On 7/22/2011 10:46 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 3:30 AM, Stephen P. King
<stephe...@charter.net <mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:
On 7/22/2011 2:11 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 12:44 AM, Stephen P. King
<stephe...@charter.net <mailto:stephe...@charter.net>> wrote:
On 7/22/2011 1:24 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
All the relevant parts of relativity which imply block
time have been confirmed. The above is like arguing
against gravity because Newton's theory wasn't compatible
with the observations of Mercury's orbit.
Hi Jason,
Could you be more specific? Exactly which "relevant parts
which imply block time have been confirmed" and how?
Special relativity, time dilation due to speed, non simultaneity
of events reported by observers in different reference frames,
and so on.
And to Brent's point, regarding the conflict between relativity
and QM, that issue is with GR, SR is not in conflict with QM.
This paper explains it well: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/2408/
Jason
Hi Jason,
I will check that paper, thanks! But here is the thing about
the implications of relativity of simultaneity: Since it prohibits
any form of absolute synchronization of events, this in turn
restricts how the entire space-time manifold can be considered as
parceled up into space-like and time like regions.
Imagine that spacetime is a 3 dimensional instead of four
dimensional. Now take any object's velocity through that space time,
and consider a plane perpendicular to the direction of that velocity.
The content of that plane is considered the "present" for that
reference frame. This is more clear if you consider euclidean space
time rather than Minkowski space. The only difference you need to
make to convert spacetime to Euclidean is to imagine that every
object's velocity through space time is c. /Relativity Visualized/ is
a good book which explains this view, but this site also explains it:
http://www.relativitysimplified.com/ . It enables an intuitive
understanding of all the strange effects like time dilation and length
contraction. Since we see only the three dimensional "shadow" of
objects, an object with a different velocity is rotated in space
time. It is like having an umbrella pointed straight at the sun vs.
it being tilted, if it is tilted its shadow becomes compressed along
the direction it is tilted.
In other words, there cannot exist a single Cauchy hypersurface
what acts as the set of initial (or final) conditions for a GR
field equation for the entire universe.
The fact that relativity iplies a unique present for every reference
frame is one of the main arguments for block time. How can the car
driving past you have a present containing different real objects than
yours? Presentism assumes the present is the set of real objects at a
given period of time, but what is real to you now in this moment is
different from what is real to me in the same moment if we are moving
relative to each other (even if we are at the same location). See:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rietdijk%E2%80%93Putnam_argument
The paper I cited also goes on to counter objections made to that
argument.
Thanks,
Jason
--
Hi Jason,
None of those papers address the concern of narratability that I am
considering. In fact they all assume narratability. I am pointing out
that thinking of time as a dimension has a big problem! It only works if
all the events in time are pre-specifiable. This also involves strong
determinism which is ruled out by QM. See
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/#StaDetPhyThe for a
general overview and tph.tuwien.ac.at/~svozil/publ/1994-calude.pdf for a
discussion that involves computationalism.
The idea that time is a dimension assumes that the events making up
the points of the dimension are not only isomorphic to the positive
Reals but also somehow can freely borrow the well order of the reals.
Please do not think that I am trying to knock Special or General
Relativity, they both represent time in terms of local readings of
clocks and therefore bypass the question that I am considering. The
block universe idea assumes a unique and global ordering of events, the
actual math of SR and GR do not!
My claim is that the idea that time is a quantity like space only
works in the conceptual sense where we are assuming that all events are
chained together into continuous world lines. We get this idea from the
way that we consider a history of events, much like the layers of strata
of stone studied by paleontologist with its embedded fossils. The point
is that none of that reasoning follows given the facts that I laid out.
It is impossible to define a unique Cauchy hyper-surface of initial
(final) data that completely determines all of the world lines in the
space-time block in a way that is consistent with QM.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=was-einstein-wrong-about-relativity
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/2710/what-does-foliation-mean-in-the-context-of-a-foliation-of-spacetime
arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0406024 ,
http://www.jstor.org/pss/51794 ,
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:F0eSPWwFThUJ:eom.springer.de/c/c020950.htm+Cauchy+hypersurface+initial+condition+problem&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com
When we add to this difficulty the fact that QM does not allow us
to consider all observables as simultaneously definable, because of
non-commutativity and non-distributivity of observables; the idea that
events are representable as pre-specifiable partly ordered sets from the
Big Bang singularity's event horizon into the far distant future falls
flat on its face. The point here is that the block universe and its
related notions of time assume something that is physically impossible.
As a concept it may work just fine and allow us to do all kinds of
calculations that seem to bypass or even disallow this problem, but if
you look carefully at the assumptions and methods in those calculations
you will inevitably find that the solutions involve a splitting of space
from time which is a step backwards from Einstein's theories. The Hole
Argument is related: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-holearg/
This is a very subtle and difficult issue that I am considering here.
Onward!
Stephen
--
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