This depends on how you define "the present". I would define it as the division between past and future. It seems evident to me that my experience consists of some past and some future, so I would say that my experience encompasses all of the present, and also some past and some future. But if you define "the present" as consisting of an extended period of time, then it is likely that we only experience a part of the present. — Metaphysician Undercover
This appears to me to be an incoherent statement. "Consciousness" and "experience" are specific to the way that we experience time. To talk about a consciousness experiencing all of time at once doesn't really make any sense. Consider what it would be like if what we experienced as a thousandth of a second in time, would consist of the physical changes of a billion years. We don't notice the changes of a thousandth of a second because they go by so fast. So all the things which happen to the earth, the solar system, and the entire universe, in a billion years, would not be noticeable to this consciousness because they go by so fast. Now extend this to all of time. Everything which happens throughout the entirety of time would not be noticeable because it zooms by too fast. How does it make sense to talk about a scenario like this? — Metaphysician Undercover
There are two very distinct uses of "eternal". One refers to existing forever, infinite temporal existence. The other refers to existence outside of time. Aristotle demonstrated that the first, infinite temporal existence, is a faulty concept. Following this, Christian theologians accepted the second meaning, "outside of time" as the description of the eternality of God. What exactly is meant by this is a subject for speculation. — Metaphysician Undercover
Perhaps there is another way of phrasing this? Perhaps "There is no object in the physical universe that has the property of being eternal"? — EricH
This claim does not seem to be based in any logic. If it is true that there is nothing which is eternal, this makes the statement "nothing is eternal" true. It does not make the statement "nothing is eternal" eternal. In fact, that would contradict the premise that there is nothing which is eternal. — Metaphysician Undercover
If there is something that is eternal, then it is false that nothing is eternal. And this statement of false, would be eternal.
However, if there exists absolutely nothing that is eternal, then our statement is true. And this statement of true, would be eternal. — Philosophim
An island to the south of continental Australia exists. A large deposit of ice on the Moon is now said to exist. But the solution to the question of what two and two equals does not exist, it simply is. — Wayfarer
What is it to think something is true than to be of a state of mind such that you are inclined to act like it is true? — Pfhorrest
on my account will is a process as lawlike as any other, which is to say not completely but substantially enough. And laws of nature are not “enforced” by anything, then aren’t normative laws like those humans pass to govern each other, they are just patterns in the structure of possible ways the universe could be. — Pfhorrest
Transcending the laws of physics is not possible because if they could be transcended they would not have been actual laws to begin with. We routinely transcend all kinds of things once thought to be laws of nature; that just shows that we were wrong about what the laws were before. — Pfhorrest
as for the problem of evil, if you want to count as God something that doesn’t meet all the regular criteria that’s fine, just a matter of semantics, but still you’re basically talking about a really powerful all-good alien who’s just not powerful enough to overcome the influence of an equally powerful evil alien — Pfhorrest
neither of whose existence we have an evidence of. That’s kinda crazy sounding and though on my account you’re free to believe it yourself if that really seems the most plausible interpretation of your experience of the world to you, you’re going to need some big evidence to back up any assertions to anyone else that that’s more likely than other, less outlandish accounts. — Pfhorrest
To believe something is just to think it’s true, nothing more. — Pfhorrest
There's no sense of superiority or blindness in saying that mental health issues should be addressed by mental health professionals, not by strangers on a philosophy forum. — Michael
Psychiatrists offer therapy as well as medication. Either way it's best to seek help from a trained professional, not random losers and one awesome person on the internet. — Michael
I don't think they are questions a philosopher can answer, be they amateur or professional. They need to be heard by a psychiatrist. — god must be atheist
We should not have to work anywhere near as hard as we used to have to work.
But back in the 1950's...the norm was for only one person (usually the father was the provider) in the family to work...and that person earned enough for shelter, medical needs, education, transportation, food, clothing and all other needs...plus small vacations and even some savings for later years.
Today...after the introduction of billions of slave machines...both parents work...sometimes with more than one job...and basic needs are barely met.
During my lifetime, normal work went from 45 hours during 5 1/2 days a week...to 40 hours 5 days a week. That was back in the 1950's.
We should be working 2 days a week...10 hours now.
This all sucks. — Frank Apisa
The point is colors do not actually exist, and that is a fact in the sense that in the outside 3d person empirical reality there are only electric and magnetic fields, and they are transparent. There is no field of purple or substance of green. Therefore, we do not see colors, we "see" something else as colors. For example, colors could be mapped to magnetic density or electric voltage scales, or different orientation of molecules, or even symbols and numbers in some higher order representation mapping. — Zelebg
The tendency for (closed systems in) our universe to evolve toward states of greater entropy isn't an effect of any of our specific physical laws, though. In a purely mathematical model of all of the possible instantaneous states of the universe, completely agnostic to the physical laws governing transitions from one state to another, states where energy is spread out more evenly are more common, and states where it is more concentrated are less common. Think of, for example, ways that air molecules could be arranged in a box: there's only relatively few arrangements that have them all clumped in the same corner, but a whole lot of arrangements that have them spread out pretty evenly across the whole volume of the box.
It's not that there are more high-entropy states than low-entropy ones because the physical laws make high-entropy ones more likely; the high-entropy ones are more likely because there's just more of them that are possible (and that is actually what defines them as high-entropy), so even if there was no law-like behavior at all, and the whole system just evolved randomly, you would just expect it to evolve into a higher-entropy state at random. — Pfhorrest
What I mean by "iron clad" though is precisely that that doesn't depend on any actual physical force, it's just a purely mathematical thing. Any universe with any physical laws would still obey the same mathematics, and so still be bound to that purely mathematical statistical tendency. — Pfhorrest
The problem with asking "what is the meaning of life?" is that there just isn't this kind of correspondence. There's nothing to point to. — BitconnectCarlos
Pretty sure it is. At the very least, everything will expand until there's nothing left to harness. — Marchesk
The second law may be iron clad — Pfhorrest
Afterlife or not, what's really the value of doing anything in the grand scheme of things? — runbounder
So the way to an absolute inertial frame is through ether theory. — Metaphysician Undercover
To claim as you do, that we might just produce an absolute inertial frame from our present understanding is not realistic, because there are too many unknown factors like dark matter and dark energy. — Metaphysician Undercover
I suppose that explains the hunt for the ether, even though I don't think it is posited to be detectable. — noAxioms
Keep in mind I'm just asking here since I'm not totally familiar. If the ether moves/flows, where does the ether go when it gets to say the center of say Earth? — noAxioms
No, the question above talks about being in a dense hollow shell, a region of a flat gravitational field (no acceleration, but still in a well). Let's assume the ball is stationary so the dilation is completely due to gravity and not the ball moving through the ether or being in an acceleration field. — noAxioms
I suppose Lorentz's theory has been generalized then? I wonder how black holes are handled since they don't seem to exist under LET. — noAxioms
No, but it is sort of one of my points. All clocks anywhere are dilated, no matter their position or velocity. They never compute how dilated these clocks are. Nothing exact is asked for. A single digit of precision would be nice. You'd think the 'time flows' proponents would want to know the objective rate of time flow, but they seem to avoid it like it's something embarrassing. — noAxioms
If the twins are approaching each other, they see the other aging faster. Yes, that's doppler, so 'sees' is a misleading choice of verbs. What each actually does is compute the age of the other, and in order to do that, each needs to select a frame, and if they select different frames (there is no reason they need to), then they're going to get different answers of course. — noAxioms
One can do it the complicated way (the non-inertial frame in which the traveler is stationary the whole way), but then the twin back home ages mostly during the time taken to turn around. If it's instant, then the remote age change is instant. Either way, your assertion above that 'at every moment of the trip twin A sees twin B aging more slowly' is wrong. It happens during the acceleration, however long that takes. — noAxioms
Can't jump to the other ship without accelerating. — noAxioms
Oh doesn't it now. Are we in a priveleged location in space where it seems to work out to a fixed distance from us in every direction, but if we were near the edge of that, it would only work if we looked back at Earth and not further away from Earth?
If not, what do you mean by this? — noAxioms
All those galaxies are nearly stationary. The separation between us and them is growing at a rate more than c, but velocity is not defined as a relative change in position relative to a reference in that view. That's the SR view, and the universe is not described by SR over large distances. That's a good part of why the absolute frame cannot be inertial. — noAxioms
First of all, under SR, this isn't true. The problem is that it takes infinite energy to accelerate the last bit, so it cannot be sustained. What can be done is indefinite proper acceleration of 1G like that, in which case light speed is never reached. — noAxioms
I actually tried to draw a picture of the whole universe using an inertial frame, including these 'superluminal' objects. Under SR, speeds do indeed add up using the relative rule and light speed can never be reached. The picture works fine until I attempted to work acceleration of expansion into it, and I could not do it without violating fixed light speed in the coordinate system. I don't think I can post pictures here or I'd show it to you, but it is a picture of non-absolute physics. — noAxioms
Muons make great clocks. Accurate to at least 2 digits and easy to accelerate. — noAxioms
Time that picks and chooses. Yea sure. — noAxioms
Let me know how that works out for you. — noAxioms
Yes, it says that, despite no signal going back. Only forth.
At no point does that page say that the measurement was invalid (cannot be done to arbitrary precision today) or that it in fact involved a round trip signal of some kind. — noAxioms
This says that in order to know X, you already need to know X. I suppose that's arguably true in this case. — noAxioms
There was no two-way measurement. That's the whole point. — noAxioms
Lorentz did not hold to the postulates of relativity. — noAxioms
Yes, that being why I call it a metaphysical interpretation. Physics is about what we see (said heuristics), but metaphysics is about what actually is. — noAxioms
That's far more of an explanation than Lorentz's story. If it derives from empirical observation, then it's fully explained. — noAxioms
I am unclear if this was ever generalized to gravity. How is time dilation say here on Earth explained? — noAxioms
Also how does it explain dilation in a gravity well with no acceleration? I'm inside a hollowed out space inside a planet and my clock runs slower here than out in space, but I'm completely inertial, not accelerating in any way. Which way is the ether going if it is the explanation of the dilation going on there? I ask because the vast majority of our current dilation (compared to a hypothetical stationary clock at zero gravitational potential) is due to this kind of thing. — noAxioms
Also, I don't see the LET guys explaining the twins using an ether calculation. They all do it the SR way, but keeping to one frame of their choice the whole time. — noAxioms
I am a moderator on one such forum and the mainstream view seems defended by a small number of people who know it and by several more who don't know it very well, and questioned by countless users that either want real understanding, want to push an alternative (like you), or want to push something of their own.
Nobody pushing an alternative view gets banned for it. The bans are for abusive language or for purposes of promotion of personal websites. The crackpots often remain, relegated to the children playground. LET is not considered a crackpot view. — noAxioms
Treating the Earth as stationary when it isn't is valid move because of what Einstein showed. — noAxioms
Where is your reference process then? How dilated is your kitchen clock? Ever try to compute that? — noAxioms
Hence Einstein's being the mainstream view. It indeed simplifies everything. — noAxioms
It being a fallacy is not a belief or not. You have to show the logical inconsistency of it. 4-D spacetime is the constructive theory you mentioned, providing an explanation for the dilations and such. — noAxioms
LET (or at least the theory Lorentz worked on himself) also posits time as a dimension. nLET does not. You seem to be in the nLET camp then. — noAxioms
The question of which is older is a frame dependent question. You know this, and yet you misrepresent what the theory says by omitting frame references in a statement that references multiple frames. — noAxioms
It isn't true since the turnaround time is not considered in the above statement, and also the frame references (there are multiple frames again) are omitted. You seem to do this deliberately since you know better. Are you really suggesting that the mainstream view is contradictory or are you just pretending to be stupid when it suits your purposes? — noAxioms
If you mean the inertial frame in which the CMBR is isotropic here, that is not a valid candidate for the preferred frame of the universe since no inertial frame foliates all of spacetime. In other words, galaxies like GN-z11 (something we can see) does not even exist in that inertial frame since it is moving at well over light speed and thus hasn't yet been born. — noAxioms
No. I put a clock in there and it still paces the one on the outside. That's empirical evidence against the dilation explanation of the apple rotting. — noAxioms
The geometry method for instance explains (and is not just a mathematical convenience) why the height of a flag pole can be taller or shorter depending on your choice of the orientation of the 'up' dimension. That is physical length contraction without any change to the proper dimensions of the pole. — noAxioms
I want to know how the twin case is supposed to provide us with evidence that time is relative. For it seems to me that most of those who reason about these sorts of case commit egregious fallacies. — Bartricks
As for what I understand relativity to mean in this context: well, someone who held that time was relative would deny that there is an absolute now. That is, there is no 'now', there is just 'now-for-x'. — Bartricks
I always wondered about this claim. The first speed of light measurement was done using a one way method. It can still be done today with far greater precision. Are you saying Romer did not actually measure light speed, or that the method he used was in some way not one way? — noAxioms
The Australian physicist Karlov also showed that Rømer actually measured the speed of light by implicitly making the assumption of the equality of the speeds of light back and forth.
you claim that your view is the truth and everybody is just being dogmatic for not seeing it — noAxioms
'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. — noAxioms
Sorry, but even the interpretations with a preferred frame need to invoke relativity theory else they'd predict different things. — noAxioms
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. — noAxioms
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 — noAxioms
Lorentz needs superluminal signals? Why? — noAxioms
That leaves the fairly small percentage of armchair opinion holders like ourselves on these forums, and among them, it seems split pretty evenly. — noAxioms
For instance, I've never seen the twin scenario (a realistic one with Earth not stationary) described using any absolute interpretation. — noAxioms
he did not see time flowing/'running' as you seem to. — noAxioms
Time is a dimension, orthogonal to space, which is why they call it spacetime. — noAxioms
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. — noAxioms
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. — noAxioms
As you say, we can pick Earth's as the absolute frame and say the muons are time dilated, yes. — noAxioms
the apparent contradiction that each other's clocks are running slower is just a very simple matter of perspective.
Here's an easy explanation from the book I'm currently writing:
[...] — Edgar L Owen
Until you falsify the other interpretation, it's opinion, not truth, and opinion isn't worth the militant fighting.
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.
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.
But you're not questioning it. You're asserting it to be wrong. — noAxioms
There are some, sure, but at a much lower percentage. — noAxioms
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. — noAxioms
You said you were fighting for the truth. So you seem to at least claim to know the truth without any proof then. — noAxioms
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. — noAxioms
You said you would debunk my statement, and yet when I ask a question, you evade it.. — noAxioms
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. — noAxioms
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. — noAxioms
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
Thank you for illustrating my point. — noAxioms
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
Anyway, I called nothing 'strange' — noAxioms
you get strange effects — noAxioms
I would never have suggested time running more slowly in a muon's own frame. — noAxioms
Dark matter and dark energy are posited because we see weird things happening in the universe and posit those names for the as-yet-unknown whatever it is that's causing them. — Pfhorrest
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. — noAxioms
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. — noAxioms
All said, most absolutists correctly do not posit an inertial frame as the preferred one — noAxioms
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