So you're not reading or not understanding what I say? — leo

You're not being very clear about what you're trying to say. I see you starting a rant about fighting for the truth, which says to me that you claim that your view is the truth and everybody is just being dogmatic for not seeing it.

I'm not saying relativity is false. I'm saying it's not necessarily true.
...
Because, again, alternative theories account for the same experiments just as well.

Not being clear.
'Relativity' is the theory, and while science is not is the business of proving anything, the evidence for the theory is overwhelming. It is effectively necessarily true. There is no competing theory.

What you seem unable to articulate is that the metaphysics behind that theory is open to multiple interpretations (preferred frame vs. any-frame-will-do, and preferred moment vs. block), and thus no one interpretation is necessarily true. With that I agree, and it isn't truth to be fought for, but rather an open-ended philosophical point left to ones personal preference.

I'm saying there is no proof it is true. I'm saying there are alternative ways to explain all the experiments that are considered tests of special relativity, without invoking relativity.

Sorry, but even the interpretations with a preferred frame need to invoke relativity theory else they'd predict different things. This is especially true of SR. There is no CMB in SR since it doesn't model our universe. You have to go to GR for that, and GR suggests (wait for it):
a preferred frame.

A lower percentage doesn't mean there are less of them, seeing as probably 1000 times more people follow the mainstream narrative without ever questioning it.

I doubt that very much. The vast majority buy into some sort of single-frame mentality because it works for them. Most of them wouldn't know the first thing about relativity theory or be able to describe how it differs from say a Newtonian view, if they even know what that was. The majority of the relevant physicists and engineers probably hold the mainstream view, but there aren't very many of them. That leaves the fairly small percentage of armchair opinion holders like ourselves on these forums, and among them, it seems split pretty evenly.

Those who question the mainstream view are relentlessly attacked, just like you are doing now, without focusing on the arguments.

You seem to be quite focused on perceived attacks and not on any arguments. I don't recall for instance you asking what beef I have with say neo-Lorentz-Ether 'theory'. I put that in quotes since a view that makes no predictions isn't a theory. Not sure what name to give the mainstream view since 'relativity' is the name of the theory, not the metaphysical interpretation. Let's just say 'multi-frame'. You also seem to be in the 3D space camp rather than the 4D spacetime camp. I must admit that the latter term appears frequently in the theory. The mathematics are far simpler in 4 dimensional space than in 3 dimension, and even nLET uses 4D calculations. For instance, I've never seen the twin scenario (a realistic one with Earth not stationary) described using any absolute interpretation.

Look at the scientific literature if you want proofs that one version of the Lorentz aether theory is experimentally equivalent to special relativity.

I consider that to be a different metaphysical interpretation of the same theory. He didn't get his name on it only because he didn't publish first, and never completed the general theory. You don't seem to buy into his view since he did not see time flowing/'running' as you seem to. That's why I reference neo-Lorentz-ether theory, which does.

But if we ever find superluminal signals there would be ways to distinguish them, and then maybe relativity will turn out to be false.

Lorentz needs superluminal signals? Why? How about quantum entanglement? Some non-local quantum interpretations require them.

The mathematics are furiously more difficult. Imagine a speed limit sign at the side of the road if it was to state the limit in absolute terms. Nobody uses the absolute interpretation to do anything practical.
— noAxioms

The nice thing is the calculations can be simplified a lot by a change of coordinates. Any inertial frame can be picked as the preferred frame to carry out the calculations, it works out the same in the end.

But that's all that relativity theory (the theory itself) says. The calculations work in any frame.

So in the example of the twins, we can pick the frame of the staying twin as the absolute frame, and then the traveling twin is the one aging more slowly all along. If the real absolute frame is the one of the traveling twin on the way out, then the traveling twin ages more quickly on the first half of the trip, but ages much more slowly on the second half, and the end result we calculate is the same. No matter what the real absolute frame is, the calculated outcome is the same.

That sounds exactly like the mainstream view.

And the advantage is there is no paradox.

That's right. Never claimed one in either interpretation.

Even if you call it an apparent paradox and not a real paradox, the point remains that it confuses pretty much everyone, to the point that plenty of papers were written on it in professional journals (and there are many more other paradoxes).

Agree with that. If they frame it as a paradox, they're misrepresenting the theory or the interpretation. Don't confuse pop articles with science. The Andromeda 'paradox' for instance isn't paradoxical at all unless you say mix interpretations.

there is no "each twin ages more slowly than the other".

Yea, like that. That's the misrepresentation I'm talking about. You're dissing an interpretation that you either don't understand or refuse to represent correctly. The theory does not say that each twin ages more slowly than the other.

If you don't say anything I have nothing to debunk.
...
Well, you should know that if there is an absolute frame, and there is a stationary object in that frame, then the object a billion light years away whose distance is increasing is by definition in motion relative to the frame, it isn't stationary...

You've contradicted yourself. You agreed that the inertial frame in which the CMB appears isotropic from here is a different inertial frame that the one where the CMB appears isotropic from a galaxy 8 billion light years away (science agrees with that). That isotropic CMB defines being absolutely stationary according to your definition of the preferred frame (known as the comoving frame), and here you say the distant galaxy isn't stationary. You need to fix something (like the statement immediately above) or you've been debunked yourself.

Like I said, if there is an absolute frame, then two frames in relative motion

I'm talking about the one absolute frame, and not any other. I'm referencing no other frame.

[Two frames] can't both be the absolute frame, so if the absolute frame is the one in which the CMBR is isotropic here then it's not the one where the CMBR is isotropic in other distant galaxies.

This is only true for inertial frames. Are you suggesting now that the preferred frame is inertial? In that case, the CMB is of no help to you since it is isotropic in a different inertial frame at every point in space, and in no inertial frame is there not a point in space from which the CMB appears isotropic to a stationary object.

You're changing your story, which indicates you're not very familiar with the view you think everybody rejects.

In the muon's frame, time is not dilated at all since the muon is stationary. I also would not worded it as 'running' since I don't think time is something that 'runs
— noAxioms

But you would say that in Earth's frame the muons are time dilated?

As you say, we can pick Earth's as the absolute frame and say the muons are time dilated, yes.

And if you say time doesn't run, would you say time passes? Flows? How would you say it?

Time is a dimension, orthogonal to space, which is why they call it spacetime. Space doesn't flow either. There is no preferred location that is one place, and then somewhere else.

So you’re saying you have a problem with people fighting for truth — leo

Until you falsify the other interpretation, it's opinion, not truth, and opinion isn't worth the militant fighting.

Apparently in your view it’s not a good thing to point out falsehoods in the mainstream narrative.

A great thing if you can, but if you do it by only showing that it contradicts your opinion, then it just makes you look the fool.

Would you say that relativists attacking ‘absolutists’ aren’t ‘militantly biased’?

There are some, sure, but at a much lower percentage.

Personally I would converse on that subject much more calmly if I hadn’t been attacked so many times for simply being a curious and inquiring mind questioning the mainstream narrative and exploring alternative paths, which is what science is supposed to be about in the first place.

You don't come across as curious. You put up strawman arguments against the truth you believe, and don't bother to actually learn the view you're attacking. Pretty closed minded if you ask me.

I guess you don’t have a problem with people getting attacked when they question the mainstream narrative.

But you're not questioning it. You're asserting it to be wrong.

In this case questioning is not claiming that relativity isn’t consistent with many experiments, it is pointing out that all these experiments can be explained differently, in a much more intuitive way.

That's not how you've worded your posts. You've asserted that the mainstream view is wrong, and hence must not be consistent with all the experiments. So instead of the rant, chill out and show where it predicts the wrong results. If you can;t, then again chill out and just accept that both views work and neither is necessarily the truth.

Also note that many ‘relativists’ claim that relativity proves there is no absolute frame.

Then they're using the same fallacious reasoning as are you. Most of them don't assert this, especially the physicists whose job it is to know relativity. Those physicists may still have their opinions on the matter.

Meanwhile, I don’t claim that absolute frame theories prove that an absolute frame exists.

You said you were fighting for the truth. So you seem to at least claim to know the truth without any proof then.

However it is easier for most people to think in terms of an absolute frame.

It isn't. The mathematics are furiously more difficult. Imagine a speed limit sign at the side of the road if it was to state the limit in absolute terms. Nobody uses the absolute interpretation to do anything practical. I can think of no examples except a cosmological map of the universe in comoving coordinates. Somehow the inertial frame just doesn't work that scale since no inertial frame foliates all of space.

No, there's another reason the absolute interpretation might be necessary. I touched on it in a prior post where I mention the three (not two) basic interpretations of the reality of space and time.

it gets rid of all the confusion surrounding the relativity paradoxes

There are no paradoxes. Any attempts to present one always involve strawman arguments.

Relativity is treated as a religion by many of its proponents, that’s a problem.

* Snort *

Do you agree that the inertial frame in which the CMB aopears isotropic from here is a different inertial frame that the one where the CMB appears isotropic from a galaxy say 8 billion light years away? — noAxioms
So? How does that prevent us from selecting the CMBR rest frame here as a preferred frame?

I said it was the correct choice. I didn't say you shouldn't select it.

You said you would debunk my statement, and yet when I ask a question, you evade it. Answer the question yes or no or something else. My argument depends on how you answer it. Then you can debunk my argument. You seem to imply 'yes' to that (as you shstraould), but it wasn't clear. If you answer no, then the argument proceeds along the lines of denial of empirical observations. If you say yes, then you should know that the distance between a stationary object here and a stationary object a billion LY away is increasing, which isn't true in any inertial frame.

If the CMBR rest frame in a galaxy 8 billion light years away ever becomes relevant, then presumably we would have found superluminal signals by then, which would allow us to pick a more accurate preferred frame.

But they have found 'superluminal' galaxies. The most distant object is something like 32 BLY away, and light from it is 13.4 billion years old. That's means the distance between us and it is increasing at well over twice light speed, despite the fact that both us and it are within a few percent of being stationary.
It isn't a superluminal signal. The thing was much closer when the light we see now was emitted. That light reaches us now at speed c. Numbers quoted here are all using the absolute interpretation, which I said was useful for such scales.

Anyway, I called nothing 'strange' — noAxioms

you get strange effects — noAxioms

I stand corrected. Yes, I consider a thing slowing down without a force acting on it a strange departure from Newtonian physics, but plenty of GR stuff also departs like that. The conservation of energy thing is a serious problem and either needs to be accounted for or needs to admit that the interpretation does not hold to thermodynamic law,

I would never have suggested time running more slowly in a muon's own frame. — noAxioms
So how do you interpret it?

In the muon's frame, time is not dilated at all since the muon is stationary. I also would not worded it as 'running' since I don't think time is something that 'runs

This was a reply to me 5 months ago and I never saw it.

What if we assume, in fact it's true that the distance between the earth and the sun keeps changing, that it's the distance AB keeps changing. Doesn't this mean AC and BC should also change? — TheMadFool

You mean the Earth and sun are A and B respectively? The distance between them does change all the time, but not a whole lot. You didn't define what C was. If it's Jupiter for instance, then AC and BC are going to be changing regardless of the stability of AB or not. If its my mailbox, then AC is pretty constant despite the continuous change to AB.

I used the math tool geogebra and what I saw was (taking three vertices of a triangle ABC) if we move B relative to A then even if AC doesn't change BC does change.

Well its pretty easy to make a counterexample of that. Just make AC and BC hinged rods holding those points at a constant separation. AB is free to change (B moving relative to A) without changing the lengths BC or AC. It just changes the angles at each of the 3 vertices.

The mathematical proof would likely use the pythagorean theorem.

The existence of the counterexample is proof that it isn't the case.

Suppose there is an object, A, in absolute rest i.e. at rest relative to everything else.

Oh, you think absolute rest means that either 1) everything is at rest, or 2) the distance between the one resting object and every other object remains the same.
In fact, the wording (the i.e. part) is a total contradiction. Motion is either absolute or relative, so if it is at absolute rest (assuming it is even meaningful to be objectively at rest), it just means it is stationary, which has nothing to do with what other objects are doing.
At rest relative to everything else is physically impossible since there are objects too far away to have the same velocity as any object here.

The absolutists tend to be militantly biased
— noAxioms

I fight for truth, you got a problem with that?

When people are told the lies that relativity is true, that they have to give up many of the intuitive ideas they’ve had all their life, that they have to replace them with totally unintuitive ideas because supposedly that’s how the universe really works, when as a result they give up trying to understand the universe or end up blindly believing the authority, when people who have an inquiring mind explore alternatives to relativity and get labeled derogatory names (“crackpot”, “absolutist”) simply because they have a scientific mind and they use it, when they get told more lies (“relativity proves there is no absolute frame”, “the concept of the aether was falsified experimentally”, “light is measured to travel at c in all inertial frames”), I think it’s a disgrace.

When the normality is to spew lies and when one gets attacked or scorned for correcting these lies and fighting for truth, it’s a disgrace. If you don’t see the problem with that attitude and the attitude you’re having now, that’s a problem too. This is the attitude that makes science dogmatic and stagnate. — leo

Thank you for illustrating my point.

All said, most absolutists correctly do not posit an inertial frame as the preferred one
— noAxioms

If there is an absolute frame then by definition there is a preferred frame, even if it may not be detected, again what are you talking about?

I use the two terms interchangeably. The preferred frame and the absolute one refer to the same thing.

Also as I mentioned earlier, the cosmic microwave background radiation does select a preferred frame.

Yes, that's the obvious one. It isn't inertial, and has the problems/properties listed in my prior post.

and hence you get strange effects like any moving object, in the absence of a force acting on it, will tend to slow down over time.
— noAxioms

I wonder where you got that, tell me more and I’ll debunk it for you.

Do you agree that the inertial frame in which the CMB aopears isotropic from here is a different inertial frame that the one where the CMB appears isotropic from a galaxy say 8 billion light years away? Not sure how far short your understanding is, so not sure where to start.

Also I like how you don’t bat an eye when you attempt to explain in a convoluted way why the twins are really both aging more slowly than the other, or why light really travels at c in all directions in all inertial frames, if you were consistent you would call THAT a strange effect.

Illustrating an apparent complete lack of understanding of the mainstream interpretation. Anyway, I called nothing 'strange' and don't deny the validity of most absolute interpretations, but I pointed out some conservation problems with it that need resolution.

And if you were consistent you would admit that muons decaying more slowly doesn’t imply that time runs more slowly in their frame

I would never have suggested time running more slowly in a muon's own frame. That's wrong in both interpretations.

You don't get it - the twin paradox in no way implies the relativity of time.
— Bartricks
You either know what you mean and can make it clear, or you don't and cannot. — tim wood

In this case, he seems to be talking about the absolute/preferred frame interpretation (Lorentz and such) vs the mainstream interpretation that says the speed of light is actually the same in any frame, and doesn't just appear that way.
The two interpretation make all the same empirical predictions and hence neither can be falsified. That's the point Bartricks seems to be trying to make. The absolutists tend to be militantly biased, and Bartricks and Leo fit right in with that crowd. They even hold conventions for them to help separate them from their money.

If the two interpretations make the same predictions, why was the Michelson-Morley experiment performed? Its results seems to be a falsification of what those two predicted as an empirical test for the absolute interpretation.

All said, most absolutists correctly do not posit an inertial frame as the preferred one, and hence you get strange effects like any moving object, in the absence of a force acting on it, will tend to slow down over time. If you find a fast moving thing, it must have been recently accelerated. Photons similarly tend to lose energy over time. Both effects violate energy conservation, and I wonder how they account for that, or if they also need to discard thermodynamic law.

Two people can be equally justified in believing contradictory propositions - and there can be nothing we can do to confirm which belief, if either, is true. — Bartricks

It seems if there are three valid contradictory positions, then nobody can be justified in their belief using any empirical evidence since they're not justified in eliminating the other possibilities. All of philosophy seems to be like that. If you could verify/falsify one position over the other, it would be justifiable scientific fact, not an interpretational choice.

I justify my choice because I think the 3D interpretation, by putting time outside of the universe, creates the logically incoherent position of the universe suddenly 'happening' at some random time without cause. That works great for say the theists who assign that cause to a decision made by a deity, but then you have the same problem of the deity existing within time or v-v, both of which typically are incompatible with the definition given for said deity.

But you can't conclude from that that both are true. Yet that seems exactly what you would need to do to derive any substantial conclusion about time from the twins paradox.

You seem to not understand either interpretation then. Neither requires the other to be true.

Tim Wood above seems to be mixing the two interpretations just like Edgar Owen does, which leads to confusion since the two views are contradictory. Tim seems to want a 4D relative interpretation and Edgar wants a 3D presentist interpretation even if he resists the label, but each of them borrows from the other interpretation. There is also the 4D absolute interpretation which nobody here seems to support.

So this is not a point about reality, or time, but about justified beliefs, yes? — Bartricks

The differences between the two interpretations of relativity (relative or absolute frames) and the differences between two interpretations of time (block 4D spacetime vs presentist 3D space) are a matter of belief, yes. The fact that the one twin will be twice the age of the other when they meet again is not a matter of belief.

When my twin travels away from me, it seems to me that he is getting smaller and smaller than me. And from his perspective, as he travels away from me, I seem to be getting smaller and smaller than him.

Now, what do we conclude? That we are both getting smaller than each other? No, that's clearly impossible. And it remains impossible even if, due to the fact we've both travelling away from each other, we'll never meet to be able to compare body sizes.

But you can. Simple geometry. I can measure the actual size of something without being in its presence, if I know how far away it is.

Two people can be equally justified in holding contradictory beliefs - there's no problem with that. What is problematic is holding that something contradictory is actually true.

Only if you believe both are true at once. They can't both be right if they're mutually contradictory. Maybe everybody's wrong.

Two people cannot both be older than each other. Two people cannot both be smaller than each other. But two people most certainly can believe that they are older than each other, and be equally justified in that belief

Nobody I know claims this. I certainly don't. OK, trolls claim this I suppose.

It has everything to do with apples - I brought apples into it and wanted to know why those who think the twin paradox shows us something interesting about time aren't as confused as someone who thinks that because an apple in the fridge decays more slowly than one on the sideboard, therefore time travels more slowly in the fridge.

So far you have singularly failed to do this - indeed, from your previous comment it seems that you think time does actually travel slower in the fridge.

If you don't think this, can you explain the difference between my apple example and the twin paradox? — Bartricks

With the apples I can open the fridge and set the two side by side and it is clear which one is more decayed.

With two clocks receding from each other (and no other objects), it is impossible to tell which is running slower. To do that, one must make an assumption about which of the two is more stationary, but it's an arbitrary choice. There is no empirical test for it. There is no doubt with the apples.

Er, I did. And then you said both move. — Bartricks

Motion by definition is relative. I said they both move relative to each other. The absolute way would be relative to some implied absolute frame, so one just says 'this one is moving and that one isn't'. I have a hard time thinking in such terms, as I said, you should go with it.

What I want to know is why physicists think it tells us something interesting about time. Because it seems to me to tell us nothing more than my fridge/apple example.

In absolute interpretation, light speed is not frame independent. That's where it becomes complicated. Has nothing to do with apples. How can I measure how long light takes to cross the room if I don't know if my clock is dilated or running full tilt? For one, no clock in reality, even if stationary and compensating for gravity, runs at full speed. They've never computed how slow Earth clocks run, which sort of puts a dent in the claim that there is such a rate.
Translation, as an absolutist, I have no idea how long it takes the apple to rot since my clock doesn't measure time accurately at all.

For instance, here's another variation: one twin travels from the earth and the other stays put. Twin one thinks "hm, my twin is getting smaller and smaller than me". Whereas the other twin - twin two - thinks "hm, my twin is getting smaller and smaller than me".

Are they both getting smaller than each other? No, obviously not. But they both have equally justified beliefs that one is getting smaller than the other.

Not justified. An object at twice the distance occupies a quarter of my visual field. They didn't take that into account if either concludes that the other is actually getting smaller.
Similarly, an approaching clock appears to run faster but nobody who knows their physics actually concludes it is. That's just blue shift.

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.