Real-Time Physics

James,

"The scientific question is not 'Who' designed me. It is: What is the origin of intelligent life? The answer is not yet known because we are stuck with a foundational science that insists the properties of the universe are mechanical yielding mechanical results."

No we aren't -- you are the one who is stuck. *You* introduce mechanics by insisting on a definition of mass. Only space and time are necessary to existence -- what we don't know is whether they are sufficient. If relativity applies foundationally -- then spacetime and not space nor time independently are necessary and sufficient.

" ... Tom goes on to mention a listing of after-effects instead of addressing the question of origins other than to repeat the word self as if each thing is its own cause: 'All biological organisms, at the extreme of the origin of the first cell, are self-replicating. The origins of multicellular organisms -- like you and me -- don't go back that far; we are corporations of cooperating cells, and those cellular units are still self-replicating, containing part of the first cell that ever existed.'"

Those are simply facts, James. *Empirical* facts. It doesn't mean that "each thing is its own cause;" it suggests that causality is encoded in relations.

"Me: Tom did not address the question of origin. He lists effects. He relies on the word 'self' to substitute for cause as if effects are their own cause."

No. Chemical self assembly and complex systems self organization are *empirical.* Facts. The facts suggest that causality is encoded in relations, and not a simple Aristotelian origin, or "first cause."

Best,

Tom

"Any intended explosion is based on engineered positive feedback loop."

No it isn't, unless the intent is to engineer a continuous explosion. Good luck with that.

"Positive feedback is also used in a clock as to compensate for the intrinsic negative feedback of attenuation. You obviously confused model and reality."

I never confuse reality with anything, Eckard, because I don't assume reality. In order to understand "positive feedback," one must know the difference between control mechanisms (negative feedback, which characterizes both your examples) and out of control conditions.

"If an equation yields a function of seemingly backward directed time, e.g. due to negative differential resistance, then it must not be misinterpreted."

You are comfortable picking whatever solutions satisfy your personal notion of reality. I am not.

Tom referring to me: "*You* introduce mechanics by insisting on a definition of mass. Only space and time are necessary to existence -- what we don't know is whether they are sufficient. If relativity applies foundationally -- then spacetime and not space nor time independently are necessary and sufficient."

You bet I do. Mass needed fixed and I fixed it. Space, time, force and mass are necessary for existence. Relativity does not apply foundationally. It is a theory about the natures of two properties for which there is no existing empirical evidence demonstrating that either space or time have ever had velocities nor have ever been observed to be undergoing accelerations.

James Putnam

"Space, time, force and mass are necessary for existence."

If that were true, inertia would be fixed quantity. It isn't.

""Space, time, force and mass are necessary for existence.""

"If that were true, inertia would be fixed quantity. It isn't."

Neither force nor mass are fixed quantities. What I said is straight from that which empirical evidence tells us. There are at least those four properties that are indispensable for existence. Thats why together they form f=ma.

James Putnam

Tom,

There is no feedback from future to past unless you deny reality/causality. Don't try telling an old EE control systems. Some time ago I explained a main aspevt of the notion reality as something that left traces. Since you "don't assume reality" I wonder if you can provide a better definition.

Eckard

"There is no feedback from future to past unless you deny reality/causality."

You assume that reality and causality are identical.

"Don't try telling an old EE control systems."

I won't. It's out-of-control conditions I'm addressing.

"Some time ago I explained a main aspevt of the notion reality as something that left traces. Since you 'don't assume reality' I wonder if you can provide a better definition."

The problem with defining reality, Eckard, is that the definition is never complete.

Best,

Tom

Tom,

In real-time means life. In this sense, reality, causality, and life are closely related to each other aspects of the perhaps most successful view of the world which distinguishes between traces of past processes in a conjectured objectively existing world and mental constructs that were abstracted from experiences and experiments as to find out what has happened in the past and what may be expected.

This common sense based conjecture can also be negatively expressed as:

- there is no obvious reason for blind trust in theories or even in mysticism

- an effect does obviously never precede its cause, there is no back-causation

- there is obviously no eternal conservation of structures.

I dislike intentions to single out and deny for instance causality or simultaneity for the sake of theories. I would like to stress that there is only one reality in the above sketched sense. It is however correct to say "in my view of reality".

EEs describe "out-of-control conditions" too. Any unstable system is embedded in a stable one. Any black box used in control theory has an input and an output. It does not matter whether the transfer function has positive or negative gain and whether signal flows are added or subtracted from each other. They always go ahead. There is no feedback from the future to the past.

Eckard

Eckard

"In real-time means life."

You assume identity of "life" and "time." If this identity truly holds, though, your distinction between present conscious life and traces of past events is arbitrary.

Tom,

A TV or radio transmission in real time is also called a life transmission in contrast to a possibly manipulated transmission from a record. Only morons conclude from such common terminology that the notions time and the life are identical.

Let me reiterate what you questioned: "So far no feedback has been observed from the future to the past." Why don't you simply admit that you were wrong when you wrote "sure it has"?

Eckard

"Why don't you simply admit that you were wrong when you wrote 'sure it has'?"

Call me a moron, Eckard. Your naive unsubtle thinking is demonstrably not all there is to "reality."

A Proof That Physics Is Dead

"Was Einstein wrong? At least in his understanding of time, Smolin argues, the great theorist of relativity was dead wrong. What is worse, by firmly enshrining his error in scientific orthodoxy, Einstein trapped his successors in insoluble dilemmas..."

Philip Ball: "Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."

Both Lee Smolin and Philip Ball know that the special relativistic time is a consequence of Einstein's 1905 two postulates so if the consequence is "dead wrong", at least one of the postulates must be false. Yet, if asked, both Smolin and Ball would declare, and physicists all over the world would wholeheartedly agree, that "the postulates and their consequences are then checked experimentally and, so far, they hold remarkably well":

QUESTION: Setting aside any other debates about relativity theory for the moment, why would the speed of light be absolute? No other speeds are absolute, that is, all other speeds do indeed change in relation to the speed of the observer, so it's always seemed a rather strange notion to me. LEE SMOLIN: Special relativity works extremely well and the postulate of the invariance or universality of the speed of light is extremely well-tested. It might be wrong in the end but it is an extremely good approximation to reality. QUESTION: So let me pick a bit more on Einstein and ask you this: You write (p. 56) that Einstein showed that simultaneity is relative. But the conclusion of the relativity of simultaneity flows necessarily from Einstein's postulates (that the speed of light is absolute and that the laws of nature are relative). So he didn't really show that simultaneity was relative - he assumed it. What do I have wrong here? LEE SMOLIN: The relativity of simultaneity is a consequence of the two postulates that Einstein proposed and so it is deduced from the postulates. The postulates and their consequences are then checked experimentally and, so far, they hold remarkably well.

Pentcho Valev

Einsteiniana's high priests have all left the sinking ship and are now trying to unbrainwash the scientific community:

"Could Einstein's theory of relativity be wrong? That's among the burning questions being asked by theoretical physicists today. It's a startling claim and one that has received a lot of attention from other scientists. Researchers from UC Santa Barbara's Department of Physics and the Kavli Institute for Theretical Physics (KITP) have received a $1.32 million grant from the National Science Foundation to continue their work on finding an answer."

What If Einstein Was Wrong? Brian Clegg, Jim Al-Khalili: "It shouldn't be too much of a surprise that Einstein could get it wrong, because science is not about absolute truth..."

New Scientist: "ADVANCES in physics often result from observations that don't fit theory: the Michelson-Morley experiment, for example, saw no universal ether, paving the way for Einstein's relativity. That successful theory is itself hard to square with one of the most universal observations of all. Relativity, and many subsequent physical theories, kill off the notion that time flows - but every human alive will argue otherwise. Well, almost every human: some physicists are resigned to the "block universe", with its static time. Others, however, feel that any theory that doesn't accommodate our experience must be flawed..."

New Scientist: "Saving time: Physics killed it. Do we need it back?"

New Scientist: "Sorry, Albert: Physics that challenges Einstein. Gravity, relativity, space and time - Albert Einstein explained all these and more. But he had an uneasy relationship with quantum theory, and with physicists still casting around for a unifying theory of physics, his ideas in all areas are under scrutiny like never before. If we want to progress towards a theory of everything, we need to understand how space and time fit together - if they do at all."

"...says John Norton, a philosopher based at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Norton is hesitant to express it, but his instinct - and the consensus in physics - seems to be that space and time exist on their own. The trouble with this idea, though, is that it doesn't sit well with relativity, which describes space-time as a malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter."

The scientific community couldn't care less. Whether or not space and time form "a malleable fabric whose geometry can be changed by the gravity of stars, planets and matter" is of absolutely no importance to anybody - science is dead anyway.

Pentcho Valev

What do others in this community have to say about the Twin Paradox? It arises from what Time is in Lorentz transformation. Is it real?

Then Peter J, Tom or others, what is your understanding of what Proper Time is?

Then Pentcho, concerning "...we need to understand how space and time fit together - if they do at all". A point to ponder: can what does not occupy space have a duration of existence (time) or can something that does not have a duration of existence occupy space?

Akinbo

Akinbo,

The point I keep making about time is that it's not so much the present 'moving' from past to future, as it is the changing configuration of what is, that turns future into past. As this energy in space is constantly changing configuration. For example, the earth doesn't travel some dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, rather tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. This makes every action its own clock, running at the rate arising from its particular conditions. So naturally some processes go faster than others. Now if time really were a vector from past to future and you moved on it like moving along a spatial dimension, it would seem logical for the faster clock to somehow get to the future faster, but in a very real sense, the opposite is true. All things being equal, ie. amount of available energy, it ages/burns/processes faster and so recedes into the past more rapidly. The twin in the faster clock frame has grown old and died when the other returns. The hare has faster metabolism than the tortoise, yet the tortoise lives longer than the hare.

Regards,

John M

John,

Is the future then an already present destination, only yet to be reached? (using the analogy you used of moving along a spatial dimension). Old age for example is a certain destination (configuration) in the future, can it be reached earlier other than at the usual pace? Or again perhaps one can live a 100 years and still look 50? Also see my post on Nov. 14, 2013 @ 10:35 GMT. Like you John, are you operating on Proper Time or which Time are you personally using to count your days?

Akinbo

Akinbo,

Think in terms of just energy in all its forms, moving about in space, like a thermodynamic medium. Since we exist as particular point of reference and function by being mobile, our thought process is to funnel as much information in and then process it how it is useful for our survival. The brain is divided into two basic parts; the left linear side and the right non-linear, scalar side. Since there is so much information, the non-linear side processes in bulk. Sort of like throwing everything together and seeing what emerges as the most important, interesting connections, etc. We refer to this as intuition. The linear side tries to place everything in its proper coherent order, but since the larger reality is not linear, this requires editing and adaption. For example, to make our measures of time all fit in the same frame, we change the number of days of the months to fit the year, rather than the actual cycles of the moon. So this sense of everything happening in sequence is very much hardwired into our minds, yet just as we experience days as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, it is a function of our experience, not of the larger reality. Those events are simply the energy coalescing some form in our minds, of some approximation of external conditions. It is they that are coming and going, ie. future to past. They don't pre-exist because the energy only comes together to form them. Like seeing a super nova is the experience of that light traveling for billions of years, only to strike the lens of the telescope at a certain moment. It is that coming together that is our experience of reality.

Regards,

John M

Real and Global Time in Einsteiniana

"Many physicists argue that time is an illusion. Lee Smolin begs to differ. (...) Smolin wishes to hold on to the reality of time. But to do so, he must overcome a major hurdle: General and special relativity seem to imply the opposite. In the classical Newtonian view, physics operated according to the ticking of an invisible universal clock. But Einstein threw out that master clock when, in his theory of special relativity, he argued that no two events are truly simultaneous unless they are causally related. If simultaneity - the notion of "now" - is relative, the universal clock must be a fiction, and time itself a proxy for the movement and change of objects in the universe. Time is literally written out of the equation. Although he has spent much of his career exploring the facets of a "timeless" universe, Smolin has become convinced that this is "deeply wrong," he says. He now believes that time is more than just a useful approximation, that it is as real as our guts tell us it is - more real, in fact, than space itself. The notion of a "real and global time" is the starting hypothesis for Smolin's new work, which he will undertake this year with two graduate students supported by a $47,500 grant from FQXi."

$47,500 were not enough and Smolin failed to establish the "real and global time". He ranted some more, just to sell his new book:

"Was Einstein wrong? At least in his understanding of time, Smolin argues, the great theorist of relativity was dead wrong. What is worse, by firmly enshrining his error in scientific orthodoxy, Einstein trapped his successors in insoluble dilemmas..."

"And by making the clock's tick relative - what happens simultaneously for one observer might seem sequential to another - Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."

In the end Smolin returned to the one and true religion:

QUESTION: Setting aside any other debates about relativity theory for the moment, why would the speed of light be absolute? No other speeds are absolute, that is, all other speeds do indeed change in relation to the speed of the observer, so it's always seemed a rather strange notion to me.

LEE SMOLIN: Special relativity works extremely well and the postulate of the invariance or universality of the speed of light is extremely well-tested. It might be wrong in the end but it is an extremely good approximation to reality.

QUESTION: So let me pick a bit more on Einstein and ask you this: You write (p. 56) that Einstein showed that simultaneity is relative. But the conclusion of the relativity of simultaneity flows necessarily from Einstein's postulates (that the speed of light is absolute and that the laws of nature are relative). So he didn't really show that simultaneity was relative - he assumed it. What do I have wrong here?

LEE SMOLIN: The relativity of simultaneity is a consequence of the two postulates that Einstein proposed and so it is deduced from the postulates. The postulates and their consequences are then checked experimentally and, so far, they hold remarkably well.

Pentcho Valev

Pentcho,

Why do you stubbornly ignore the possibility that the second postulate (constant c) may be correct if the first postulate contains a wrongly interpreted conclusion. My essay explains:

"Was Einstein right? Definitely yes, when he postulated a good old insight [10]: There is no preferred point of reference in space.

Let's check his conclusion: The laws of nature should therefore be the same for any inertial system. This would be correct in this sense: If two bodies A and B in motion relative to each other with a velocity v then A obeys the same laws as did B if it was instead chosen the object of consideration. Fig. 1 shows A and B moving. Body A sees B with the same delay as B sees A. Given the distance AB is increasing then light from A is seen at B red-shifted as is light from B at A too. Both bodies had already a common reference position S where their clocks got synchronized. Einstein used a different synchronization. Why?"

Eckard Blumschein