Hi Ed,

Thanks for the warm welcome back. I haven't had an opportunity to read any of the essays here yet, but from what I see I think there are some great ones that I'm really looking forward to—yours among them of course.

You're right that I've considered other aspects of the problem of the nature of time, along similar lines to what I wrote about in my last essay, but of course relating to the topic of this contest. In 25,000 characters, one can only discuss so much coherently, so there was a lot more that I could bring into this discussion, with different aspects of the problem to look at; but also, I learned a lot through the discussions we all had during the last contest, and was able to draw on what I think is a clearer picture.

For that reason, I really want to thank everyone who discussed that problem during the last contest, acknowledging the influence it had on this essay, and encourage discussion on the nature of time here.

Time is a notoriously difficult concept to parse, and I think it's also the most important one to clearly tackle before physics can truly move forward out of its current deadlock, since it's connected to every major problem we're currently facing—as this essay may illustrate, through Wheeler's own acknowledgement—so I think it's just so important to open a dialogue that allows us to develop our thoughts on time and use it to move past this problem that's been unresolved for far too long.

I hope you enjoy the essay!

Daryl

broken link

Hopefully this works...

Hi Paul,

It’s nice to hear from you again. However, I do wish you’d read through and try to understand the content of my essays, rather than (apparently) just sifting through, looking for something to take issue with.

“It is not a matter of spacetime existing…” Isn’t it? There’s a pretty common conception that space-time exists, or that parts of it exist anyway, and I’m trying to speak to that. But do I agree with the idea of space-time as something that exists? Of course I don’t, as I’ve written about in my essay.

I think if you did try to understand the content of the essay, and not just look for something to disagree with, you’d find a lot of similarity in our views; e.g., you wrote that “Existence is only spatial.” In fact, the argument I’ve tried to make in the essay is that a three-dimensional Universe exists, and our four-dimensional physics describes its history. It’s a view known as presentism, and it’s very unpopular; but part of arguing for an unpopular viewpoint is arguing against the popular one—i.e., you’ve got to address it, and not just say that the things people commonly think of are no matter because you feel you’ve got the right idea about things. So I said I was concerned with what it would mean for space-time to exist; “would” being the operative word.

As I said, I think there’s a lot that we would agree on. It’s therefore always very puzzling to have you arguing against me while stating the things I’ve argued for.

Daryl

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Dear Joe,

Thanks very much for your gracious comment. I’ve only managed a cursory look through your essay, but I wanted to say that I like your use of “codswallop”, and think your main argument that each and every event that ever occurs is unique, is a good one.

I wanted to clarify a couple of points that you made in your comment. The first quotation was given in summary of the logical consequences of a view that I don’t agree with. In any case, I think you’ve mistaken me there, because the eventual conclusion of the argument is that according to the view (as commonly acknowledged) time shouldn’t actually pass, as we commonly think of it. I think it does, and I think relativity theory describes that very well, contrary to popular belief.

The second quote you gave is actually something I quoted from Juergen Ehlers, and it’s also something I disagree with. I think there very much is an all-pervading “now”—a three-dimensional Universe—that exists, by which I mean that time passes, with new events occurring throughout space at every instant.

When people like Ehlers say things like “The four-dimensional world simply is, it doesn’t evolve”, I take them to be describing a 4D block reality—all the events that seem to occur throughout eternity—as existing, in the same sense as I think of the 3D Universe as existing, except that the 4D block isn’t supposed to change as the 3D Universe I’m thinking of—the all-pervading “now”—does.

Anyway, I think this one idea—the 3D Universe exists—is probably the same as what you mean when you say “One real Universe is eternally occurring, once”, and that it’s also what Paul means when he says “Existence is only spatial”.

Daryl

Dear Hoang cao Hai,

I have to admit that I think I don't understand the question. Sorry for that.

I see from your essay that you must be a realist, since you're arguing for an absolute reality. I've done this as well. I think we probably share a similar viewpoint on a number of issues. I've examined relativistic effects in my essay, and argued that they are indeed consistent with these views that I think we share. I'm arguing against the view that reality is relative, not for it.

I hope that starts to answer your questions.

Best,

Daryl

Dear Manuel,

Thanks very much for reading my essay, and for your gracious comment. I will read your essay and comment. And I'll give it a fair rating. But please allow me some time to get to it, as I've got a number of others I have to get to before then.

Best wishes,

Daryl

И это верно: «Time is the denominator of existence…»

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And it's true: «Time is the denominator of existence ...»

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Dear Vladimir,

Thank you very much for your comments! I'm so glad that you read and appreciated my essay. It's great that you see the relevance of the topic to this particular contest, and I'm glad you've agreed with the argument as well, as you say it's true that time is the denominator of existence.

I haven't managed to read many of the essays here yet, but I thought I'd mention that a point I've tried to make, that there should be some sort of existence to begin with, so that events can occur and information can come to be, is, I think, similarly made in some other essays as well, which you might be interested to read if you haven't yet. For instance, Lawrence Crowell commented on his own essay, that "The core issue is that It From Bit is undecidable, for any schema of that nature is based on an incomplete axiomatic system". Also, Cristi Stoica discusses Wheeler's "law without law" in his essay.

And the first point I discussed in the essay, that space-time shouldn't be thought to exist anyway---which is just a wrong way of thinking about it---is noted as well in the introduction to Edwin Eugene Klingman's excellent essay.

Your essay too sounds very interesting to me, and I very much look forward to reading it!

Thanks again, and best of luck!

Daryl

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Dear Daryl,

Augustine's utterance was also quoted by v. Weizsaecker who did also not yet understand what Michael Helland reminded us of:

"Newton wrote that for time to be understood, it should be considered as two different flavors: the relative time depicted by our clocks and other moving/changing systems, and absolute time which is external."

I wonder why I was forced to rediscover Newton's clarifying insight and why my attempt to derive consequences has been facing fierce rejection.

Best regards,

Eckard

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Peter,

I forgot about the thought experiment. I'm not sure I understand it. Are the two clocks moving with the train and the other attached to a post at rest with respect to the outside? Do they need to be clocks, or are we just thinking of a signal that flashes once from each of them and is observed by someone at the other end of the train? Do the flashes occur, although side-by-side in, say, the y-coordinate, at the same value of x and t, so that in the x-t frame they look like the same event?

It might help if you send me your derivation. I'm very interested to see what you've got.

Thanks,

Daryl

Daryl,

Thanks. That's a bit clearer (if 'clarity' is really possible in this 100yr fog!)

Your description of my scenario is correct. And let's say two 1ms flashes, giving a 'space-time event'. But they're not observed as either the same time, wavelength or period. I think the solution I propose adds that pinch of magic dust to yours to finally clear the mist;

Flash C1 is IN the train. The train and air are an inertial system through which light propagates at c, (discrete field, = DFM), it's also at rest with the observer so the event remains 1ms, and with no Doppler wavelength change (0 delta lambda).

Flash C2 is outside the train but in the same inertial FRAME (at rest with the observer). Again no delta lambda on observer interaction ("detection"). However, it arrives BEFORE C1! This is because is DID change speed to propagate at c in the frame of the air outside the train, but then changed back on re-entering the original (emitter/detector) frame. That surprisingly is as found and as SR.

Flash C3 (fixed post) ALSO arrives before C1, so with C2, as it also propagates at c in the outside air frame. It then also shifts on meeting the observer frame, but this time there had been no INITIAL shift, so it is found to be blue shifted; i.e. both wavelength lambda AND the 'space-time period' have undergone 'length contraction'. (A flash from behind would be dilated or red shifted).

That rationalisation does take a little thought to assimilate as it will at first be quite unfamiliar (in a near vacuum the 'extinction distance' is greater so we need a far longer train to get rid of the birefringent mix). Careful thinking through should cause the fog to start lifting.

Let me know how you get on.

Peter

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Dear Eckard,

That sounds like an excellent challenge, which I very much look forward to following up on. Let us get to the bottom of this!

Best regards,

Daryl

Dear Michael,

Thanks for your post. Although I think anything that could ever cause anything else to exist first has to exist itself (and your algorithm does operate on its own time), I find your comment and your essay's abstract intriguing and will try to get to it.

Daryl

Dear Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta,

Thanks for your post. Your essay sounds interesting to me, as I think we’ll see eye to eye on some fundamental issues. I hope you do enjoy my essay when you read it!

There was one particular statement you made that raised a red flag for me though. You wrote “The main stream community people want magic from science instead of realty especially in the subject of cosmology. We all know well that cosmology is a subject where speculations rule”, and really I couldn’t disagree with that more. Out of all the areas of physics, I think cosmology is the one that’s done the best to maintain a grasp on reality. I believe this is why, despite being more inclined towards philosophy, as my main interest lies in searching for a clearer and more realistic understanding of nature, I persevered through the “shut up and calculate!/purely hypothetical mathematical derivations leading to descriptions of observable events are all that matter/etc.” attitude in modern physics, to a PhD in cosmology.

Don’t get me wrong: I do think the model is fundamentally flawed, and people are reading too much into the measured parameters; but modellers in every science are prone to doing that, and I think with cosmology the heart’s in the right place. Cosmology aims to describe the large-scale structure of our Universe; to realistically account for the redshifts, etc., of distant galaxies that we believe really exist, despite the fact that we’re only observing images of them that were shone into space millions of years ago---i.e., so we can't really verify that they're actually there "now", in the cosmological sense of "now".

I think the dividing line in this contest is between people who strive for a sensible, realistic, and self-consistent description of nature that would agree with all observations we can make, and those who care more to push the limits of nonsense, to derive a theory of reality that’s not inconsistent—i.e. is technically compatible—with observation, despite possibly being nothing like experience. Personally, I’m in the former camp, and while I can appreciate to some extent the sense of scepticism that motivates the latter, I think it’s been more damaging than anything, and really defeats the purpose of science and philosophy.

The best example I know of is the Macheo-Leibnizian stance that a Universal frame of rest isn’t observable, and is therefore to be rejected from the point of view of relativity. This supports the Einsteinian stance on the relativity of simultaneity, and consequently the description of reality as a block universe in which time doesn’t really flow. According to the sceptical stance, this isn’t strictly inconsistent with experience, and we have no way of proving that all of eternity isn’t real as what we think of in our minds as now, right now, each and every second.

As I argued in this essay, however, this has often led to a very inconsistent way of thinking, in which all of eternity is actually thought of as existing—i.e. another temporal dimension is snuck into the mix—and the whole thing becomes a muddled mess with even more structure, which is even further from being scientifically defendable than the one bit of structure—the ultimate cosmic rest-frame—that they wanted to deny at the outset. In short, those who argue in this way can’t even get their story straight, but that’s generally okay by them because it’s all a bunch of abstract unobservable gibberish, which they think is a good thing because they anyhow take quantum physics to support the idea that reality really is a bunch of nonsense. In short, its stances like the one that there is no cosmic rest-frame, that lead physicists into rabbit holes where they’re happy to play around with math and make a complete mess of things and deny the notion that reality could even possibly make sense.

But then, as I argued in my previous essay, the Macheo-Leibnizian stance is actually DEAD WRONG! For the past 80 years we’ve reasoned from the cosmological data that there is actually a cosmic frame of rest—an absolute rest-frame—and the CMBR provides unprecedented scientific evidence that this is so. The observation of a cosmic rest-frame more than motivates the idea that only the three-dimensional Universe exists, and therefore time actually passes, etc., and the events that occur in the Universe as it exists make up the space-time map of all observables, which we describe with four-dimensional physics.

Sorry if this sounds like I’ve gotten my back up. I really don’t agree with a lot of what cosmology is supposed to have established. But I do think cosmologists have done a better job of *striving* for a realistic and sensible theory than physicists in other areas. Mis-attributing the meaning of measured parameters isn't the same as pushing abstract magic as something better than a sensible description. I still think cosmology is, at its heart, a realist's theory.

Daryl

I got the link to my previous essay wrong again!

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Dear Datyl,

Thank you very much for an informative post.

I say Thank God , I could provoke anger in some one at least.!!!

I will answer all your questions, and please read the following in this post...

You remove all the "NO"s you will get main stream cosmology. If have any differences on any point we can have eye to eye.

after this FQXi also you can contact me by my id snp.gupta@gmail.com

- - - Dark enrgy , dark matter are calculation mistakes that rules to start with,What do you say?????

Please see, and discuss on any point, you feel not satisfied. . . .

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/2012/11/fundamen
tal-questions-addressed-by.html

Fundamental questions addressed by Dynamic Universe Model



This Model is new Cosmological model fundamentally and mathematically different from Bigbang, Steady state model etc. I am giving below its Foundational points, Present Day unsolved problems, which can’t be solved by other prominent models, New Satellite Mass reduction technology and publications (Four Books published).

Main foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model:

-No Isotropy

-No Homogeneity

-No Space-time continuum

-Non-uniform density of matter, universe is lumpy

-No singularities

-No collisions between bodies

-No blackholes

-No warm holes

-No Bigbang

-No repulsion between distant Galaxies

-Non-empty Universe

-No imaginary or negative time axis

-No imaginary X, Y, Z axes

-No differential and Integral Equations mathematically

-No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to GR on any condition

-No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models

-No many mini Bigbangs

-No Missing Mass / Dark matter

-No Dark energy

-No Bigbang generated CMB detected

-No Multi-verses

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Dear Daryl,

Did you get solution to the above problem?

Please try Dynamic Universe Model with some numerical values, give initial values of velocities, take gravitation into consideration( because you can not experiment in ISOLATION). complete your numerical experiment.

later try changing values of masses and initial values of velocities....

Calculate with different setups and compare your results, if you have done a physical experiment.

I sincerely feel it is better to do experiment physically, or numerically instead of breaking your head on just logic. This way you will solve your problem faster.....

Best

=snp

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Dear Daryl,

Please find my reply here.

Regards,

Eckard

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snp:

This is a very simple experiment, which you are overcomplicating. There is no need to 'break your head' on it, because it's purposely very clear and very simple. And there have been many tests that have confirmed the validity of SR in its applicable domain, although this particular experiment is so simple that it hardly needs to be carried out.

Eckard:

thanks very much for your post! I'll respond to it over there.

Daryl

Here's my first response:

Eckard,

Thanks for your answer. I’m sorry you felt that I mean to ‘test’ you with this question. I just thought it would be a nice concrete place to start a discussion about relativity and check on what we can agree, as you previously suggested.

And sorry for the confusion over the definition of a ‘gunslinger’. From Wikipedia: Gunfighter and gunslinger /ˈɡʌnslɪŋər/, are 20th-century words, used in cinema or literature, referring to men in the American Old West who had gained a reputation as being dangerous with a gun.

In the scenario I posted, which I adapted from Greene’s ‘Fabric of the Cosmos’, the two men are dueling with laser pistols, so their ‘bullets’ travel at c. And someone observes it all from outside the train. I asked: “Do the gunslingers see the signal at the same time, or not? According to which perspective? If no, is it still a fair fight (assuming each stands his ground)? How do you reconcile this with there being one common time?”

We don’t agree on the answer to the first question, so let’s consider your suggestion 3: “The velocity of light c equals to the distance d between the position of emitter at the moment of emission and the position of receiver at the moment of detection divided by the time of flight t: c=d/t.”

In the frame of the observer outside the train, the signal propagates at c towards both gunslingers, from the place of emission. While the signal is propagating, the guy on the left is approaching that point of emission and the guy to the right is moving away from it. The distance that the light eventually travels in order to reach the guy on the left should therefore be less, in the outside observer’s frame of reference, than the distance that the light eventually travels in order to reach the guy at the right. With c constant, this means, by your suggestion 3, that the signal reaches the guy at the left in less time than it takes to reach the guy to the right.

On the other hand, in the gunslingers’ proper frame of reference on the train, they never move relative to the place where the signal is emitted, so the distance that the light travels is the same in either direction, takes the same amount of time to get to both gunslingers, and is therefore observed by each of them at the same time.

Do you disagree that the signal will be observed synchronously in the gunslingers’ frame, but the gunslinger on the left will see the signal before the one on the right in the frame of the observer standing outside the train? If we can agree on this basic picture, which doesn’t say anything about what’s *really* going on, but only demonstrates the issue that Einstein and others realised, then we can move on to discuss how we would interpret it. The key, in my opinion, has to do with what Paul brought up in his first post above, on Jun. 12, 2013 @ 18:47 GMT. As I keep saying, synchronicity and simultaneity are different things.

Regards,

Daryl

And here's the second:

Oh I can’t help myself. Can I say already what I think is the problem with Einstein’s proposal that synchronous events are simultaneous? It’s perfectly exemplified in the following quotation from Greene (next three paragraphs):

"So: *if you buy the notion that reality consists of the things in your freeze-frame mental image of right now, and if you agree that your* now *is no more valid than the* now *of someone located far away in space who can move freely, then reality encompasses all of the events of spacetime*. The total loaf exists [he's been chopping up space-time like a loaf of bread]. Just as we envision all of space as *really* being out there, as *really* existing, we should also envision all of time as *really* being out there, as *really* existing, too. Past, present, and future certainly appear to be distinct entities. But, as Einstein once said, "For we convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent." The only thing that's real is the whole of spacetime.

“In this way of thinking, events, regardless of when they happen from any particular perspective, just *are*. They all exist. They eternally occupy their particular point in spacetime. There is no flow. If you were having a great time at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, 1999, you still are, since that is just one immutable location in spacetime. It is tough to accept this description, since our worldview so forcefully distinguishes between past, present, and future. But if we stare intently at this familiar temporal scheme and confront it with the cold hard facts of modern physics, its only place of refuge seems to lie within the human mind.

“Undeniably, our conscious experience seems to sweep through the slices. It is as though our minds provide the projector light referred to earlier, so that moments of time come to life when they are illuminated by the power of consciousness. The flowing sensation from one moment to the next arises from our conscious recognition of change in our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. And the sequence of change seems to have a continuous motion; it seems to unfold into a coherent story… The intuitive image of a projector light that brings each new *now* to life just doesn’t hold up to careful examination. Instead, every moment is illuminated, and every moment remains illuminated. Every moment *is*. Under close scrutiny, the flowing river of time more closely resembles a giant block of ice with every moment forever frozen into place."

People do think of space-time as existing, but not always just as such a frozen block. In the general relativistic picture, objects are more often thought to move around, warping space-time as they go. How often have you heard that when something falls into a black hole, it has to keep falling towards the singularity at r=0 because r is the timelike direction within the event horizon, so even light can’t escape it? It can move in any spatial direction it likes, but even light has to keep going towards r=0. Let me ask you: if one of these gunslingers we’re talking about jumped into a black hole, could he shoot a laser bullet towards r=2m and one towards r=0 (say he’s got two guns and fires them simultaneously in either ‘direction’) so that, although they’d both fall towards the singularity out of necessity, the latter bullet would actually get there ‘first’? Should that be any more possible to do than for you to take a gun and point it towards the past and another and point it towards the future and have the latter make it to 2014 before the former? The whole concept is so completely inconsistent and blatantly wrong!—and it’s truly remarkable that it’s persisted as long as it has.

So, the first point I addressed in my essay—which I couldn’t avoid having to address because nothing else I could say would make any sense from the point of view of the current incorrect paradigm in physics—is the blatant inconsistency in this common way of thinking of space-time as something that exists: due to the “relativity of simultaneity”, people *do* think of space-time as existing, as the Greene quotation illustrates, *but the idea smuggles in an extra dimension that’s not formally part of the theory*! They think of a block universe—all of space-time—as existing, which sneaks in the same sense of temporality as we think of when we think of a block of wood as existing. Just as a 3D block of wood sitting somewhere as time passes is a 4D concept, described by 4D physics with three spatial and one temporal dimensions, a 4D block universe existing as Greene has described it is a *5D* concept, described by four space-time dimensions and one temporal dimension. There’s more unobservable (and completely unjustifiable) structure in this view than there is when we just assume absolute simultaneity and a true rest frame, which is what Einstein rejected from the point of view of parsimony; i.e., he was so parsimonious that his theory led to a conception of reality with *more* added junk than if he’d just accepted what’s *obvious* from the beginning.

But the 5D idea that Greene describes really is a misrepresentation of what Einstein’s SR is actually supposed to imply. So: what does Einstein’s proposal that simultaneity is relative *really* mean? The block universe that’s a logical consequence of the proposal is *just* a 4D slice of that 5D reality. The block universe doesn’t exist; it’s just a temporally singular thing that pops in and out of that ‘existence’ in an instant.

My point is that when one finally understands, and makes this clear distinction, and denies the temporality that our thoughts always want to sneak into the idea, then it should be very clear that the Einsteinian view, that synchronous events should be simultaneous, *must* be wrong. The reason is obvious: *something* exists; there is *some* sense in which time passes, because right now is earlier than right now is earlier than right now, etc.—or at least it’s not all on par as we perceive it. That much is true, even if it’s because all of eternity *exists* in the 5D sense described by Greene, and our consciousnesses simply flow through our worldtubes like a river that flows everywhere and never runs dry. For that consciousness to flow, and the block to exist, that fifth dimension is required. The pure 4D block universe, unadulterated by our thoughts, is impossible to reconcile with any realistic sense of the world, and those who argue for it always do fall back on the 5D concept at one time or other, if not always so overtly as Greene does.

So, what I propose is that only the three-dimensional world around us exists, and there is only one true sense of simultaneity. In the gunslingers example, the signal either reaches them simultaneously or it doesn’t, regardless of whether that is described as synchronous in the chosen frame of reference or not. This bit of structure that’s necessary to form a coherent theory of existence that’s consistent with the apparent flow of time, etc., precludes any informational bits that might come to be. Above all else, without *existence*, bits can’t exist—for bits that exist can’t be the cause of their own existence.

So how do we reconcile the results of the gunslingers example with the notion of absolute simultaneity? Take the outside observer to be perfectly at rest in the cosmic rest-frame. Now consider the perspective of the two gunslingers. Is it so difficult to see that from their perspective, if they’d just lift the blinds so they can see the world around them, then they too would realise that the guy to the left is going to see the signal first, because he meets it part-way between his position at the time of emission and the signal’s position at the time of emission?

Of course it’s not difficult to see that that’s going to be their perception. Just because everything can also be described as if the train were at rest and the Universe were zipping past—just because he can bounce a ball on the floor, or toss it in the air, and have it come right back to his hand—doesn’t mean the gunslingers are unable to come to grips with the fact that they’re actually moving, and the sense that the guy to the left is going to see the signal first.

But this is the rock that the whole relativity church was built upon: Mach’s failed argument that even if there is a cosmic rest frame we could never observe it; Einstein’s wrong argument that it’s just superfluous structure and the theory’s just as good without it. WE HAVE A VERY PRECISE OBSERVATION OF A COSMIC REST-FRAME, and all the relative motion between galaxies, which is very small compared to the speed of light, is full well understood to be motion through the Universe.

So let’s go back to Greene’s statement: *if you buy the notion that reality consists of the things in your freeze-frame mental image of right now, and if you agree that your* now *is no more valid than the* now *of someone located far away in space who can move freely*. This statement has been fed to us for a hundred years, and it’s just plain wrong. For which freeze-frame mental image of right now are we supposed to say is the valid one for the gunslingers to hold: the one with the blinds shut or the one with them open? If the former is no more valid a mental image to them than the latter, and acceptance of the latter in light of all the cosmological evidence we’ve found over the past century is also consistent with the apparent fact that time does flow, then why the **** should we hold the former up as the crown jewel of objective thought, which proves to us without a doubt that there’s no such thing as the passage of time, and all eternity ‘exists’? If the freeze-frame mental image of right now that’s held by the gunslingers when they’ve blocked out the evidence from the world around them leads to an unrealistic description of physical reality when we assume that it’s a true representation of “right now”, then we should instead assume that the true representation of “right now” is the freeze-frame mental image of right now that’s held by the gunslingers when they’ve opened the blinds!

Cheers,

Daryl

Thanks, Ed.

I skimmed through his essay earlier and couldn't see how he was proposing something different from teleparallelism, but I'll have another look. Also, I don't see why he's setting the cosmological constant to zero. It doesn't have to (and I think it shouldn't) be interpreted as dark energy, but can be treated as a geometrical constant. The full vacuum Einstein equation is R_ab=Lambda*g_ab.

Daryl

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That was me.

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A changing present; however, this "change" is not by virtue of constant rearrangement, but simply because it endures. For that reason, regardless of any possible rearrangement, each instant is already different from any other. In that sense, the present is always changing. I think this is what Joe Fisher means as well.

The alternative you suggested, that the present "moves" along the "passage of time", brings to mind a physical dimension along which the present flows. In order for the 3D present to flow along that fourth dimension, all of it would have to exist, and that's really a 5D concept.

But I think existence *is* the fourth dimension, even in the relativistic description--but the only thing that's ever real is the three-dimensional enduring present.

Daryl

Daryl,

Are they one and the same? It endures because the energy is conserved and time is the measure of regularity, because it is both enduring and in motion.

Existence is the fourth dimension, in that without both the effect of sequence and the concept of narrative, we don't exist. That doesn't make it physically real.

We seem to be on the same page.

You do realize this view refutes the conceptual basis for Big Bang Cosmology? No wormholes, or multiverses either. Just scales beyond our ability to conceive.

Regards,

John

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Dear Héctor,

Thanks for the summary of your essay. It does indeed sound interesting to me, and I look forward to reading it. From what you said, I suspect you would find some interest in the above discussion I've been having with John Merryman--especially the first part.

Thanks for commenting here, and best wishes!

Daryl

Dear Peter,

Thanks very much for the gentle reminder this morning. I've been struggling to get through a few things, but managed to read and rate your essay today. Well done! It was an interesting read.

And thanks for the supportive words about my essay. It hasn't been nice seeing how many people hate it without bothering to comment why they do, or alternatively simply hate me.

Anyway, maybe it will be better to continue our discussion from above in this thread, since it might be easier to find?

There are a couple of things that concern me in what you wrote. Your proposal of comparing descriptions of different things from different frames of reference doesn't seem right to me. I don't see why you are suggesting that the description of A in frame A should be compared to the description of B in frame B. That seems like comparing apples and oranges, but maybe I'm missing something. I think we can compare A and B in frame A, or A and B in frame B, or even compare the descriptions in frame A to the descriptions in frame B, but comparing A in frame A to B in frame B doesn't make sense to me. Here's what I'm thinking: suppose I took a rubber band and marked off centimetres on it using a ruler, and then used it to measure my foot. Say it's 27 cm. Then I stretch the rubber band out and measure your foot. If it reads 15 cm, would I really be justified in saying my foot is bigger? The other point I don't really see the reason for is considering the Doppler shift at all. Are you saying light should travel faster or slower if it is Doppler shifted? I might still just be missing something.

Best regards,

Daryl

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Peter,

Thanks for rating, and for continuing to press the point here. We're still not seeing eye-to-eye on--not that that has to be a bad thing, as you've said.

It seems to me that you're conceiving of a "frame" as a space, or a medium through which light propagates. But a frame of reference is just a coordinate system that one uses to describe space. You can run a tape measure along train tracks and use that as the coordinate in your frame of reference, and say that the train is "moving"--or you can run a tape measure along the floor of the train and use that as the coordinate in your frame of reference, so you claim that the outside world is "moving". We can analyse the situation in different frames of reference, and relate those descriptions to each other through covariant coordinate transformations; but when you speak of light entering one frame, etc., it seems that you're thinking of these different frames as different spaces, rather than just different ways of measuring space.

It still seems like you're saying, "A happens with the rubber band unstretched and B happens when it's stretched, so B happens more quickly", but I think you've got to make your measurements either with the band stretched or unstretched. Sorry if it seems like I'm being obtuse; it just seems inconsistent, but I am trying to keep an open mind.

Daryl

Dear George,

Thanks very much for reading and rating my essay. I've read through parts of yours before now, and had intended to post a comment and rate it when I'm able to read through the whole thing, but I wanted to say in response to your comment that I'm glad you were able to appreciate my essay because I see a lot of value in your epistemic viewpoint.

Many thanks again, and best wishes,

Daryl

Daryl,

I am really happy to meet you. Thank you very much for compliments and kindly words. I understand your critical remarks also. I can say that I have some explanations and answers on these. But, I will tell now you one thing only. I am never pretended to be fully right on the all aspects. The same approach I have use in relation to our deserved pioneers as will. I never accept that any of them must be perceived by us as the indisputable and finitely authority. We must remember always that they was ordinary/normally people first (same as we are) So, we have right to make mistakes and we must not excluded that our teachers also can have it.

Then why I am talking so sure and criticizing on left and right? Matter is - I have use some approach that give me many incredible RESULTS! I am talking sure with this only. (And lot of people just do not take in attention mentioned ,,trifle,,!) Let me just offer you my works (mentioned in references) Try study these. I really believe it will interesting for you. Then you can continue my ideas, reject some points, suggest new modifications that will bring to new RESULTS etc. That is the normally way of development of our knowledge.

My Best wishes,

George

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Hi John,

Yes I did get it as I was preparing for a trip. I've just arrived in Lausanne for a metaphysics of time workshop tomorrow, but I will read your essay. Thanks very much for reading mine, and for rating it (you gave it a 6, right?). I will read yours.

Daryl

Dear Akinbo,

Thanks very much for your comment. Sorry it's taken so long to reply, but I've finally managed to read your essay. I thought your analysis of monads was very interesting, and I really liked the way you handled your discussion of historical philosophical views on the topic. I think it's really important that anyone who stands on the shoulders of these giants should know what they were actually thinking and how they arrived at their ideas, since textbooks often either misrepresent things, or just leave out the original reasoning entirely.

Regarding your question about existence/non-existence as a binary choice, I think our views are very different on that point, although I can appreciate what you're going for. It's just that I do think a continual passage of time is fundamental, and prior to any particular thing existing. I can think of a three-dimensional set of monads existing, like the "one-dimensional" set you've drawn at different stages in the two figures in your essay, but I can't think of those two instants if the monads don't exist. And in order for objective time to pass uniformly throughout the Universe, which is what I've argued for in my essay despite relative proper duration, etc., I don't think random discrete particle creation and annihilation in the Universe could be the cause of this uniform absolute duration.

That's why I think 'it from bit' has to fail, despite the possibility that bits (monads) are the fundamental building blocks of everything in the Universe. But I'm no stick in the mud, and as I said I can appreciate your position, and I enjoyed your essay.

Best of luck in the contest,

Daryl

Dear Yuri,

You know, there is a sense in which I agree with that. Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I hope you liked the essay.

Daryl

Dear Marcoen,

Thanks for reading my essay. You've asked a very good question, which puts me on the spot for having made a very strong claim at the end of my essay, and requires me to be accountable for it, although I had hoped it was justified sufficiently well from what I had previously written in the essay.

I think Einstein's deduction of the relativity of simultaneity is more of a reductio ad absurdum than the derivation of a truly interesting result because he begins with the operational definition of simultaneity, and eventually shows that this is relative, which comes to mean that not only is each particular instant so described "simultaneous" in the representative frame, but really the whole block of events that occur throughout eternity has to be simultaneous all at once.

The standard argument for this is given, e.g., in Ken Wharton's essay, and I've argued against that both here in my essay and again at length on Ken's page. Furthermore, since any meaningful definition of "simultaneity" at an instant already assumes a dynamical passage of time, I've argued for a different position in which passage is really fundamental, whereas Einstein began his first relativity paper by defining "simultaneity", and then went on to derive a picture in which the definition is meaningless anyway, for all intents and purposes.

I hope that clarifies what I meant by that statement.

All the best,

Daryl

Hi Ken,

Thanks for dropping by and commenting. Yes, it was really nice to meet you at the conference. I agree that while our views remain ontologically very different, they are physically (i.e., not just empirically) equivalent, which from my point of view is a really good thing. As you know from my essay, and our discussions on- and off-line, that means something to me because I think (and I think you agree) that a lot of people on both sides of the dynamical/adynamical divide have the physical picture completely messed up--e.g., growing block-ers, and people who think of consciousness as crawling upwards along world-lines, or of the block as warping and changing, etc. It's good to have a consistent interpretation of the physics!

No worries about not commenting on the essay directly here. I think we've sufficiently hashed out our views for now, although I do hope to keep in touch, and look forward to more discussion with you about the nature of time in the future.

Good luck in the contest, and best wishes!

Daryl

Dear Antony,

Thanks so much! I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to respond to your earlier post before now, but thanks very much for what you wrote there. I'm glad you liked my essay so much, and really appreciate your comment!! I've been really busy the past few weeks, on top of which I was staying in places with really poor wifi, so wasn't able to contribute to the contest much. I've read a few essays today, and yours was the next on my list after the one I'm currently reading, so you can expect to hear from me soon.

All the best,

Daryl

Dear Daryl,

No worries glad to help.

I can appreciate the situation as I was stuck in the middle of Bulgarian countryside a few weeks ago, with very weak intermittent wifi too!

Also Portugal where I had to read while in cafes - much to my wife's disapproval ;o)

FQXi seems to have fixed the current bug - seems it was a server migration issue.

The earlier rating drought was also a drama on here too! haha.

Hope you like the essay, if you do get the chance - as it isn't very mainstream. No problem if you don't.

Best wishes,

Antony

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Hugh,

I like that quote from Capek, too. I think it addresses a significant issue with relativity. I am puzzled by your comment, though, because this is an issue that I went on to directly address in my essay, and you've said nothing about that. I don't think reality is timeless, and I think succession is very real, due to a fundamental passage that I attempted to reconcile with relativity in my essay. If your model is both timeless AND incorporates a dynamical flow of consciousness, then I fear you've got an idea like Weyl (there's a famous quotation by him in my essay as well), which is really five-dimensional.

Regards,

Daryl

Thanks Torsten!

I'm part-way through your essay now, reading on my phone on the highway home.

Best, Daryl

John,

Thanks for posting, and sorry I didn't get to your discussion with Tom. I think it would be a great thing if some sort of proceedings of these contests could get published.

And sorry to be slow in responding here again. I was hoping to read through our discussion again in order to re-wet my feet, but it seems that I may never get the time, so I'm going to try to wing it. I think I remember the point that I think should make all the difference. It has to do with calling c the 'speed of light', and all this issue with calling the speed of light constant.

I think you'd admit that we're converging on an understanding here. I'm going to ask you to refer back to my last two posts on the 19th of July--the almost-Aha! posts--keeping a few extra points in mind.

In those posts I explained why it makes sense to refer to c as the 'speed of light'. And you'll admit that c is a constant. However, as you've noted there's a real sense in which the speed of light is not constant in an expanding universe. However, c is constant, and null lines are invariant. Those are the invariants in the theory, and in that sense the 'speed of light' is an invariant quantity. But calling the speed of light a constant is a loose way of speaking, and maybe it's just too misleading and confusing when talking about an expanding universe.

Now, please consider the following from the Postulates of special relativity Wikipedia page:

"Also Hermann Minkowski implicitly used both postulates when he introduced the Minkowski space formulation, even though he showed that c can be seen as a space-time constant, and the identification with the speed of light is derived from optics."

Now, thinking of c as a space-time constant and the null lines as invariants of the metric, please have a look at the posts I mentioned, and let me know how that sits.

Daryl

Hi Daryl,

I've read over your essay several more times.

You wrote:

"If time objectively passes in the way that I've described, as opposed to not passing at all (in the case of a real block universe), then the usual justification for the collapse scenario is invalid, because it takes reality to be synchronous in general reference frames".

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by collapse scenario. Is it wave function collapse? However, I like that you've examined relativity so critically, especially the example of the sun 8 minutes away. Are you saying that reality doesn't exist because of relativity?

Please excuse my ignorance here, as I think you've a very good essay and I'm just struggling with the above question a point a little.

If you can clarify or give an example, I'd love to discuss further!

Best wishes and thanks for the comments on my thread.

Antony

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Hi Daryl, Tony,

I really like Daryl's statement:

"The way for relativity to make sense is to assume that time truly passes and simultaneity is absolute, regardless of the fact that simultaneous events won't be described as synchronous in just any given reference frame."

Simultaneity is the fact, synchronicity is the communication of the event over distances at the speed of light, obviously synchronous only for equidistant observers, or other equivalent special relations between frames.

I have put enough thought into it to convince myself that there's absolutely no way our universe could "hold together" in stable fashion for 14 giga-year unless simultaneity spans the universe. This is why the "ict" formalism is appropriate (despite MTW). The orthogonality of time is a different order of orthogonality than that between the three spatial dimensions. Thus the signature: (-,+,+,+).

I also agree with Daryl's realist position that things should "make sense". I've often heard that "our brains evolved" in the classical world and we shouldn't expect to make sense of a quantum universe, or relativistic universe, etc." But if consciousness is as I propose in my essay, an inherent property of creation, then one would expect things to make sense.

I've begun reading a new book, "Bankrupting Physics" by Unzicker and Jones, which I recommend other realists.

Thanks for keeping comments going after the voting has closed.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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