Classical Spheres, Division Algebras, and the Illusion of Quantum Non-locality:

Thomas Ray

I meant east to west, the opposite direction.

[deleted]

Tom,

Perception is our reality. Math is the patterns we perceive. As we keep peeling away both the layers of nature and the tricks our perception of nature plays on us, the patterns get ever more refined.

If you go back to the ancients, math and religion were closely entwined. Astrology for example, where it was seemingly natural to assign meaning, agency and mechanism to those patterns. First with astrology, it was mythological agency to the stars. Then as our sense of causality became more entrenched, it became natural to assume the motions of the cosmos were the turning wheels of some cosmic mechanism. Why? Because it was a concept that people could understand and it seemed to fit the patterns.

Now we have spacetime, where the lack of constants for measures of distance and duration was solved by tying them to a physical constant, the speed of light in a vacuum.

The question I have to ask is why does the mathematical geometry derived from this clever relation come to be viewed as more fundamental than the physical processes being measured? Such that dimensional attributes of space are assigned to time and it becomes this eternal timeline on which all events, configurations, relationships, etc. are permanently etched. Meanwhile space has suddenly been given physically dynamic properties and is not just the void the term was originally assigned?

Yes, spacetime does describe gravity, but does that mean it actually explains it? Epicycles managed to describe and predict a lot of celestial actions, but did they really explain them?

Meanwhile we are stuck with this notion that you can fall in a wormhole and travel through time, but the rather simple and basic view that events emerge and dissolve as the energy changes configuration is dismissed as naivety by the high priesthood of spacetime.

I just don't buy it. I think Minkowski, Einstein and company got a little carried away in the excitement of the discovery of the patterns they found. They were human. We really don't need blocktime. Gravity could well have some explanation we have missed, or not fully explored. We don't know what we don't know, but we do know it is easy to go off on wild goose chases and when the theories start sounding increasingly fantastical, it's a good sign to step back and review the model.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"Perception is our reality. Math is the patterns we perceive."

Is the alphabet "the patterns we perceive"? Amazing that you keep lecturing on what you think mathematics is.

John Merryman

Tom,

Ok, it's shorthand symbology for the patterns(factors and functions, ie, nouns and verbs).

If I'm wrong, then why don't you give the correct description of "the universally *objective* language of mathematics?"

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

" ... why don't you give the correct description of 'the universally *objective* language of mathematics?'"

I have, John, over and over again. It's the measured correspondence of mathematical language to physical event that assures an objective, scientific theory.

John Merryman

Tom,

Is there any potential for distortions to be incorporated into this process?

Is it a tool that if used incorrectly can give erroneous results, or is it beyond error?

Regards,

John M

John Merryman

Tom,

Let's say I'm calculating the arc of an artillery shell and it lands about where my calculations said it would. Did this happen because there is an underlaying fabric to the geometry which guided that shell, or was it because I effectively included all the primary physical factors, weight of the shell, amount of charge, angle of the barrel, windspeed, past accuracy and there were no significant disturbances?

Now obviously I'm using this as a comparison to spacetime. Do I need that underlaying geometry to guide the physical processes, or do the physical processes effectively produce the geometric result?

Now the underlaying question would be the gravity causing that artillery shell to arc and fall. Is it due to the curvature of this geometry, or is there some as yet not quite understood force of gravity? For one thing, we now need dark matter and quite a lot of it to actually make the math work on galactic scales. Usually when there are anomalies, such as the motion of Mercury caused questions for the Newtonian theory of gravity, it is the theory which was then open to doubt, not that some enormous new force of nature became unquestioningly accepted. Since Newton was close enough to land men on the moon, why didn't we just add a few minor adjustments to his math, like we do today? Are you really sure spacetime really is the final word, or, like Newton, it is just a useful placeholder until an even more effective model comes along?

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

John, they teach the projectile problem in high school physics. Look it up, and you will find that there is no force acting on the projectile; i.e., the initial velocity at less than escape velocity has zero acceleration horizontal to the plane; its acceleration is entirely vertical, i.e., gravitational.

John Merryman

Tom,

The point is that we don't fully understand gravity and while it can be described by spacetime geometry, does spacetime geometry explain it? As I keep pointing out, epicycles describe the motions of the planets, but they didn't explain them. There is a normal habit of trying to look deeper into what we do see and filling in the gaps with speculation. Science is supposed to be more skeptical than that. Given it is a model based on measurements, your comment that the model is the solution to the equation seems to imply the explanation arises from the description yet all it really is is comparisons of measures of durations and distances. There are endless fascinating connections and inter-relations in nature.

I am just not throwing away the entire dynamic process of actual, physical change for a model in which facts that support a chosen view are put up on a pedestal and any that don't are swept under the rug and enormous necessary features, from block time to dark energy, exist only as mathematical projections.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"The point is that we don't fully understand gravity and while it can be described by spacetime geometry, does spacetime geometry explain it?"

Yes.

John Merryman

Tom,

No, it doesn't. The map doesn't explain the territory, only describes it. Now we even have that great unmarked territory of galactic gravitational effects covered by dark matter. Does dark matter explain anything? No. it's just the measurement of the gap between theory and observation. That is description, not explanation.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"The map doesn't explain the territory, only describes it."

John, your assertions have absolutely nothing to do with science. All we are asking is for an accurate description of reality, not an explanation for why it exists. You'll have to go to church for that.

The reason is that almost any explanation will do. As in that old Bill Cosby routine, "Why is there air?" -- the coach answers, "to blow up basketballs, of course!"

John Merryman

Tom,

Causality is explanatory. All proof of spacetime consists of is measurements. Measurements are not causal. They are descriptive. The only force spacetime is presumed to be causal of is gravity, yet it seems obvious(dark matter) that we are a long way from figuring out gravity. Also used to explain an expanding universe, but since the speed of light doesn't increase proportionally, in order for it to remain constant to the expanded space, I don't see the actual connection, other than superficial convenience.

On the other hand, think of the problems created by spacetime; No explanation for asymmetry of time, so it gets swept under the rug. Time traveling wormholes creating all sorts of grandfather problems, so with all that bending around of the fabric, it needs to avoid narrative contradictions.

Could there be other descriptive models that take actual causality into account? Not in Tom's world.

Regards,

John M

John Merryman

In fact, by reducing the actual, physical of change to a measurement, it eliminates the very process of causality and leaves it as sterile measure. It would be as if the measure of a frequency is more elemental than the physical input producing it.

Thomas Ray

"It would be as if the measure of a frequency is more elemental than the physical input producing it."

It is.

No physical event is real until measured. The question between Bell's theorem results and classical determinism is whether a measurement creates the event, or if the event was determined by prior conditions (the input to the measurement function).

Robert McEachern

"No physical event is real until measured."

Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if nobody hears it?

Has your brain functioning ever been measured? ;)

Rob McEachern

John Merryman

Tom,

The measurement is the lens through which we view reality. It is the receiver of the signal. How it is angled, framed, positioned, part of the spectrum being sampled etc, all determine what is received, but there still has to be a transmission. Those distant stars, the moon, etc, are not created by our measuring their light, but our perception of them is. That light is dynamic, but our measurement is an essentially static slice/framing of the energy. So the 'event' is the measurement, but the process of which that event is a slice/measure is the energy. The energy goes from past to future 'events,' while the events come into being and dissolve, future to past, possibly leaving some residue of form inscribed in the continuing conditions.

Regards,

John M

Akinbo Ojo

Tom,

Talking about division algebras, continuous functions, etc on which you are expert, I just bought a knife, it is so sharp that its cutting edge has zero width and I was wondering if you could be kind enough to help me cut an Algebraic loaf of bread in two with it?

Akinbo

Thomas Ray

Division by zero is a prohibited operation. No, we don't rigorously know why -- it's just that we can't have consistent arithmetic if we do so. However:

You have a 1-dimensional loaf of bread? Really? Then the zero point is where the lines of the bread and the knife intersect at 90 degrees. Akinbo, you really should follow Joy's advice to get that geometry book.

Best,

Tom

John Cox

John Merryman,

Mathematics is information, too. What's the diff? Energy manifests itself in myriad forms. Why can you bestow "being " onto information, universally, and deny it universally to what we obtain as mathematical? Energy obtains as informational. We describe it in relations that our perception calls math. jrc

John Merryman

John C,

I'm not denying it, I'm just saying it doesn't exist as a platonic realm. There is no math in the void. Without physical manifestation, it is a multiple of zero. Math even rules math.

Regards,

John M

John Cox

John M.

In a universe subsumed by energy, who cares if the jello was jiggling when the bowl was set down. Existentially; space, energy and time are legs of the same stool, and if there are not universally transformative relationships between them they wouldn't make little plastic ones to keep the lid separate from your pizza. Those relationships are what is meant by existence having a mathematical being. Geometry started as an adjunct to the arguments evolving the rules of logic, and the idea of any arbitrary unit of length was, if I remember correctly, an invention of the Pythagorean School. Prior to inventing a one length representing a square there was no 'stick figure' in "geometry". It all began as abstract relationships such as; parallel lines do not intersect, the lines had no definite length. Just like the relationship of the legs being 'information'. That is the 'Platonic realm'. Agreed, there is no math in the void, there isn't any energy either. jrc

John Merryman

John C,

And if we want to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together and not keep coming up with things like dark energy, inflation and multiverses to fill the rather enormous gaps...

Reset!

Regards,

John M

John Cox

John M.

"...things like dark energy, inflation and multiverses to fill the rather enormous gaps." are clues about those gaps. Why reset a good thing that keeps on going. Given that GR can generate a singularity from what is applied onto the theoretical mechanism which stipulates light velocity as a tenant of the equivalence principle, suggests that why we can't find our way through a singularity is because we would have to go a tad bit faster than light to achieve a straight line at constant velocity through space crossing it.

I hypothesize that that singular velocity would equate (rigorously) as 2.143^14 cm/sec. Being the exponential root of 'c', times 'c' (read e radical c, times c). The spacelength obtaining from the exponential increase of 1/c space intervals, and laying that against the timelength of one c, provides the slide rule consistent with Lorentz for the distributive function of energy quantity to a volume in accord with inverse square law. Time does not 'slow as it approaches the singularity horizon of the core region of a rest mass, it condenses so one must transit more of it, to go from point A to B in that space. The light velocity tenant producing that singularity is thus not violate. That's an old hypoyhesis of mine but recent discussions on FQXi has prompted the recognition that communication across the singularity would be at the velocity.

Thanks for sparring with me. jrc

John Merryman

John C,

Maybe what is on the other side of the singularity is light?

There are very significant jets of radiant energy being shot rather far out the poles of galaxies.

Sometimes the solution is too obvious to consider.

Regards,

John m

John Cox

John M.

And if what is on the 'other side' is light, it would lens around a galactic core because it could go it's nominal 'c' velocity. jrc

John Merryman

John C,

And it might well, but anything actually falling in would be ejected out the poles, like any vortex.

An interesting link.

Regards,

John M

Thomas Ray

"Sometimes the solution is too obvious to consider."

John, this is where your thinking fails to progress and ideas rattle around in your head without making contact with the objective world.

You have this animus against concepts like dark energy, continuous spacetime, the many worlds hypothesis, etc. supported by nothing except the lack of fit to your private world. What is obvious to you, really has no objective meaning -- in fact, what is personally obvious to anyone has no objective meaning, which is why we have science and mathematics.

There's a story, maybe apocryphal yet highly representative, of a professor lecturing in mathematics who was interrupted by a student's question on a point that she didn't understand. "That's obvious," said the professor. When the student persisted, the professor turned his back to the class and worked silently at the blackboard, his work hidden from view, for fifteen or twenty minutes. When finished, he erased the work, turned to the class and said, "Yes, it is obvious."

We like to poke fun at academics and educators for assuming what we don't know. The fact is, though, that academics and educators are far less guilty of presumptuous behavior than the lay public, richly demonstrated in these forums where we persistently hear that "relativity is obviously wrong," or some such irritating pronouncement.

One cannot know what is obvious until we can agree by objective standards that it is. That's what "obvious" means.

Best,

Tom

Thomas Ray

"Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if nobody hears it?"

Metaphysical realism guarantees a sound. The observer is never absent the event.

"Has your brain functioning ever been measured? ;)"

This is another way of asking whether you can see your own eyeball. To conflate the instrument with the event is a categorical error. All real physical events are projections of mind, not creations of it.

Thomas Ray

"The measurement is the lens through which we view reality."

That's just another way of saying that perception is reality.

Demonstrably, it isn't.

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