Continuation Causes Superior but Unrealistic Ambiguity by Eckard Blumschein

Dear Eckard,

I enjoyed your essay which built a solid case for the superiority of digital signal processing and discrete representations. I thought that the historical references to Euclid, Leibniz, Gauss, Cantor and others were fascinating.

Best regards,

Paul

Dear Eckard

I was hoping to see a response to my post above. The more rigorous logical analysis is in a post I've just made to Tom in support of Georgina in the blogs (Time travel) but repeated in my string. I hope you'll look, as it identified conceptually and logically where our understanding and application of maths and SR was incorrect.

I note I haven't scored yours yet and will do so now with the far higher one it deserves, as time is running out. I do hope you will agree mine deserves the same, if you haven't done so yet.

Very best wishes.

Peter

Dear Paul,

In my understanding, foundational questions should not just include FOM (fundamentals of mathematics) but demand some clarification in FOM even if corrections might be painful to those mathematicians to whom aleph is a gospel and set theory the alpha and omega alias infinity of mathematics. I agree not just with David Joice in that the good old Euclidean notion number was abandoned in the 19th century. So far I seem to be the first one who makes this an issue. Cantor's "counterintuitive" infinities beyond infinity provoked distrust, and they got even used as to enforce purely formal thinking. I do not intend being considered one more crank who tries to disprove Cantor or Einstein. Having dealt with the foundations of the foundations, I see the necessity for tiny but very basic resurrections.

When I tried to explain why discrete and in particular digital models are superior, I did not hide that any belonging abstraction and in particular linearizing implies a loss of realism. I do not yet see any possibility to decide whether or not the world is anyhow discrete at the lowest level. However, most likely such lower end of our scales for temporal and spatial distance would be as useless as an upper end. I never dealt with or believed in the big bang.

Already when I was a child, I did not understand those who spoke of blowing up a point. To me numbers and continua are likewise abstract notions that do not have exact correlates in nature unless we define for instance how to count a pregnant cow. My Fig. 1 might illustrate how to imagine discrete values to be seen in a continuous function and how a non-linear transformation changes the scales. When I heard for the first time the expression negative signal to noise ratio, I was confused. How can it be negative? The answer is simple: SNR is usually given in dB.

Best regards,

Eckard

Dear Eckard,

I enjoyed the ideas in this essay. We are very much on the same line. Quantities are related to objects, negative and complex numbers are useful because they represent orientations of real objects. They represent common sense reality, nothing magical about them. We could do without complex numbers and replace them with their 3D analogs, the more powerful quaternions.

I remember you also used examples of auditory perception in last year's essay to make your point.

I especially liked the sentences:

"Strictly speaking there are neither absolutely continuous nor absolutely discrete signals, because any tangible thing is finite."

"Even begin and end of an animal's life are continuous while irreversible processes."

"Peas are preferably treated as if they were uncountable. Uncountable liquids are measured in terms of countable gallons."

"Both the foundations of mathematics and, to a larger extent, basic interpretations of implication for physics are not yet as mature as possible."

"...unfortunately common identification of a number with just one point instead of the distance between zero and a virtual limit point..."

"Foundational pragmatism outperforms pseudo-foundational formalism"

Best wishes for this contest,

Arjen

Dear Arjen,

Even John Baez confirmed in principle that quantum physics can equivalently be expressed in terms of real or complex numbers, and quaternions and octonions.

However, so far he did not even mention the - as I maintain - reasonable tailor-made description in terms or only positive real numbers (R).

My argument is simple: Any finite interval in R can be completely shifted into R, and this shift merely reverses the original physical relationship. For instance, any analysis of measured data has nothing to do with what will possibly happen after the measurement.

Some consequences imply a lot. For instance, there is presumably no a priori given block of spacetime, no Higgs boson and no SUSY. MP3 works well with cosine transformation. This does however not mean that negative and complex numbers are unnecessary. On the contrary, they are utterly advantageous if correctly used and interpreted.

Regards,

Eckard

Dear Peter,

I did not yet read what you just wrote in your string. Time travel is impossible to me. What about the somewhat simplistic explanation you gave by means the metaphor of a river, it did not yet immediately convince me. With acoustic waves in a single medium one can also not exceed the velocity of sound by means of superposition.

You might read what Tom Van Flandern wrote: "Is faster-than-ligth propagation allowed by the laws of physics?" and "Lorentz Contraction" in http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity/LR.asp .

Does it agree with your ideas? I see it agreeable with logic and all pertaining experiments I am aware of. It also seems to agree with the many convincing arguments collected by Ekkehard Friebe.

Yan Flandern recognizes a universal time, a universal instant of now. Lorentz transformation works just one way and therefore without paradoxes. Minkowski metric seems to loose its basis. Physics becomes less mystic, and my touch stone seems to work: We do perhaps no longer need ict.

Regards,

Eckard

Dear Eckard,

I am very pleased with your new found popularity. Hope your essay makes it to the panel, as it appears it will. I am equally (if not even more) pleased, but not with my rating position (38) of my essay. But rather, by a very significant result I just posted yesterday. I consider you a friend and a supporter. So I just had to tell you of this directly.

Two very key assumptions in physics (dating back to Einstein) are

1)The constant speed of light (CSL)

2)The Photon Hypothesis (PH)

The first lead to Relativity, while the second lead eventually to Quantum Physics.

In my very short paper "If the speed of light is constant, then light is a wave" I give a simple mathematical proof that CSL contradicts PH.

I look forward to your always insightful comments.

Best Wishes,

Constantinos

Dear Eckard,

I really have not thought enough about these questions of the fundamentals of mathematics and how best to use mathematics to model reality. Which is one of the reasons I am very glad that you are.

I was just trying to say that I think there may be a legitimate use for i as explained and hopefully clarified below.

In my essay I have tried to show that space-time mathematics relates only to the recieved image of reality and incorporated temporal distortion. There is no change within the space-time model as it is a static geometric model, where time is a part of the geometry.

However to have casality and passage of time there has to be a foundational reality where there is spatial change giving a sequence of earlier and later. Hence time appears as earlier and later in a sequence of spatial arrangements or positions. The spatial sequence is Mc Taggarts C series; the earlier later passage of time is B series; (space-time) past , present future expereince is Mc Taggart A series time. See his paper on the unreality of time in my references.

So if One wishes to have that passage of time type change and -also- relate this to what is observed (in static space-time) one needs to have a change of position that can not be represented within the 3 spatial dimensions of space-time and that is a spatial distance that can not be a "real" measurement of distance because it can not be observed as a distance, within the observers scale and frame of reference.

Thanks for that historical clarification, Eckard. I am always impressed by your vast knowledge and your deep insights. And that is the reason I seek your comments on the result I linked in my last post.

I am aware that Maxwell's equations (considering light as a wave) determine that the speed of light is a constant. My just posted result does the opposite. With the assumption that the speed of light is constant, I mathematically demonstrate that light must be a wave. Thus, under all circumstances, light is a wave. In my view, this contradicts the Photon Hypothesis and the 'physical view' it lead to. It makes a strong case for a continuous universe.

Good luck,

Constantinos

Eckard,

I had forgotten to rate your essay. I have now done so. If you have forgotten me, I ask you to remember.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Eckard,

on the contrary Mc Taggart's very clear and unambiguous definition of the elements neccessary for time as we know it are very useful. The everyday notion of past, present and future is not adequate.

As I have tried to explain in my essay for the distant observer events that have already occurred and are to the near man already the past, are yet to be experienced and are in that distant observer's future. Though beyond what has already occurred everywhere (even though it has not been experienced) the future is un-written. So you see from this that some parts of the future, not yet experienced, are preordained, as they have already happened, and others are not.So there is partial determinism allowing causality and free will.

The everyday notion of a present experienced by all simultaneously is not sufficient to explain observations, where there is observed to be non simultaneity of events. (See the dog on the hill example in the essay.) However simultaneity is necessary at the foundational level to permit causality.The differentiation of (Foundational)object and (Reconstruction from received data)image reality allow both to co-exist without contradiction or paradox.

The experienced present is formed from the data that is -received-, not the objects or events that exist or the data immediately it is formed. So objective or uni-temporal Now (Where foundational objects exist and interaction occurs) is different from the experienced space-time present. There is transmission delay according to distance from object or event which causes temporal distortion of the image reality experienced.

Best regards, Georgina.

Yes Eckard,

you are correct that most people do understand there is an information delay. However it does seem that there has been a general difficulty reconciling this knowledge with the notion of the present. Most are not conscious that the present experience is not a singular simultaneously occurring collection of events, or objective slice of reality happening right Now - but a composite image formed from received data with incorporated time delay, that is unique for each observer.The amount of delay being variable according to the distance from the origin and the nature of the stimulus.Smells taking longer than sound taking longer than light.

I suspect experiments are designed without the subjective, relative nature of the present being taken fully into account. The two ends of the laboratory are not seen at precisely the same time by the experimenter standing at different ends of the room.It takes time for the light reflected to reach the experimenters eyes and be processed.

Such considerations are important for example when quantum physicists start to talk about time travel. On a minute scale due to the high speed of light and tiny scale of particles under consideration, the far end of the room is seen in the past compared to what is actually happening at the far end of the room. The yet unobserved event might be said to be occurring in the future as it has not yet been observed, but so it is with all distant observations.It becomes the experienced present when the observation is made ie the data is received and processed so that there is an awareness of it.

This gets really messed up for astronomical observations because it takes a vast amount of time for the data to arrive so it is obviously not something happening right now but yet it only now a part of present experience.Until it is observed it is something that has happened but is not yet observed, like the event at the end of the room. Still in the future until it is seen even though the event has happened. After the event is seen it becomes the past consigned to memory or other records.

Those events that have happened but are not yet observed are only a part of the future, the determined part. Beyond what exists at the uni-temporal objective Now (That is right now in objective reality) there is nothing so the future is open and unwritten. Allowing non determinism and free will.I think confusion over this is what lead to the writing of the Andromeda paradox. It can be understood either as I have explained here or by using the Lorentz transformation to calculate what would be observed. The event becomes a part of the present when the data is received by the observer not when the data is formed.

I do not know if you have actually talked to many people about their concept of the present. I seem to have had great difficulty getting others to accept the composite nature of an experienced present moment which is an image of reality formed from received data, rather than an objective reality made from objects and events as they are in space. If you are now saying this is the common everyday perception of the present then I am surprised at that.

I too have only recently become aware of Mc Taggart. I have found his A, B, C series helpful because I have myself been trying to describe how a spatial change can become a sequence in time, which is necessary for passage of time and how this is different from experienced and geometric space-time. As his A, B C series are very clear and unambiguous so I am using his series to explanation what I mean.

That should have said "As his A,B,C series are very clear and unambiguous, I am using them to explain what I mean.