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  • Post #204

Dear Eckard,

Perhaps I did miss a nuance in your assessment of negative frequencies. It wasn't quite clear what you were claiming. Your posts here do help. I pointed out that, of course, a negative frequency does not have to be associated with backwards progressing time which is apparently your main concern.

And yes, I agree that the cosine transform is just as valid to perform as the Fourier transform. The only drawback is that the result you get doesn't generate the phase relationships between the various frequency components. Which is perfectly adequate in many applications.

So much more than that I don't have the time to devote on this subject. Sometimes it doesn't pay to over-complicate a simple problem. I hope you don't feel that I made a mistake in rating your essay.

With best wishes,

Steve

    Yes Georgina, and Einstein synchronization depends on an observer. I hope we will nonetheless support each other.

    Best,

    Eckard

    Paul,

    I admire your efforts to preach presentism to those who might share a slightly different view. I hope we can nonetheless respect each other. What about infinity, I agree with you on that one cannot find in reality anything that is evidently absolutely infinite. Assumed infinity of space and time are potential infinities when seen from human perspective.

    You seem to defend a "just misconceived concept". Did you refer to Einstein's belief that the separation between past and future is just an illusion? Wouldn't this contradict your explanation "not an illusion".

    Anyway, I am more interested in arguments against what I am claiming in my essay.

    Eckard

    Dear Steven,

    My main concern is correct reasoning including correct mathematics. Fourier transformation (FT) vs. cosine transformation (CT) is indeed not a complicated problem. Nonetheless, most experts perhaps including you consider CT just a special case of FT with limited application. Well, CT is absolutely equivalent to FT (except for the arbitrarily chosen in IR point of reference) only with the assumption that reality is real-valued and one-sided. Then FT is twice redundant, i.e., IR contains four identical copies of reality.

    I have to fear that virtually nobody here will rate my essay correctly and more importantly accept the consequences concerning symmetry issues in physics.

    I will return to the wave issue later.

    Best,

    Eckard

    Dear Steven,

    You wrote: "As you know we share the perception that Lorentz invariance is not a complete description of how wave phenomena work, especially with regard to interactions with particles. There weren't quite enough details of Feist's experiment to fully understand the setup and results. I'm seek out his paper and comment further on that. In general though, light waves are transverse in nature while sound waves and many other mechanical waves vibrate in longitudinal directions in space. Outside of a vacuum EM waves do have a longitudinal component, but that component is not self-traveling. It dissipates quickly. So it's not clear yet how applicable the Feist experiment is to EM."

    Before I got retired I was with at an institute for electronics, signal processing and communication technology. Therefore I got a bit familiar with TEM waves in cavities as well as with acoustics waves and a comparison between them. You are quite right, TEM and acoustic waves are different to some extent. Nonetheless I realized that Feist's result cannot be explained if one adopts the reasoning by Lorentz to acoustics. I wrote that neither Feist nor Bruhn explained Feist's measurement. I should correct me and say convincingly explained. Meanwhile Feist sent me an arXiv paper (24 pages in German) in which he theoretically justified his measurement. I cannot recommend reading it because Feist dealt with many marginalia including Ritz, Pashky, and Marinov transformation. His own explanation is similar to mine but about as geometrical and worrying as Marmet's attack on MMX.

    Norbert Feist wrote (my translation): As I was informed by Dr. Karl Mocnik/Graz in December 2000, he had already 10 years ago realized that Michelson experiments with sound have the same outcome as the optical ones.

    Just some details: Width of the transducer 2 cm, width of the reflector much larger.

    Best,

    Eckard

    Dear Ben,

    In response to Stephen Sycamore I tried to explain how the uncommon views of mine behind each of my figures are logically connected, and I hope this chain of heretical but well-founded views can help to eventually resolve at least some of the questions that gave rise to the topic of the contest.

    I see your approach much more straight forward. Of course, it would be desirable to immediately find a unification of theories that contradict to each other while each of them has been successful, approved, and confirmed by "robust evidence". I am ready to question this robustness.

    I doubt that this unification can be achieved with mere modification of what you called "the fundamental building blocks of every aspect of modern physics". The topic of the contest asks for good reason: What BASIC assumption is wrong? Perhaps you are on a good way when focusing on mathematical foundations. That's why I suggested to you some food of thought. Please don't take amiss my honest opinion. I respect your work and wish you success.

    Eckard

    Dear Eckard,

    I appreciate your magnanimous reply. In any case, as you point out, honesty is preferable to false praise! I respect your point of view, and assure you that there are no hard feelings. Take care,

    Ben

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    • Post #211

    Eckard

    If I remember correctly, because you have said this before, it is not presentism. Anyway, I do not care what it is, the point is that knowledge supposed to be objective must correlate with physical reality as it is independently manifest. And it is really quite easy to establish, generically, how that must be. Which brings me to this notion of 'points of view', there is only one, because physical existence only occurs in one form. And indeed, it is from the "human perspective". Precisely what other perspective is there?

    I referred to Einstein only in the sense that it was a quote you used. My point, which is correct, was about past, present, future. The point about 'illusion' was that that would have no experienceable substantiation. But there is a physical reality reflected in these concepts of past, present, future, it is usually just not that which actually occurs.

    "I am more interested in arguments against what I am claiming in my essay"

    Indeed, but if your base concepts about the reality being modelled by mathematical constructions is incorrect, then that becomes a reundant exercise.

    Paul

    Dear Ben,

    You wrote: "I think that set-theoretic issues are very relevant to physics. I have run into the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice in my own efforts to understand physics."

    I did not yet take issue in that direction because my own reasoning is most likely far away from what you learned and thought. Don't hurry, I am prepared but not keen for a controversy where virtually all silent participants would consider me stupid at least in the beginning. I nonetheless hope that my radicalism might help you out if you will run into trouble in future. You are still young enough for reaching decisive progress.

    Best,

    Eckard

    Paul,

    Human perspective means what you are calling manifest in opposition to ideal constructs including the divine perspective imagining a sight from out side. For instance, a point is not tangible. I also maintain, the very moment is strictly speaking not manifest.

    You are correct: If my "base concepts about the reality being modelled by mathematical constructions" were wrong then one could not expect correct results.

    You merely failed to show me where they are wrong.

    Eckard

    Hello Eckard,

    Would it be possible for you to write up something additional to clarify the issues you bring up? I believe you are entitled to submit 2 files inside this forum.

    I'm thinking it would help very much and be more convincing if you laid out a detailed list of assumptions, dependencies and inferences in a step-by-step manner similar to the procedure followed for a math proof.

    Steve

      Dear Eckard,

      Congratulations, I'm very happy to see you as a finalist!

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Yes Eckard,

      It appears that the community has appreciated your work after all. Assuming no further chaotic oscillation in the ratings; I congratulate you as a finalist.

      You deserve to have your work seen and reviewed by the experts. Knowing you; I am sure their feedback - even stern criticism - would be worth as much as appreciation from the average reader. But alas; that will be left unknown. May the judges treat you well, in the way that they can.

      All the Best,

      Jonathan

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        • Post #217

        Congratulations Eckard!

        You are finalist!

        Yuri

        Dear Jonathan,

        Steve Sycamore suggested to me something like an attempt to summarize the essence of my essay. Asking myself for the key assumption to start with I tend to focus on the notion of reality in contrast to e.g. Einstein's notion of it. I did not yet reply to your hint on the finding that a child has to learn distinguishing between himself and his surroundings. And yes, oneness is an issue.

        All the Best,

        Eckard

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        • Post #219

        Eckard

        "Human perspective..." There is nothing else we can know, and even then we have to invoke hypothesis to overcome a variety of mecchanical problems in the sensory processes. We can just make assertions, based on no form of experienceability, but this is science not belief. We know of a physical reality only via the sensory systems. But within that existentially closed system, it exists independently of them.

        "the very moment is strictly speaking not manifest". So how does physical existence occur then? Take anything as an example. Say St Paul's Cathedral. This is differentiated from everything else by certain features, and we also know they change. But this conceptualisation of 'it' is at a much higher level than what occurs. In terms of existence, what appears to constitute 'it' is constantly altering, indeed it would be impossible to delineate a clear boundary for 'it', etc. But it must have a physically existent state as at any given point in time, ie whatever configuration is actually occurring, in order to exist. This (aka present)is all there is, it is not the previous configuration (aka past)which must have ceased and been superceded, neither is it the subsequent configuration (aka future)which has yet to occur as a function of the present.

        Paul

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        • Post #220

        Paul,

        With human perspective I mean for instance that counting does never reach a number infinity. Archimedes argued: every number can be incremented by adding one. Scholastics taught what Aristotle formulated: Infinitum actu non datur. Nonetheless, EEs like me used to operate with infinity like a quantity. We know that this infinity belongs to an abstraction. Somewhat simple people cannot even imagine how it happens that sometimes temporarily insane people are saying they feel standing besides themselves. The sound human perspective is certainly the most natural but not at all the only possible one.

        You are persistently speaking of a closed system in which we live. When I agree with Popper on that the real world is presumably an open system, I assume that there is an infinite plurality of possible influences on everything and therefore no chance to predict the future for sure.

        May I understand your "closed system" as human's ultimate mental restriction to input via the sensory systems? Well, in this respect I agree at least with respect to one decisive aspect: Future data are definitely not available in advance via any sensory or measuring system.

        I maintain: There is no present time between past and future. Expressions like today, presently, at this month, within this millennium, etc. denote time spans that are usually deliberately undecided with respect to the alternative past or future. Today was, today will be, or today was and will be something. What does existence mean? My dictionary tells me: "If something exists then it is present in the world as real, living or actual thing." Such a practical judgment cannot be based on expected future data. Hence, existence necessarily belongs to the near past. How near is, of course, as unclear as is the duration of considered as unchanged existence. What you calls "physical existent state at a given moment" is a fiction which is only reasonable together with the assumption anything flows steadily without sudden steps.

        Why do you imagine that the past must cease immediately? Isn't the past a continuous summary of all what already happened up to the border to the future, something like a permanently incremented integral? Why do you speak of the future as the subsequent state? Don't you know that real numbers do not have a successor? Do you blindly follow Hilbert's unfounded finitism?

        Eckard

        Eckard

        "May I understand your "closed system" as human's ultimate mental restriction to input via the sensory systems?"

        No. We, and indeed all sentient organisms, are part of reality. We are not separate from it, as if we were, somehow, 'looking in'. So our very existence is the closed system. We cannot transcend that, and thereby know of anything extrinsic to it (assuming it exists anyway). But, although we are trapped in a sensory loop, within that, the sensory systems which enable that particular form of awareness in the first place, do not control/create what we are enabled to be aware of. That is, 'our' reality occurs independently of these processes. They receive physically existent phenomena.

        It is the subsequent processing that is one of the problems. All the 'mental' stuff is just another 'nuisance', ie another factor which prevents the sensory systems from functioning perfectly by causing variation from the original. But all these factors are concerned with the mechanics of the processes, not metaphysical issues which cannot be resolved, by definition, and are irrelevant to an objective explanation of physical existence as it is detectable to us.

        "There is no present time between past and future". Now, given that there is a physical existence, and it alters (ie occurs in different states), how can that statement be true? There must be a point of existence (the notion of time is irrelevant). Otherwise there is no physical existence, let alone something which can then occur differently! It cannot be what has occurred, neither can it be what has yet to occur. It can only be what is occurring. You are quite right about the vagueness of the quantities of time you quote. What is being referred to here is the deconstruction of physical existence until a physically existent state is 'revealed', ie that which had physical existence and involved no form of change. This probably revolves around the condition of the properties of the elementary parts. But that is what, to answer your question, is what existence means. This is not to be confused with the substance of existence.

        "Such a practical judgment cannot be based on..." You are confusing knowledge of reality, with reality. It must have existed so that we can gain knowledge of it.

        "Why do you imagine that the past must cease immediately". Because within any sequence of physical existence, two physically existent states cannot co-exist. The predecessor must cease for the successor to occur.

        Without going into detail, and questioning the concepts, but just to convey the point. Two examples:

        1 Take any type of elementary particle which is doing something. Now, in terms of substance, that is it, that is the 'bottom-line'. In terms of reality, ie what is existent at any time, that is not it. Because the question arises as to what constitutes a physically existent state? Say the 'doing something' was 'spinning'. Do we designate a physically existent state as half a spin, a whole spin, a million spins? No, all those options include change (ie must be more than one state). A physically existent state (ie a reality) in this circumstance will be one 'degree' of spin, ie where there is no further divisible state between two subsequent states. And a 'degree' would equate to the smallest particle in reality, ie the point at which no further spatial difference is possible. We have no chance of identifying this, I would suggest, but then the sensory systems evolved to give advantage in survival, not to perceive the very nature of our existence. But the whole point is, for physical existence to occur, and change, there must be a physically existent state of it, that must be definitive, there can only be one of them at a time in any given sequence, and it cannot involve change. This is the present, ie what at any given time is existent.

        2 Say reality consisted of n differently shaped and coloured bricks, which have an innate property which caused them to move. Now, again the elementary substance of physical existence is the n bricks. The reality, ie what is existent, is a particular configuration of these as at any point in time, ie a particular physically existent state.

        Finally, I must just stress that, generically, this is all very easy to say. What this is in terms of our reality is incredibly difficult. But these (and other) logical rules apply.

        Paul

        PS: I dumped the latest version of the first 22 paragraphs on my blog yesterday