational shift, because it must have the same cause as the Doppler shift, is caused by differences to the 'density of spacetime' - this is a completely different cause from that of the Doppler shift.
And it goes on - you don't define spacetime, but you need to not only because its density changes in your picture, but also because it has time in it, and you get time out of it the other side as well - "Time must then be a consequence of the relative spacetime density." So you need to define it early on.
If you want to talk about the general subject matter then do, you haven't so far.
Best wishes, Jonathan
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 15, 2012 @ 17:57 GMT
PS I don't want you to feel you can't answer those points, I just mean we should keep to the general discussion generally... JK
Hoang cao Hai wrote on Sep. 19, 2012 @ 14:09 GMT
Dear
Very interesting to see your essay.
Perhaps all of us are convinced that: the choice of yourself is right!That of course is reasonable.
So may be we should work together to let's the consider clearly defined for the basis foundations theoretical as the most challenging with intellectual of all of us.
Why we do not try to start with a real challenge is very close...
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Dear
Very interesting to see your essay.
Perhaps all of us are convinced that: the choice of yourself is right!That of course is reasonable.
So may be we should work together to let's the consider clearly defined for the basis foundations theoretical as the most challenging with intellectual of all of us.
Why we do not try to start with a real challenge is very close and are the focus of interest of the human science: it is a matter of mass and grain Higg boson of the standard model.
Knowledge and belief reasoning of you will to express an opinion on this matter:
You have think that: the Mass is the expression of the impact force to material - so no impact force, we do not feel the Higg boson - similar to the case of no weight outside the Earth's atmosphere.
Does there need to be a particle with mass for everything have volume? If so, then why the mass of everything change when moving from the Earth to the Moon? Higg boson is lighter by the Moon's gravity is weaker than of Earth?
The LHC particle accelerator used to "Smashed" until "Ejected" Higg boson, but why only when the "Smashed" can see it,and when off then not see it ?
Can be "locked" Higg particles? so when "released" if we do not force to it by any the Force, how to know that it is "out" or not?
You are should be boldly to give a definition of weight that you think is right for us to enjoy, or oppose my opinion.
Because in the process of research, the value of "failure" or "success" is the similar with science. The purpose of a correct theory be must is without any a wrong point ?
Glad to see from you comments soon,because still have too many of the same problems.
Regards !
Hải.Caohoàng of THE INCORRECT ASSUMPTIONS AND A CORRECT THEORY
August 23, 2012 - 11:51 GMT on this essay contest.
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 19, 2012 @ 16:06 GMT
I guessed that this post had been sent to more than one essay page, and found that it had. I also have trouble understanding it.
But best wishes, JK
Conrad Dale Johnson wrote on Sep. 22, 2012 @ 14:50 GMT
Jonathan,
I very much appreciate the clarity and intelligence of your essay. And I agree that the "block time" concept is a major obstacle to a deeper understanding of physics -- but I don't think that Minkowski's spacetime is the problem.
As Stein pointed out back in the 60's, what the Rietdijk-Putnam argument disproves is the Newtonian notion of a single present moment "now" that applies to the entire universe simultaneously. It shows us that we shouldn't think of the universe as "moving through time" all at once, as a single vast object. But this has nothing to do with the physical "now" that can actually be experienced, from any particular point of view in spacetime.
This is one of the issues I dealt with in my essay (
"An Observable World") -- unfortunately I tried to get way too much into that essay, so I'm afraid the arguments aren't very clear. But I tried to show (in Section 3) that Minkowski's geometry is completely different from that of a static, 4-dimensional "block universe". The problem is not with his geometry, but with our traditional way of theorizing about the physical world as if we could stand outside of it and describe it as an object.
I agree with you that physics needs to come to grips with the time as we experience it happening around us. What Minkowski's geometry shows us is not that this aspect of time is illusory, but that it's essentially local. It shows us that my "here and now" is not physically related to other places and times by means of any spacelike "time-slice" through a 4-dimensional block, but through a web of back-and-forth light-speed connections.
The deeper problem here is that we haven't yet learned to conceptualize the physical world that can actually be experienced, from inside. In many papers on time, the notion of a local present moment is just rejected out of hand, as "solipsistic" -- as if our physical location in spacetime were something "subjective". The main point of my essay was that physics needs to describe not only the objective structure of the world but also the internal structure of physical interaction through which information becomes observable, in specific local contexts.
So I don't think we should reject the "block universe" picture. It's entirely reasonable to spatialize time, to imagine it as if it were a 4th spatial dimension -- as we do in all our diagrams that put space on one axis and time on another. It's obviously helpful to visualize dynamics this way -- but we have to avoid confusing this picture with the more fundamental one given by Minkowski, representing the structure of spacetime that can actually be seen from inside.
This contradicts the argument you make in your first section, that we have to choose one or the other view of time. I think both are equally important in understanding physics, though not equally fundamental. I realize this view is unusual, and I've struggled to find ways to express it. I hope you'll find time to look at my essay and let me know if it makes any sense to you.
Thanks again for your excellent work -- Conrad
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 22, 2012 @ 20:37 GMT
Hello Conrad,
thank you very much for what you say, I really appreciate it. I'll read your essay.
I have two points to make - the first is that I don't think you understand why the Rietdijk-Putnam argument rigourously rules out any possibility of motion through time existing at all (if Minkowski was right). You sound surprised that people talk as if our position in time is subjective, but according to Minkowski spacetime, it unavoidably has to be. I haven't read Stein, but it sounds like he was writing immediately after the shocking discovery in the '60s, and trying to cushion the blow. But since then it has been worked through and understood, and without at least some adjustment to Minkowski spacetime, you simply get motion through time not exisitng.
The reason is straightforward - it's that the difference between past and future is entirely observer-dependent in some situations. That means it has to be perception-based, and has no reality outside the observer.
But as you quite rightly say, SR leads to local time rates, which can't be connected up at all. I'm saying that this local aspect makes the very long distance simultaneity required for the Rietdijk-Putnam argument questionable. But if simultaneity at a distance only applies within the light cone, block time then no longer applies at all, removing the confusion about time that we have nowadays, and allowing what we observe to be real.
Incidentally, I've shown on George Ellis' page that the kind of adjustment he tries to make in his EBU (emerging block universe) approach doesn't work, because this observer-dependence for the difference between past and future still arises. There's a need to remove block time in any form.
I hope this makes sense, best wishes,
Jonathan
Conrad Dale Johnson replied on Sep. 26, 2012 @ 14:07 GMT
Hi Jonathan -- Sorry I couldn't respond sooner. But I don't agree that the "block universe" view follows from Minkowski "unavoidably" or otherwise. Stein's argument has been picked up and elaborated many times since the '60s, most recently in the George Ellis paper you and he were discussing in the comments to his essay. You're right that the "block universe" does seem to be rigorously proved...
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Hi Jonathan -- Sorry I couldn't respond sooner. But I don't agree that the "block universe" view follows from Minkowski "unavoidably" or otherwise. Stein's argument has been picked up and elaborated many times since the '60s, most recently in the
George Ellis paper you and he were discussing in the comments to his essay. You're right that the "block universe" does seem to be rigorously proved to many physicists, for reasons I discuss in
my essay.
I think you and George and I all agree (as you said in your 9/9 comment to George) that the problem with Rietdijk-Putnam "is in the assumption that simultaneity across a distance has meaning (beyond the light cone)." George quoted from his paper:
"...the physical events that shape how things evolve are based on particle interactions, and take place along timelike or null world lines, not on spacelike surfaces, which are secondary. The concept of simultaneity is only physically meaningful for neighboring events; it has no physical impact for distant events, it is merely a theoretical construct we like to make in our minds. What we think is instantaneous makes no difference to our interaction with a vehicle on Mars. What is significant is firstly what happens over there, secondly what happens here on Earth, and, thirdly the signals between us. Simultaneity does not enter into it."
But the three of us draw different conclusions from this. The point I try to make has to do with what you wrote above in responding to Daryl: "an event 4 minutes ago on Mars has zero separation in spacetime from right now where you are on Earth. All this may have no physical meaning. And because it leads to block time which requires illusions, spacetime is very questionable."
I think the "zero separation" on any light-like interval most definitely does have physical significance. And it very clearly shows that Minkowski spacetime is very different not only geometrically but topologically from a 4-dimensional "block". The problem is that from the usual objective standpoint -- envisioning the universe as if "from outside" -- we can easily imagine the "block spacetime" but not the spacetime Minkowski describes.
What I tried to say in my essay was that what Minkowski describes is exactly the spacetime any actual observer experiences, in the ongoing present moment.
So I end up agreeing entirely with your rejection of the "block universe" at a fundamental level. But like George, I believe the problem is not with Minkowski but in the careless, unphysical way his equations are interpreted to correspond with our "common sense".
Taking this common view "from outside", you think it's a problem that for some observers an event has already occurred, while for others it hasn't. But there's no contradiction between the worlds the observers actually see, in their respective present moments, only between the way each of them retrospectively reconstructs the set of supposedly "simultaneous", spacelike-separated events that took place at a certain past "point in time".
My disagreement with George is that he still wants to imagine the past as a "block", which only perpetuates the misunderstanding about how space and time are physically connected in Minkowski's spacetime.
I know my treatment of this in my essay was probably too abbreviated to be clear. If you get the chance, I'd appreciate it if you'd give me your comments on what parts of my Section 3 made sense to you and what didn't.
Thanks - Conrad
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Sep. 27, 2012 @ 12:20 GMT
Hello Conrad,
as I said when I replied before, I hadn't read your essay. But to me it's great - I've been amazed by the clarity of sections 1 and 2 reading them this morning. I love the way you write, it seems to me you think like I do, trying to get each idea across in a way that can be really assimilated as you go. And what you write seems important to me.
Because these kind of...
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Hello Conrad,
as I said when I replied before, I hadn't read your essay. But to me it's great - I've been amazed by the clarity of sections 1 and 2 reading them this morning. I love the way you write, it seems to me you think like I do, trying to get each idea across in a way that can be really assimilated as you go. And what you write seems important to me.
Because these kind of questions have been looked at for some time in attempts to interpret quantum theory, I suspect that in themselves they won't provide a complete solution, but they could be an important part of it. And applying them to relativity as well is important.
Just read 3-5. I understand that you had to abbreviate. I must say, to me people have been aware of these kinds of issues, and I generally trust the consensus over a century about both SR and QM. I think we can be mistaken about the interpretation of a theory, as with spacetime, but I don't think we're likely to have made an error in how it is worked through. I'm always suspicious of attempts to point out a direct error of that kind with SR. And the 'inside' and 'outside' viewpoints are clearly an issue in SR, because of the role of the observer. So when a large group of physicists decide that block time is a consequence of spacetime, and keep to this view for 50 years, and work with it even though it presents major difficulties, I believe them.
Just to clarify my view, you say that I "think it's a problem that for some observers an event has already occurred, while for others it hasn't." I only think that's a problem because that's the single point that led to block time. And above all, it leads to what looks like the difference between past and future being one of perception only. The two observers can be passing each other in the street - that's the problem, and incidentally, I pointed out that the same problem also arises in George's EBU.
In my essay I'm not specific about what removes that possibility (of an event being past and future in two different viewpoints), I just show the kind of thing that could remove it, and point out that even a slight difference to the rules about distant simultaneity could remove it (this strengthens other points that suggest block time is wrong). In my book I go into that question in more detail.
I think your essay points out an important issue, which although it has been thought about before, may yet lead to breakthroughs. And I think you manage to write about it in a wide ranging general way that could make people think about it, and help with us getting there. As you can see, I'm keener on the general side of your essay than the specific, but to me it's a lot.
Good luck and best wishes,
Jonathan
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Conrad Dale Johnson replied on Sep. 28, 2012 @ 15:11 GMT
Jonathan --
It's very heartening to me to get such a positive response; thanks very much. The block time idea clearly needs to be overcome, and I look forward to seeing how you deal with it in your book. Your essay does a fine job of pointing out the difficulties of treating "now" as an illusion, a matter of perception. If such a basic aspect of all our experience is illusory, what are...
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Jonathan --
It's very heartening to me to get such a positive response; thanks very much. The block time idea clearly needs to be overcome, and I look forward to seeing how you deal with it in your book. Your essay does a fine job of pointing out the difficulties of treating "now" as an illusion, a matter of perception. If such a basic aspect of all our experience is illusory, what are we supposed to trust, as a basis for empirical science?
And I can hardly blame you for believing what's been an almost unquestioned consensus about the meaning of Minkowski spacetime. Nearly everyone has focused on the notion of spacetime as a 4-dimensional manifold, and dismissed as merely incidental the fact that it has a -+++ signature rather than ++++ or --++ or some other arbitrary combination. So people call it a "block universe" and rarely even mention that it happens to have a "hyperbolic" geometry... since that's just one more "count-intuitive" aspect of fundamental physics, or maybe even a technicality "without physical significance."
There's a lot to be said about this, which I had to abbreviate in my essay down to the bald statement that Minkowski's geometry is nothing like that of a 4-d "block". But I suggest that Minkowski's spacetime is a web of intersecting light-cones in which there are no spacelike intervals between events. The so-called hyperplanes of simultaneity are figments of our rational imagination, due to our erroneously embedding Minkowski spacetime in a 4-d block. Not only do all the laws of physics ignore spacelike intervals; even mathematically we have to use imaginary numbers to represent them. So for me, the problem is one of seeing what Minkowski's mathematics is telling us, rather than rejecting or revising it.
In your essay you wonder whether "there may be a rule we don't yet know about that prohibits relating 'now' moments across a distance..." I suggest this "rule" is already given by the light-cone structure of spacetime, and it's just our habit of thinking about the world "from outside" that makes this difficult to see. I don't mean to underestimate that difficulty, though. I'm still struggling to find good ways to illustrate the spacetime geometry we all experience "from inside."
In any event, it will take some time before it seems natural for any of us to think about physics "in real time" -- and I'm very glad you're working on the problem.
Many thanks -- Conrad
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Jonathan J. Dickau wrote on Sep. 25, 2012 @ 02:29 GMT
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments on my essay forum page. They are appreciated. I've been sidelined by unexpected responsibilities, but I expect to get caught up on reading and comments soon - now that things are back to normal (more or less). I'll read and comment on your essay as soon as I can, and I'll respond to your comments back on my essay page if it seems appropriate.
All the Best,
Jonathan
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Member Benjamin F. Dribus wrote on Sep. 25, 2012 @ 03:05 GMT
Dear Jonathan,
I think your essay is right on target, and it rates very high in my opinion. Let me make a few remarks. First, let me say that I don't believe the manifold structure of spacetime persists to arbitrarily small scales, but this in of itself is hardly a radical position anymore.
1. I agree that one ought not to begin with mathematical models of time (or anything else!), but ought to begin with physical concepts, and then use whatever mathematics is necessary to get the job done. This may lead to mathematics that is “less convenient,” but so be it! Choosing mathematically convenient but physically dubious models has caused too many problems in physics to even begin to list.
2. An excellent point you make: “Often more than one conceptual picture is described by similar mathematics.” Likewise, there is often more than one choice of mathematical formalism to use in attempting to make a physical idea precise. Often the differences among these conceptual pictures or formalisms involve physical issues at the periphery of what is being considered when the theory is first developed. Only later are the distinctions recognized as important, and by this time it has often become “common knowledge” that a particular marriage of concept and formalism is the “only way to go.”
3. You say “And then other physical laws, which also depend on there being a timeline (or rather, many), and behind them fundamental principles like cause and effect, which also depend on a timeline.” Now, this is something I have thought about a great deal. Do cause and effect depend on a timeline, or does time depend on cause and effect? Or are they two ways of talking about the same thing?
4. You say, “Within the light cone, where events are in range of each other, there’s a clearer sequence - one can say an event happens before another if it can influence it by getting a light signal there in time. This short range way of relating events has meaning, based on causality. But it doesn’t mean there are long range time links across space, as in Minkowski spacetime.” This, in my opinion, is the crucial point. The physical order is the causal order, and the “time-orders” given by choices of reference frame are not physical. They represent extra, noncanonical information added for mathematical convenience and should be given no weight when discussing issues of existence.
5. Continuing from 4, I believe another aspect of this false assumption is the “symmetry interpretation of covariance.” Covariance in special relativity is, conceptually speaking, the statement that different inertial frames are “equally valid,” and the usual way of making this precise is to invoke the symmetry group of Minkowski space (the Poincare group). I do not think this is the best interpretation, especially when one generalizes the discussion from special relativity to general relativity and then to the fundamental structure of “spacetime.” I think a better interpretation is in terms of order theory. The causal order on Minkowski space is defined in terms of the light cones, and an event E is simply unrelated to events outside its light cone in terms of the causal order. Imposing a time order on Minkowski space refines the causal order by artificially relating E to most of the events outside its light cone (all those outside the same “spatial section.”) Different frames of reference, then, are different refinements of the causal order. However, it is obvious that such a refinement carries no canonical physical meaning. The physical information is contained in the causal order, which does not imply a block universe.
6. These topics are a major focus of my essay,
On the Foundational Assumptions of Modern Physics. Since you have evidently thought about these issues deeply, I would be grateful for any further thoughts you might have on the subject. I think that "spacetime" is essentially a way of talking about cause and effect, and that geometry is a very good approximation to this at currently observable scales.
Congratulations on an excellent contribution! Take care,
Ben Dribus
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Sep. 25, 2012 @ 23:06 GMT
Dear Ben,
It was very good to get your post, thank you. I agree with what you say, and found it heartening to get such a response. I'll read your essay.
Your points 1 and 2 are very well put, and I agree with them - you set these things in a wider context. For instance "Choosing mathematically convenient but physically dubious models has caused too many problems in physics to even begin to list".
I think the causal order can be what applies in your points 4 and 5, as you say, without being the most fundamental thing in your point 3. When we try to establish simultaneity across a distance (or an ordering of events across a distance), then to me the potential for a causal order can be used to trace the relationships between events. That may be simply a convenient system.
It doesn't mean causality necessarily leads to the flow of time. You say: "Do cause and effect depend on a timeline, or does time depend on cause and effect? Or are they two ways of talking about the same thing?". I'd say a flow of time is required for cause and effect to happen. It looks that way because the time rate slows down and speeds up in certain situations. And the two ways in which this can happen seem rather different. I can't see how this kind of thing could happen to cause and effect on its own, though perhaps you see it as a dimensional thing with causality wrapped up in it. But to me an underlying flow of time is needed, as George Ellis has argued for in a recent arXiv paper. Without that I don't see how you can get causality going in the first place.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading your essay, and thank you for your comments.
Best wishes, Jonathan
Anonymous replied on Sep. 26, 2012 @ 02:55 GMT
Dear Jonathan,
Thanks for the response, and I'll look forward to your remarks on my essay. I can already anticipate some of your potential criticism, but the criticism of the wise is far more valuable than the agreement of the ignorant!
Regarding the question of whether time or causality is "more fundamental," or if they are two different ways of talking about the same underlying structure, I note your emphasis on the permanent effect of time dilation as an important clue regarding the nature of time. The "pure causal" response to this might focus on the "objects" that are "aging," examining what an "object" really is in the context of a single fundamental structure (at the classical level). Something which I don't yet know your view on is whether "matter-energy" is something that "lives in spacetime" or if "spacetime" and "matter-energy" emerge together from some sort of microstructure, which is the case for many approaches to quantum gravity.
In any case, perhaps we can discuss this more when you have had time to compare our ideas. Take care,
Ben
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Hoang cao Hai wrote on Sep. 25, 2012 @ 07:20 GMT
Dear Jonathan Kerr
Your presented is very interesting.
But it seems you have not decided on the final choice.
Do you think:
Actually, it was too simple to the extent that we can not "doubt" that: that is it.
Let relax with essays and my new theory and hope to get your opinion.
Kind Regards !Hải.Caohoàng of THE INCORRECT ASSUMPTIONS AND A CORRECT...
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Dear Jonathan Kerr
Your presented is very interesting.
But it seems you have not decided on the final choice.
Do you think:
Actually, it was too simple to the extent that we can not "doubt" that: that is it.
Let relax with essays and my new theory and hope to get your opinion.
Kind Regards !Hải.Caohoàng of THE INCORRECT ASSUMPTIONS AND A CORRECT THEORY
August 23, 2012 - 11:51 GMT on this essay contest.
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Pentcho Valev wrote on Sep. 25, 2012 @ 17:30 GMT
Jonathan,
You wrote (on Giovanni's page): "Pentcho, briefly, you and I have already discussed this question at length on my page, and I have shown you to be wrong, in a way that even you eventually didn't argue back about. The reason we call it "the spacetime interpretation" is because it's an interpretation. It's untested - unlike SR, which is extremely well confirmed by experiment. People...
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Jonathan,
You wrote (on Giovanni's page): "Pentcho, briefly, you and I have already discussed this question at length on my page, and I have shown you to be wrong, in a way that even you eventually didn't argue back about. The reason we call it "the spacetime interpretation" is because it's an interpretation. It's untested - unlike SR, which is extremely well confirmed by experiment. People often imply that spacetime is an unavoidable consequence of SR, but no-one will actually say that it is, because it isn't."
Then you wrote (on my page): "Hello Pentcho, we can find out the answer to what we've been discussing. I thought I'd got it across, was trying to help to get to what's underneath the picture they imply, which sometimes can be false. Maybe you want to email John Baez, (baez@math.ucr.edu), or some other relativist, with the question 'is Minkowski spacetime an unavoidable consequence of SR, and the only possible interpretation?'. I'd be surprised if any relativist said yes to that. Anyway, please discuss it, if there's any further need to, on my page rather than on Giovanni's page. (Let me know what they say, if you email them.)"
Here is a text where Minkowski spacetime is referred to as an useful diagram allowing one to get "an overall intuitive picture of a setup". Note that "if you want to produce exact numbers in a problem", special relativity is enough:
David Morin: "Minkowski diagrams (sometimes called "spacetime" diagrams) are extremely useful in seeing how coordinates transform between different reference frames. If you want to produce exact numbers in a problem, you'll probably have to use one of the strategies we've encountered so far. But as far as getting an overall intuitive picture of a setup goes (if there is in fact any such thing as intuition in relativity), there is no better tool than a Minkowski diagram."
In my view, if you want to prove that Minkowski spacetime is more than a useful diagram, you will have to find an example where Minkowski spacetime produces "exact numbers in a problem" that special relativity does not produce. I think there is no such example.
Pentcho Valev
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Sep. 25, 2012 @ 22:02 GMT
Hello Pentcho,
well maybe we agree, as I also think spacetime is sometimes nothing more than a useful system for diagrams of SR. But I thought the question was, is spacetime a necessary consequence of SR. I think almost no-one would say it's the only possible interpretation, and few would say it's a necessary consequence, though people do imply it sometimes. I suppose I was trying to show you where the whole edifice of relativity, as it is now, has a genuinely questionable area. Spacetime is one part of that set of ideas that hasn't been tested. But I know you have your own view of SR - anyway, you can check what I've said if you want, and ask people how spacetime detaches from SR. (Btw, I went to that cafe in Holland Park today, nice to think of Lee Smolin and João Magueijo sitting there talking.)
Best wishes,
Jonathan
Pentcho Valev replied on Sep. 25, 2012 @ 23:02 GMT
Jonathan,
Let us replace special relativity with the deductive closure of Einstein's 1905 postulates:
W. H. Newton-Smith, THE RATIONALITY OF SCIENCE, Routledge, London, 1981, p. 199: "By a theory I shall mean the deductive closure of a set of theoretical postulates together with an appropriate set of auxiliary hypotheses; that is, everything that can be deduced from this set."
Now the difference between us can be clearly defined: I believe Einstein's light postulate is false, you will probably start looking for false "auxiliary" hypotheses. But we must agree on one thing: if spacetime is "flawed", some member of the set is false, and we should expose it.
Pentcho Valev
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Sep. 25, 2012 @ 23:25 GMT
Hello Pentcho,
I'm glad you agree that if spacetime is flawed, then there's a flaw somewhere in what led to it. That's what I've said in my essay. I've said Minkowski's assumptions about time may be wrong, and specifically about simultaneity across a distance. This is perfectly possible without SR being wrong, as anyone will tell you if you really ask.
Let's just agree to disagree about SR itself, earlier on I did post the address of a page with links to many experiments confirming it. And if you think a flaw in spacetime has to mean a flaw in SR, then just ask any good relativist if SR could be right but spacetime wrong. And if he says that one is a consequence of the other, then give me his email address, and I'll have a word with him!
Best wishes, Jonathan
David Rousseau wrote on Sep. 25, 2012 @ 19:56 GMT
Dear Jonathan,
Your essay is well written, accessible, interesting and defends valuable fundamental points. I am sure it will do well! I was glad to see your defence of real change, and hence of things existing wholly in the present and causal powers being real factors in explanation-building. In
our essay Julie and I argue that the concept of energy commits us to a view of material things as capable of changing, and link this to the ability to build scientific explanations. If this on the right track then the block universe model cannot be a realistic view, just as you so clearly argue.
I greatly enjoyed reading your essay, and hope you will find ours interesting too. Good luck in the competition!
Best regards,
David
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Sep. 25, 2012 @ 23:43 GMT
Dear David and Julie,
Thank you very much. It's good to see more people questioning the block universe picture - after it was accepted unquestioningly for so long - and your ideas sound very good. I've argued that physics itself requires motion though time, and it looks like you've hit on a specific example of that arising, and can show it in a detailed way. I'm looking forward to reading your essay.
Best wishes, Jonathan
Pentcho Valev wrote on Sep. 25, 2012 @ 23:40 GMT
Jonathan,
You wrote: "Minkowski's assumptions about time may be wrong, and specifically about simultaneity across a distance."
Then you should formulate the false assumption in an explicit manner. But I don't think you will be able to find assumptions specific for Minkowski that are alien to special relativity.
Pentcho Valev
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Sep. 25, 2012 @ 23:49 GMT
Hello Pentcho,
I've said in my essay that the false assumption is that an event can be both
past and future, in two different viewpoints.
Best wishes, Jonathan
Pentcho Valev replied on Sep. 26, 2012 @ 05:11 GMT
Jonathan,
You wrote: "I've said in my essay that the false assumption is that an event can be both past and future, in two different viewpoints."
This is part of some people's interpretation of spacetime, not a (physical) assumption from which (physical) conclusions can be deduced. If that is the problem, then there is no additional feature of spacetime that can be logically or experimentally falsified - spacetime is just as perfect and falsifiable as special relativity. The problem is with the interpreters, not with spacetime.
Pentcho Valev
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 26, 2012 @ 08:05 GMT
Hello Pentcho,
Well I partly agree on that. It is a physical assumption, but not a fundamental one, which is what I think you mean. As I've said in the essay, it's an assumption that is basic in the sense that many other assumptions stem from it.
The more fundamental physical assumption underlying it (which I think is false) is one of Minkowski's, but not initially of Einstein's, though he took it onboard later. It's that simultaneity has meaning across distances beyond the light cone. I think you should see that I am not what you oppose - I am also critical of aspects of the existing use of relativity, as it stands at present. We disagree on what's wrong with it, and are in different places on the spectrum of views. But I think you should really argue with the people who are at the far end of the spectrum, who would defend that entire set of ideas.
Best wishes, Jonathan
Pentcho Valev replied on Oct. 4, 2012 @ 16:07 GMT
Yes Jonathan we disagree on what's wrong with relativity but I somehow feel either of us has the potential to get on the right track (if he's on the wrong one now).
You get maximum rating from me.
Pentcho Valev
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Anonymous replied on Oct. 4, 2012 @ 16:54 GMT
Jonathen, Pentcho.
"But I don't think you'll ...find assumptions specific for Minkowski that are alien to special relativity."
As you say, it's in the interpretation. HM described "Imaginary c+v", which is certainly not real c+v but is observable apparent c+v when not using Proper Time (i.e. observed from another frame). This is not interpreted as inconsistent, but as Lorentz suspected (1913 - see my essay) it is.
Jonathen. I was hoping you'd manage to get to read my essay (27/9) as I think it's logical mechanisms and ontology may shed light on the dilemma you discuss, confirming precisely where it was SR went wrong, stemming from one assumption. I look forward to your views.
Very best wishes
Peter
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Pentcho Valev replied on Oct. 4, 2012 @ 17:27 GMT
Peter,
I am referring to my essay for the first time (it is no longer in the contest):
Shift in Frequency Implies Shift in Speed of LightThe problem is, as always, in the wavelength - is it varying or is it constant.
By the way, you may wish to see another varying-wavelength interpretation of the Doppler effect (moving observer) - I have just started a discussion in sci.physics.relativity:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?from
groups#!topic/sci.physics.relativity/pQFNmwsamiU
Pentcho Valev
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Author Jonathan Kerr replied on Oct. 4, 2012 @ 22:11 GMT
Thanks very much Pentcho,
it's very much appreciated, and I felt it here. I've enjoyed some of our discussions, regardless of our differences, and am wishing you all the best.
Jonathan
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Yuri Danoyan wrote on Sep. 26, 2012 @ 14:31 GMT
Jonathan
I am also thinking about two levels of time.
Levels o Parmenides and level of Heraclites
You can read my essay 1413
Yuri
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Peter Jackson wrote on Sep. 26, 2012 @ 23:29 GMT
Jonathen
A handful of the missing jigsaw puzzle pieces emerge from applying the structures of logic (TFL and PDL) to the evolution of interactions over no zero time at a qauntum scale. I try to describe these in my essay, but as motion is difficult to visualise many haven't assimilated the complete ontology. I think you will. I hope you'll get to read it as I think it may be foundational.
I look forward to your comments (and possibly your book). Do you like a bit of theatre?
Best wishes
Peter
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Sep. 27, 2012 @ 20:18 GMT
Hello Peter,
thanks, I'll read it when I can.
Best wishes, Jonathan
Vladimir F. Tamari wrote on Sep. 29, 2012 @ 11:32 GMT
Dear Jonathan - thank you for your explanations and your good wishes in your last message above that I have just seen.
----
Hello. This is group message to you and the writers of some 80 contest essays that I have already read, rated and probably commented on.
This year I feel proud that the following old and new online friends have accepted my suggestion that they submit...
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Dear Jonathan - thank you for your explanations and your good wishes in your last message above that I have just seen.
----
Hello. This is group message to you and the writers of some 80 contest essays that I have already read, rated and probably commented on.
This year I feel proud that the following old and new online friends have accepted my suggestion that they submit their ideas to this contest. Please feel free to read, comment on and rate these essays (including mine) if you have not already done so, thanks:
Why We Still Don't Have Quantum Nucleodynamics by Norman D. Cook a summary of his Springer book on the subject.
A Challenge to Quantized Absorption by Experiment and Theory by Eric Stanley Reiter Very important experiments based on Planck's loading theory, proving that Einstein's idea that the photon is a particle is wrong.
An Artist's Modest Proposal by Kenneth Snelson The world-famous inventor of Tensegrity applies his ideas of structure to de Broglie's atom.
Notes on Relativity by Edward Hoerdt Questioning how the Michelson-Morely experiment is analyzed in the context of Special Relativity
Vladimir Tamari's essay Fix Physics! Is Physics like a badly-designed building? A humorous illustrate take. Plus: Seven foundational questions suggest a new beginning.
Thank you and good luck.
Vladimir
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John Merryman wrote on Oct. 2, 2012 @ 17:37 GMT
Jonathan,
It is very undiplomatic to tell someone to "leave" it, on their own thread.
"John,
I'll bring this to your page, and try to explain, for the nth and last time, what - to be fair - you genuinely don't seem to understand. No-one else will tell you that your ideas simply don't fit the evidence or the physics, they'll all go on letting you think the ideas could be right. Only I am boring enough to try explain it to you.
Time dilation is a single effect, described by a set of equations, and if only the observed time rate is needed, then it's just one equation. That equation works for many situations, it's very general. To explain the effect, you have to come up with a conceptual picture that works for all those situations. You can't have it fading evenly and steadily into a different explanation in some situations, and then fading back again into your original explanation on the other side. The equation shifts by degrees you see, from one situation into another. So any explanation needs to cover all situations. That's why I made the point about the two observers passing each other in the street, going in opposite directions. Each sees the other in slightly slow motion, and your explanation fails there.
Each is in fact observed with a slower metabolism than the other, because every process is observed slowed down - this may be an illusion, or each may somehow actually be slowed down from the other point of view. But citing changes to metabolism as the CAUSE of time dilation simply doesn't work.
If that was the cause, we wouldn't have pondered this for a century, it would have been very much simpler to deal with. The reason is that the mathematics would be different! And it would allow a whole range of possible explanations of that kind, but no-one even considers them, because they don't fit. Being a good mystery, it rules out a lot of intuitive explanations.
Your last post was full of errors, no-one will point them out, not even me.
Please leave this now, thanks, and good luck.
Best wishes, Jonathan"
Jonathan,
First off, my point is not about relativistic measures of duration. It is about whether time emerges from action, ie, the changing configuration of what exists/the present, such that it is events going future to past, or whether it is simply a measure of duration from one event to the next, past to future, resulting in such concepts as blocktime.
If you can figure that out, then maybe we can consider what causes duration to vary in different situations and from different points of observation. Is it because of the geometry of spacetime, or because duration is subject to context, whether actual, such as with gps satellites, or perceptual, as with those observers you are fixated on.
That you don't seem able to understand it is a different issue might go towards explaining why those schooled in the established paradigm haven't considered this. I think
Edward Anderson provides a very vivid example of this disconnect, as he first explains time as manifestly Machian, then delves into how it is best measured. The issue is not measurement, the issue is cause!!!!!!
Regards,
John
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Oct. 2, 2012 @ 20:04 GMT
Sorry, I didn't know you'd mind. I was just trying to get it off Ben's page, mine or yours would have been fine. But as we'd already posted briefly on your page, I went back there. I wouldn't have posted about it further at all if you hadn't raised it with Ben, but because you did, I went there and apologised, and put the apology on your page too, in case there had been a misunderstanding. Anyway, I've tried to explain what I was saying, and to bring the focus to the question we were looking at, I can't do more than try. Let's agree to disagree,
best wishes, Jonathan
John Merryman replied on Oct. 2, 2012 @ 20:57 GMT
Jonathan,
Not a problem. I only pointed out our communications in response to his suggesting raising the subject with you.
I don't know that we have reached a point of disagreement, since we seem to be talking past each other, on slightly different issues.
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Oct. 2, 2012 @ 21:13 GMT
Whatever, no worries. Good wishes to you. JK
Sergey G Fedosin wrote on Oct. 4, 2012 @ 07:37 GMT
If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is [equation] and [equation] was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have [equation] of points. After it anyone give you [equation] of points so you have [equation] of points and [equation] is the common quantity of the people which gave...
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If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is
and
was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have
of points. After it anyone give you
of points so you have
of points and
is the common quantity of the people which gave you ratings. At the same time you will have
of points. From here, if you want to be R2 > R1 there must be:
or
or
In other words if you want to increase rating of anyone you must give him more points
then the participant`s rating
was at the moment you rated him. From here it is seen that in the contest are special rules for ratings. And from here there are misunderstanding of some participants what is happened with their ratings. Moreover since community ratings are hided some participants do not sure how increase ratings of others and gives them maximum 10 points. But in the case the scale from 1 to 10 of points do not work, and some essays are overestimated and some essays are drop down. In my opinion it is a bad problem with this Contest rating process. I hope the FQXI community will change the rating process.
Sergey Fedosin
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Oct. 4, 2012 @ 12:04 GMT
Hello all,
Thanks for comments and discussions. I hope that will go on, I can be contacted here and by email, I forgot to put my email address on the essay, but it's jonathan.kerr@to-gl.net .
As you can see from my posts here and on other pages, I'm generally more interested in what can be shown to apply, more or less anyway, than in avenues that are suggested as being possible. I'd say my essay has a tendancy to show something to be the case, and I hope anyone looking at it will bear in mind that aspect of it, and hopefully find it there.
It only does that alongside the prevailing view of quantum theory as fundamentally unpredictable, and not necessarily in the context of a hidden variables approach. Perhaps one shouldn't assume that it must be either one or the other - but with the unpredictability that in current physics is thought to underlie QM, the whole argument holds, and much of it holds anyway.
By the way, I've bookmarked an exchange between Ben and Conrad on Conrad's page http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1513 , Sept 22-4, which is a very good overview type discussion of approaches to QM.
Anyway, best wishes to all,
Jonathan
Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Oct. 7, 2012 @ 12:54 GMT
Just an additional note - people have been discussing some questions about the voting on the contest blog ( http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1263 ) since Oct 5th, as quite a few essays suddenly dropped rapidly in position over the last 48 hours of voting. The organisers found some multiple voting had been going on, and removed the extra votes.
My essay stayed in the top 35 for two weeks from sept 20th, usually between positions 20 and 25, and was at 31 on Thursday 4th. Then in the last 24 hours of voting, it dropped more than 70 positions. Ah well! I don't know why that happened, but perhaps the positions up to the last 48 hours are more indicative. Anyway, I've had a very good response to my essay from colleagues, both in the ratings and more importantly in the discussions, particularly from Ben. The ratings should be in the margin of things anyway - the forum has been very good, and to me the event in general, and most of us have learned a lot from the exchange of ideas.
Best wishes to all, Jonathan
Jonathan J. Dickau wrote on Oct. 10, 2012 @ 00:59 GMT
Hi Jonathan,
Thank you for the thoughtful remarks left on my page. I apologize that I was not more diligent, as I skimmed, but never finished reading your paper for detail. I am sorry if my failure to cast a vote for you in time contributed to your drop in score. I was still rating essays at the final hour, though, and I rated at least 25-30 essays in the final 48 hours. This may have contributed to fluctuations somewhat.
I appreciate your willingness to communicate. I shall continue to participate, and I'll comment here once I have given your essay a complete reading.
All the Best,
Jonathan
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Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Oct. 10, 2012 @ 14:33 GMT
Hello, thanks.
well, you've obviously been doing some multiple voting, but I'm sure in your case not of the kind that the organisers said they'd had trouble with!
I look forward to your comments, thanks a lot.
Best wishes, Jonathan
Author Jonathan Kerr wrote on Oct. 11, 2012 @ 19:10 GMT
(PS. The above post was of course a joke! JK)
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