Relativity?

How does science work? And what's all this about quantum mechanics?

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surreptitious57
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Re: Relativity?

Post by surreptitious57 »

Theories are not facts even though they are comprised of them and the reason they are not is because they can be subject to potential
falsification at any time. But whether they can be actually falsified is irrelevant because it is the possibility of falsification that matters
surreptitious57
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Re: Relativity?

Post by surreptitious57 »

ken wrote:
explain what general relativity and what quantum mechanics is to you and also let us know if you think or believe they are facts or theories
They are theories not facts for the reason I have already given above
surreptitious57
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Re: Relativity?

Post by surreptitious57 »

ken wrote:
surreptitious57 wrote:
ken wrote:
Would you care to explain what parts if any you think are not united between general relativity and quantum mechanics
If you did then I would know what parts you are very interested to see how I try to or could actually unite
No because you have made the claim that they are easy to unite and that is not conditional on anything else
I just want to see what you are going to offer because until you show it I really have no idea what you have
And until you explain where you think or believe they are separated then I really have no idea why you would even think they are separate
NO thing is separate in the Universe. Only human beings look at and see separation. Human beings distort what is real and true when they
do this thus the reason WHY human beings are still trying to figure out things
I agree they are not separated in reality but only in theory and the reason for that is because gravity cannot currently be quantised
Human beings are trying to figure out things because they are curious but are not omniscient and so do not know all of the answers
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Noax
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Re: Relativity?

Post by Noax »

Would like to comment briefly on this:
ken wrote: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:33 pmDid the person who produced the theory of relativity predict that clocks would read different times depending on which way they traveled?
The theory made the predictions, not the author, who may or may not have been involved in the particular experiment. Secondly, the theory says it depends on the gravitational field each clock is in, and which clock moves more, not on which way they travel.
Did the person who produced the theory of relativity predict that some clocks would actually "tick faster" (for lack of better wording) the faster that clock went, relative to direction of travel?
Neither the person nor the theory says this. The faster clock 'ticks slower', and it is relative to a given frame, not to a direction of travel.
Also, what was the actual prediction in the actual words of the actual person who made the prediction?
The predictions were computed by application of the theories once the exact parameters of the experiment were known. The competing theories essentially said that two clocks that are in sync will stay in sync (to the precision of the clock) regardless of motion or altitude.
surreptitious57
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Re: Relativity?

Post by surreptitious57 »

ken wrote:
You have just said that I already know that a theory of everything does not exist yet the truth is I already do know that a theory of every
thing already does exist. But unfortunately for some people they are NOT yet able to explain things clearly so that they can be easily understood
There is nothing stopping you from explaining your Theory Of Everything as best as you can and so why not do it so we can actually see what it is
Whether it will be understood is an entirely separate issue. You have been asked this multiple times now and have yet to produce any thing at all
ken
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Re: Relativity?

Post by ken »

davidm wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 5:37 pm
ken wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 1:12 pm If that has NOT yet been shown and thus proven and/or evidenced, through tests and/or experiments, then HOW do you KNOW that this would, of course, happen?
It HAS been shown through tests and experiments -- as has been shown to you. See above.

If you're asking for an experiment in which a human subject accelerates to a relativistic speed, this obviously has not been done, but it's not necessary to do this to know that the theory is correct -- anymore than it is necessary for a human to jump into the sun to prove that he would burn up. But all of this has been explained to you, again and again and again .... in one ear and out the other.
And I have already shown how your example of jumping into the sun to prove some thing, which has already been proven with first hand experience by the way, is ridiculous at best. But you might have missed where I have shown this already.
ken
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Re: Relativity?

Post by ken »

davidm wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:10 pm
ken wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 1:12 pm
Have ALL of the known possible different frames, and all the actual amount of differing frames imaginable, been considered in this absolute statement of yours here? Or is it more like this is what you presume would happen?
Here again you demonstrate your obdurate ignorance of science, no matter how many times people have tried to educate you.
You are again wrong here.
davidm wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:10 pm It all goes in one ear and out the other, or you are just trolling.
That all depends on what you want to BELIEVE.

How many times must an experiment be conducted, in how many different locations, before we should accept it? A millions times in a million different places? A trillion times in a trillion different places? An infinite number of times in an infinite number of different places?[/quote]

If you want to BELIEVE that human bodies age differently because of the speed that they travel at, based on an experiment being done on a human body being involved, then so be it.
davidm wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:10 pmHow many times have people here tried to explain to you that science is not about verification?
If you have noticed, some say otherwise.

It’s about falsification. We gain confidence in theories that survive all falsification checks — as relativity has for more than a hundred years (not just your ignorant “once or twice,” lol). [/quote]

Again, you can BELIEVE whatever you like.
davidm wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:10 pmTomorrow we may run an experiment that falsifies relativity.
But could 'relativity' ever be falsified. The very nature of it would suggest otherwise.

If that happens, we would not throw out relativity. We would check to see if the experiment had a flaw in it. If we found no flaw, we would run the experiment again and if it falsified relativity, then we would try to find some other reason for the result. If indeed we begin to think that the experiment falsified relativity, we would then begin to explore other potential theories that would encompass all the successful tests of relativity theory, while ALSO explaining why relativity theory came up short in this particular experiment. A new theory that embraced both the successes while explaining the failure with a slightly different model would be tentatively held to be a better modeling theory than relativity was. This is exactly what happened with general relativity vs. Newtonian mechanics.[/quote]

WHY make up theories about what might be? WHY not just look at what IS, instead?
davidm wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:10 pmSomething very like this also happened just a few years ago. An experiment showed that neutrinos were traveling faster than light! If this were true, relativity would be overthrown. It created quite a stir, until the experimental setup was checked. Sure enough, it had a flaw in it. When the flaw was corrected neutrino velocity was not found to exceed c, once again in total conformance with Einstein.
Once again a human being looking up to and putting another on a pedestal.
davidm wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:10 pmBut naturally I am wasting my breath on you. Still, this gives my typing fingers a workout.
There is only breath in words, not in writing.
davidm wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:10 pmAs an aside, I would say that Popperian falsificationism is not the be-all and end-all that some might seem to think. String theory proceeds along yet it is unfalsifiable. And false theories can still be useful. I’d say, contra what I believe Noax said, that Newtonian mechanics is strictly false but it’s still useful so who cares? This is because science is not and cannot be about what is “true” but merely about what is instrumentally useful: modeling the world and making successful and useful predictions based on those models. In this sense I’d say science adheres to the Kantian noumenal/phenomenal distinction. A good example of this is quantum mechanics, wherein phenomenal QM is strikingly successful but noumenal QM is unknown and perhaps unknowable.
Everything is knowable.
ken
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Re: Relativity?

Post by ken »

thedoc wrote: Thu Dec 21, 2017 10:52 pm A typical Creationist will demand that all possible scenarios be tested and verified before they will consider any scientific theory to be true, as long as it doesn't contradict their particular interpretation of the Bible. But the Bible is accepted as true without any verification or testing because the Bible says it is true, their interpretation, others are suspect. Presenting evidence to a Creationist is like banging your head against a brick wall, but there are probably thousands of lurkers reading the thread, and for them we persist, some more than others.
WHY bring those human beings called "creationists" into this?
ken
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Re: Relativity?

Post by ken »

surreptitious57 wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 3:20 am
david wrote:
For any who might be interested in discussing the philosophy of relativity theory and of spacetime here might be a springboard for that discussion
Seriously heavy questions there but still an excellent opportunity to try and understand some really hard physics and from a very good site too
There is no thing heavy nor hard there.
ken
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Re: Relativity?

Post by ken »

uwot wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 11:25 am
ken wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 7:11 am
uwot wrote: Wed Dec 13, 2017 11:12 pm
That's been dealt with on this thread. Whatever the "true nature of time, if it even exists", the only thing that we can measure, or count, is periodic events.
But there are NO actual periodic events, so there are NO actual intervals to measure.
Periodic events, to people who believe in them, include things like the Earth going round the Sun, the Earth rotating on it's axis, a pendulum swinging back and forth, the vibrations of plucked strings and the oscillations of irradiated atoms.
All of which are just a part of the one actual event, which some times is referred to as spacetime. There are NO actual periodic events. There are only human beings who break down the one actual event into periodic events. As for 'people who believe (in any thing)' well that has already been discussed.
uwot wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 11:25 am
ken wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 7:11 amHuman beings have just devised, invented, and created a way to make measurements.

As above, we don't know whether we are actually measuring any such thing as 'time'; all we can do is count periodic events such as the ones listed above.
To be able to count "periodic" events one has to first break one thing down into periods, or only look at one thing.
uwot wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 11:25 am
ken wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 7:11 amIf an observer only wants to see separate events, then they can, AND, if another observer only wants to see one event, then they can also.
Well, it all hinges on what you mean by see. If two observers are watching the pendulum in a grandfather clock swing side to side, it is entirely up to the individual to choose to 'see' the whole sequence as a single event, or to break it down into the individual swings. But in the most literal sense, both observers will see the pendulum swinging.
Obviously.
uwot wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 11:25 am
ken wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 7:11 amBut, if an observer actually wants to see what IS, which is the Truth of ALL things, then they can also see that.
Same thing. What they will see is a pendulum swinging. If they wish to interpret that as the truth of all things, that is entirely their business. Some of us are less impressed by pendulums.
I am not sure if any person would interpret a pendulum swinging as the truth of all things, and, I am not sure WHY you would bring such a suggestion into this discussion.
uwot wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 11:25 am
ken wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 7:11 amRemember, absolutely EVERY thing is relative to the observer.
Indeed, but that is not the sort of relativity that has been discussed over 60 pages.
Well, of course, that would be relative to the observer.

Also, how many sorts of 'relativity' do you observe, and what are they?
uwot wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 11:25 am
ken wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 7:11 am
uwot wrote: Wed Dec 13, 2017 11:12 pm For all practical purposes, that is time. Periodic events demonstrably, without any exceptions, have always been observed to 'take longer' the faster the arena they happen in is moving, and/or the stronger the gravitational field in which they occur.
What do you mean by 'periodic events', 'demonstrably', 'without any exceptions', have 'always' been observed to take longer?

I have NOT observed what you are proposing here.
Ah, well; that is the point about the sort of relativity we have been discussing over 60 pages: it is only when you look at another frame of reference that you can observe the difference.
How many actual frames of reference do you propose there are in the one and only Universe?

Of course you, and some others, can look at, and see from, only a part of ALL-THERE-IS, or you can look at, and see from, ALL perspectives, or ALL frames of references. The choice is yours.

The two different ways of looking, and seeing from, will, obviously, give two very different observations or distinct points of views. One provides a much larger, overall, and thus truer, picture of things, while the other provides only a very narrow, small, and thus distorted, glimpse of things. I hope I do not have to explain which obviously provides a much clearer and better view, and in far more clearer detail also.

By the way is it actually possible to look at another frame of reference without making assumptions? Either you are in one frame of reference or you are not, and if you are not in a particular frame, then you would only be guessing what would be observed from that particular frame.
ken
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Re: Relativity?

Post by ken »

Londoner wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 12:00 pm
ken wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 7:11 am
But there are NO actual periodic events, so there are NO actual intervals to measure.
Would you say there are any events at all? That is to say, do you ever see change?
Yes, and

yes.
Londoner wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 12:00 pmFor example, you see this post. For you has this post (and all the others) always been on this thread? Or was there I time when there were less posts, or no posts at all.
Besides the fact that a thread usually does not exist without posts, there was a "time" when there were less posts in this thread.
Londoner wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 12:00 pmIf you have experienced a change, that this thread has grown longer and longer, then we could see each new post as a periodic event.
Yes very true we can SEE each new post as a periodic event, just like with just about any thing we can break them down to periodic events.
Londoner wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 12:00 pmWe could measure other changes against the changes in this thread. For example that the time I was having my breakfast was the time uwots latest post appeared. If we did that, then we would be using the thread like we use a clock. My breakfast was at 'uwots post-time'. It wouldn't be a very good clock, but it would still serve the purpose of measuring changes relative to each other.
Yes, as I have explained the same. 'Clocks' were invented to measure changes. The period of change, or changes, is defined by the change of a clock. A clock measures in periods.
Londoner wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 12:00 pmThis is purely about phenomena. We are measuring one experienced event relative to another, not measuring the quantity of some metaphysical substance 'time' that somehow inhabits those events.
Yes I know. That is more or less what I have been saying.

Did you think I was saying some thing different? If so, then what did you think I have been saying?
ken
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Re: Relativity?

Post by ken »

Noax wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 2:02 pm
davidm wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 12:20 am For any who might be interested in discussing the philosophy of relativity theory and of spacetime, here might be a springboard for that discussion.
Thank you for that link. All kinds of good fodder for discussion.
I picked a bit at this question since it comes up in this thread: What exactly is space-time? Is it something we can touch? How does it bend and interact with mass?

In it there is a reference to Minkowski's arguments http://www.minkowskiinstitute.org/MinkowskiProof.html for the reality of 4-D spacetime, a wonderful short piece (author unspecified) summarizing the issue. I'll quote a bit from it:

"What is presently adopted is only Minkowski's four-dimensional mathematical formalism of spacetime, but not the reality of what this formalism represents."

I am interested in the necessity of the reality of something beyond just a mathematical model. It seems that this would be a philosophical point yet Minkowski says that experiments would be impossible if spacetime where not really 4D.

But the proof goes on to demonstrate that a 3D world would not work. That seems to be no proof that the world is 4D, but merely proof that it is not 3D. The mathematical model the physicists use, not being one of a 3D world, works. What if there was no real space at all? Then spacetime would be unreal with it, the model would be 4D, and experimentation would work. Maybe I'm not getting some critical piece of the argument.

Quite interestingly, the page I link above references the thing I mentioned way back that a relativistic experiment is performed every second. I would not have been able to produce a link if asked, but here I stumble on something that makes the same claim I did.
When, and if, human beings show how they define the words 'time' and 'space' for example, or even 'spacetime' then we can look at if those things actually exist or not.
ken
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Re: Relativity?

Post by ken »

Londoner wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 2:33 pm
ken wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 2:01 pm
You, and others, propose things as definitive truths.
You, and others, do NOT know if those things are definitely true.
Therefore, what you, and others, propose are NOT, yet, definitive truths.
They describe phenomena, our experiences. The description is considered 'true' if it matches other peoples' experiences.
Thank you.
Londoner wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 2:33 pmIt is not a claim of truth in any metaphysical sense. It is not a claim that this must be the case or a claim to know why it is the case.

We assume certain things, for example that 'like causes produce like effects' i.e. there appears to be a regularity in phenomena. But again this arises simply from shared observation of correlations in phenomena, it is not a suggestion of some separate entity, 'the cause', that controls phenomena. There might be such a thing, but since we can only deal with phenomena we can never know it. All we note is the observed correlation.

Science is restricted to the observable and the measurable. If your understanding of 'definitive truths' is of something more than this, you are mistaken to think relativity etc. is such a claim.
My understanding of 'definitive truths' is not some thing more than that. Did you think otherwise?
ken
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Re: Relativity?

Post by ken »

Londoner wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 3:36 pm
ken wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 2:47 pm
Does believing that some thing is what happens, which to you has already been demonstrated, beyond ANY doubt, mean that you are at all open to the fact that this maybe is NOT what actually happens?

If so, then great.

If not, then great also.

Your honest answer is all I am seeking.
'Doubt' is a psychological state. One can doubt anything.
'Belief' is also a psychological state. One can believe any thing also.
Londoner wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 3:36 pm Is there anything you would consider 'beyond ANY doubt'?
Yes, the thoughts within this head.

Is there any thing else that can be surely known?
Londoner wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 3:36 pm If not, if your position is one of skepticism, then I don't see why you take such a particular interest in relativity since you would feel the same about every claim to knowledge.
My position is NOT one of skepticism, so I do NOT feel the same about every claim to knowledge. Did you think My position was of skepticism? If so, WHY did you think that?

By the way I have already expressed how, and when, some thing is truly known, or known for sure.
ken
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Re: Relativity?

Post by ken »

davidm wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 9:39 pm
ken wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 8:53 am
davidm wrote: Wed Dec 13, 2017 11:41 pm:

P1. Hitler was a vegetarian.

P2. But Hitler was a bad man.

C. Therefore, vegetarianism is bad.
Is that, to you, really an ad hominem?
Yes, Ken, that's really an ad hom. That specifically is what an ad hom is -- that some argument is wrong because of a personal characteristic of one making the argument. :?
I thought 'ad hominem' was more like a fallacious argumentative strategy whereby an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.

In 'your' argument you are NOT attacking any person making the argument, 'you' are just trying to label a human being, who was named hitler, a 'bad man'. You have NOT attacked any person associated with the argument. You have just tried to to attack some person by calling them some thing, which they are not. You have NOT, yet, proven nor made an argument to support your attempt at an "attack". Either what you said is a true representation of the character of a person, and therefore not an "attack" of the character, or it is not.

To Me, 'your' argument is just wrong because it is not valid, nor sound.

Also, 'you' are the one making the argument, and, you say that some argument is wrong because of a personal characteristic of one making the argument, and that that is what 'ad hom' is. Are you trying to suggest that 'your' argument is wrong because you have a 'personal characteristic'?
davidm wrote: Fri Dec 22, 2017 9:39 pm
davidm wrote: Wed Dec 13, 2017 11:41 pmInsult:

Hitler was a bad man.
Is that, to you, really an insult?
Yes, Ken, that's an insult. :?
You make Me laugh out loud some times.

Some human beings can try to insult others. Some human beings may also feel, or be, 'insulted' by some thing said, which is somewhat or completely untrue. But I do NOT call some thing, which is at all untrue, an insult. I can NOT be insulted, nor by the way be complimented either, although plenty of human beings try, very hard, to insult Me.

If you believe what you wrote was an insult, then who do you think you are insulting when you write the words "hitler was a bad man"?
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