Where is "here"?

So what's really going on?

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raw_thought
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by raw_thought »

It seems to me that you are saying that space (distance ) is not real because how we measure it is arbitrary. We can use feet, yards, miles etc. That is a silly argument.
Obvious Leo
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by Obvious Leo »

raw_thought wrote:It seems to me that you are saying that space (distance ) is not real because how we measure it is arbitrary. We can use feet, yards, miles etc. That is a silly argument.
That's not what I'm saying at all and I can't imagine how or why you would put such a bizarre and false construction on my words. You do NOT have the authority to offer gratuitous translations of my views and I"ll thank you to stop doing so. You've been warned several times before.

I said that the Cartesian space is not physically real because it has no physical properties. If you wish to refute my words this is the statement you will address by telling me what its physical properties are.
raw_thought
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by raw_thought »

I am sorry that I questioned the prophet.
However, you probably do not understand what you are implying. By saying that the grid (coordinate system) is not real (I agree. There is no actual physical grid) means that it does not describe reality is silly. I agree that the grid is composed of arbitrary units (feet,yards,miles) and in that sense is a human narrative. However, it is a human narrative that describes reality.
That is what Kant said. He did not say that space (distance ) is not real.
PS; I asked politely ( "it seems to me"). However, I can tell that you are getting emotional again. I will return tomorrow. It is boring to listen to a name calling rant and silly threats.
raw_thought
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by raw_thought »

raw_thought wrote:Considering that you said that Einstein said that math can be used to prove anything, I do not trust the authenticity of your quotes. I googled that supposed Einstein quote and came up with nothing. Actually, I found many Einstein math quotes and they all say that math describes and helps us understand reality.
You never answered my question. If only time is real and space is a fiction that means that I can say that something will happen in 2 hours but I cannot say that I am 6 foot 2 inches tall. Why are time units OK and space units are not. And if space does not exist then it is meaningless to say that my car is moving at 55 miles per hour. Next time I get pulled over for a speeding ticket I will tell the cop that space is unreal and therefore it is absurd to say that I was speeding! :lol:
Please answer those questions. See ya tomorrow!
Obvious Leo
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by Obvious Leo »

You cannot say that something will happen in two hours time beyond a finite order of probability, a truth which the Minkowski block model denies.

This is because the future hasn't been made yet.

What are the physical properties of space which allow it to perform all the miraculous feats which you seem to be attributing to it? Is not possible that Einstein might have been right after all and that spacetime is not a physical model of the universe at all but merely a mathematical representation of such a model? Are you suggesting that the 40 years of his life that he spent after the publication of GR in looking for a physical model of the universe were wasted? Was he wrong to reject the dice-playing god and spooky action at a distance?
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Greta
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by Greta »

Leo, I've waited to see how things played out with raw_thought but it's circular. You know a lot more about physics than I do, so I find your claim about space confusing because even after all this talk I cannot conceptualise your model, and the only other time I've had this much trouble is with Rob Bryant's videos about imagining extra dimensions (whose string theory constructs obviously clash with your spaceless model). Two competing ideas but each as incomprehensible to me. I even found the holographic time hypothesis presented on Through the Wormhole easier to wrap my head around.

Help us out here - when you say that space is an observer effect, what exactly does that mean?

I love to look into the sky and think of how that space stretches out forever (as far as I can tell) - to think of how the Earth and its magnetosphere and gravitational forces stretch out far beyond our planet's material borders. I like to think of what lies under me - thousands of kilometres of the Earth at a scale I can't physically comprehend. But you say is it's all an illusion - that I am not looking out into space and time or thinking of the kms of rock beneath/above my feet, only into time.

I can understand that perspective - that everything we see, we see in the past and so forth. However, it seems like only one perspective. That is, one can also imagine spacetime - no matter what Einstein said (he was fallible and worked a long time ago) - and the situation looks to me like a case of multistable perception, like a Necker Cube or Escher drawing. "Look at it this way and you get this, look at it that way and you get that", like the fable of the six blind men and the elephant.

If you reject this idea, then please help me out - why is there a metre/yard of reality in the spatial dimension between me and a small table in my living room? If this small relative space is real - a dimension in my relative reality - then we can expand on it to ever greater distances and determine whether that relative space is real or not. I could go across the room, at the top of the street, the next suburb, to the Moon. At what point does this space cease to be real?
raw_thought
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by raw_thought »

"physical model"???
By your definitions that is an oxymoron.
He did have a model of the universe. It showed the nature of reality. However, he wanted a TOE. If I create a statue of you, I have a model of you. However, it is not a complete model. Clay is not protoplasm.
raw_thought
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by raw_thought »

Leo,
Are you actually claiming that Einstein did not say that gravity is curved spacetime?
raw_thought
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by raw_thought »

Leo,
Do you realize that when you say that space is not real that means that distance is not real? That means that the statement " I work 5 miles from my home" is meaningless.That is silly!
You are level confused. You are asking how far distance is. Since the universal distance has no particular distance, you claim that distance (space) does not exist. That is like you saying," You believe in dogs? Show me a dog!" I show you a dog. You then say," I wanted a universal dog,not a particular dog!"
Obvious Leo
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by Obvious Leo »

raw_thought wrote:Leo,
Are you actually claiming that Einstein did not say that gravity is curved spacetime?
What I'm saying is that Einstein made perfectly clear that the above is not a physical statement because an entity with no physical properties cannot be said to curve.

If you wish to claim that empty space can curve itself then tell me how it does it.
Obvious Leo
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by Obvious Leo »

I'm still waiting for you to explain to me how space expands. Does it just spread itself out a bit or do new bits of space arrive from somewhere to fill in the gaps?

In the philosophy of the bloody obvious an expanding space is a mathematical metaphor and that's exactly what Albert Einstein thought it was too!!!
Dubious
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by Dubious »

Obvious Leo wrote:
Dubious wrote: not all things have to be physical to be real.
In a physical theory they do.
Very glib! What physical theory is purely physical? I don't know of any.
Dubious wrote: The reality of Cartesian space are the coordinates it supplies to position, location, etc.
Obvious Leo wrote:In other words the Cartesian space is a mathematical co-ordinate system and nothing more.
Yes! It's a mathematical map that defines position, vectors, forces etc within a 2 dimensional or 3 dimensional space indispensible to science and engineering. Is it supposed to be more and would it fail on that account?
Obvious Leo wrote:The Persian philosopher/mathematicians knew this 600 years before Descartes was even born.
Brilliant as they were they may have understood the rudiments which can even be derived from a chess board but it was Descartes who established the total application as we now know it.
Dubious wrote: Whether due to space or due to time it's an indispensable map whose territory has not yet been confirmed as not existing either way.
Obvious Leo wrote:Yes it has. The physicality of the Cartesian space was disproven by Michelson and Morley and subsequently confirmed as disproven by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen.
Is Cartesian Space - actual physical space as you mention - the same as a luminous ether. You seem to be conjoining them as if they're the same thing consequently claiming that the existence of space has been disproven since the ether concept does not apply. Have I got this right, that the existence of space has been confirmed not to exist based on the quoted methodologies?
Obvious Leo
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Dubious wrote:Very glib! What physical theory is purely physical? I don't know of any.
Neither do I. I agree with Einstein and Bohr that physics is a branch of mathematics.
Dubious wrote:Yes! It's a mathematical map that defines position, vectors, forces etc within a 2 dimensional or 3 dimensional space indispensible to science and engineering. Is it supposed to be more and would it fail on that account?
I don't think it needs to be more than this if making predictions is all we ask of our theories. However if we want them to have any explanatory authority then we must make a careful distinction between what is physically real and what is merely a mathematical contrivance.
Dubious wrote: Brilliant as they were they may have understood the rudiments which can even be derived from a chess board but it was Descartes who established the total application as we now know it.
Descartes was a religious zealot and a metaphysical dunderhead who didn't know his epistemological arse from his ontological elbow. The centuries long fallacy of mistaking the map for the territory originated with exactly this idiot.
Dubious wrote: Is Cartesian Space - actual physical space as you mention - the same as a luminous ether. You seem to be conjoining them as if they're the same thing consequently claiming that the existence of space has been disproven since the ether concept does not apply. Have I got this right, that the existence of space has been confirmed not to exist based on the quoted methodologies?
Yes. Einstein himself conceded that GR was still an action at a distance theory no different from Newton's because in the absence of an aether there was still no defined mechanism for gravity, even in principle. The way he described the problem was that replacing the physical aether with a geometric aether made the problem worse instead of better. This is still the case to the present day and absolutely no progress towards such a mechanical theory for gravity has been made in a century. This was Minkowski's fault.
Dubious
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by Dubious »

Obvious Leo wrote:Descartes was a religious zealot and a metaphysical dunderhead who didn't know his epistemological arse from his ontological elbow. The centuries long fallacy of mistaking the map for the territory originated with exactly this idiot
Even though I find Descartes detrimental in some respects especially his view of animals as being merely soulless mechanical creatures which observation would have confirmed as thoroughly non sequitur, I definitely would not describe him as an idiot! That is truly tantamount to an absurdity. Neither was he a religious zealot as per the following words from Pascal:
I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God. But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers; after that, he had no more use for God,
Based on what I know of Descartes but with some amendments, I wouldn't mind cradling his brains in my cranium. Wikipedia has an interesting article on him which categorically refutes everything you said about him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes

Also, I don't understand how he could have committed the fallacy of mistaking the map for the territory a phrase you often mention! In what way did he do this according to you? Your opinion seems somewhat perverse since much in Descartes acted as incentive for Leibniz.
Obvious Leo wrote:Yes. Einstein himself conceded that GR was still an action at a distance theory no different from Newton's because in the absence of an ether there was still no defined mechanism for gravity, even in principle.
Since it was light that presupposed an ether as a conduit which was confirmed not to exist AND since light travels through space which, correct me if I'm wrong, you denote as Cartesian (which to me is nothing more than a mathematical description of points on a piece of paper or computer screen) how could the negation of said ether negate, to the point of proof, the dimensions of space? Can't see how that follows.

Nothing yet is conclusively decided regarding the existence of time and space. These fields seem more within the prerogatives of Quantum physicists searching the layers below what constitutes the quantum reality map.

Also, I never heard of ether as being considered essential for gravity to operate since it has no electromagnetic foundation which presupposes a medium. Conversely, it's not unreasonable to think if an ether did exist gravity would bend it in accordance with how gravity is known to bend light only without said ether.
This was Minkowski's fault
Actually it was more Albert's fault since he allowed the inclusion of Minkowski's revision of SR into GR. Even though he was "dubious" in the beginning he was still the master of his own theory. The upshot is that the success of the theory as it stands, hasn't yet been negated even by those physicists who wish and strive for revision. I agree that prediction in itself does not confirm reality. From what I recall, Ptolemy's system as refined to the period leading to Copernicus was overall more predictive than the latter until Kepler distorted the circle into an ellipse.
Obvious Leo
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Re: Where is "here"?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Dubious wrote: Nothing yet is conclusively decided regarding the existence of time and space.
Don't you reckon its about bloody time to get it sorted?
Dubious wrote:These fields seem more within the prerogatives of Quantum physicists searching the layers below what constitutes the quantum reality map.
Bullshit. These are ontological questions not epistemic ones. The randomists will be useless.
Dubious wrote: Also, I never heard of ether as being considered essential for gravity to operate since it has no electromagnetic foundation which presupposes a medium. Conversely, it's not unreasonable to think if an ether did exist gravity would bend it in accordance with how gravity is known to bend light only without said ether.
The so -called bending of light by gravity is no more complicated than the bending of a stick in water. It's an observer effect because light travels at an inconstant speed. Gravity slows down light just as surely as water does and it needs no aether to do it.
Dubious wrote:Actually it was more Albert's fault since he allowed the inclusion of Minkowski's revision of SR into GR. Even though he was "dubious" in the beginning he was still the master of his own theory.
I'd have to agree since ultimately it was Einstein who was credited with the theory. However GR proved SR wrong and he should have picked up on this. It would have saved a shitload of problems for the QM theorists as well.
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