You seem to only be able to think in absolute terms. That works as well.

The simplest case then is Earth is arbitrarily designated as stationary and Bob moves fast the whole time and thus ages less because physical processes slow down if they're not stationary. That's actually pretty simple, and the twins thing isn't a paradox at all. Reference frames don't come into play at all with this interpretation. Why don't you go with it?

Doesn't matter - same point applies. They both speed away and then come back together, yes? — Bartricks

The apples are just sitting there, not in relative motion. One in the fridge (which works by retarding chemical reactions, not dilating time) and one not.

THey won't both be older than each other, will they? So, what's the point?

The apples stay the same age. One just rots quicker.

If the apples move fast, then yes, one actually gets older than the other. This has been demonstrated conclusively with small fast objects that decay at very known rates.

No. The original setup is that the two move apart from each other. There is no designation of either of them being the stationary one.

Under absolute terms like that, perhaps the guy with the rocket is initially the stationary one and it is Earth that is moving quickly. The answer still comes out the same.

I never said one is traveling through space and the other isn't. I said each was stationary relative to a different inertial reference frame. You're using absolute phrasing. The situation is quite different given an absolute interpretation.

No, they can't. One would have to accelerate and become stationary in a different frame. The other twin ages slower in that frame as well, but in that new frame, the twin back home is already much older than the twin turning around.

BTW, the apple example is more like gravitational dilation. An apple on the top floor of a building rots faster than one on ground floor, all else being equal.

They don't meet back up if they stay stationary in different frames

It would be best to continue this discussion on the SciForums forum, rather than here, because this is a philosophy forum, and the above is a physic issue. — Mike Fontenot

And I have. I'm a newbie there.

This, on the other hand, is philosophy:

The underlying solution to the apparent contradictions you mention is the notion of two kinds of time.

Processor time which proceeds at the same rate throughout the universe in each tick of which the entire universe is recomputed including the computation of the allocation of the constant identical total distance traveled through spacetime of every object between distance in time and distance in space. The result is the universe as the present moment surface of a cosmic hypersphere in which everything is at the same processor time but objects have different proper times depending on how much spatial distance they have traveled along their own world lines in their own frames, — Edgar L Owen

You lost me there. In their own frames (a block concept), they travel no spatial distance at all, by definition. You continue to mix philosophy of time interpretations.

Also, why a hypersphere? Are you saying space is curved and finite and wraps around if you go far enough? Glorified (non-local) computational balloon analogy?

Within this present moment surface, frames view other frames from the perspective of their different coordinate systems and calculate differed relative values to the space and time values of clocks in relative motion to their own.

OK, 'present moment surface.' is consistent with what you're saying, but then other frames do not correspond to this surface, but rather to hyperplanes tilted one way or another so that only along the 2D plane of intersection are simultaneous events 'actual' (part of the hypersurface. Why would you consider such a frame valid if most of consists of nonexistent events.

For example, Bob (the guy traveling) just before turning around at age 10 figures that Alice (the stay at home sister) is 5 years old, but her 5th birthday is actually a past event and in reality (assuming she's the stationary one) she's 20 years old, or more precisely, the universal computer is computing Bob's 10th birthday at the same time as it is computing Alice's 20th. The 5th birthday is long gone and it is a mistake for Bob to compute her age using a coordinate system where he is stationary. The fact of the matter is, he's very much not stationary, but moving like a bat outa hell.

The block interpretation has no problem with Bob's frame since all those events are equally real, and hence any frame is as good as another. This is why the block interpretation (which had been around since before Einstein) suddenly became more intuitive.

- - -

Has time passed more slowly for the apple in the fridge?

If 'no' (and obviously the answer is 'no'), what's the difference between that case and the twin case? — Bartricks

The difference is that relative to the apple in the fridge, the apple on the table still rots faster. With the twins, in the frame of either, it is the other one that rots more slowly.

Until recently, I've been a proponent of the co-moving inertial frames (CMIF) simultaneity method, but I recently discovered a simple proof that shows that the CMIF method is incorrect. And I also defined a new simultaneity method. — Mike Fontenot

I could not make any sense of the new method. The old CADO/CMIF one was worded from a sort of idealistic perspective, but otherwise it didn't seem outright wrong. Can you point me to this simple proof against it? Or to some sort of reason why the standard relativistic view (per Einstein) is unreasonable?

The difference is that her's is actual because she just looks at her comoving clock and reads the time — Edgar L Owen

Both of them are looking at their own comoving clock and reading its time, so this isn't a difference.

while his is apparent or observational because he from a distance in a different state of motion has a perspective view. He's not actually there reading her time on her clock

She is also at a distance from his clock and has a 'perspective view' as you call it. Neither of them is actually there reading the other's clock. Again, no difference.

First thanks for looking at my site and commenting on it. — Edgar L Owen

I only glanced at a few places. Hardly a solid effort to read it all. You seem to hold a sort of dualistic view of mind where the physical universe is a computed virtual reality which is fed real time to a non-physical experiencer elsewhere. The VR has a current state for everything which is sort of updated all at once everywhere for the next 'universal current present moment'.
That seems to be the general gist. Let me know if I didn't get very close.

1. I said " If it follows an inertial path all its constant spacetime distance traveled is through time."
I meant in its own frame where it is at rest. That was assumed but perhaps should have been explicitly stated.

If there is a universal current present moment, then there is a universal location for everything, and if the location of some object changes (in your computer) from one tick to the next, then that object isn't stationary. Yes, I agree that it can be made stationary by selecting a coordinate system with time axis parallel to its worldline, but that frame doesn't correspond to reality in the universe you describe. In such a frame, most moments simultaneous with here and now are in the past or future (have already gone by or have yet to be computed), so the frame aligns the time axis differently than the actual one.

2. I said " Time passes at the same rate on all inertial clocks"
Again I meant in their own frames since in their own frames all their constant motion through spacetime is through time. Normally I mean 'in their own frames' unless I state otherwise.

If I have two clocks in relative motion, in no frame are they both stationary, so I'm not sure how this statement can be satisfied as your modified statement words it. At best you seem to be stating a simple tautology that clocks measure their own proper time, and being inertial isn't required for that.
Under an absolute interpretation such as yours, the concept of the rate of a clock has meaning, but you seem to mix relative and absolute statements without picking a consistent interpretation.
You deny presentism, and yet you talk about time passing at a rate, which is a presentist concept. Under the 4D spacetime interpretation, time isn't something that passes or moves in any way, it's just another dimension with no more present moment than there is a current location (which there is in Fontenot's view, or at least his old CIMF view).

3. My statement is of course when we ignore signal transit time and red or blue shifts which we normally do when calculating proper times of moving clocks.

OK. That's definitely not how you worded it the first time, where you talked about what's being viewed and not what's being computed.

Ignoring those, two relatively moving clocks do each see each other's clocks ticking slower than their own by the same amount. This is simple time dilation which is well established.

Assuming a relativist interpretation and assuming they're inertial, agree. It seems not to be true in your VR universe where a moving observer should compute his own clock as running slow because he's not stationary (not at the same location in the simulation from one moment to the next). Using his own frame is wrong in that situation because that frame doesn't represent the universal frame.

Also you seem to believe the past still somehow exists which leads me to suspect you believe in a block universe in which all past and maybe future states actually exist. I don't agree...

This is what I mean by mixing interpretations. You explicitly deny the block interpretation (that's fine), but then say you're not a presentist, which is what's left. If you deny the block, then you must deny any frame that has past and future events being simultaneous with some current event, a contradiction if you deny the reality of such events.

I didn't look to see how much of these contradictions are in the books since you said the SR parts were under revision. I scanned pretty much none of that. I looked a bit at consciousness, entanglement and dark matter, just sort of random places to click.

I'm not an absolutist or presentist. Labeling thought generally misrepresents it. — Edgar L Owen

I'm not representing it, just categorizing it. Presentism isn't one fixed belief system, so I'm not telling you your beliefs. I'm just reacting to your initial post asserting the ability to demonstrate a "universal current present moment", and then immediately following that assertion with a premise that assumes its conclusion (and doesn't seem to be true even the conclusion is).

Your website is full of presentist assertions, notably this:

All processor computations occur in the current universal present moment in a non-dimensional computational space in the same sense as computer programs define computational spaces.

It that (my bold) isn't presentism, I don't know what is. I'm not saying presentism is necessarily wrong, but you seem to be in denial about being in the category, like its something to be embarrassed about. The vast majority of people are presentists, even if most of them are unaware of the term or the alternatives.

My theories are my own perhaps a new interpretation but completely compatible with relativity though not necessarily how it's interpreted (which varies anyway). I have around 12 books and 22 YouTube talks explaining my Complete Theory of Everything

How nice that you publish your personal beliefs, but almost all of it seems to be falsified. Has any of this been reviewed by somebody competent in the respective fields? It seems not.

Proper time is simply what any clock is currently reading.

There is no 'currently' in the definition of proper time, and if proper time is described merely as what any clock reads, the description is too simple since our twins are reunited with the clocks reading different values, which is unexplained by this oversimplified statement. Yes, all clocks measure the proper time of that clock, or more correctly, of the worldline followed by that clock. Your statement needs to encompass that.

The presence of an observer is irrelevant

Good. Your wording sometimes left me wondering.

Anyway the twin example is pretty simple. A lot of people over complicate it...

1. The elapsed proper time of any clock depends entirely on its own motion through spacetime, not in the least to how it's being observed by any observer.

This wording presumes that there is a concept of motion through spacetime. Any non-presentist interpretation would not word it that way. "The proper time of any clock depends entirely on the worldline of the clock". Calling that 'motion' makes it sound like the rock is here in 2020 and hence 2019 has no rock or anything else, it having all moved on to the present. That contradicts relativity theory which would require, in any inertial frame, existing events to happen simultaneously with nonexistent (not current) events.
I say 'in any inertial frame' since no inertial frame foliates all of spacetime, hence any 'universal current present moment' cannot map to any inertial frame.

If it follows an inertial path all its constant spacetime distance traveled is through time.

Not in any coordinate system where it isn't stationary, so this is false. Yes, in a coordinate system where an inertial object is stationary, two events on that object's worldline are separated only by time, but in other coordinate systems (other reference frames), this is not so.

Time passes at the same rate on all inertial clocks.

Obviously false, as can be demonstrated by doing the twins experiment with a tag team of 2 clocks. All clocks are then inertial, but since the final comparison yields different values, some of the inertial clocks must be running at different speeds than another.

The entirely separate issue is how relatively moving observers view each other's clocks.

Well, you said this which is empirically incorrect.

relatively moving observers each view the time on each other's clocks ticking slower than their own.

Not true. If I look at an approaching clock, it will appear to run faster. Hence the blue shift of light from approaching objects like Andromeda. If your statement were true, everything in motion would appear to be red shifted, not just the receding stuff.

First there it's easy to demonstrate there is a universal current present moment. — Edgar L Owen

You're an absolutist and presentist I see, but claiming you can demonstrate it seems a bit too much. So you misrepresenting relativity theory is sort of a strawman tactic.

No, proper time is the current reading of a comoving clock, a clock moving with an observer. — Edgar L Owen

SR theory makes no reference to the concept of a 'current' anything. The definition also makes no reference to an observer being necessary. Just google 'proper time' and you get:

In relativity, proper time along a timelike world line is defined as the time as measured by a clock following that line. — wiki

OK, there are definitely some wrong definitions out there in non-physics sites like:

time measured by a clock that has the same motion as the observer. Any clock in motion relative to the observer, or in a different gravitational field, will not, according to the theory of relativity, measure proper time — dictionary.com

This seems to agree with your definition that only clocks accompanied by observers are proper, while in fact all clocks measure the proper time of their own worldlines, and in the example above, the clock simply is not measuring the proper time of said observer since it is a different worldline. Were the clock to be comoving with a different worldline, (not in the presence of the other object, but with the same motion and potential all the way), then it would measure the proper time of that object, but only in a frame in which its motion matched that other object. This wouldn't be true in all frames unless the object was completely inertial the whole time.

'Proper' implies frame independence. No frame need be specified to talk about the proper time along a specific worldline, or the proper length or proper mass of an object. These things don't change from one frame to the next.

It was Mike, not me that said there was a sudden jump in how the traveling twin views the age of the earth twin. I just pointed out this is only under the a-physical simplification of instantaneous acceleration.

Mike adds confusion by using absolute verbiage in a relative interpretation of events, but what he says is technically correct. So "he concludes that she instantaneously ages by a large amount during the instantaneous turnaround" is misleading but not wrong. He claims that one school of thought claims this, but I've never seen a physicist word it that way.
Let's say the trip takes 20 years for her and 10 years (5 each way) for him. Mike says the brother concludes that she ages 15 years during the turnaround. Worded more the way any relativist would, it should say: "Simultaneous with the event where the brother is furthest from Earth, the difference in her age in the outbound frame of the traveler and in the return frame of the traveler approaches 15 years as the time taken to turn around approaches zero".

That makes it much more clear that it is two different frames being referenced, and not anything actually happening to the girl back home caused by what the traveler is doing. Similarly, using the 'approaches' language gets rid of the instantaneous turnaround simplification that seems to offend you. In fact, the longer it takes the twin to turn around, the more the 15 year age difference of the sister is in the example I gave above. 15 years is a minimum difference given an arbitrarily powerful ship. Point is, there are two frames, and her age is very much at least 15 years different in those frames, simultaneous with the one twin's turnaround event. This is a simple example of relativity of simultaneity.

Notice no mention of 'current reading' of any clock in the twins scenario. There is no particular moment in the scenario that is the 'current' one. Special relativity denies a preferred frame, and with it a preferred moment. Absolute interpretations (Lorentz say) assert said preferred frame (not an inertial one), but even Lorentz didn't go so far as to assert a current (preferred) moment in time.

And second this is only describing how the space twin SEES the earth twin's age. — Edgar L Owen

This is a serious misrepresentation of what the theory says.
Upon the turnaround, the space twin sees pretty much the same exact time on the Earth twin clock as before. The clock doesn't suddenly appear to jump like your statement seems to imply.

Secondly, you throw around the term 'proper time' a lot, all in a way incompatible with the physics definition of the term. Proper time is a duration (a temporal length), not a reading at a particular moment.

Will this prediction of doom affect the way you go about your life? — Bitter Crank

Probably not. I already know about it, so the prediction changes nothing.

Suppose the problem went away. Suppose some trivial solution existed and the climate would remain reasonably unchanged despite what we're doing. Would that change the outlook for humanity in say the next century? If not, perhaps there are bigger fish to fry.

But physicists DO differ about what HE concludes about HER current age DURING his trip. — Mike Fontenot

This seems to conflict with this subsequent statement:

Special relativity says that, for two perpetually-inertial observers (meaning that they have never accelerated, and never will accelerate), they EACH will conclude that the other is ageing more slowly. — Mike Fontenot

OK, maybe not, since both are wrong.

Physicists do not differ about this, although they might word it differently. At any point during the exercise, there is no ambiguity of the age of one person relative to the other in the frame of either person (or more exactly, in the frame in which the person is currently stationary). Without the frame specification, statements about simultaneity are ambiguous
.
It has nothing to do with being perpetually inertial. An inertial frame is defined by a reference to an object at a specific moment, so if that object is accelerating, its current inertial frame is changing.

"For the traveler traveling away or the observer staying behind their is no difference in their relative speed so they age at the same rate." — Mike Fontenot

That was an example of a statement without a frame specification, and thus wrong. In either frame in which one person is stationary, the other ages more slowly.

If two people have equally good evidence for contradictory positions, it does not follow that they are both correct. — Bartricks

There are no contradictory positions in this scenario. Both parties agree on all facts at all times. Confusion only arises when the frame references are omitted.

Sophisticat seems to be the first poster with a sensible reply.

You are not inertial, you are accelerating towards the centre of the Earth. — A Seagull

Gravity is not part of special relativity. That said, under GR, on Earth you are accelerating upward, not downward, else the water in your cup would stay in only if inverted. The force on me from my chair pushes me up, not down.

Number theory are rules about numbers, which are language expressions.
...
The physical universe cannot be a model of number theory, because it is not a structure that consists exclusively of language expressions. — alcontali

Tegmark is not suggesting the universe is a structure of language expressions. You're confusing mathematics with the methods used to convey mathematical concepts. Tegmark's mathematical universe is an ontological proposition, not an epistemological one.

At some point, you will run out of physical miles, because the universe is deemed finite.

Is it now? You have some evidence of this?

From there on, you will run into facts that are true in the natural numbers but not true in the physical universe.

Nobody said the universe was the set of natural numbers. I can think of plenty of finite sized mathematical structures.

I am personally not particularly interested in the grand unification attempt in physics. I do not believe that Tegmark is either. — alcontali

Well surprise, because Tegmark is a physicist by profession where empirical results count. His dabbling on the side into metaphysics produces no falsification tests and thus is metaphysics, which in turn is philosophy. Not to discredit what he says, since it is mostly those metaphysical positions which interest me.
Many philosophers only have a weak background (if any) in physics, and thus often produce philosophies that directly contradict physics. I appreciate Tegmark because he's not among these.

If a sentence is provable in the ToE, it is guaranteed to appear as a true fact in the physical universe. This is not the case for any other mathematical theory.

Going to have to give me some examples so I can figure out what you mean by this.

It will not work for number theory, set theory, or another partial theory in mathematics, which are merely Platonic abstractions, divorced from the real, physical world.

Tegmarks statement, as quoted by whoever authored that quote you posted, says quite the opposite: "all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically". Platonic abstractions are mathematical structures, and thus are posited to exist physically by Tegmark. I will not go so far, for the reasons I posted before. I personally don't give meaning to something 'existing physically' or 'being real'. That means I'm not a realist I guess. Tegmark definitely is one. But I like the rest of what he says.

The sentence "2+2=4" is true in the abstract, Platonic world of the natural numbers

It's true in many more worlds that just that one; e.g. it's true in the world of real numbers, and it's true in our world. But that was not my point. My point was about the truth of it not being contingent on instantiation. The world of natural numbers can be real or just abstract, and it is still true for that world in both cases.

We cannot seek to abolish the distinction between mathematics and science.

Was proposing no such thing since I am suggesting nothing scientific here. It is a straight philosophical proposition, still entirely distinct from science.

Max Tegmark has made an interesting attempt at modeling the "Ultimate Ensemble theory of everything" (ToE):

... whose only postulate is that "all structures that exist mathematically exist also physically". This simple theory, with no free parameters at all, suggests that in those structures complex enough to contain self-aware substructures (SASs), these SASs will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically "real" world."... — alcontali

First of all, Tegmarks premise there is not what is usually referred to as the theory of everything. The latter is what you're talking about here:

Prominent contributors were Gunnar Nordström, Hermann Weyl, Arthur Eddington, David Hilbert,[19] Theodor Kaluza, Oskar Klein (see Kaluza–Klein theory), and most notably, Albert Einstein and his collaborators. Einstein intensely searched for, but ultimately failed to find, a unifying theory.[20]:ch 17 (But see:Einstein–Maxwell–Dirac equations.) More than a half a century later, Einstein's dream of discovering a unified theory has become the Holy Grail of modern physics. — alcontali

That 'holy grail' is a unified theory, and Tegmarks comment paves no way towards unifying gravity with quantum field theory. It's just a philosophical postulate about the question of why existence exists.

Secondly, if Tegmark says that all such structures exist physically, then the SAS will exist in a physically real wold, and not just perceive themselves to. Not sure who wrote your quote, but it obviously wasn't Tegmark. The comment isn't entirely self consistent.

I am a big fan of Tegmark, and he has deeply influenced my beliefs. This postulate of his is a sticking point with me though since it makes pretty much everything physically real, making it not distinct from something that isn't physically real. But it points out that there is no distinction between mathematics that exists and mathematics that does not. 2+2=4 is true whether or not something physical performs the sum or not.

This has led me to a a different approach where being 'real' is not a property of something (like a rock say) but rather a relation. The rock is real to the water it diverts. But such a view is very different now than what Tegmark is proposing.

I don't see how that's not basically just making up arbitrary SciFi-like crap. — Terrapin Station

How wonderfully well (and typically) argued... You're free to disagree, but if you cannot point out an inconsistency in it without dragging in some strawman assumption of your own, then it is not crap at all.

None of the above.
— noAxioms
Can you describe this in words? — TheMadFool

C is not at rest relative to either A or B.

II was thinking about. Motion doesn't mean simply a change in distance rather a change in position too qualifies as motion. When you twirl the triangle the distance stays the same, yes, but there is a change in position no? Is that not motion?

Of course it is, yet your OP suggested otherwise, stating that the distance AB must be changing if the position of the points is changing, and thus motion cannot happen if length AB stays the same.

Now take any other object C in the universe.

C must be either be at rest relative to:

1. both A and B
2. A
3. B — TheMadFool

Whatever happened to 4: None of the above.

The vast majority (like all) objects C are at rest relative to neither A nor B.
Some of it depends on your coordinate system. My fork and knife appear to be at rest relative to each other, but only because I'm using a rotating and accelerating reference frame.

Imagine A, B and C are points on a triangle. We know that A and B are in relative motion. So the distance AB is always changing.

I can take a triangle and twirl it about and yes, there is motion but that doesn't imply that the length AB is changing. The Earth moves quickly around the sun, but its distance from it (length AB) stay more or less the same. It would stay exactly the same for an object with a perfectly circular orbit.

So I assume you're talking about a dynamic triangle formed by moving objects, in which case all 3 of the lengths are possibly constantly changing.

C is the other vertex of this triangle. If AC is constant and BC is constant but that means AB also has to be constant

Imagine a salad tong, with C at the hinge and A/B the two grasping ends. As you squeeze the tong, AC and BC lengths remain constant but AB is getting smaller. This counterexample demonstrates that AB does not have to be constant.

Thus, ALL objects in the universe are in motion relative to something else. All is motion.
Is there anything wrong with this argument?

It draws conclusions that don't follow from the arguments. Even if all objects are indeed in relative motion, you've not shown it by your logic.

Still, if another celestial body with big enough gravity aproaches Earth, wouldn't then be possible to actually fall upward, even if for just a couple of moments before the humanity extinction — Childish Daydream

Sure. The moon is already trying to do this, and the tides are the result of the water trying to fall up as you say. Pass a mass close enough and it will pull you away, and everything around you as well. Get it close enough and it will pull the nails off your fingers.

As for there being other universes, the term is left completely undefined.
For instance, the region of space centered 100 billion light years away is 'another universe'. It is as detached from us as the parallel world where the dinosaurs still live today.

Does that distant universe exist? Does it have a defined state? I say no, it doesn't, because to say it has such a state is a couterfactual statement. I personally have rejected the principle of counterfactual definiteness and thus pretty much would not say that such places (like the universe separated from us only by distance) exist in any meaningful way.

Neither time nor distance is infinitely divisible; the Plank time and the Plank size are shortest and the smallest. — PoeticUniverse

This assertion is of course nonsense since there is no evidence whatsoever that neither time nor distance cannot be divided after some point. It's just below the ability to measure after a point.

So the argument nevertheless ties into the wording of the OP: There is very much a finite time interval (well above the Planck time) below which no 'experience' can take place, therefore shorter durations are not experienced. You have a finite number of 'experiences' in your life, and when they've run out, you're done.

Mr x (1976 to 2019). x has to first reach 1997 and before that he has to reach 1986 and before that 1981and before that 1971 each time interval can halved indefinitely. The math says so. Is the problem with math or a subset of math infinity? — TheMadFool

The math also says that you can cut the cheese as many times as you like and it doesn't give you more cheese. You f***ed up when you drew a different conclusion from the mathematics.

I also don't think Mr X ever needed to reach 1971, but that's just a nit.

You're not imprisoned on Earth. Earth is your species' natural home. — Unseen

If we're propagating to the stars, then the galaxy is my species' natural home. My species' natural home is somewhere in Africa, and I have been kept away from there mostly from choices made by others.

And no third party decided you or I were going to spend our meager existences on Earth.

I'm of dutch decent and some third party (my parents) decided I was going to spend my meager existence on another continent. The kids will do fine on the ship, better than the volunteers that miss Earth they once knew. They'll be told stories of places they'll never see just like I'm told. I hope the people on the ship are kept busy. It would be pretty unethical for them to just be passengers the whole way. That's the zoo I was worried about.

Except for those who are there at the end of the journey and, one hopes, find suitable digs, the generations of crews are born for one purpose only: to get that last bunch to the new Earth-like home.

And the one purpose of that last bunch is the bunch that comes after them. It's my purpose here as well right now, so what's changed?

Their lives are being used, ;pure and simple. In order to keep the peace, they may not even be told that they are basically slaves. They may never be told about the home planet they left or even that their ship is on a mission.

You want this mission to not fail, but you're not going to tell the people why they're on the ship? Not a great way to go about it.

The obvious solution is to let the trip take 100,000 years and the population rides as test tube embryos to be grown and raised by machines after they've terraformed the destination. That reduces the human component to not being in charge, probably ever. Servitude maybe, or maybe just zoo specimen.

This is not a discussion of whether interstellar travel is possible. Why not do something constructive like accepting the premise as a hypothetical? — Unseen

OK, skip the practical solutions then. How is all these people spending their lives on a ship less ethical than imprisoning them on a planet? It's the environment they're born in, one good enough to live out a life. What's wrong with that? I don't see myself being issued a world cruise as apparently is my right, and certainly not a spaceship ride.

The Turing test is used to check whether an AI (artificial intelligence) is at human-level intelligence or not. — TheMadFool

I don't buy this. By this logic, If there is a test to communicate with a squirrel and convince the squirrel that the entity at the other end of the test is a fellow squirrel, then humans have not yet achieved the intelligence of a squirrel.
I think AI will have long since surpassed humans in intelligence and consciousness before one is capable of imitating a human to this degree.

Does that necessarily preclude what I stated in my post: that when you raise it to a higher level than the quantum level, things still start looking pretty deterministic? Take the laws of physics. If I throw a ball, the odds are pretty darned good that it's going to leave my hand and fly through the air. What are the odds that it won't leave my hand? 1 in a trillion? quadrillion? quintillion? Even if things are probabilistic and not certain at the quantum level, it seems that when you raise it up high enough, things still start to look pretty deterministic. — MattS

Not in any long run, no. Small differences are amplified, not lost in the averages. Get familiar with chaos theory, or what is popularly known as the butterfly effect.

How can we actually have control of our thoughts/actions when these thoughts/actions are driven by chemical reactions at a level that we can't possibly control?

How do you not have control of your thoughts and actions if the parts are functioning correctly? If you had conscious control over that function, such abilities would be lost, not gained. The free-will proponents sometimes talk about initiating cause rather than propagating it. I cannot see how that would be a benefit in a situation, for example one trying to cross a street at a time of ones own free choosing.

I can't trigger a chemical reaction by my will alone

Why would one want to do that? There are those that claim to have this ability (pyrokinesis say), and it isn't evidence of free will if they can actually do it any more than me using a match to achieve the same ends.

So in the end, how did I myself affect the chemical reaction that caused the electrical impulse in my brain that led to a thought/action? Help me understand.

I think you're confusing will with the means by which your will is implemented. I'm a monist, so I consider my will to be free. If a 'soul' were to suddenly possess my mind and make this body do different (more moral say) things, that would be a great example of my will suddenly being overridden by this possessing influence. It would no longer be free. I'd be just a vehicle (an avatar) then and responsibility for my actions falls on my 'driver', not on me, and my suppressed will would be epiphenomenal at best. "There is no Dana, there is only Zuul".

I don't see determinism as changing any of that.

Determinism has almost nothing to do with it. Lack of determinism doesn't mean ones will is not a function of physics.

I watched it enough to see that it was the same thing as the sites that come up with the same search.

What they are calling dimensions is not the geometric definitions. They describe Hilbert space, which isn't additional dimensions with length and ordering and such like you get with the first 4. You can't draw a curve through them. The whole OP was about curved lines being straight in a higher dimension, but the 'higher dimensions' are not dimensions at all, so no curves can be defined.

What they call dimensions 5 through 8 are all the same thing, corresponding to Tegmark's level-3 multiverse. Dimension 9 is the level-2, and 10 is level-4. None of these are linear dimension that have a concept of length or orthogonality or ordering of points. They are therefore not dimensions.

Finally, I see an attempt to associate this idea with superstring theory, which actually does have many more dimensions, but which are real dimensions and have nothing to do with what the list-of-10 is all about.

It is hard to deny Einstein since his work is what popularized time being a 4th dimension instead of the alternative flowing 3D model that still stands for the majority that don't give the subject matter any particular thought. If you're pushing this video, it presents time as a dimension, which you cannot do if you reject the spacetime geometry of Einstein's relativity theory.

So I stand behind my initial two assessments of the OP, one of which is that there seems to be no example of a curved line that is straight in a higher dimensional space. The video gave no such example.

I don't usually watch youtubes. If there is a concept from it you'd like to convey, post the gist of it.

I don't agree with everything Albert Einstein concluded about special relativity and general relativity (perhaps its the way some modern scientists explain it). These are very important concepts for being a rational thinker in the day and age we live in. — christian2017

Having a hard time parsing this statement. The only way that makes sense is if you're saying that such concepts are important for a rational thinker, but not important to you.

That said, I cannot think of an example of a curved path that is straight in a higher dimension. In a lower dimension, sure. An airplane takes a curved path through 3D space but a straight path on the lower dimension 2D surface of the earth.

Buy it for 2 cents, and one of the wishes is to produce a buyer at a penny.

This exercise seems chock full of loopholes.

Another way is to set up a Hilbert's Hotel sort of arrangement where each new buyer pays but a cent which is passed up the list to prior sellers, thus each time raising the price at which it was bought by a penny. You pay in installments of one cent every time the bottle changes hands. Problem solved.

I would agree that lot's of people build philosophies with an (generally completely unfounded) belief SR, GR, QM and/or QFT* supports their ideas. I find it philosophically relevant to refute such arguments (at least the part connecting to modern science). — boethius

Your choice of QM interpretation most definitely go with certain philosophical stances and not others. It seems important to be compatible. But I agree that I don't see this with relativity.

However, I don't see how SR, or GR and QM for that matter, displacing Newtonian physics had a big impact on presentism and eternalism, the debate pre-existed both and continues.

I think relativity moved a lot of people (those who thought about such things and understood it) to the less intuitive camp of eternalism. It certainly did for me, even if I continue to defend the opposite stance as not being in contradiction.

I have though of my own 'proof' of presentism being wrong, but I think it is invalid like the attempts others have made. If time on Earth is dilated (running slow) due to its motion and gravity well, how much faster does time actually flow? If my Earth clock says a million seconds went by, how many seconds actually went by as measured by a clock measuring absolute time, stationary and at zero gravitational potential? Gravitational potential is negative, so zero is 'in no gravity well', as high as one can possibly be.

The complete lack of an answer to this in the absolutist web sites (like conspiracyoflight.com for example) seems to be my evidence against their position. They avoid it, like it's embarrassing or something.

Light moves at c relative to any frame. This has been experimentally confirmed.
— noAxioms

I don't argue with this statement above. This fact of reality does not have any impact on what I am claiming is wrong with the interpretation of Special Relativity. What physicists say is that all the laws of physics look the same to you regardless of how fast you are traveling. I interpret that to mean as I have been told by others that you cannot tell that your clock is slowing and you cannot notice that your length in the direction of motion is shrinking and that your increase in mass is also not noticeable — MrCypress

You make it sound like speed is a property of an object. It isn't. I am not moving at some speed. I can only have speed relative to an arbitrary reference. So for instance, relative to a muon in the upper atmosphere, I am moving at .995c which is the only reason I can get to and measure that stationary muon before it decays in a couple microseconds. At that speed, the distance between myself and that stationary muon is decreased by a factor of about 10, as is my height, and yet I don't notice anything weird about that compression except that I get to the muon before it decays, something that I would no be able to do if I had to travel a 10x longer distance.
This experiment has been done countless times, and makes for a nice empirical test with a significant dilation factor.

So I agree with what you say above, despite the nonexistence of the implied property of speed.

It is my belief that as one gradually accelerates and approaches the speed of light a person on board that space ship they will be flattened and pressed back into their chair. The ship length will be compressed and it will require more and more thrust to continue to accelerate to the speed of light. Eventually the human brain will not be able to function because the electrons in their brain will no longer be able to move forward in the direction of motion that the ship is traveling.

So this is completely wrong. Again, it uses the concept of a property of speed. There is no such thing. In the frame of the ship, the occupant will notice nothing and his brain works just fine. There is no contraction at all since the occupant is stationary in this frame. He is not going fast at all, but the stuff outside the window certainly is, which accounts for its red and blue shifts.

What are the philosophical implications of relativity? — boethius

The primary one is the philosophical interpretations of time: presentism and eternalism. The former was always the default until relativity gave equal if not better footing for the latter, but scientifically (empirically), the two are not distinct. SR does not assert a block universe even if the assumption of one makes the calculations simpler. Hence the difference is philosophical.

Now what if they don't have any window and they only observe things from within the spacecraft? I believe that they would still be able to notice gravitational effects that wouldn't be present if they weren't moving in that way relative to the galaxies, considering there is an asymmetry in the way they are moving relative to the matter around the spacecraft. — leo

SR says that local experiments would not be able to detect the speed, meaning no differences. Looking out of the window constitutes a non-.local test, but there is no way to tell if you're moving or the galaxies you see are moving fast.
Anyway, there would be no local gravity differences. There is no asymmetry. In the frame of the 'ship', the ship is stationary and the galaxies are moving incredibly fast and their clocks are the ones running slow.

Here is where the the incorrect interpretations start to breakdown. We have both just agreed that you can tell you are moving at 99% the speed of light by using Doppler effect. — MrCypress

Speed is relative to something, so this is correct. The galaxy and I have a .99c difference, but in the frame of either, it is the other that is moving.

That frame of reference is moving so slow relative to the speed of light that it is essentially stationary.

This is totally wrong. Frames don't move relative to light. Light moves at c relative to any frame. This has been experimentally confirmed.

So in reality if you are moving at the speed of light relative to the earth you are essentially moving at the speed of light relative to everything else in the Universe.

Again, not true. Earth moves at the same speed as only a few relatively local things. If you are going that fast relative to Earth, you're stationary relative to some other galaxy that happens to move at about that velocity. The expansion of space assures that there is a galaxy that is stationary relative to you. Hence you're not moving fast at all. You're just far away from the stuff which is also stationary.

The only differences will be slight because of their relative motions relative to you and the stationary back ground of space. The Doppler measurement is the first anomaly that gives the person in the spacecraft a clear indication they are moving at 99% the speed of light.

If you were at that stationary galaxy going the same speed, the background would be isotropic: no doppler difference in any direction.

Wayfarer is right: This thread belongs in a physics forum. It has philosophical implications, but none of them were brought up by anybody.

I am not sure I am following you. In fact, I just am saying that the cause precedes the effect in all reference frames without FTL. Isn't it right? :smile: — boundless

Yes. With locality, which is essentially saying no FTL.

Ok, I see. Interesting, thanks! I wonder if this can be used to reconcile SR with pilot-wave theory... :smile:

Pilot wave is a form of Bohmian mechanics: Pro counterfactual definiteness (objective state) and denial of locality. So I wonder how they interpret spooky action at a distance using pilot waves. I don't know the official line on that. They certainly cannot reproduce spooky action using a classic pilot wave setup like they use for double slit.

Can you "discover" something that is non-physical? — Pattern-chaser

Obviously yes, your topic being a prime example.

Mathematics is not part of the scientific space-time universe, except trivially.

I choose to interpret it otherwise.

How could you "discover" maths when there's nothing to come upon, and say "Oo look, that seems handy!"

Yet that is exactly how mathematical progress was always made. Nobody found it under a rock or through a telescope. Not even talking about mathematical models of the universe here. I'm just talking about pure mathematics like Calculus, imaginary numbers, 14 dimensional space, and octonions and such. These are not 'come upon', yet are discovered.

As for pi, as soon as you invent numbers, and all the stuff that goes with them, you notice pi as soon as you start considering circles. Bearing in mind that circles - not just things that are roughly circular - occur rarely if at all in the real world....

Exactly. We notice pi despite the complete absence of any actual circles in nature to measure. Figuring out pi to a lot of precision doesn't involve hunting down an ever closer physical approximation to a circle.

I simply meant that without the selection postulate, it seems that RQM implies the splitting.

Anyway, I agree with you. RQM seems simply silent on this point.
— boundless

Maybe it's embarrassed. :yikes:
— Wayfarer

Well, possibly! :razz: — boundless

This is why I resist describing RQM under presentist terms. If time is external to the structure that is the universe, then such selection is an objective act relative to this realm under which time exists, and it isn't really RQM anymore if such an objective action takes place.

With time being part of the structure, no event/state (something to which a relation can be made) 'flows' to a different event, necessitating such a selection. Thus there is no selection postulate.
This isn't an embarrassment, just an implication of a relative interpretation.

Ok, I agree. But my point was another. If you say that 'your' present exist (the 't=0' 3D hypersurface), then the Andromeda Paradox is unavoidable.
— boundless

This hypersurface exists. So does this different hypersurface. That's just two different things, not a paradox.
— noAxioms

Well, I think I see where you are getting at but I am not sure you can really avoid the paradox if you say that all events in the hyper surface are in a definite state. I am not saying you are wrong, I just do not know. — boundless

The Andromeda Paradox is about the ambiguity of what time it is elsewhere, not about the state being definite. The former is a frame dependent thing and the latter is a statement of superposition of something unmeasured. I think you meant the former but your wording suggested the latter.

Totally agree. Two observers at the same place but different frames might disagree about what is going on at Andromeda, but they'll agree entirely about what has been measured. The light cone from that location is a frame independent thing.
— noAxioms

Yes! In Relativity the ordering of events in every light cone is an invariant (unless one accepts tachyons or any FTL influence).

I didn't say that. I said the set of events in a given light cone is frame independent. The ordering of those events is still quite frame dependent.

Interesting corollary for a presentist, who by definition cannot observe any existing thing. In 8 minutes, the thing I observe will not be the present state of the sun. It will be an observation of something nonexistent.
— noAxioms

Yep! Presentism is somewhat problematic in Relativity. I would say that 'global presentism' is simply incompatible with relativity of simultaneity. Maybe a form of 'local presentism' can be saved but it is surely counter-intuitive (I personally lean towards some form of presentism and I admit that I am troubled by this).

I have done an advocatus diaboli thread defending the compatibility of relativity and presentism, so I maintain that they're not incompatible. SR says that the preferred frame cannot be determined given the special case after which it is named. But inability to detect such a frame does not mean that there isn't a special one. Presentism doesn't even require it to be a inertial frame, and no presentist that knows their physics seems to assert that it corresponds to such a frame. The foliation is always bent, which has the interesting paradoxical implication that no two stationary observers are simultaneous in each other's inertial frames. I find that hilarious, but not paradoxical.

Nit-pick: you think that maths, a human invention, is more fundamental than the stuff of which the universe is built? — Pattern-chaser

I consider it something discovered, not invented. If invented, pi would not be the same value in another world. OK, odds are the aliens don't express the value in base 10. That base is definitely a human invention.

I see what you mean, but 'pre-measurement Alice' can predict that 'she' will be 'remembered' by both 'post-measurement Alici'. — boundless

I thought about that and it seems that post-measurement Alice has the same relationship to pre-measurement Alice as the relationship to post-measurement Bob, which is a superpostition of multiple unmeasured states. The perspectives are quite different but the relationships are essentially identical.
Therefore the future does exist to Alice, just not a specific state. The cat exists to Bob, even when in superposition of dead and alive.

Ok, I agree. But my point was another. If you say that 'your' present exist (the 't=0' 3D hypersurface), then the Andromeda Paradox is unavoidable.

This hypersurface exists. So does this different hypersurface. That's just two different things, not a paradox.

The answer to this objection is to not regard what is outside the light cone in the same way of what is inside from an ontological point of view.

Totally agree. Two observers at the same place but different frames might disagree about what is going on at Andromeda, but they'll agree entirely about what has been measured. The light cone from that location is a frame independent thing.

On the other hand, it seems intuitive to accept the 'existence' of the present (e.g. I will observe the present state of the Sun at t=8 minutes).

Interesting corollary for a presentist, who by definition cannot observe any existing thing. In 8 minutes, the thing I observe will not be the present state of the sun. It will be an observation of something nonexistent.

There is nothing physical that connects my current state to that past state as opposed to any other random arrangement of matter. Identity is abstract, not real. There are plenty of philosophical arguments that demonstrate this.
— noAxioms

I sort of agree with this (but the reasons are not exactly the same...as I said I have a different view about mind) - it seems that there is some kind continuity without, however, a persisting identity (but we are digressing maybe...). This is not IMO however a complete denial of the existence of 'individuality' (and 'identity' in some sense).

Agree that what I said depends on my personal choice for philosophy of mind. Some interpretations do give identities to things. Mine just happens not to.
Not sure how you combine your mind interpretation with your QM one. Does the pre-Alice ontologically become one of the post-measurement Alici to the exclusion of the others because the mind-identity can only follow one of them? That's a very different QM interpretation.

The problem is that to say that the ordering is dependent on perspective means that there is no objective truth with respect to the order. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly so. That's why it is called the theory of relativity and not the theory of objectivity. It's only a problem if you add that additional premise as you are doing.

I think it's important too to differentiate between Everett's Interpretation and MWI, as first put forth by DeWitt. — i aM

My comments pretty much reflect the Everett interpretation, and not DeWitt's. Both are grouped under the same heading in the wiki list, but you point out some critical differences between the two.

I'm not sure why, in MWI, the separate branches are said to not be able to interact with one another.

Without interaction, there would be no interference. Seems a view that asserts lack of interaction can be falsified. I suppose they get around that by saying that superposition states are not different worlds interacting, but rather just one in that state, to be metaphysically separated at measurement time. There are experiments that demonstrate otherwise.