Tom,
" If time were derivative of the action principle, action would have no meaning -- an event could not be differentiated from every other event. Just as a measure of temperature doesn't differentiate the motion of molecules; it is a measure of average motion."
Yes, I do find when I point out that time is not so much some universal narrative from past to future, but the process by which future becomes past, most responses amount to a worried blank look. The rational left hemisphere of the brain functions as that linear, causal sequencing of events. Even when I observe that "tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns, rather than the earth moving along some meta-dimension from yesterday to tomorrow," the reaction is "Okaay." It does raise massive issues as to the nature of reality, but I never get to bounce those sorts of ideas around because rarely is anyone willing to make that first step.
As for temperature, yes, it is an averaging of the amplitudes/velocities of a quantity of molecular/atomic activity, but those individual actions are all trading energy around and tend to settle on some equilibrium state of average motion themselves. Meanwhile we have throughout history been trying to deduce the universal flow of time, as Newton described it, but the best we seem to extract is some cumulative composite of different rates. In spacetime, every action is its own clock and as we discussed before, Julian Barbour won the initial essay contest, on the Nature of Time, with an entry arguing the only value "worthy of the name" was the path of least action from one configuration state of the universe to another.
So effectively it is just like temperature, many actions creating an overall composite effect of change, rather than an overall level of activity/heat.
"Frequency is a measure of the number of cycles of a wave crest in an interval; it is not a measure of action."
Yet how do you actually measure frequency? By comparing those waves with some other activity, like that occurring within a mechanical clock. My point is this process does not occur outside of what is physically present. It is those waves which come into being and then fade into the next, ie. they go from being in the future to being in the past. Meanwhile the sequential effect for us, the observer, is to go from one wave to the next, because we only exist in that present.
" The number of revolutions of the Earth is not a measure of action."
No, but the revolution of the earth is an action. The number of revolutions is descriptive, ie. static. Much as a map is static, while the territory is dynamic. The earth turns. The calender does not.
"Counting is not identical to action."
Action creates events. Counting is descriptive of events. Information derived from action.
"How does one decide that one vacuum is smaller or larger than another vacuum?'
I said "frame." A finite frame would reasonably be smaller than an infinite frame, but that does sound contradictory.
Tom, Lorraine,
There are innumerable ways to argue about space, but the real issue is whether it is some infinite vacuum without physical properties to bend, bound, etc. and that any such effects are due to interactions of physical properties populating it, or did it pop into existence 13.8 billion years ago and been expanding since. As I point out, even BBT assumes that stable vacuum, by arguing that distant galaxies will recede over time, as their light can no longer reach us, thus an increasing number of stable lightyears.
Will have to continue this later...
Regards,
John M
