Absolute or Relative Motion... or Something Else? by Daniel Wagner Fonteles Alves

Dear Daniel,

I have been thinking a bit more about the last few sections of your paper. I am in the process of trying to learn several new things at once (and also write a dissertation about something completely unrelated!) so you'll have to forgive my delayed response.

First, I appreciate your explanation in the previous post; I think I have a better idea now of how you are using certain terminology. In particular, I realize now that a large part of what you are presenting is your own ideas, so it's not surprising I haven't heard of this view before. Now let me itemize a few remarks.

1. Regarding the concepts "time, space, object, motion," it seems that you want to define each in terms of the others. Now it seems clear that any logical or mathematical system (at least any system satisfying a suitable finiteness assumption) will have either undefined concepts at its lowest level (in terms of which the remaining concepts are defined), or will have redundancy at its lowest level (where the fundamental concepts define each other). It seems that these two possibilities are interchangeable: if you have redundancy, you can eliminate concepts one by one until the redundancy disappears and the remaining concepts are undefined. Conversely, you can define new concepts in terms of the fundamental (undefined) concepts and take these to be "equally fundamental." I suppose this is analogous to finding a basis of a vector space from a spanning set, or augmenting a basis to a larger spanning set that is no longer linearly independent. There are plenty of situations in which a larger redundant set of concepts is useful, so parsimony is not the only consideration here.

2. It seems that "semantic completeness" as you define it requires redundancy, because if every concept can be defined in terms of others, then some of these concepts can be eliminated (at least, if there are a finite number of fundamental concepts).

3. We must be very careful about the use of the word "object," because it has more than one meaning. It has a precise, axiomatic, but very flexible meaning in the context of category theory; as you point out, categorical objects could be Hilbert spaces, or logical propositions, or whatever. It seems to have a vaguer but more specific meaning in the sense of "physical object." When you mention defining time in terms of objects, space, and motion, the objects you are talking about in this case must mean "physical objects," such as "particles" or "fields," and to define "time," they must somehow be indentifiable as "the same object" after undergoing the "change" that defines time. In other words, I don't think a pair of different structures by itself can define time in a Machian sense; rather, it is necessary to be able to identify the "second" structure as being the "result" of "changing" the "first" structure. I use quotation marks to indicate that I am not attempting to be precise at this point! What I am trying to get at is that the concepts of "change" or "motion" require that the "initial and final states" be identified as different states or configurations of the "same object" rather than two totally unrelated structures.

4. I am glad you pointed out the work of Derek Wise. I have not read these notes yet, and they seem very relevant to what we have been discussing.

5. There is much more to discuss, but no time at the present to do so. I see you have an email address on your paper, and I also have one on mine... that way we can keep in touch after the essay contest is over.

Take care,

Ben

Dear Ben,

Thanks for your reply. I understand your lack of time. A few remarks to your remarks:

''It seems that these two possibilities are interchangeable: if you have redundancy, you can eliminate concepts one by one until the redundancy disappears and the remaining concepts are undefined. Conversely, you can define new concepts in terms of the fundamental (undefined) concepts and take these to be "equally fundamental."''

That´s the point. I was thinking that maybe we can define ''motion'' using ''time'', but then times becomes undefined... or we can define ''time'' using motion, but then motion becomes undefined... and so on. In the end, maybe all fundamental terms: space, time, motion, physical objects could have this ''duality''. The reason that points me for thinking this is that machian philosophy (which leads to GR) can be seen as a PART of this duality!

''2.It seems that "semantic completeness" as you define it requires redundancy, because if every concept can be defined in terms of others, then some of these concepts can be eliminated (at least, if there are a finite number of fundamental concepts).''

I don´t know if they could be eliminated... but the CHOICE of fundamental terms would not be unique! Again, we could consider that motion gains meaning from time, space and objects, OR that time gains meaning from motion, space and objects. Then, we could postulate that no matter how we choose to represent the universe, there should be no physical change upon a different choice of fundamental terms. Absolute and relational views of motion would be a part of the same structure... and there would also be the ''something else''!

Ultimately, what I propose is that by investigating the ''meaning'' of classical statements about motion, we can find new ways to conceive motion, and then build physics using this conceptions.

''What I am trying to get at is that the concepts of "change" or "motion" require that the "initial and final states" be identified as different states or configurations of the "same object" rather than two totally unrelated structures.''

We can also define motion without an absolute structure by introducing a ficticious ''background'' structure for the final and initial state and then eliminating it using barbour´s best matching: take for instance two configurations of point particles defined in cartesian frames, say (xi,yi,zi) and (x'i,y'i,z'i), representing distinct instants of time. Now hold the first frame fixed and perform rotations and translations of the second until some incongruence measure such as SQRT((xi-x'i)2+(zi-z'i)2+(yi-y'i)2) gets minimized. This is defined as the best-matched distance between these two configurations, and this value can be calculated using only information meaningful in the relational view of motion.

I´ll keep in touch for further discussion.

Best regards

Daniel

and one redundance and one for the sortings of datas and informations, and now you are going to make some logarythms for the sortings, we know we know.

and after a mthematical universe proof of course of course.

Dear Daniel,

I completely agree that "if the appearance of observation in the semantic functor could bring us any closer to quantum mechanics" since I see "observation" as a mapping from physical states to recorded experimental outcomes, i.e. to descriptions encoded in some memory medium using classical information. So observation is itself a functor, from a category in which the objects are quantum states and the morphisms are unitary transformations to a category in which the objects are descriptions encoded in classical information and the morphisms are formal operations defined on those descriptions. The criterion for descriptive coherence is precisely diagram commutativity. But this is not your "semantic functor" which you have defined as a category automorphism. It is the function that tests whether two physical configurations "mean" the same thing from some observer's point of view.

Such "observation" functors are very familiar: they define the semantics that we associate with computer hardware. We pretend that "classical" computers are classical. This is of course nonsense; they are quantum systems just like everything else. Nonetheless, when we look at them, we assign a semantics under which their physical dynamics is mapped to formally-specified execution traces of classical algorithms. In my view, this is what ALL observation is.

My PhD advisor, Rob Cummins, used to tell us all to imagine that our PCs grew up overnight in our back yards. I agree: this forces us to think about the semantics we assign to physical events in a coherent way.

Good luck with your research,

Cheers,

Chris

Hi Daniel,

To be honest, I doubt that it is reasonable to follow Barbour and somehow replace time. Your age refers to the time of your birth which is certainly not likely to be chosen as reference point for an absolute time. May we conclude that there is no absolute zero of time? I do not suggest referring to the hypothetical moment of a Big Bang. Being an old engineer, I see only the actual border between past and future a natural fix point suited to refer to in an non-arbitrary manner. You might try and find some flaw in my criticism .

As for mathematics, it would not be unreasonable to completely avoid non-zero integration constants by agreeing on a definition of integration that always refers to the lower border zero.

Eckard

Dear Daniel,

The contests solicited to reveal wrong assumptions. As an engineer I know how to describe an invention. Accordingly my essay begins with a list of obvious shortcomings. Will your suggestions provide solutions to such enigma and suspected flaws?

I do not deny that Barbour's approach might be reasonable to some extent. I merely doubt that it will help for instance to overcome Einstein's tense-less view. I rather see it a step in the wrong direction. See 1364.

Best regards,

Eckard

Dear Daniel

Reading your essay I could see you have the talent, mental stamina and imagination to discover new physics. The problem of understanding motion is a very interesting one. You promote Barbour's theory which I value for relegating time to an emergant status, but think the SS idea unnecessary theoretical complication. Mach's ideas are very interesting, but there are many ways to interpret them.

Starting from very different premises developed in my 2005 Beautiful Universe Theory on which I based my fqxi essay Fix Physics! . I concluded that motion is the translation of a pattern (a concept you use) in the energy and orientation of dipolar nodes making up a universal lattice. In my theory general relativity becomes very simple, but motion involvs a self-convolution of the pattern not only of the object involved but (a la Mach) the nodes making up the surrounding gravitational field, on to those of the entire universe. For example a force on matter causes the pattern to compress first, and then start moving with its length contracted, 'pushing' the external gravitational node pattern ahead as well. This combines Newtonian SR and GR notions. I attach a figure from the BU paper to explain this qualitatively.

I wish you all success, and urge you to stick close to simple physical concepts - one can easily get too abstract using clever mathematics.

VladimirAttachment #1: 2_BUFIG26.jpg

After studying about 250 essays in this contest, I realize now, how can I assess the level of each submitted work. Accordingly, I rated some essays, including yours.

Cood luck.

Sergey Fedosin

Thanks!

If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is [math]R_1 [/math] and [math]N_1 [/math] was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have [math]S_1=R_1 N_1 [/math] of points. After it anyone give you [math]dS [/math] of points so you have [math]S_2=S_1+ dS [/math] of points and [math]N_2=N_1+1 [/math] is the common quantity of the people which gave you ratings. At the same time you will have [math]S_2=R_2 N_2 [/math] of points. From here, if you want to be R2 > R1 there must be: [math]S_2/ N_2>S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] (S_1+ dS) / (N_1+1) >S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] dS >S_1/ N_1 =R_1[/math] In other words if you want to increase rating of anyone you must give him more points [math]dS [/math] then the participant`s rating [math]R_1 [/math] was at the moment you rated him. From here it is seen that in the contest are special rules for ratings. And from here there are misunderstanding of some participants what is happened with their ratings. Moreover since community ratings are hided some participants do not sure how increase ratings of others and gives them maximum 10 points. But in the case the scale from 1 to 10 of points do not work, and some essays are overestimated and some essays are drop down. In my opinion it is a bad problem with this Contest rating process. I hope the FQXI community will change the rating process.

Sergey Fedosin

Daniel

Motion seems at the heart of misunderstanding in physics. I'm now re-reading those I've not yet scored and am pleased to say yours still stands out. You did undertake to read mine, and I hope you will as I'm very interested in your comments (and score!). Very well done for yours. I hope you find we have a rich common vein.

Best wishes

Peter

Peter

I have read your essay few days ago (and already rated it very positively). Sorry for not leaving any comments before, I was in the middle of a big hurry with university and work projects. But I will post some remarks right now.

Daniel

Sergey, I don´t understand that. Are you sure about this rating formula? That would mean that giving an essay 10 ratings of ''1'' and 1 rating of ''10'' would be the same thing!

Hi Daniel and Sergey,

(My intention of going through Daniel's essay and the discussion thread was to involve in the discussion, but I accidentally saw your question about the scores. So I thought of putting my two cents worth).

Suppose an essay had an aggregate score of 150 from 20 ratings (average rating 7.5). Now someone gives 10. Avergage goes up to 7.62. Someone else gives 1 the average becomes 7.32. (Fluctuation 0.3)

Another esssay has an aggregate of 45 out of 6 ratings (average 7.5), Some one gives 10, average shoots up to 7.86 Someonelse gives 1. Average 7.0.

(Fluctuation 0.86).

For the folk who have got a lot of ratings done already, a stray lower rating does not make their average fluctuate much. The ranking might go down a few places.

For those with a lower number of ratings, even a single low score makes a big difference in the rankings, it can go down 30 to 40 places.

Thus if Sergey gave 3 to everybody the effect is not uniform to all.

The Fundamental Questions Institute must address the fundamental question of how to establish a fair, impartial and a uniform rating process.

Solution - (1) No Prizes, that will bring down the number of essays, only those who have serious stuff will tend to enter the competition. (2) Essayists should not be allowed to rate others' essays. (3) Prohibit solicitations of mutual high scores. (4)Prize money diverted to an independent panel to select and rate essays. (5) All "shoe horned" essays not dealing with "Wrong Assumptions" per se to be rejected.

Best regards,

Viraj

Dear Daniel,

your essay the most interesting and refreshing in this contest. You introduce many new and stimulating ideas. I also very much enjoyed reading your discussion with Dr. Israel Perez and side entirely with you.

I very much liked how you introduced the ideas about time, space and motion. I am intrigued by shape dynamics and intuitively feel that this is the right way to go. My conception is that space, energy and time are 3 aspects of one and the same, a process, with either one expressed in terms of the other two.

Because you are so well-read on what to me appears as the avantguard in physics, I would very much value your feedback on my essay, which, thankfully, will be after the ratings, so we all can relax speak our mind without worrying about the consequences (which your honest replies indicate were never your concern). My topic is 1547.

Again, thank you for your most stimulating and well-written essay!