While Bill stays put, Ann moves toward the light coming towards her showing the events as they unfold. Of course she's going to see the decision to invade Earth before Bill does. By the time the light reaches her, she's simply closer to it. She's been walking millions of years towards it already. Once Bill sees the decision happening, for Ann at that point, having walked at 5 m/s for all that time, the light reaching her then is 15 days later and the armada is already on its way. — Benkei

But the relativity of simultaneity isn't just about one person seeing something before another person; it's about that thing actually happening for one person before another person. That's what I find peculiar.

Do you feel comfortable saying both are correct because neither has a privileged frame of reference? If yes, what makes the Andromeda example different for you? If not, why not? — Benkei

I don't really understand your question. I certainly accept that special relativity, and its various implications such as the Andromeda Paradox, are correct, but like much of science I find it very peculiar.

Sorry. I think the difference you describe is meaningless. — T Clark

You think the distinction between "there is intelligent life in the Andromeda Galaxy" being truth-apt and it not being truth-apt is a meaningless distinction?

The realist would disagree. They would argue that it's truth-apt and either true or false.

The same with something like "a fleet of spaceships has left the Andromeda Galaxy en route to Earth". It's either true or false even if we can't know which it is.

However, what's interesting about special relativity is that it seems to entail that whether or not such a proposition is true is relative to one's reference frame such that if two people cross paths in opposite directions then it can be true for one of them and false for the other. And if it's true for one of them then the future for the other is "fixed".

As the article asks "Can we meaningfully discuss what is happening right now in a galaxy far, far away?" Answer - of course not. — T Clark

Is that just because we don't know what is happening, or is it because there's nothing happening? A realist would presumably say that something is happening right now in a galaxy far, far way, but if special relativity is true then what's happening right now depends on our individual, relative velocities, such that what's happening right now in a galaxy far, far way in your reference frame isn't what's happening right now in a galaxy far, far away in my reference frame.

Please explain how "even the slightest movement of the head or offset in distance between observers can cause the three-dimensional universes to have differing content." And how can this purported difference in content cause a difference in simultaneity of months? — T Clark

There’s some math here that might explain it: https://medium.com/mathadam/the-andromeda-paradox-b4bb30a0e372

Given the distance to the Andromeda galaxy one person moving towards another nearby person at just 5 m/s changes the frame of reference enough that there’s a 15 day difference between which events in Andromeda are simultaneous.

And the further the distance the lower the velocity needed to establish such a significant difference. So given a far enough away location even small head movements can bring about a sufficiently different reference frame.

I consider this "paradox" untenable since simultaneity cannot apply to distant events. — jgill

So do distant events occur in the past relative to my reference frame? Or the future? Or not at all?

Continuing in that article:

Mr. Shapley, in fact, also told Congress that his investigation had uncovered some evidence that some of the claims of the elder Mr. Biden’s involvement were mere “wishful thinking.”

He told of an interview conducted with Hunter Biden’s business associate Rob Walker, who told investigators that it was “projection” that former Vice President Biden would get involved in their business ventures.

“I certainly never was thinking at any time the V.P. was a part of anything we were doing,” Mr. Walker said, according to Mr. Shapley.

...

House Republicans sought to portray the testimony as further evidence that Hunter Biden had gotten what they call a sweetheart deal from the Justice Department, even though his agreement to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges appeared in line with how other first-time, nonviolent offenders were typically treated. Mr. Biden paid his back taxes and penalties in 2021.

Isn't that saying that they can hark back to something that didn't happen? — wonderer1

No? It's just saying that they conclude that at some point in the past, it was true for one of them that the ships had set off and false for the other.

As it says they don’t know that it’s the case, but the reasoning suggests that it is the case for one of them. It’s better to understand it as saying that according to their their reference frame rather than according to their beliefs.

Ok, so a rock traveling at the speed of light comes from a star a million light years away to here. At the same time that it leaves, there is a super massive solar flare in the star. The rock arrives here a few years later but we will not see the flare for a million years. — Sir2u

The rock and the flare arrive at the same time. From our perspective they took 1,000,000 years.

A ship followed them at 99% the speed of light. From our perspective it took 1,010,101 years to arrive because the distance is 1,000,000 light years. From the ship's perspective it took 142,492 years because the distance is 141,067 light years.

From our perspective the ship arrived 10,101 years after the rock and flare. From the ship's perspective it arrived 1,425 years after the rock and flare.

See also:

And in the "scenario most frequently discussed," there is a fourth potential outcome that halfers want to say is not a potential outcome. SB can be left asleep on Tuesday. This is an outcome in the "laboratory" space whether or not SB can observe it. It needs to be accounted for in the probability calculations, but in the "frequent discussions" in "typical literature," the halfers remove it entirely. Rather than assign it the probability it deserves and treating the knowledge that it isn't happening as "new information." — JeffJo

What if the experiment ends after the Monday interview if heads, with the lab shut down and Sleeping Beauty sent home? Heads and Tuesday is as irrelevant as Heads and Friday.

I think this is equivalent to the case where we don't consider days, and just say that if heads then woken once and if tails then woken twice. It doesn't make sense to consider heads and second waking as part of the probability space. It certainly doesn't have a prior probability of 1/4.

This doesn't seem to be saying anything.

Why use the word "God" at all? Why not just say that there was some inanimate, formless chaos that happened (without intention) to form into the space and time and matter and energy that we are familiar with?

Using the word "God" brings in all sorts of additional, religious baggage.

I do believe that in many of these instances XX and XY accurately describe what the speaker meant when he hung the sign, not what the word eventually evolved into and what it was meant to protect. — Hanover

Maybe that's true of the person who hung the sign (assuming they have a basic understanding of biology), but our use of the words "man" and "woman" and our separation of bathrooms and locker rooms long preceded our discovery of sex chromosomes in 1905.

At the most you could argue that the words and separation was determined by phenotype as historically there was no means to distinguish between a typical XY male and someone with XX Male Syndrome, and so it's a stretch to argue that genetics had something to do with the conventions of our language use, even if there is a strong correlation between genotype and phenotype.

But your response doesn't really address my questions. Should someone who has physically transitioned use the bathroom associated with their sex chromosomes? How would anyone know what someone else's (or their own) sex chromosomes are? What about people who are neither XX nor XY?

I think practical considerations are far more important than the intentions of the person who painted a sign on a door, so your argument is a red herring.

I'll throw in one last consideration. I posted a variation of the experiment here.

There are three beauties; Michael, Jane, and Jill. They are put to sleep and assigned a random number from {1, 2, 3}.

If the coin lands heads then 1 is woken on Monday. If the coin lands tails then 2 is woken on Monday and 3 is woken on Tuesday.

If Michael is woken then what is his credence that the coin landed heads?

Michael's credence before the experiment is P(1) = 1/3, so if woken he ought to continue to have a credence of P(1) = 1/3 since he gains no new relevant evidence if he wakes up during the experiment.

And given that if woken he is 1 iff the coin landed heads, he ought to have a credence of P(Heads) = 1/3.

Do we accept this?

If so then the question is whether or not Sleeping Beauty's credence in the original experiment should be greater than Michael's credence in this experiment. I think it should.

Existence IS God. — EnPassant

What does this mean? Are you saying that the words "existence" and "God" are synonyms? As a fluent English speaker I'd have to disagree. At the very least, "God" is proper noun and "existence" an improper noun, so clearly there is at least some distinction between the words.

What's the verb form of "God"? For "existence" it's "exists". So how would you rephrase the sentence "there exists more than one apple"? Maybe "there gods more than one apple"? Doesn't make much sense to me.

Or are you perhaps just asserting pantheism? If so then what evidence or reasoning leads you to believe that the universe is "divine" (or whatever it is that distinguishes a pantheistic universe from a non-pantheistic universe)?

Copied from something I posted in a previous discussion:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-survey-idUSKBN13X0BK

Almost 60 percent of transgender Americans have avoided using public restrooms for fear of confrontation, saying they have been harassed and assaulted, according to the largest survey taken of transgender people in the United States.

The survey of 27,715 respondents reached an estimated 2 percent of the adult transgender population in 2015, seeking to fill a gap in data about a severely understudied group whose experiences and challenges from medicine to law to economics and family relations are poorly understood.

The findings by the National Center for Transgender Equality on public restrooms counter the message of mainly conservative politicians and religious leaders that transgender people are the antagonists preying on others. It found that 12 percent of transgender people were verbally harassed in public restrooms within the previous year, 1 percent were physically attacked and 1 percent were sexually assaulted. Nine percent said someone denied them access to a bathroom.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/transgender-teens-restricted-bathroom-access-sexual-assault/

Transgender and gender-nonbinary teens face greater risk of sexual assault in schools that prevent them from using bathrooms or locker rooms consistent with their gender identity, according to a recent study.

Researchers looked at data from a survey of nearly 3,700 U.S. teens aged 13-17. The study found that 36% of transgender or gender-nonbinary students with restricted bathroom or locker room access reported being sexually assaulted in the last 12 months, according to a May 6, 2019 CNN article. Of all students surveyed, 1 out of every 4, or 25.9%, reported being a victim of sexual assault in the past year.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8022685/

Also according to the declaration, the idea that protection for transgender people (including using the bathroom without constraint due to gender identity) harms the privacy and security of other users is a myth. Several critics point out that there is no evidence that non-discrimination policies or that explicitly allow transgender people to use restrooms according to their gender identities have led to an increase in the number of sexual harassment cases in bathrooms and women's locker rooms anywhere in the world (Doran, 2016; Hasenbush et al., 2019). States (19) and cities (more than 200) in the US that have passed laws against discrimination against LGBT people show that such measures have not caused any increase in incidences of crime in bathrooms (Maza and Brinker, 2014). This is not surprising, given that the approval of protections against discrimination has no impact on existing laws that criminalize violent behavior in bathrooms. In the absence of real incidents to base trans-exclusionary bathroom policies, anti-trans groups fabricate horror stories about trans-inclusive bathroom policies (Maza, 2014).

Security and privacy in the use of public restrooms are certainly important for everyone—including transgender people. Arguments that unilaterally conceive the access of transgender people to restrooms according to their gender identities as a risk factor for the safety of other people assume, even implicitly, that the transgender population does not deserve to be protected under the same standards as the cisgender population. This is particularly alarming, given that research shows precisely that young transgender people are exposed to much higher rates of violence in US schools' restrooms (middle and high school) than young cisgenders (Murchison et al., 2019).

What about those who’ve physically transitioned? Should an XX person with an artificial penis and testicles use the XX locker room? Should an XY person with artificial breasts and vulva use the XY locker room? How would a third party using the locker room even know that they’re artificial?

What if someone doesn’t know what their sex chromosomes are because they’ve never been tested? Although there’s a strong correlation between sex chromosomes and appearance there are all sorts of genetic conditions that differ from the common, and not everyone with them knows that they have them. They might be very rare but whatever laws or rules you have in place will need to account for them. Will all bathrooms and locker rooms require genetic testing?

What if someone is neither XX nor XY? Again it might be rare but again they need to be accounted for.

That is the definition of light year, how far light travel in one year. — Sir2u

Because of length contraction the faster you go the shorter the distance between two points. So something that is 1 light year away to us is less than 1 light year away to an object moving at near the speed of light.

See here: https://www.emc2-explained.info/Dilation-Calc/

In the second set of boxes set the % of c to 99.9 and the distance to 100 light years. It shows that from the perspective of the ship the distance is 4.471 light years and will take 4.475 years to reach.

Is there something about the American constitution I don't understand? Is it unamendable by any sitting government? Is a national referendum required to alter the constitution? — universeness

Requires two-thirds of the Senate and the House of Representatives and three-fourths of the States to agree to it.

Why I am not hearing about the democrats trying to rush through legislation, to prevent anyone found guilty of a criminal act being barred from standing for president?
Why was this gaping hole in USA legislation not corrected, years ago? — universeness

Because that might be unconstitutional.

Article II states "No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States."

Although it doesn't explicitly say that "Any person except...", it could probably be argued that this was meant to be an exhaustive requirement (although I don't know if one could both argue this and claim to be an originalist, as some Justices claim to be).

Trump rejected lawyers’ efforts to avoid classified documents indictment

Trump time and again rejected the advice from lawyers and advisers who urged him to cooperate and instead took the advice of Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, and a range of others who told him he could legally keep the documents and should fight the Justice Department, advisers said. Trump would often cite Fitton to others, and Fitton told some of Trump’s lawyers that Trump could keep the documents, even as they disagreed, the advisers said.

...

Trump’s chances to avoid charges began in early 2021, according to current and former advisers. After Gary Stern, counsel at the National Archives, asked Trump’s team for the return of documents, some of his lawyers and advisers began advising him to return them. National Archives officials were privately baffled at what they viewed as inexplicably recalcitrant behavior and kept asking for answers to no avail.

In the fall of 2021, Alex Cannon, then a Trump attorney, urged the former president to return documents to the National Archives, repeatedly telling him that he was required to give them back, according to people familiar with the matter.

After months of talking to Trump and his staff, Cannon — referred to in the indictment as a “Trump Representative” — told Trump that the National Archives was threatening to go to Congress or to the Department of Justice if he did not return the documents, the people said.

...

Meanwhile, Trump grew angry with his lawyers and chose new lawyers, bringing in Evan Corcoran to handle the matter at the recommendation of adviser Boris Epshteyn.

Shortly after the subpoena arrived, the indictment says, Corcoran and another lawyer met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and told him he needed to comply.

Such a moron. His own lawyers tell him that he needs to give them back and he just ignores them.

It appears he did file them separately, took them with him, and disputed with NARA over them. If you find that he took something designated as presidential records with him, be sure to let me know. — NOS4A2

He took things that were neither presidential records nor personal records; documents with classification markings related to national defence.

You can read the indictment for a list of the one's he's being charged over.

Also that court ruling only says that "there is nothing under the statute that the Court can compel the Archivist to do."

It continues by saying:

The PRA authorizes NARA to invoke the same enforcement mechanism embodied in the Federal Records Act, which begins with a request to the Attorney General to institute an action for the recovery of missing records. Compare 44 U.S.C. § 2112(c) with 44 U.S.C. § 3106. The statute does not mandate that NARA invoke this enforcement scheme but rather vests complete discretion with the agency to utilize that mechanism. 44 U.S.C. § 2112(c) (“When the Archivist considers it to be in the public interest, he may . . . .” (emphasis added). The Archivist has chosen to invoke the mechanism in the past when it deemed such action appropriate. See, e.g., United States v. McElvenny, No. 02-3027, 2003 WL 1741422 (S.D.N.Y. April 1, 2003) (seeking recovery of a map of Cuba annotated by President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis).

So it appears you're incorrect in your claim that NARA doesn't have the authority to take back documents it considers Presidential records.

The above also references the court case you referenced before @NOS4A2, which has this to say:

The only reference in the entire statute to the designation of records as personal versus Presidential also calls for the decision to be made by the executive, and to be made during, and not after, the presidency. It provides: “materials produced or received by the President, [and other Executive Office employees], shall, to the extent practicable, be categorized as Presidential records or personal records upon their creation or receipt and be filed separately.”

Given that there is no record of Trump categorising such documents as personal records during his Presidency, they cannot be considered his personal records under the Presidential Records Act. Simply taking them with him when he left isn't sufficient.

Someone below him has more authority then? — NOS4A2

He's subject to the legislation like everyone else, which says:

(2) The term "Presidential records" means documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, created or received by the President, the President's immediate staff, or a unit or individual of the Executive Office of the President whose function is to advise or assist the President, in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President. Such term—

(A) includes any documentary materials relating to the political activities of the President or members of the President's staff, but only if such activities relate to or have a direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President; but

(B) does not include any documentary materials that are (i) official records of an agency (as defined in section 552(e) 1 of title 5, United States Code); (ii) personal records; (iii) stocks of publications and stationery; or (iv) extra copies of documents produced only for convenience of reference, when such copies are clearly so identified.

(3) The term "personal records" means all documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion therof,2 of a purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President. Such term includes—

(A) diaries, journals, or other personal notes serving as the functional equivalent of a diary or journal which are not prepared or utilized for, or circulated or communicated in the course of, transacting Government business;

(B) materials relating to private political associations, and having no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President; and

(C) materials relating exclusively to the President's own election to the office of the Presidency; and materials directly relating to the election of a particular individual or individuals to Federal, State, or local office, which have no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.

Do you think the government can take back personal records of a former president, circumventing the presidential records act, if the next administration deems them illegal to retain? — NOS4A2

They weren't personal records. The Presidential Records Act doesn't given the President authority to declare that agency records are his personal records.

So you’re saying that after the president leaves office, they can retroactively re-classify it and arrest him for having it? — NOS4A2

I'm saying that it can be illegal for him to retain it when subpoenaed to return it even if it is, and remains, declassified.

You mistakenly believe that "unclassified" means "legal to have". That isn't the case. A document can be unclassified and illegal to have.

What are you talking about?

A document being declassified can still be subject to the provisions of legislation. Your claim that if Trump declassified a document then he is legally entitled to it after leaving the Presidency is factually incorrect. Jack Smith and his prosecutors know more about the law than you.

Yes, and?

They cannot re-classify Trump’s documents. — NOS4A2

They can:

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-classified-national-security-information

Information may not be reclassified after declassification and release to the public under proper authority unless:

(1) the reclassification is personally approved in writing by the agency head based on a document-by-document determination by the agency that reclassification is required to prevent significant and demonstrable damage to the national security;

(2) the information may be reasonably recovered without bringing undue attention to the information;

(3) the reclassification action is reported promptly to the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) and the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office; and

(4) for documents in the physical and legal custody of the National Archives and Records Administration (National Archives) that have been available for public use, the agency head has, after making the determinations required by this paragraph, notified the Archivist of the United States (Archivist), who shall suspend public access pending approval of the reclassification action by the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office. Any such decision by the Director may be appealed by the agency head to the President through the National Security Advisor. Public access shall remain suspended pending a prompt decision on the appeal.

And in Trump's case, even if he did declassify it, it was never "release[d] to the public under proper authority", given that "prior to public release, all declassified records shall be appropriately marked to reflect their declassification."

You clearly just don't understand anything about what classification is or how it works.

The documents in question were not automatically declassified. — NOS4A2

Even if manually declassified they may still contain information covered by additional restrictions that would require continued withholding of information from disclosure, such as the Espionage Act and Atomic Energy Act.

Executive Order 13526 doesn't circumvent legislation.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s classified documents or national defense information, which is a distinction without a difference. — NOS4A2

There is a difference. See here:

Classification is but one basis for an agency to withhold the disclosure of records or information. A declassified record may still contain information covered by additional restrictions that would require continued withholding of information from disclosure.

A document being declassified doesn't mean that it is legal for any person to possess it. A declassified document can still be subject to the provisions of other legislation, such as the Espionage Act and Atomic Energy Act.

And as I mentioned in the other discussion, the Presidential Records Act doesn't give Presidents the authority to simply assert that agency documents are their private property.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/us/politics/trump-presidential-records-act.html

To start, presidents also routinely handle documents produced by departments and agencies like the Pentagon and the C.I.A. As agency records, they are instead governed by the Federal Records Act, which has no provision allowing a president to declare any to be his personal property.

The Presidential Records Act states that presidential records do not include “official records of an agency.” A 1993 ruling by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit says the law avoids any “potential definitional overlap” by making clear that if a document qualifies as an agency record, that trumps any possibility it could also be considered a presidential record.

“Certainly anything produced by an agency and given to a president would be considered an agency record,” Ms. Kwoka said.

The Espionage Act has nothing to do with the Archivist.

The ruling is only that:

The Court will grant the motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) because plaintiff's claim is not redressable. NARA does not have the authority to designate materials as “Presidential records,” NARA does not have the tapes in question, and NARA lacks any right, duty, or means to seize control of them. In other words, there has been no showing that a remedy would be available to redress plaintiff's alleged injury even if the Court agreed with plaintiff's characterization of the materials. Since plaintiff is completely unable to identify anything the Court could order the agency to do that the agency has any power, much less, a mandatory duty, to do, the case must be dismissed.

Nothing in this says that Trump can avoid being charged under the Espionage Act for retaining documents related to national defence.

But during his presidency, Trump was authorized to posses, declassify, and determine as personal records those documents. — NOS4A2

According to the PRA:

(3) The term “personal records” means all documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion therof,[2] of a purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President. Such term includes—
(A) diaries, journals, or other personal notes serving as the functional equivalent of a diary or journal which are not prepared or utilized for, or circulated or communicated in the course of, transacting Government business;
(B) materials relating to private political associations, and having no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President; and
(C) materials relating exclusively to the President’s own election to the office of the Presidency; and materials directly relating to the election of a particular individual or individuals to Federal, State, or local office, which have no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.

There are documents you would be prohibited from sharing even if they had been declassified. Is that your understanding? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I believe so. Classification levels are an additional restriction, beyond what else might be restricted by law, and aren't a replacement.

So something can be unclassified but still illegal to retain/share, e.g. issues related to national defence or atomic energy.

It’s not irrelevant if those are his personal records. He can dispose of them as he pleases, according to the constitution and precedent. — NOS4A2

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/donald-trump-presidential-records-act-clintons-sock-drawer-defense-2023-06-09/

Moreover, Moss said, the question of whether the documents were personal or presidential records is beside the point in a case involving the Espionage Act, like the one against Trump.

“Whether as a presidential record or a personal record, the records at issue in this indictment still have classification markings and contain information relating to the national defense,”

Trump could roll a blunt with those documents for all I care. Neither the DOJ nor NARA have the power to designate documents presidential or personal records. That discretion lies solely with the executive. — NOS4A2

He’s being charged under https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793 (section e) so what you say here is irrelevant.