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I'm overloaded with work at the moment and haven't had time to look in here since I last posted. In trying to find the place, I read a post again and found something I'd missed the last time:-

Gigasoft wrote:Besides, he and I have both already stipulated that autism, for this discussion's purpose, is a mental illness.

I would never count or describe it as a mental illness, so no.

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Octocontrabass wrote:

DavidCooper wrote:STR would not be making unjustifiable claims about its imagined superiority over LET

Special relativity makes exactly two claims:

1. The laws of physics are the same in every inertial frame of reference.
2. The speed of light in a vacuum is constant even when measured from different inertial frames of reference.

Where are you seeing a claim about superiority?

The idea that it's simpler by depending on denied magic instead of a space fabric.

Special relativity doesn't specify any mechanism. Where are you seeing this "magic"?

The denial of the space fabric necessarily brings in the magic to provide the essential services supplied by "nothing".

Can I take that to mean you haven't set up an appointment with a psychiatrist yet? (My next appointment is in a few days.)

Of course I haven't set up such an appointment: I'm not going to waste his/her time and/or my money.

Okay. How can absolute speeds be measured in reality?

I covered that earlier in this thread in more than one way.

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Gigasoft wrote:

The existence of the term absolute frame which predates STR demonstrates that I'm using and describing frames in the longest established way

The term absolute frame presupposes that there is already something called a frame, so no, it doesn't.

The point is that frames were being used long before STR based on the idea of a medium which is tied to the absolute frame. Everything else about frames comes from that where you explore other possible relative movement of the aether relative to the content of the system you're analysing. As soon as frames come into play, the first one of those is the absolute frame, while all the others are frames which misrepresent reality. When all that started up, no one was abstracting it to vectors. You're just doing revisionism due to your determination for a specific theory to be right (at all costs).

Relative speed has never been defined as measuring the speed of an object A in the rest frame of some object B and then subtracting the speed of yet a different object C.

More revisionism: you just can't switch off the propaganda. Relative speeds were in origin calculated on the basis of a rest frame and two objects typically not at rest in that frame and not at rest relative to each other.

Worse though, what would it matter if I was using new terms to look at this when I've shown a way of reanalysing MGP in a non-naive manner which reveals that it shows that absolute speeds exist?

Of course replacing the definition of a term inside of a statement by a new, different definition matters. It makes it no longer the same statement. Take the statement "45% of dogs sleep in their owner's beds". It would be easy to disprove this by taking dog to mean a hot dog, or the Australian term for a snitch, but also completely meaningless.

There's no ban on using different definitions so long as you explain which ones you're using in an argument and don't try to pass of one as another which is incompatible with it. I've made it clear which definitions I'm using, and the argument doesn't rest on any conflation with other definitions. You're trying to play games by banning definitions from other theories while insisting that only the definitions of your faith-theory are allowed, thereby allowing the theory to shackle your thinking. That's the cause of theory-induced blindness.

With MGP, the light going one way round the ring passes all the material of the ring in less time than the light going round it the other way, and that's true even within the theory you believe in. Every frame of reference agrees with that, and agrees on which lot of light is doing that in less time than the other. That makes the average relative speed higher for that lot of light relative to the ring material it's passing. You're trying to avoid seeing and understanding that by playing games with definitions, and that's theory-induced blindness in action. For you, the relative speed has to be the same for both lots of light, and yet one takes less time than the other to pass all the same material. You are determined not to see that as a problem for your broken theory, just as billions of worshipers of the Creator of Hell are incapable of recognising that beast as a Devil rather than a God. What people want to be true overrides their thinking every time their theory/religion breaks.

It's the same with an actual universe - it can't pander to every frame, but has do co-ordinate the action using just one of them.

It doesn't have to "do" anything in particular to make SR work. All that matters is that the laws of physics are Lorentz invariant.

No; when you simulate the action or when the universe runs the action, it can't do contradictory things at the same time. Running the simulation is testing the model, and the model breaks. It's a dead model, just like a host of dead, disproved religions which billions of people still cling to.

Two light pulses passing the same material in different lengths of time having different average speeds relative to that material while they are local to it - how is that not mathematics?

As it stands, it is simply a phrase in English, with no defined meaning on its own. A mathematical description would consist of equations involving mathematical objects and operators. Translating English into maths requires assigning a definite meaning to each term.

You clearly don't know what mathematics is. Go and see a mathematician and ask him to put his name to your claim that my statement is not mathematics. Let's see him bring shame upon himself and destroy his reputation. Mathematicians are fully capable of discussing mathematics in ordinary language: the ones that can't do so don't understand what they're talking about.

(3) When two things pass the same length of material in different amounts of time, one necessarily has a higher speed relative to it than the other.

This is only true when the distances travelled, the times taken and the speeds are all measured in the same coordinate system. If it isn't the rest frame of the material, then the situation is not what is described by the second postulate of SR, and thus does not contradict it. Since the material is rotating, no inertial coordinate system contains the paths of both light pulses. I think I've explained this a few times.

No; all you've done is demonstrate repeatedly that you don't understand it. You're trying to make all the material of the ring at rest all the time it its own frame so that the light has to pass it at a relative speed of c, but that doesn't correspond to any single inertial frame, so you're having to mix frames, and in doing so you are repeatedly changing the speed of the light relative to the material of the ring: you're making a mathematically illegal move over and over again. Every single inertial frame provides an account of the action which does not make a mathematically illegal move, and every single one of them tells you that the average relative speed of one lot of light relative to the material of the ring its passing is higher than that of the other lot of light. You're rejecting all the good hard evidence (proof) that can be taken from the experiment in favour of mathematically-illegal voodoo, and you're doing that because you're shackled by your determination for a bonkers theory to be true.

Earlier, you said "there are other naive observers elsewhere denying that those things can have happened". Now you're changing the story to "remains in a state of happened and not-yet-happened", which is something else entirely.

The mad physicist in the rocket was alternating between claiming something had happened and that it hadn't happened yet. The fix for that is to deny simultaneity at a distance such that the event is in a state of happened and not-yet-happened at the same time, and there are other naive people asserting that. Both of those naive types of people exist.

The more accurate way to put it would be that they do not know if it happened or not, which does not preclude the first observer from knowing it happened.

That's the rationalist LET position: we don't know if it's happened or not, but we do know that it has happened, is happening now, or hasn't happened yet. STR rules that out, so within STR it is wrong to say that you don't know if it's happened yet or not because STR insists that it's both or neither.

when all frames are taken into account, that event will never have definitively happened because there will always be extreme frames for which the matter is never settled

There are no frames that depend on a events happening before other events when in reality they can't affect each other at all. Events may be settled in any order that is compatible with causality. Changing frames does not require you to change the order of evaluation. The set of inputs that determine the state of a subsequent event is exactly the same and looks the same no matter which frame you calculate in.

When you run a simulation (or when the universe runs actual events), it has to commit to them happening without then unhappening them. You can see in simulations the result: it forces one frame to dictate the order in order to avoid sustaining contradictions. It's a simple enough thing to check just by writing your own simulation and then changing frame. If you can do that without any events of the double twins paradox experiment unhappening, you'll have achieved an extraordinary trick that will rip apart a vast amount of established mathematics, and your computer chip will likely turn into a unicorn in the process.

The word "govern" does not appear in the postulates of SR.

Rationality runs on mathematics and is not restricted to the restricted and magical rules of mathematically-broken theories. Governing comes in when you test the model with mathematics by simulating it.

Why is there then a problem with a hyperbolic rotation in the x0,x1 plane, considering there is no law of physics that requires events to happen in an orderly fashion on the x0 axis?

There's a problem because when you change frame you make events unhappen. Whether you like it or not, you are changing the governance of the unrolling of events.

What does LET have to say about the functionality about a muon? Nothing.

Anything that changes over time can serve as a clock. Muons decay: they are clocks. LET not only states that moving clocks have their functionality slowed, but provides mechanisms for them doing so.

Suppose a new type of particle had been discovered before SR was published. Who is to say that this particle couldn't be supported by a different aether, or by no aether at all?

Everything that we've detected in the universe behaves in ways that fit there being a space fabric which governs its maximum speed of travel. If there was some particle governed by some other fabric moving relative to our space fabric, one of those fabrics would have to be governed by the other or a third fabric would have to govern both in order for them to interact. For the new particle not to be supported by a space fabric at all would leave it depending on magic instead.

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linguofreak wrote:He sees magic in not having a mechanism, or in having one that is frame-agnostic at the metaphysical level. Not sure why.

It involves magic whenever you have demonstrable, real services being supplied by nothing, and when you allow contradictions to occur.

The average velocity of matter in the observable universe can be determined by finding the frame in which the proper time since the big bang is maximal. He mistakes this for the velocity of the ether, but the existence of a frame where the age of the universe is maximal is a gravitational effect.

No I don't. The average velocity of matter in the observable universe is irrelevant. The clocks that record the most time since the big bang are at rest in their local space fabric, and most of the content of the universe could be travelling at 0.99c through their local space fabric throughout the observable universe (unless the expansion slows them down towards absolute rest, in which case they couldn't find the energy to keep going at 0.99c, but in such a case we'd have all the galaxies at close to absolute rest and close to rest relative to the clocks with the longest timings on them).

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linguofreak wrote:But in any case, frames are not hypotheses about what the universe is doing. They are sets of coordinates to describe the locations of things in the universe and to describe numerically what it's doing. They are mathematically related to each other such that a description in one frame can be transformed into an equally valid description of the same situation in another frame.

On the contrary, they are rival hypotheses as to how objects and waves are moving relative to a medium, as is seen clearly when you work with s-frames (and which is how c-frames were originally used too before they were perverted by allowing a mathematical error to be introduced into them by Einstein by claiming equal validity for all of them). When we look at how the sound waves are hypothesised to travel relative to the content of the system in different frames and we see how only one of them has them move at s relative to the air, we see that for all frames to be equally valid, every sound pulse has to move at an infinite number of different speeds relative to itself because it's moving at an infinite number of different speeds relative to the air. Even when we remove the air and only have magic mediums govern its speed with one for each frame, the sound pulse is still moving at an infinite number of different speeds relative to itself, and the same applies to any light pulse when using c-frames. That's simply a mathematical fact which physicists ignore and are in >99% of cases (even of those with expertise in relativity) completely ignorant of. They simply do not understand frame mathematics.

You seem to be under the impression that the boundary between events that have happened and events that have not needs to be a flat hypersurface at a constant coordinate time ("now") in some reference frame. This is not the case. The only requirement is that the boundary be spacelike everywhere (so that for all events that have happened, all events in their past lightcones have also happened), but its shape is otherwise arbitrary. In different frames, the boundary will look different, but which events are on either side of the boundary won't change between reference frames, only the coordinates of those events will change. The only thing that will move events from one side of the boundary to the other is the simulation advancing.

It doesn't matter how you try to skin the cat: when you simulate the action or run it as an actual universe, you cannot allow events to unhappen when you change frame. STR forces some events to unhappen.

This all assumes that we don't have a block universe going on, in which case talking about events that have happened or not is useless, but I'm willing to accept the stipulation that we do not live in a block universe for the time being.

The block universe idea came about as a way to try to get out of the problem of events unhappening by having no events happen at all and by getting rid of running time. In the process, you get rid of causation, so the block universe is a dead model, unless it's seen as some kind of fossil being generated behind where the action is taking place at a rolling now.

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eekee wrote:@DavidCooper: I'm sorry, I had no idea you have experience with mental health patients.

I don't; I have merely encountered plenty of autistic people and discussed the condition with them when they have driven conversation in that direction. Almost all of them have been high-functioning ones though.

But, from this point of view, acceptance of Einstein's theories of Relativity is entirely the opposite position: few if any scientists want to believe in the universal speed limit postulated by General Relativity. It opposes the progress of the human species in leaving the cradle (Earth). Worse, science has uncovered quite a number of threats to the continued existance of complex life on Earth, so this restriction against fast escape is rather disturbing.

That isn't going to drive them from STR to LET which imposes the same restrictions. The reason they cling to STR is status. They care more about their own status than about truth, and they've set up a situation where questioning STR immediately destroys your status. That's where they've gone so horribly wrong, because they've created something that works exactly like a religion.

Physicists believe in Relativity because no usable alternative theories have been found.

No they don't. LET accounts for all the action with the same precision, but rationally.

I didn't realise @DavidCooper needs an education on the difference between mathematics and physics.

I don't. It's physicists who need an education in mathematics to understand that when their theories break fundamental rules of mathematics, they lose the right to hold their theories together with the very mathematics that their theories are overriding. They cannot escape the governance of mathematics.

@DavidCooper: You need to show how your theory connects to the physical world because mathematics alone doesn't do that. For example, a draft paper such as I described MUST explain the precession of Mercury's orbit; it's one of the most easily-made observations which aligns with Relativity and (so far) no other theory.

It is predicted by LET, so no you're merely swallowing propaganda and regurgitating it.

But as interesting as that is, the paper goes on to explain that length contraction is insufficient on its own, time dilation is also required ... The footnote on the end of this sentence is curious. (#17 on page 7.) It states that the Kennedy and Thorndike experiment doesn't imply time dilation unless you restrict length contraction to the direction of motion. Interesting... But I'm getting into this well over my head. To really understand the paper, I'd have to familiarize myself with a tremendous number of other papers.

Clock retardation (timing dilation, misdescribed as time dilation in STR) was understood before MMX and was precisely what they were trying to use in their experiment, because they expected greater clock retardation of a light clock aligned with its direction of travel than from one aligned perpendicular to that. The MMX is essentially a pair of light clocks. They hadn't taken into account length contraction, but the experiment revealed the need to do so (and leading to the creation of Lorentz Ether Theory).

So, now I know that Einstein himself was not entirely comfortable with Relativity, my opinion is a little bit more flexible than before this discussion. It's only "a little bit" not due to theory alone, but because I see no reason to believe such deep details of the universe must be comprehensible to humans.

This often comes up in discussions of relativity: "the universe is under no obligation to make sense". It's an admission that STR doesn't make sense. But LET does, so it's daft to back a theory that doesn't make sense over one that does and which accounts for all the same facts with the same precision. STR depends on magic. LET doesn't. There's no contest.

Imagine a very simple universe governed by only the most straightforward and pure mathematical laws. To understand this simple universe, the most complex mathematical function you ever have to apply is the square root. Already, there's a number which cannot be fully comprehended by humans: the square root of 2 is easily proven to be an irrational number. A finite being cannot hold within its memory a full representation of the square root of 2 because it has infinite digits. This shows humans can't handle everything even in a purely mathematical universe, and one we've designed at that.

The full representation is root 2 and people do comprehend it.

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[Note to self: two still unread before this post.]

DavidCooper wrote:The idea that it's simpler by depending on denied magic instead of a space fabric.

No, that's what people who use special relativity say. I'm asking where special relativity itself claims to be superior to other theories.

DavidCooper wrote:The denial of the space fabric necessarily brings in the magic to provide the essential services supplied by "nothing".

No, that's what people who support aether theory say. I'm asking where special relativity itself claims that space fabric cannot be the mechanism by which it operates.

DavidCooper wrote:Of course I haven't set up such an appointment: I'm not going to waste his/her time and/or my money.

The only person qualified to determine whether such an appointment would be a waste of time is the doctor. And aren't you in a country where you don't have to pay to go to the doctor?

DavidCooper wrote:

The average velocity of matter in the observable universe can be determined by finding the frame in which the proper time since the big bang is maximal. He mistakes this for the velocity of the ether, but the existence of a frame where the age of the universe is maximal is a gravitational effect.

No I don't. The average velocity of matter in the observable universe is irrelevant. The clocks that record the most time since the big bang are at rest in their local space fabric, and most of the content of the universe could be travelling at 0.99c through their local space fabric throughout the observable universe (unless the expansion slows them down towards absolute rest, in which case they couldn't find the energy to keep going at 0.99c, but in such a case we'd have all the galaxies at close to absolute rest and close to rest relative to the clocks with the longest timings on them).

Incorrect. To be compatible with observation, your theory must predict the same frame dragging effects as GR, and, if it does so, then the frame in which the proper time since the big bang is maximal will be determined gravitationally by the velocity of matter in the observable universe, regardless of whether ether exists or what its rest frame is.

You seem to be under the impression that the boundary between events that have happened and events that have not needs to be a flat hypersurface at a constant coordinate time ("now") in some reference frame. This is not the case. The only requirement is that the boundary be spacelike everywhere (so that for all events that have happened, all events in their past lightcones have also happened), but its shape is otherwise arbitrary. In different frames, the boundary will look different, but which events are on either side of the boundary won't change between reference frames, only the coordinates of those events will change. The only thing that will move events from one side of the boundary to the other is the simulation advancing.

It doesn't matter how you try to skin the cat: when you simulate the action or run it as an actual universe, you cannot allow events to unhappen when you change frame. STR forces some events to unhappen.

How does it force some events to unhappen? How is data lost about an event that has already been calculated just because we change the location where we plot the event on a coordinate chart? Read what I wrote again.

I just watched Adam Savage's commentary on the controversy surrounding the Mythbusters plane on a conveyor belt episode. The physics is much simpler but the controversy is just as strong, and Adam is, remarkably, very nice about the whole thing. He has some interesting insights on how people think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUjcHW7SHaI