It concerns the speed at which light is transmitted. It's known that the speed of light is different in different mediums, and this involves refraction. I believe the classical way of understanding this, understanding light as waves, involves the wavelength of the light. The quantum understanding of this difference in speed involves the light photons being absorbed and reemitted by the atoms of the material. — Metaphysician Undercover

Didn't know this. Looked it up, and pretty much yes. They said that light was absorbed by the lattice, not the atoms, as evidenced by the absence of absorption lines in the refracted spectrum.

I believe that when light is transmitted through a substance, there is an interaction between the electrons of the material, and the light energy. — Metaphysician Undercover

I've not heard of anything like that, but I'm no expert either. All descriptions I read are from light being absorbed, not just passing by if it was merely being transmitted through a material that passes light like glass. Yes, glass interacts, but not by giving off electrons.

What does any of this have to do with relativity thought experiments that F-E is asking about?

Let me clarify my argument:

x and y are omnipotent beings.

x being omnipotent can do anything. — TheMadFool

You need to redefine omnipotent then, since most-powerful carries no implication of 'can do anything'. You asked if the logic was sound, and I responded without preconceptions of what alternate definitions you gave.

OK, so you're going with more classic definition of omnipotent then. Then we're back to true-Scotsman fallacy. God is not dependent on your insistence of certain qualities. God need not be all-powerful to do any of the acts attributed to God. God needs only be sufficiently powerful, and maybe this universe is a failed practice attempt in a class project in which a C- was given.

So you're saying the most powerful being is NOT an all-powerful being? So, in what sense is the most powerful being the most powerful if it's not all-powerful? — TheMadFool

My example was the most-powerful bunny, which by your definition is God if there's nothing more powerful than it. There's plenty of things it cannot do (not all-powerful), but that doesn't preclude it from being the top of some arbitrary ranking according to power.

My postulate is omnipotent beings exist. My assumption is that there are two. All propositions in my OP follow logically from there being two omnipotent beings. If they contradict each other that much the better as contradictions are proof that there can only be 1 omnipotent being. — TheMadFool

Then none of the other statements follow from your one postulate of god being the most-powerful and there being two of them.
For instance, 3: X being omnipotent does not imply that X can kill Y. It just means Y is no more powerful than X. There is also an unstated assumption that X is a living being than can meaningfully be dead or not dead.
5: Inability of Y to be dead similarly does not follow from Y being omnipotent. The logic is not valid at all.

None of the numbered points follow from the postulate you gave.

If preconceptions are allowed, then Poseidon is not a God because Zeus is more powerful. Sounds an awful lot like a no-true-Scotsman fallacy.

Omnipotent being = The most powerful being

God(s) is/are omnioptent being(s).

Assume: there are TWO omnipotent beings, x and y.

1. x is omnipotent
2. y is omnipotent
3. If x is omnipotent then x can kill y
4. If x can kill y then y can be dead
5. If y is omnipotent then y can't be killed
6. If y can't be killed then y can't be dead
7. y can be dead AND y can't be dead (contradiction)
So, our assumption that there are TWO omnipotent beings is false. This reasoning can be applied to any number of Gods.

Is my proof sound? Is there another proof that there exists only 1 god. — TheMadFool

First of all, you need to label your points as postulates or conclusions. Hard to tell.
Second of all, the soundness (or lack of it) of your logic is hidden by the biases assumed by the reader. I for instance agree to none of your postulates or definitions.

So never mind my preconceptions. You've reduced deism down to a game of Stratego and defined god as the most powerful being, even if just a bunny rabbit, so long as it is at least as powerful as any other being.
I already see a flaw in the soundness in that you've left unstated that there are any beings at all. If there are no beings, there is no most-powerful one that would be the god.

1 and 2 contradict your stated goal: You postulate two identically powerful beings in hope to drive it to contradiction. All very well if it can be done.
3 does not follow, so I assume it is another postulate. 3 also implies that if there are two identically most-powerful beings, they can kill each other.
5 is contradictory with 3. 3/4 says they can be dead if both most powerful, and 5/6 says the opposite.
If these are conclusions, they don't follow. If they're postulates, they're mutually contradictory and thus proof of nothing.

What is the underlying method of light transmission that relativity ultimately describes? With Newton, you had a mechanism - photons, if relativity is a description of reality, then what is the underlying reality? — FreeEmotion

Relativity is not a full description of reality. A full description would need to include relativity. Light is still photons, and relativity is based on the observed fact that the speed of photons is a constant in a vacuum. It says that they have zero rest mass and frame-dependent nonzero energy. Relativity says little more than that at the level we're discussing here. Look to quantum mechanics for a better description of what a photon actually is.

It is called the photoelectric effect. — Metaphysician Undercover

The photoelectric effect concerns emission of electrons when light shines on a surface and has nothing to do with light transmission mechanism or relativity.

OK, but the distance and time to D1 is not needed, just take the event consisting of light reaching D1 and the event of light reaching event D2, and measure the speed in between. — FreeEmotion

OK, those are events, but how do you measure speed between events? There is no frame-independent definition of that in physics. So you've not specified a frame for these two events. Essentially you need to tell me the spatial separation between events E1 and E2, and given that we know light speed, we can compute (not measure) the time it takes for light to make the trip in the frame you've specified. This is obviously not a measurement of light speed since we're assuming a constant for it in our calculation.

Most (all??) light speed measurements are done via round trip so the emission and detection events are in the same place and the duration can be measured by a clock. That doesn't work if the events are spatially separated. Most of the thought experiments you reference in your early posts assume an already known light speed and from there find geometric implications about the ordering of events and the distance between them.

Let's take the first instance. You have a two detectors, that measure when light passes one and then when light passes the other, D1 and D2. You then have light emitted from an emitter of course, from somewhere outside the detector, along the same axis as D1 and D2.

E >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>D1>>>>>>>D2>>>>>>>

It makes no difference if the emitter is moving towards or away from the detecting apparatus, the speed of light they measure will always be the same. Is that correct? — FreeEmotion

You're describing objects, not events. The above setup needs a defined frame to take a measurement, and none has been specified. So for instance, the D1 detector doesn't know when the light was emitted and thus how long it took to get there or how far it traveled. That needs definition, so the measurement of elapsed time can be taken. You've not provided that.
That said, if the experiment is expressed as three events instead of three potentially moving objects which are not events, then the measurement can be taken in any frame and it will always result in the same speed of light.

One explanation is that E, D1 and D2 all are immersed in an invisible medium just like air is to sound, that transmits light by first responding to the disturbance at E and then transmitting the light at the natural speed that the ether transmits light to D1 and D2.

I suppose no alarm bells need to be raised here, this is the explanation involving ether.

This explanation has been falsified long ago. You persist in a model that predicts different results than those that are empirically observed.

What I think I meant was, in the absence of ether, what other explanation is possible? The ballistic theory will be ruled out by the independence of the speed of the emitter.

The wave theory would work, but it needs a medium.

How would you describe the way in which light is transmitted, without using either the ether, waves in ether or the ballistic theory? What is this concept and can it be put into words?

Relativity is not a statement about the mechanism of light getting from here to there. It is about the geometric implications that directly follow from a fixed light speed.

It isn't the case that no solutions can be suggested; suggestions have been made. There are two problems with the suggestions: The tolerable suggestions do not result in enough of a reduction in CO2 and other greenhouse gases such as methane or CFCs to help a lot. The intolerable suggests could (probably) result in large enough reductions in green house gases to limit warming, but would also be extremely, and intensely, disruptive to most aspects of life.

Were we to abruptly stop processing petroleum, stop burning coal, switch to a 95% vegetarian diet, sharply reduce manufacturing, begin massive reforestation projects, reduce total world population, and so on we might bring global warming to a halt -- not instantly, but in a century or so. Some side effects of this approach would probably include: Economic collapse; massive social upheavals including revolutions; extreme dislocations of population; increased deaths due to exposure to heat and cold (not in the same places at the same time); a loss of health care infrastructure; and so on, and on.

"Severe disruptions" should not suggest inconvenience; it should suggest hell on wheels. — Bitter Crank

Indeed. But still a smaller hell than the current path. A preemptive bubble burst might wipe out over half the population, an intolerable situation. But doing only tolerable measures will be far worse. It is the trolley problem. Do nothing and the calamity is 5x worse and history wonders why nobody acted. Do something and the weight of the consequences rests on those that altered the path and history remembers them. Heroes or Hitlers?. Probably depends if those that choose go down with their own ship.

If historians 500 to 1000 years from now are worth their salt, they will understand what we were up against in the 21st century. — Bitter Crank

This rings true.
What we are up against seems to be an inability to even suggest a solution. Pushing for greener energy will help delay the change, but I've never seen a suggestion for an actual way out of this mess. I don't have one myself except possibly the wild-card of the AI singularity.

and experiencing it through an exclusively objective framework — Anonymys

I would have thought that experience is by definition subjective. One can consider something in more objective terms, but that wouldn't be an experience.
The fact that this wasn't obvious means I probably don't know what is being asked in the OP.

So there is no philosophical objection to light, or light waves or photons or whatever, being measured at the same speed no matter how fast the emitter and receiver are moving relative to each other?

None? — FreeEmotion

None, yes. Emission and detection of a photon are two events and events do not have velocities and do not define frames. The relative velocity of the apparatus involved is thus completely irrelevant.

Can the concept of an object whose speed always is your speed + its natural speed raise any alarm bells?

That's the intuition, and intuition is wrong here. All measurements (light in a vacuum) always yield the same number. Light is slowed if it goes through water, glass, etc.

I think the one relevant to this thread is eternal-inflation theory, where other worlds have different physics.
Modal realism pretty much covers any of them. I don't think of think of that as any kind of metaphysical stance, but rather a set of tools for describing them and an assertion that there is no preferred world that is more actual.
For instance, a universe that is undetectable just because it is outside the Hubble-sphere is another world just like the worlds of inflation, QM, or whatever. Is it not real? Some say not.

How is this hypothesis backed up? Because if the other universes are undetectable, then I am guessing that it was not brought up from empirical data. Then was it deduced somehow?
— Samuel Lacrampe

It apparently fell out of some interpretations of quantum mechanics, and later some string theories.
Quantum mechanics is well-established, string theories aren't. — jorndoe

The theory in question is a cosmological one (theory of big things explaining what we see in telescopes), the other end of the scale from QM interpretations (explanations of observed behavior of little things). Oddly, the two are sometimes related, especially in the realm of string theory.
These other universes are not QM worlds, but other spacetimes with different physics and numbers of dimensions and such. They're more an answer to the teleological argument than the cosmological one. The view doesn't answer the first-cause issue, it just puts it further behind our big bang.

If AI is doing all of the work of making things then people will be consuming those things 24/7/365. It will be Black Friday all of the time.

Isn't replacing labor in our capitalist system the reason for automation with AI? That capitalist system will still be there along with one if its requirements: people willing to consume more and more stuff. And they will have all day, all week, all year to do it. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I don't think it would result in a black-friday forever situtation, Capitalism where everybody is indefinitely rich.
I've spent quite some time trying to figure out such a society, and the AI would have to be our mommy, and like good mommies, doesn't spoil the child by granting every request. It can't be capitalist, because all capitalism is based on tracking indebtedness to the labors/products of another, but if nobody works and stuff is free, there is no equity anywhere.
So textbook communism? Not meant the bad way that western culture paints that word. Families run by communism: All children obey rules and expect to be cared for in return, but the children have no external responsibilities of their own.
The AI is the mommy, and provides food and shelter for all, but not unlimited. It would be big-brother in that it observes all. This would seem necessary to preserve law and order. Not sure what punishment would be like, since incarceration seems to be simply a less comfortable jail cell than the one we're already in.
Sans capitalism, we wouldn't really own anything including a home. But there needs to be provisions for ownership of irreplaceable things like one's own creation (artwork and such). If I travel elsewhere, the place I put my art might be occupied by another, and the artwork needs storage of some sort. Such storage must be limited.
Would there still be an economy based on human-produced products? I am a great artist and produce original paintings that are in demand, a resource that is limited, despite the AI being able to reproduce the work effortlessly. Would there be a concept of the original still being better than one of these copies and thus 'worth something'? Flip side is that my child brings home an ugly piece of school art that had value to me just because it becomes part of the memorabilia that makes up the history of my child. I go on vacation and the AI finds it most efficient to destroy the thing when I'm gone and make a new identical one when I return. Am I offended? If so, original works have value, and capitalism cannot be completely dead.

The AI is of course going to have to do something humans seem incapable of on their own: Find a balance where resources are renewable and thus the books balance. It would have to do what are currently immoral acts: Compulsory birth control and probably death control. A mommy (one mommy, not multiple competing ones) can do this. Our current morals (be they from God or society) seem designed for maximum suffering. The benevolent AI would need to rewrite that code.

PUN = unobserved events will resemble observed events

How do we proved PUN? — TheMadFool

It is a principle, not a hard truth.
PUN = unobserved events will probably resemble observed events

Finding an exception does not deter from the principle, it just modifies the list of observed events. The principle cannot be used as hard proof of anything since it is merely a statement of probability.

If we are a simulation then I suspect our knowledge of mathematics would be deliberately limited by our builders..... — Jake Tarragon

If they (simulation runners) are deliberately changing what we know, then it wouldn't be us that they're simulating.

I guess if you define Ether to be a substance that can be said to be stationary, then it defines a frame, and you can move relative to it, and light speed would be non-constant. This is pretty much how they falsified the ether model.

The Lumiferous Ether when it was thought to exist, was to serve the purpose of an universal frame of reference. A local volume of the Ether would then serve the same purpose. — FreeEmotion

Yes, that was the model for a while. It predicts that if two observers were in the same local volume but only one of them stationary, the moving one could be detected by that observer measuring a different speed of light. But it is always measured the same, falsifying this view.

Take for example the train and lightning strikes thought experiment. I have always thought that one could tell which lightning strike occurred first by stopping the train, and taking readings with measuring rods and clocks. — FreeEmotion

In the frame of the train, it is already stopped. Typically, the lightning example has the two lightning events being simultaneous in the frame of the platform, but the experiment works with the roles reversed as well.

At the time the train is moving,

Only in the frame of the platform

however, it may not be possible to do this, due to the impossibility of using variations in light speed to determine simultaneity of events.

The experiment presumes a fixed light speed, as has always been measured. If the speed was variable, empirical measurements would vary depending on the frame in which the experiment took place. This has been done, and it is always a constant.

This is an 'as it happens' view. Science also consists of taking measurements of past events using not speeds but displacements and locally recorded times.

In the train example, there are two observers taking the measurements, each spatially centered between the two events. So the events are simultaneous if they're detected at the same time, even though it takes time for the light from the events to reach the measurer.

Could we define an arbitrary boundary based on a set of stars that move very slowly relative to each other? Within this frame of reference, we can define absolute motion, does this make sense? — FreeEmotion

If it is relative to something (your set of stars), it is not absolute. Any absolute frame would not be in reference to a particular thing.

How large does the frame of reference have to be to become useful?

Frames don't have a size.

P3: Before the big-bang, there was neither time nor space. — Brian A

If there was no time, there is no 'before the bang'.
I have issues with the others as well, but P3 has that blatant self contradiction

What if X and Y have different features? X is 1.2 m in height and Y is 1.9 m and a different set of features. Can they be identical? If not, then I do not share identity with the child my mother raised.

Your example above (cars) are not identical since they have different location. It gets trickier when they don't.

Well, No mammals are cats, to follow the exact same form, but the two are the same statement.
So indeed, these are both examples of conclusions that don't follow from the premises.

Intuitive yes, but if we went by that, the world would still be flat
— noAxioms
Yes, Minkowski time, which is gridlike, is a convenience for scientific problems. It is not real time/duration as we experience it in life. — Rich

Interesting choice of quotes to attach to that response.
So you're saying that the round Earth model is just a convenience for scientific problems, not corresponding the real flat world as we experience it in life.
Not absurd, but pretty idealist. Not sure if FreeEmotion is asking about this.

Are you claiming there would be an experiential difference between the views?
— noAxioms

Indeed, explicit within Relativity, two observers are experiencing events differently. To Bergson, time (duree), is precisely what we experience as life. Memory is continuously evolving and sometimes it feels as time is moving very slowly and sometimes very quickly depending upon what we are experiencing. This is the duree of life, what Bergson called real time. Thomas Mann (and other modernist writers) attempted to express this experience in their novels, such as Mann's Magic Mountain. — Rich

So your claim is that under Minkowski time (time has same ontology as space, something that relativity suggests but doesn't demand), experienced time would not seem to drag when one is bored?
Not sure where in any of the descriptions that prediction is made.

Does Special Relativity apply only to 'real time' events? That is, events where information is communicated only by the speed of light and at the speed of light? No examining of historical traces or event logs, Einstein's train thought experiment seems to only illustrate real time effects. — FreeEmotion

Not sure what a 'real time event' is. If there is communication, there is the event of the message being sent, and another where it is received. That's two events.
Einstein's experiments involve implications of frame-independent constant light-speed, so yes, there's going to be discussion of light in them. Not sure how that makes it more 'real time'.

This forum is a much freer and more open forum than some of the science fora I have been on. Refreshing change. Thank you. — FreeEmotion

Been on that, and yes, it seems a place for people who know their stuff to make fun of people who don't. Some are worse that way than others.

So does this mean that the Relativity of Simultaneity does not apply to God? — FreeEmotion

I think (without proof) that time is part of the universe, and that clocks measure it (temporal distance). God is outside the universe presumably (unless he created himself sort of like the legend of Abe Lincoln being born in a log cabin he built with his own hands) so the physics of this universe have zero application to God. If you want, you can suggest the physics of God as almost everybody does, but somehow I don't think God takes much notice of us telling him how his physics must work.
Now if you put time outside the universe (as Rich does), then it can be said that God existed before the universe and eventually caused it to begin, and it is a thing that continues to 'happen'. Then I guess the question of relativity at least has some bearing. Anyway, in this interpretation, time is not part of the universe and thus would seem utterly undetectable. Clocks don't measure it (as relativity shows), but people are special and apparently do detect it, but not well enough to say what is going on elsewhere right now, so I find this claim completely dubious. This is probably not a fair description, since it is a view I don't hold. Ask the question of its adherents.

I would think he knows the Universe the way we would know fish in a fishbowl - we know were each one is, the limits, the center of the fishbowl ( I note your comments) , and the position and velocity of each fish in real time (since fish move at very much less than the speed of light, there are no detectable relativistic effects for us). He would know whether a fish is absolutely at rest or at motion with regard to the edges of the fishbowl, for example, or the water (ether?) or an arbitrarily chosen set of water molecules which happen to be in the same inertial frame?

Relativity says there is no outside boundary, the bowl grows over time, and there is no possible designation of something stationary that gives a sub-light velocity to most of the fish.
The center has no position and no duration, so it does not define such a reference. It is an event, not a frame. Where on this map is the center of Earth? "Not on the map." OK, but which spot is directly over the center? "All of them".

Not a religious argument but more an experiential — Rich

Are you claiming there would be an experiential difference between the views? That would constitute an empirical test, no?

and intuitive one based upon Bergson's studies of biology, mathematics, and education.

Intuitive yes, but if we went by that, the world would still be flat with the sun being carried overhead each day. Very few scientific advancements in the last couple centuries would qualify as intuitive findings.

Time (durée), as it is experienced, is heterogeneous and continuous.

???? So we should experience a series of stationary images while watching a 60fps movie.

This is the opposite of scientific time which is homogenous and discontinuous.

No idea how this relates to ontology of time, or what you mean by 'scientific time'.

I think what I am really getting at is: is a purely Newtonian universe possible, with all relativity being Galilean Relativity. Could God create such an universe which neither violated Newtonian physics nor Relativity as an illusion due to the limits of the speed of light, meaning limiting the speed of information transfer? — FreeEmotion

God is defined to be able to do anything, yes. But no, this is not that universe. Such a universe is possible. It would probably have luminiferous aether if there was a light speed of sorts, but the aether would be something you could carry with you to increase the speed of information transfer. There would be no limit to that. If there was a limit, then no Galilean Relativity.

Sound works like that. It has a speed limit (that varies with the medium), but if I'm in a supersonic jet, I can hear the person behind me talking. Outside, nobody hears the jet approaching. Sound obeys Galilean Relativity only because we can carry its aether with us.

One can imagine that information transfer is limited by the speed of light, reality is not. For example, is God's knowledge of an event is delayed by the time it takes light from the event to reach Him? Surely this is an absurd statement? (Asimov hinted at this, that the speed of light was slowing the second coming of Christ).

Your God has a location, and light travels there? Indeed, that's absurd. God is outside and does not gain knowledge the way we do: by waiting for physical photons and such to reach us. God has access to all states, and thus can meaningfully be said to be everywhere.

Bergson's critiques were philosophical in nature. He didn't question the scientific aspect, i.e. simultaneity of measurements. — Rich

This is correct. ToR suggests but does not assert an ontological status to time. To date I've seem many claims of empirical evidence supporting both sides, but I've never found any of them to be valid.
Bergson's claim was religious based, claiming that the immaterial mind somehow can detect what no clock or other physical device can: The rate of advancement of the present.
There is an empirical test against that claim (do the twin experiment with a human instead of a clock), but such an expenditure of resources would only prove that people detect time, not the advancement of the present. It would not conclusively be evidence of the ontological status of time.
Wayfarer, I've yet to read your article on the subject

You've not defined a paradox. You just gave multiple choice. Pick one and stick with it.
You don't need to reach for fiction to see this. Amoebas do this every day.

Mystical Spiritual Mumbo-Jumbo Physicalists:

Some Physicalists, believing in the mind as a separate metaphysical substance, try too explain away what they've fictitiously posited and believe in, by saying that mind is something that "supervenes" on the brain (Actually there's nothing to do that "supervening"), or in terms of epiphenomena, or by the mumbo-jumbo of emergent phenomena.

All of that is mystical, spiritual, fictitious balderdash. — Michael Ossipoff

A more unbiased summary of somebody else's view I've never read.
Off-point of me to comment, but you seem to dislike similar assessments of your own views. Just sayin..

Yes, here's what there is:

******************************************
There are hypothetical systems of hypothetical facts
...

I cut most of the meat out, because the statement began with "there are" which is sort of my point. The rest I actually kind of get, and approve more than you know, despite the fact that we seem to have built such different towers on such similar foundations.

It has been asked, "Where are there these facts?

Someone answered:

If there were no facts, then the fact that there are no facts would be a fact.

Not so. If there were no facts, then the fact above simply would not be. That's not even a paradox.
It has no frame in which it has meaning, so the potential truth of it doesn't exist either.

That's my take anyway.

There are as many varieties if physicalism as there are off Buddhism. I would say physicalism is a point-of-view that declares everything is physical, but then again this is my POV of physicalism. — Rich

You're right in that the term is used loosely and is but one category of beliefs.
The way I've heard it distinguished (sometimes, not necessarily) is that Materialism involves what Ossipoff is denying: that material is fundamental, and that the existence of the material is thus some sort of what is being called a brute fact. Physicalism just say's we're physical things, that people are built of the material and nothing immaterial. It does not necessarily assert that the physical is fundamental, or even objectively existent.

How does Physicalism explain why there's this physical world which, according to Physicalism, is Reality itself. ... independently, fundamentally-existent.," — Michael Ossipoff

Materialism would perhaps care to address that question, but your question assumes that there is something, physical or not. So how do you explain that there is whatever you assume there is?

It seems to be a contingent truth, putting it in the realm of modal logic which requires a frame. I (whatever I am) am an existing state a frame which we'll call the universe. Existing in the universe is not the same as existing, so I (a physicalist in this context) make no such assertion of that generalization.

As purely philosophical question, would God be able to define an absolute frame of reference, — FreeEmotion

God is free to define a sorting of all the events into time order. No inertial frame of reference does that, so it would not be an inertial frame if it was done.
It would have no effect on us if such an arbitrary definition was made.

say the centre of the known (to Him) universe,

It is known to me even, so I hope God is aware of it. Didn't you see my post about that? The centre of the universe does not define a frame, even if it does suggest an origin for a non-orthogonal coordinate system.

and all that there is beyond the reach of light and time?

Don't know what you mean by that. All parts of the universe of which I am aware (including the ones undetectable from here) are temporal and lit up, even if only dimly. Perhaps you define the universe as more than just what came from the big bang.

Once we say God knows something, then it forces it into the realm of existence since God cannot know something that does not exist?

Not sure if that qualifies as a circular definition. What if God knows that something doesn't exist? Probably not a valid example since I seem to be playing epistemological meta-language games in making that statement. The nonexistent thing doesn't exist, but the fact that God is aware of its nonexistence does exist. But it must exist, having been referenced...

I'm not sure of your definition of 'exists' either. Does 2+2=4 exist? Surely God knows it, so it must exist.
I find existence to be a relation, not a property, so there is no 'exists', there is only 'exists in'. Your definition may vary, but I cannot comment clearly without knowing it.

Mr Cee is moving at about .9999c one way and Mr Bee the same speed in the opposite direction. Nobody is going faster than light. The separation is about 2 trillion light years and they both exist in that frame. — noAxioms

The above assumes a constant expansion rate to the universe, not a true thing. Given that it is accelerating, neither Mr Bee nor Mr Cee are in that frame of reference....
The trick works for fairly distant places, but my example put these events a couple trillion light years apart, too far.
So that brings us down to one's definition of existence to ask if Mr Cee exists.

So which one are you rejecting here? — Mr Bee

I'm rejecting the prior post saying that sufficiently distant places don't exist. I gave an example of an event 2 trillion light years away that exists now, and where nothing is moving faster than light, thus refuting my assertion of the nonexistence of the event.

Seems like the former, but if that is the case, then I still don't understand where the assertion that some things don't exist in some reference frames if they are moving away faster than light. Your response still amounts to this assumption that they do, but I am afraid I don't see how or why.

Well, in our frame, Mr Cee is in the future and does not currently exist, so is not moving faster than light. Similarly, we don't exist in Mr Cee's frame. The frame is not a valid one for us since it would have us moving at about 140c, far beyond light speed.

Also, since we are on the topic of absolute frames, I don't think that GR allows for the notion of a reference frame, due to the curvature of space-time.

Yes, it says that SR laws only work locally. They break down over any significant distance, and my example far exceeded that. Does it make it invalid? I was just trying to counter my prior assertion.
Messages could in principle reach distant places if the expansion of the universe was constant, but it isn't. Hence the event horizon, which delimits events that can never have a causal effect here on Earth.
But coordinate systems exist that map really distant events like Mr Cee's post. Mr Cee has a proper-distance from us (length of a tape measure that curves with space), and a proper velocity (how much that measurement grows per second) and that value can be greater than light speed without violation of GR.

Instead the idea of an absolute frame is replaced with a preferred global foliation, which though technically not a frame of reference, defines a global time like the correct inertial frame should under SR. I am not sure if your statements above apply there, but I think I should throw that out since GR is the theory we are currently using.

Yes, there is an obvious global foliation (comoving coordinates), and I was unaware that GR rules (with space and velocity expressed in actual distance, not proper distance) would be valid at all in that coordinate system. Yes, that's where 'proper-distance' comes from. It essentially paints 4D spacetime in polar coordinates instead of the rectangular coordinates that yield inertial frames. The math to do Lorentz calculations in polar coordinates would be an interesting exercise, perhaps beyond my capabilities.

Not sure I am getting the connection between things that expand from us at a speed faster than light and them not existing. Sure they won't ever interact with us given the light speed limit and all, but that does not imply that they would cease to exist for us. — Mr Bee

I'm going to have to eat my words then.
I am on record for saying that the distance between any two events (points in spacetime) can be expressed by pure spatial separation or by pure temporal separation, or if right on the edge between the two, then undefined singularity. That assertion contradicts my denial of existence of things not in our reference frame.

So consider the event of you making that post, and Mr Cee on some other forum on some seriously distant planet making a similar post. Mr Cee does not exist in the frame in which Mr Bee is at rest, but that just means the wrong frame was chosen. Consider the frame where some spot about halfway is at rest. In that frame, the universe is now about a trillion years old and Mr Bee and Mr Cee are very near opposite edges of the expanding universe where time is dilated about 70x. Mr Cee is moving at about .9999c one way and Mr Bee the same speed in the opposite direction. Nobody is going faster than light. The separation is about 2 trillion light years and they both exist in that frame.
Words eaten. Thank you for the correction.

Sort of its own disproof then. The logic is sound, and the conclusion obviously contradicts reality, thus at least one of the premises must be wrong. I happen to take issue with all three of them.