Measuring Existence

[Obvious Leo]

You're overthinking this, the pair of you. Leibniz was right and Newton was fucking WRONG. There's no such thing as "space". Chuck this mathematical metaphor out of your overly-busy minds and all the ducks will line up in a neat little row. The universe is a continuum of time and gravity which the observer merely perceives as a continuum of time and space. Physics is modelling a fucking hologram.

[JSS]

You're overthinking this, the pair of you. Leibniz was right and Newton was fucking WRONG. There's no such thing as "space". Chuck this mathematical metaphor out of your overly-busy minds and all the ducks will line up in a neat little row. The universe is a continuum of time and gravity which the observer merely perceives as a continuum of time and space. Physics is modelling a fucking hologram.

Time isn't a "thing". It is a measure of relative changing of things. What are the things that are changing?

[Obvious Leo]

You're overthinking this, the pair of you. Leibniz was right and Newton was fucking WRONG. There's no such thing as "space". Chuck this mathematical metaphor out of your overly-busy minds and all the ducks will line up in a neat little row. The universe is a continuum of time and gravity which the observer merely perceives as a continuum of time and space. Physics is modelling a fucking hologram.

Time isn't a "thing". It is a measure of relative changing of things. What are the things that are changing?

You're quite right, JSS. Time is a dimension and a dimension is not a "thing". A dimension is nothing more than a mathematical co-ordinate system to describe the behaviour of matter and energy. Therefore time is just an observer-defined metric for codifying the rate of change in a physical system. So is gravity.

So is the speed of light.

[uwot]

I agree that gravitation is caused by a type of refraction. My concern is that I am uncertain what you personally mean by "refraction".

I mean refraction as in what refraction means. As I said, I think big bang stuff is a material medium with mechanical properties that is literally denser around objects. That density falls according to an inverse square, a la Newton, and any motion, including rotation, distorts the big bang stuff in a way that produces gravitational effects consistent with GR.

[JSS]

So is gravity.

So is the speed of light.

That is where we differ. Although those three have an association, they are not the same concepts. Gravity is an affect (usually erroneously referred to as a "force"). It is the otherwise uninspired migration of mass objects toward each other. That is different than the measure of relative change. Perhaps you could say that it is the relative change in position, but inspired independently from other proposed forces besides simple mass attraction.

I agree that gravitation is caused by a type of refraction. My concern is that I am uncertain what you personally mean by "refraction".

I mean refraction as in what refraction means. As I said, I think big bang stuff is a material medium with mechanical properties that is literally denser around objects. That density falls according to an inverse square, a la Newton, and any motion, including rotation, distorts the big bang stuff in a way that produces gravitational effects consistent with GR.

Oh. So you don't know what it means? Hmmm...

re·frac·tion (rĭ-frăk′shən)
n.
1. The deflection of a wave, such as a light or sound wave, when it passes obliquely from one medium into another having a different index of refraction.

If that is what you meant by "refraction", I agree that "stuff" refracts into (and around) mass. I can't buy the BB bit, but otherwise...

This is that "stuff" refracting:


I call that "stuff", Affectance.

[uwot]

There's no such thing as "space".

I've never said there was, I know me Kant as well as you. As I keep saying, the most plausible explanation for all the phenomena that look like a universe made of stuff, is a universe made of stuff. Just stuff. No time. No space. No holograms. Just stuff. Big bang stuff, to be specific, but you can call what is happening to it a process, if you like.

[uwot]

I call that "stuff", Affectance.

I know you do. My gripe with it is that you don't explain the mechanism by which affectance affects.

[Obvious Leo]

. What are the things that are changing?

My apologies, JSS, I neglected to answer this question. The things that are changing are quanta of energy and they only know one speed. Quanta of energy change state at the speed of light and this is entirely determined by gravity.

It all comes back to the original mistake which Minkowski made in SR, although in all fairness this mistake could not have been picked up until after the publication of GR, by which time it was all too late. The question is a simple one and yet all of cosmology rests upon the answer.

Is the speed of light a constant or is the speed of light proportional to the speed of the clock on which this speed is being measured?

[Obvious Leo]

but you can call what is happening to it a process, if you like.

I do like. A process has no need of a spatial background extension, neither the independent background of SR not the dependent background of GR. Occam is my guiding light in this matter and the background we observe is merely a past which exists no longer. It's a cognitive illusion.

[uwot]

A process has no need of a spatial background extension, neither the independent background of SR not the dependent background of GR.

Well, again, I think stuff itself has extension, billions of light years as it happens, but I don't care if it is or is not 'in' some spatial background extension. I agree with you, it's a handy mathematical device, but ontologically, entirely superfluous.

Occam is my guiding light in this matter and the background we observe is merely a past which exists no longer. It's a cognitive illusion.

I get that, but physics is there to explain phenomena and although all phenomena represent a reality that is no longer current, I'm quite content to try and make sense of what used to be. It's the ship of Theses thing, I know the thing I'm am looking at has had a few planks replaced in the time it took for the light to reach me, but it's still the same ship, in my view. And JSS' as it happens.

[JSS]

I call that "stuff", Affectance.

I know you do. My gripe with it is that you don't explain the mechanism by which affectance affects.

Do you know the mechanism that allows energy to affect? What is energy?

I explain the "mechanism" by which affectance affects by merely saying that affects add. That is all that is required for them to "affect each other". Every affect is merely adding to (or in the negative sense subtracting from) other affects. There is no more to it other than how dense such affecting gets (mass/gravity fields) and the polarity of affecting (adding versus subtracting).

The things that are changing are quanta of energy and they only know one speed. Quanta of energy change state at the speed of light and this is entirely determined by gravity.

Exactly. But I call that "quanta of energy" "Afflate", an "Affectance Oblate", which is merely a small, unspecified amount of affectance (otherwise known as "ultra-minuscule EMR energy").

[JSS]

It seems to me that we are all pretty close to being on the same page with merely a few nuance differences.

[Obvious Leo]

I agree with you, it's a handy mathematical device, but ontologically, entirely superfluous.

I already know that you know this, mate, which is why I haven't given up on you. The bit that you don't seem to be getting is that this is the reason why the epistemic models of physics make no sense. Applying a spatio-temporal extension to what are purely temporal phenomena is what lies at the heart of all the locality/non-locality mysteries of QM. There's no such fucking thing as locality in the ding an sich because locality exists only in the mind of the observer observing a reality which no longer exists. Ontology is all about the nature of Being, not about the nature of what WAS.

It's very much about the ship of Theseus. For how long does an atom remain the same atom? For as long as it takes for an electron to either absorb or emit a photon. The atom is becoming a new atom at the speed of light.

[Obvious Leo]

It seems to me that we are all pretty close to being on the same page with merely a few nuance differences.

That's what I've been trying to tell you.

[uwot]

Do you know the mechanism that allows energy to affect?

My background is philosophy. I wouldn't claim to know anything other than that 2+2=4, all bachelors are unmarried men and as Descartes pointed out, there are phenomena.

What is energy?

Basically the amount of damage something will do if it hits you, according to Newton, or how bonkers it will go if it unravels, as per Einstein. In essence how tightly wound up big bang stuff is. How big a lump it is and how fast it's moving.