3 dimensions of space and 1 of time

[Frame Dragger]

I am not advancing any theory of my own. It's amazing that you're threatening to ban me...

Perhaps you would be interested in reading some of the fqxi essay winners, by Julian Barbour (visiting physics professor at Oxford), Claus Kiefer (institute for theoretical physics at Univ of Köln), or Carlo Rovelli (univ of Marseille phy dept) http://www.fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2008.1 I was expressing a simplified (and obviously less cogent) version of that argument. And matheinste, there's not really any difference between an analogue clock and a digital clock, but thanks.

Ok, as there is no difference, why not humour us all and answer his question? Don't forget by the way, that the thoughts expressed in an Essay Contest may not have the rigour of those that would put forth in a peer-reviewed journal?

EDIT: @ia: btw, DaleSpam can't ban you directly, and if he's talking to you HERE, it means he probably didn't just REPORT you! In fact, he was trying to do you a favour, and your manner of showing gratitude proves the saying that no good deed goes unpunished.

 

[atyy]

I am not advancing any theory of my own. It's amazing that you're threatening to ban me...

Perhaps you would be interested in reading some of the fqxi essay winners, by Julian Barbour (visiting physics professor at Oxford), Claus Kiefer (institute for theoretical physics at Univ of Köln), or Carlo Rovelli (univ of Marseille phy dept) http://www.fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2008.1 I was expressing a simplified (and obviously less cogent) version of that argument. And matheinste, there's not really any difference between an analogue clock and a digital clock, but thanks.

Yes, those came to mind when I saw your earlier post, but I wasn't sure, because it seemed quite different. I'm not sure that Rovelli or Barbour would agree, but I think it's not so much that time doesn't exist, rather that in Newtonian and special relativistic mechanics, it is possible to define time such that "motion looks simple". This is the view advanced in Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's "Gravitation", p23 and in Stephani's http://books.google.com/books?id=WAW-4nd-OeIC&dq=stephani+hans+relativity&source=gbs_navlinks_s, p5.

 

[brainstorm]

Whenever discussing dimensionality, the issue always seems to end up being whether dimensions are cognitive frameworks (a la Kant), or whether objective matter-energy is actually organized according to real dimensions that exist outside the mind.

Those who get sucked into this debate do because they can't comprehend the idea that all human perceptions, including those of physical matter-energy, are structured and defined by consciousness in order to perceive it.

That doesn't mean that nothing exists outside of consciousness. It means that nothing exists in the way that consciousness perceives it without applying conceptual frameworks like dimensionality, space, time, etc.

I suspect that some people will always insist that the reality of their perception IS the reality as it exists outside their perception. These people are in dire fear that if perception is subjective, they risk terrible consequences of losing their mind, grip on reality, etc.

The fact is, dimensions are applied and space-time is a conceptual framework for making sense of various matter-energy events in different contexts. I would guess that misinterpretation of one observational context in terms of another is the cause of most if not all shortcomings in knowledge.

Learning how to sort out the discrepancies caused by misapplied knowledge is probably the key to attaining truer knowledge, but in order to do that you have to overcome the insistence of everyone who has achieved some level of authority or expertise who is more interested in asserting what they know than figuring out how what they know might be misleading at one level, even while it may be enlightening on another.

 

[brainstorm]

Yes, those came to mind when I saw your earlier post, but I wasn't sure, because it seemed quite different. I'm not sure that Rovelli or Barbour would agree, but I think it's not so much that time doesn't exist, rather that in Newtonian and special relativistic mechanics, time is defined so that "motion looks simple". This is the view advanced in Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's "Gravitation", p23 and in Stephani's http://books.google.com/books?id=WAW-4nd-OeIC&dq=stephani+hans+relativity&source=gbs_navlinks_s p5.

How can time exist or not? Time is sequentiality. Matter and energy exist. Forces are relations between them. Time/sequentiality is a method of defining and measuring them. Don't mix up materiality with cognition. Yes our only access to materiality comes via cognition, but it is possible to sort out ideas from material things, imo.

 

[Frame Dragger]

Whenever discussing dimensionality, the issue always seems to end up being whether dimensions are cognitive frameworks (a la Kant), or whether objective matter-energy is actually organized according to real dimensions that exist outside the mind.

Those who get sucked into this debate do because they can't comprehend the idea that all human perceptions, including those of physical matter-energy, are structured and defined by consciousness in order to perceive it.

That doesn't mean that nothing exists outside of consciousness. It means that nothing exists in the way that consciousness perceives it without applying conceptual frameworks like dimensionality, space, time, etc.

I suspect that some people will always insist that the reality of their perception IS the reality as it exists outside their perception. These people are in dire fear that if perception is subjective, they risk terrible consequences of losing their mind, grip on reality, etc.

The fact is, dimensions are applied and space-time is a conceptual framework for making sense of various matter-energy events in different contexts. I would guess that misinterpretation of one observational context in terms of another is the cause of most if not all shortcomings in knowledge.

Learning how to sort out the discrepancies caused by misapplied knowledge is probably the key to attaining truer knowledge, but in order to do that you have to overcome the insistence of everyone who has achieved some level of authority or expertise who is more interested in asserting what they know than figuring out how what they know might be misleading at one level, even while it may be enlightening on another.

In short, some people can't resolve cognitive dissonance, nor can they accept that their senses are more about filtering irrelevant information for the sake of survival than anything else. Intellect aside (and yes, I know that's a BIG aside, but for now, please) we're not built to explore much outside of new hunting grounds. We see a tiny portion of the EM spectrum, hear a little bit in some mediums, feel vaguely, and ALL of this is subject to interpretation at the cellular level.

I'll have to see if the JAMA article is free, but there was a fun study recently which shows that cells in the retina respond to basic shapes which informs later processing in the brain. You're concieving what it is you see, before the signal even travels the optic nerve to the brain.

As you say, it's not an argument for Solopism, but an argument for ignorance beyond what can be proven in experiments, and perhaps the result that we'll end using technology based on principles we may not be capable of understanding in a way we find satisfactory (say, the way we understand a rock, or think we do).

 

[watty]

doesnt this thread go against the sticky rules in that its a discussion of someones theory?

 

[atyy]

How can time exist or not? Time is sequentiality. Matter and energy exist. Forces are relations between them. Time/sequentiality is a method of defining and measuring them. Don't mix up materiality with cognition. Yes our only access to materiality comes via cognition, but it is possible to sort out ideas from material things, imo.

When discussing general relativity, we are not discussing psychological time, nor thermodynamic time, nor several other times. We are discussing time as defined in general relativity, or as Nikolic suggests "pime"! http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/259

 

[brainstorm]

When discussing general relativity, we are not discussing psychological time, nor thermodynamic time, nor several other times. We are discussing time as defined in general relativity, or as Nikolic suggests "pime"! http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/259

If people could adequately bracket their discussion of time to limit their discussion to the context of GR or any other theory, there would never be any issue of whether time, space, or any other dimensionality exists outside of theory.

However, I don't know of anyone disciplined enough to separate their psychological or other personal experiences of time from their discussion of physics. Most physicists I know think that the physical realities described in their theories are the same physical realities they live in. Many wouldn't have any reason to do physics without this belief.

I guess the simplest way to put this problem is whether physics is a form of philosophy or something else. I would say of course it is, but too many scientists experience some kind of primal desire to distinguish themselves from philosophers, I think.

 

[bapowell]

I really hesitate to get involved in this discussion, but isn't the difference between physics and philosophy the fact that physics is an experimental science?

 

[brainstorm]

I really hesitate to get involved in this discussion, but isn't the difference between physics and philosophy the fact that physics is an experimental science?

I understand your hesitation, because I share it. It is potentially energy-draining and fruitless, depending who gets involved in the discussion and the attitude they take.

Still, it is a valid issue; one that has the potential to refine philisophical understanding of the relationship between disciplinarities.

I think the most fruitful basis for it is to establish what disciplinarity is and how distinct disciplines may relate to each other. From a relatively naive approach to classification, any discipline or other category of knowledge can be defined in mutual exclusion to other categories. This is naive because in reality, forms of knowledge labeled as distinct actually overlap and are related in their genealogy and conceptual bases.

So, to get into the logic of whether physics is an experimental science and philosophy isn't, you have to address the question of what constitutes experimentation and whether philosophy is devoid of it.

Likewise, to define physics or any other category of science as "not philosophy," you would have to define philosophy and demonstrate that physics or the other science is devoid of philosophical elements.

In practice, these are impossible and in fact physics exercises philosophical elements - and experimentation and empiricism can be viewed as philosophical methods of appropriating observation and interaction with material realities in the process of generating knowledge.

If you can understand all that, then it should not be too difficult to see how physics or any other science brings philisophically-derived concepts to bear on observations and even applies theoretically developed concepts and language to processes of perception and (empirical) observation to start with.

This is maybe a risky claim, but I would venture to say that science is applied philosophy in the same sense that technology and engineering is applied science.

 

[Dale]

I am not advancing any theory of my own. It's amazing that you're threatening to ban me...

Perhaps you would be interested in reading some of the fqxi essay winners, by Julian Barbour (visiting physics professor at Oxford), Claus Kiefer (institute for theoretical physics at Univ of Köln), or Carlo Rovelli (univ of Marseille phy dept) http://www.fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2008.1 I was expressing a simplified (and obviously less cogent) version of that argument.

The fqxi is not a peer-reviewed source, it is an essay contest. Your continuing along this line is inappropriate, you have agreed to the rules and are deliberately ignoring them despite having been warned.

Btw, you did not adress the substance of my rebuttal. All of the words in bold already imply time. Your statement was nonsense (regardless of who you are imitating) without time.

 

[Dale]

Still, it is a valid issue; one that has the potential to refine philisophical understanding of the relationship between disciplinarities.

So take it to the philosophy forum.

This thread has now been thoroughly hijacked by ia_ and brainstorm and abandoned by the OP, it seems to have lost all useful purpose.

 

[brainstorm]

So take it to the philosophy forum.

This thread has now been thoroughly hijacked by ia_ and brainstorm and abandoned by the OP, it seems to have lost all useful purpose.

This topic is very relevant to this thread. The whole problem of discussing the existence of dimensionality, space, and time in the context of physics is that it is a philosophical physics issue. That was the point of the post.

Discussing what spacetime, space, time, dimensions, etc. are is absolutely a physics topic, but it is an impossible one without awareness that this is the philosophical side of physics.

There was no intent to hijack the thread, and it is the OP's responsibility to provide argumentation why or how this issue could avoid philosophical grounding issues, imo.

 

[Hoku]

Haven't abandoned the post, just busy this weekend. Bought a book, The Shape of Space by Jefferey Weeks and am reading through it before posting next.

ia_'s post made sense to me. Because of time dialation, two seconds is relative (twin paradox), right? So I think ia_ is saying that the important measurement is how far the clock hand moves. This is because 2-seconds is different for each twin but the both see the clock hand move the same amount, right? I think this is in line with Relativity?

Anyway, wish I could write more but I didn't even have time to write this. Gotta go...

 

[Dale]

This topic is very relevant to this thread. The whole problem of discussing the existence of dimensionality, space, and time in the context of physics is that it is a philosophical physics issue.

Philosophers can write reams of elegant prose and carefully disguise the tired old recycled arguments, and not a word of it changes the fact that theories that use time accurately predict the results of experiment. That is all that is expected of any scientific theory.

You may not realize it, but your and ia_'s anti-time ramblings are a dime a dozen here (sometimes on days like today we get two for the price of one). I have offered the same challenge to each that I now offer to you:

If time does not exist then show me a time-free theory of physics that both accurately predicts the results of experiments done to date and also suggests new experiments which have not yet been performed which could distinguish it experimentally from time-based theories. Until such a theory has been developed and experimentally validated it would appear that nature disagrees with your musings.

I have no doubt that you will fail to answer this challenge as have all of your predecessors.

 

[ia_]

The fqxi is not a peer-reviewed source, it is an essay contest. Your continuing along this line is inappropriate, you have agreed to the rules and are deliberately ignoring them despite having been warned.

Btw, you did not adress the substance of my rebuttal. All of the words in bold already imply time. Your statement was nonsense (regardless of who you are imitating) without time.

Julian Barbour has a bunch of peer-reviewed articles, (for instance http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v249/n5455/pdf/249328a0.pdf published in Nature 249, 328 (1974), and http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0012089 published in Class.Quant.Grav. 19 (2002)). What is your point? You decided I was spouting some pet theory and when that turned out not to be true I "hijacked" the thread?

People were arguing over whether GR was 3+1 dimensional or 2+2, and as far as I can tell I'm the only one citing peer-reviewed articles that attempt to suggest one thing or the other right now.

 

[Dale]

You are indeed now citing peer-reviewed sources, but they don't support your position. The first manuscript appears to be a reformulation of Newtonian mechanics and the second manuscript is explicitly and deliberately just another derivation of relativity and makes no new experimental predictions.

You still have not responded to the substance of my original rebuttal.

 

[brainstorm]

Philosophers can write reams of elegant prose and carefully disguise the tired old recycled arguments, and not a word of it changes the fact that theories that use time accurately predict the results of experiment. That is all that is expected of any scientific theory.

You may not realize it, but your and ia_'s anti-time ramblings are a dime a dozen here (sometimes on days like today we get two for the price of one). I have offered the same challenge to each that I now offer to you:

If time does not exist then show me a time-free theory of physics that both accurately predicts the results of experiments done to date and also suggests new experiments which have not yet been performed which could distinguish it experimentally from time-based theories. Until such a theory has been developed and experimentally validated it would appear that nature disagrees with your musings.

I have no doubt that you will fail to answer this challenge as have all of your predecessors.

I'm not being "anti-time." Time, just like any other dimension, is a useful conceptual instrument for perceiving, theorizing, predicting, and planning events. All I am saying about these dimensions is that they exist as concepts and do not exist physically outside of science and cognition.

Your third paragraph makes the same dime-a-dozen logical mistake that others make when trying to equate explanatory power with existence as a physical reality. Just because something works well inside your head doesn't make it exist outside of your head.

As for doing physics without time; at the level of qualitative description of physical matter-energy events it actually clarifies to part with the concept of time. I have read people treat time as a force that propels matter-energy dynamics. That is confounding because it implies that somehow those dynamics can be influenced by controlling time.

Events do not happen because time is moving. They happen because of the internal dynamics of the event. In fact, time and space as abstractions actually detract from sufficient understanding of the microdynamics of events by generalizing them within a larger, abstract framework. This is why historical accounts almost always treat co-temporality as quasi-causation, as if simply the fact that two things happened around the same time necessitates a causal relationship, or any relationship at all for that matter.

Time is conceptually possible because cognition allows us to remember and/or record multiple states of an object and compare them. Time always involves counting one regular event and defining another measurable event as a ratio in comparison with it.

The more things that are measured in relation to the same clock-event, or the more clocks that are synchronized, the easier it is to make the leap to believing that time is something that exists as an external generality for all things. In fact, it is just a method for comparison of distinct measurable events.

 

[ia_]

You are indeed now citing peer-reviewed sources, but they don't support your position. The first manuscript appears to be a reformulation of Newtonian mechanics and the second manuscript is explicitly and deliberately just another derivation of relativity and makes no new experimental predictions.

You misunderstood my position from the beginning. Where did I claim to make new predictions? Nowhere. Where did I propose a theory? Again nowhere. My initial post attempted to suggest what several of the fxqi essays, as well as a few of the papers by Barbour state. The whole point was that KNOWN theories can be rewritten relationally, without explicitly needing time.

I never proposed a theory, and you're now criticizing me for not proposing a theory. Let's get back on topic?

 

[atyy]

Julian Barbour has a bunch of peer-reviewed articles, (for instance http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v249/n5455/pdf/249328a0.pdf published in Nature 249, 328 (1974), and http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0012089 published in Class.Quant.Grav. 19 (2002)). What is your point? You decided I was spouting some pet theory and when that turned out not to be true I "hijacked" the thread?

People were arguing over whether GR was 3+1 dimensional or 2+2, and as far as I can tell I'm the only one citing peer-reviewed articles that attempt to suggest one thing or the other right now.

So in Newtonian mechanics time can be "eliminated" in "configuration space" - what is the dimensionality of configuration space (please consider at least two "particles", since we need a clock for one of them)?

 

[ia_]

Yes, those came to mind when I saw your earlier post, but I wasn't sure, because it seemed quite different. I'm not sure that Rovelli or Barbour would agree, but I think it's not so much that time doesn't exist, rather that in Newtonian and special relativistic mechanics, it is possible to define time such that "motion looks simple". This is the view advanced in Misner, Thorne and Wheeler's "Gravitation", p23 and in Stephani's http://books.google.com/books?id=WAW-4nd-OeIC&dq=stephani+hans+relativity&source=gbs_navlinks_s, p5.

Unfortunately page 5 isn't included in google's preview, but I think I see the idea from pg 6. MTW also has a preview.

It seems like Stephani and Barbour are beginning with essentially the same process and using it in opposite ways. Stephani shows that the form of Newton's eq changes if the time variable is taken to instead be some function T=f(t), and that therefore defining it in a way that's as simple as possible in inertial reference frames is most useful. Barbour essentially decides to try eliminating it completely by writing the euler-lagrange equations as purely relational.

Whether this implies that time exists or not, well, it still behaves in a way that's equivalent to time existing.

 

[Frame Dragger]

You cited an essay contest...

Citing a peer reviewed article means the ARTICLE has been reviewed, not the author. Well, both in practice, but doesn't it occur to you that even a well respected physicist might express views in an ESSAY CONTEST he wouldn't in a PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL?! I don't see how this is a difficult concept, as it is basic to citation.

As for MTW, I have my copy here, and reading through the relevant portion they are talking about how NEWTON formulated time versus an archaic metric such as "The Day". It is a very practical discussion and by no means does it consider a timeless universe.

 

[atyy]

You cited an essay contest...

Citing a peer reviewed article means the ARTICLE has been reviewed, not the author. Well, both in practice, but doesn't it occur to you that even a well respected physicist might express views in an ESSAY CONTEST he wouldn't in a PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL?! I don't see how this is a difficult concept, as it is basic to citation.

As for MTW, I have my copy here, and reading through the relevant portion they are talking about how NEWTON formulated time versus an archaic metric such as "The Day". It is a very practical discussion and by no means does it consider a timeless universe.

Hmmm, is MTW peer reviewed?

 

[Dale]

The whole point was that KNOWN theories can be rewritten relationally, without explicitly needing time.

That in no way implies that "time (although a useful convention) doesn't exist" any more than the Lagrangian formulation of classical mechanics implies that force doesn't exist.

Lets get back on topic?

I would be glad to get back on topic. You still have not addressed my original rebuttal that your statement I first quoted is nonsense without the concept of time implicit in the highlighted words. I think this is the fourth time that you have ducked the issue.

 

[ia_]

You cited an essay contest...

Citing a peer reviewed article means the ARTICLE has been reviewed, not the author. Well, both in practice, but doesn't it occur to you that even a well respected physicist might express views in an ESSAY CONTEST he wouldn't in a PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL?! I don't see how this is a difficult concept, as it is basic to citation.

As for MTW, I have my copy here, and reading through the relevant portion they are talking about how NEWTON formulated time versus an archaic metric such as "The Day". It is a very practical discussion and by no means does it consider a timeless universe.

We're discusing MTW and the relativity book by Stephani in relation to the peer reviewed Nature article linked above. I'm just going to reply to Dale's post too. Semantics is not physics. Are you criticizing me because the English language wasn't designed to be purely relational? Come on.

 

[Frame Dragger]

Hmmm, is MTW peer reviewed?

I think it's pretty much ad hoc really. Just three old fellows with some nutty ideas decided to write a 2000+ page telenovella that only people with at least some tensor calculus can understand. Why, is it meant to be something more?

@ia: Then you're citing articles which do not support your view, and a book with a page in the early portions (before the math EXPLAINS it) talking about how Newton formulated time, and then goes on to describe the realtive accuracy of some types of clocks. Based on THAT... we're back to you making a lone, unsupported statement, which DaleSpam warned you about.

 

[brainstorm]

You cited an essay contest...

Citing a peer reviewed article means the ARTICLE has been reviewed, not the author. Well, both in practice, but doesn't it occur to you that even a well respected physicist might express views in an ESSAY CONTEST he wouldn't in a PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL?! I don't see how this is a difficult concept, as it is basic to citation.

As for MTW, I have my copy here, and reading through the relevant portion they are talking about how NEWTON formulated time versus an archaic metric such as "The Day". It is a very practical discussion and by no means does it consider a timeless universe.

The reason for citation of sources is for readers to evaluate for themselves the source of the information.

If you want to make a distinction between peer-reviewed journals and essay contests, you should either CITE a source that explains and makes meaningful the distinction, or explain it yourself.

Be careful not to black-box the status distinction between peer-reviewed journals and other sources. Too often people simply trust the peer-reviewers because of the fact that the journal was peer-reviewed. In fact, all sources should ultimately be evaluated according to your own knowledge and authority. Without doing that, there's a good chance you're just going along with a trend of accepting certain information or knowledge on the basis that it is commonly validated by individuals with some status-recogntion.

 

[atyy]

I think it's pretty much ad hoc really. Just three old fellows with some nutty ideas decided to write a 2000+ page telenovella that only people with at least some tensor calculus can understand. Why, is it meant to be something more?

Old fellows? Thorne was 30 when he wrote it!

 

[Frame Dragger]

The reason for citation of sources is for readers to evaluate for themselves the source of the information.

If you want to make a distinction between peer-reviewed journals and essay contests, you should either CITE a source that explains and makes meaningful the distinction, or explain it yourself.

Be careful not to black-box the status distinction between peer-reviewed journals and other sources. Too often people simply trust the peer-reviewers because of the fact that the journal was peer-reviewed. In fact, all sources should ultimately be evaluated according to your own knowledge and authority. Without doing that, there's a good chance you're just going along with a trend of accepting certain information or knowledge on the basis that it is commonly validated by individuals with some status-recogntion.

There is too much information out there for anyone with a job and a life to NOT depend on peer-review, not to mention that I don't automatically trust a reviewed paper. I automatically DISTRUST ones that are not submitted, although I'm happy to read them given the time.

I come from a field in which everything MUST be peer-reviewed or people don't get well, become sicker, and/or die. Did that stop The Lancet from setting off a panic about vaccinations and a posssible link with ASDs? No, so clearly healthy skepticism is warrented. That said, do you have any idea how much material is produced in a given sub-field of a field in a science? Hint: More than you could "ultimately [evaluate] according to your own knowlede and authority".

Furthermore, the notion expressed in the sentence I quoted is utterly contrary to the scientific method, not just modern practice. Naturally you use your mind, and tune it as best you can for the occasion, but if you're "The Authority" even very very bright folks run into terrible trouble. It is through constant review by as many people as possible (peer-review, say JAMA, establishes a standard which its readers ALSO DEMAND) including the readers of peer-reviewed work that allows for mistakes by even such august insitutions as The Lancet to retract an error, and admit their folly.

Finally, if Kip Thorne wrote a piece of Popular Science... I wouldn't cite it. Is he the real deal? Sure! What would I do?... find a proper citation. If you disagree with the entire notion of citation, you're going to be MISERABLE here, and in science, medicine, debate, politics, law...

...Because ideally you're right, but as none of us live forever we have to choose what to read.

EDIT: @atyy: I was joking all the way around! Anyway, for the record I consider "Old" to be a function of a generation+region, and I don't think 30 has been old since... when was flint-napping the "in" thing to do?
EDIT2: 30... You know, that's the kind of thing that can make a guy feel deeply unaccomplished despite relative success in his field! 'Gravitation' by age 30... Amazing... granted he had help, and that is CLEARLY cheating!

 

[atyy]

EDIT: @atyy: I was joking all the way around!

Me too

 

[Frame Dragger]

Me too

Got me!

 

[Dale]

Semantics is not physics. Are you criticizing me because the English language wasn't designed to be purely relational?

A semantic argument is one in which the disagreement stems from different definitions of the same word. Do you think that I have a different definition of the word "moves" than you do? If so, I am willing to stipulate to your definition for the purposes of this thread in order to avoid a semantic argument. I certainly didn't think that we had different definitions for "occurs when", "moves", or "clockwise".

EDIT: I have thought about this a bit more and realized that the issue I raised cannot be dismissed as simply a limitation of the English language, nor as a non-physics criticism. Here are the abbreviated physics definitions of the terms in question:
"occurs when" $$t_A=t_B$$
"moves" $$\frac{dx}{dt} \ne 0$$
"clockwise" $$\frac{d\theta}{dt}<0$$
Let me know if you disagree with any of those, but note that time shows up in all of them.

 

[Hoku]

I've just had time to really read all of these new posts. I have to say, it feels like this thread has entered a dark, damp thicket. Since my last meaningful post, there have been over 3-pages of arguments.

The argument between dx and Altabeh didn't bother me because it's more proof that the question about whether gravity is a force or not is more of an issue than people realize. I think it's important to resolve this.

I wasn't happy with how things turned out regarding ia_'s initial post. ia_ probably could've presented it better, but I also think that people were too quick to be harsh on him. I think things with him could've been resolved much sooner (possibly as much as 2-pages sooner), and without enraging emotions, if it had been responded to differently.

I just want to know how he thinks matter exists in a timeless universe.

Let's re-read part of the initial post by ia_:

"I'm going to say that space is 3 dimensional, and time (although a useful convention) doesn't exist, because you can always substitute it out of your equations for any experiment by including your timekeeping device."

The part in bold makes it evident to me that he's not implying a timeless universe. He's just saying that, instead of in our equations, we keep track of time on our wrist. I don't know how much sense that makes, but it seems to me he's not saying matter exists without time.

Because of how ia_ was responded to, brainstorm came to the rescue. brainstorm is definitely a philosopher at heart. I respect that and his kind of philosophy has an important place in the world. Unfortunately, this thread is not as philosophical as he thinks. If it is, it's a different kind of philosophy. It's possible that brainstorm jumped in without actually reading the entire thread. An easy mistake.

Events do not happen because time is moving. They happen because of the internal dynamics of the event.

I like the above quote, thanks for sharing it!

I hope to get things back on track with my next post, which should be sometime tomorrow.

 

[brainstorm]

There is too much information out there for anyone with a job and a life to NOT depend on peer-review, not to mention that I don't automatically trust a reviewed paper. I automatically DISTRUST ones that are not submitted, although I'm happy to read them given the time.

I guess I am quite privileged in that I received very critical literature training where we were encouraged to study popular texts and analyze and critique the information and claims-making in them. Once you have done this, it changes the way you look at peer-reviewed texts because you can see how many of the rhetorical and logical shortcomings of non-reviewed literature actually appears in reviewed lit as well. Then your mouth drops open realizing that readers of peer-reviewed lit, perhaps only some, are accepting information uncritically because of the status they attribute to the publication and peer-review generally.

Generally, a rigorous approach to reading critically should entail treating citations and peer-review as additional information applied to evaluation of the text. In that sense, peer-review and source-citation are added values to the extent that they make it easier to see how the writer came up with certain ideas or information and why they might say (or get away with saying) certain things and not others, i.e. because of review by certain peers and not others for example.

What people shouldn't do, which I have dealt with many times, is shoot into defense of the validity of a text or piece of information/knowledge based on no reason except reference to the quality/status of the source/writer/etc. The very fact that something is peer-reviewed doesn't make it more valid. It just means that the particular individuals who reviewed it allowed it to pass as publishable. It's not like editors publish the reasons why reviewers recommended a particular piece for publication.

The idea is that if it is bad it would get filtered out, but no one ever asks what passes for bad and good to whom, and for what reasons.

I come from a field in which everything MUST be peer-reviewed or people don't get well, become sicker, and/or die. Did that stop The Lancet from setting off a panic about vaccinations and a posssible link with ASDs? No, so clearly healthy skepticism is warrented. That said, do you have any idea how much material is produced in a given sub-field of a field in a science? Hint: More than you could "ultimately [evaluate] according to your own knowlede and authority".

More than anything, critical analytical reading is about treating texts as archeological artifacts. It's like digging up a pot and asking how the pot could have been made, what materials were used, etc. You may not be able to evaluate every aspect of the research behind a publication just based on the publication, but from the language used by the writer you can get a good idea of how they think and what the shortcomings and strengths of their research are.

You never accept information except tentatively and critically, and that is why source-citation and explicit reasoning are valuable aspects of a publication. I.e. they make your criticism and reliance on tentative truth easier to process. Ultimately the responsibility will be yours if you act on information in a text, whether it is peer-reviewed or not. You are right that more heads are better than less when it comes to subjecting information to (multiple) authorities. However, you should also pay attention to the fact that sometimes people become less critical in a peer-authority situation out of social politics, i.e. they don't want to deviate from norms and expectations of their peers. Likewise, just as in non-scientific culture, people sometimes resort to blatantly attacking some texts or people to inflate the status of the texts and people they accept as legitimate. People just do this because it's less risky than sticking your neck out to exercise truly independent judgement, which would be more rigorous but more likely to put you in conflict with peer-authority.

Furthermore, the notion expressed in the sentence I quoted is utterly contrary to the scientific method, not just modern practice. Naturally you use your mind, and tune it as best you can for the occasion, but if you're "The Authority" even very very bright folks run into terrible trouble. It is through constant review by as many people as possible (peer-review, say JAMA, establishes a standard which its readers ALSO DEMAND) including the readers of peer-reviewed work that allows for mistakes by even such august insitutions as The Lancet to retract an error, and admit their folly.

This is a hard concept, I think, for many people due to the way authority was treated in their academic training. No one is ever "The Authority," in the sense of being the decisive authority on anything in democratic science. Authoritarian science is a different matter, but imo science is never supposed to be authoritarian or autocratic - in fact, "authoritarian science" is an oxymoron imo.

The whole great thing about science is that it emerged as the technique of checking knowledge through empiricism, testing, and experimentation. The complement of this empirical criticism is the critique that takes place at the level of theory and methodology. Ultimately, when you accept some piece of information or knowledge, you do so tentatively with the acceptance that it could later turn out to be wrong. So when you accept someone else's authority, you do so based on your own authority. You can't blame the peer-reviewers or the author for what you do with their text. You can only blame them for being wrong.

Finally, if Kip Thorne wrote a piece of Popular Science... I wouldn't cite it. Is he the real deal? Sure! What would I do?... find a proper citation. If you disagree with the entire notion of citation, you're going to be MISERABLE here, and in science, medicine, debate, politics, law...

If you read it and it informs your thinking you SHOULD cite it and explain how it influenced your thinking and how you were critical of it. If you were reading someone else's paper and they had read something in Popular Science that informed their thinking, wouldn't you want to know how? The problem is that many people will automatically reject a writer/text where pop.sci is cited at all, which puts writers in the position of hiding their influences. This whole situation makes for bad science and it would all be resolved if readers could grow up and move beyond accepting or rejecting texts/writers based on status cues and simply take literature at face value and subject it to their own critical reasoning and authority in whatever form it takes.

...Because ideally you're right, but as none of us live forever we have to choose what to read.

That's a bad reason to choose what you read. A better reason would be to select literature based on your interest and a certain estimate of utility. Learn to read selectively and critically to evaluate whether a particular text is useful to the goal you are pursuing in the current project. Know what you're reading for before you begin your literature search.

 

[Frame Dragger]

I guess I am quite privileged in that I received very critical literature training where we were encouraged to study popular texts and analyze and critique the information and claims-making in them.

... The intimation being that I, or others here did not? No... you see, I think you don't have a grasp of the amount of material in any given field that MUST be read, and then CAN be read. Unless your training included forming a hive-mind to share the reading with, you're absolutely blowing smoke right now.

I am not concerned with rhetoric when I read a peer-reviewed piece, because I am not an editor, and I'm interested in the CONTENT. In fact, for some of the reasons you mention (all great thinkers don't make good authors...) it can be quite pleasant to have peer reviewed journals to skim for the relevant information.

After all, I'm concerned with saaaay... the pharmacokinetics of a drug as described by a given study, not how the authors feel about the damned thing.

Does this mean I eschew reading anything save JAMA or JAPA, or etc... etc...? No, and it would be silly to conclude anything else, because we're not talking about reading, or research, but how to CITE. That is a debate you can have until you run out of words, breath, and keystrokes, but the reality of academia and science is unchanged. Feel free to turn your considerable education towards finding a solution to the issues which lead to unfair rejection of studies and theories, I can't think of many who would do anything but thank you.

As for the rest, I didn't (nor do I believe that many here) needed a crash-course in Skepticism, but thank you nonetheless. As for the issue I raised regarding The Lancet, I would blame the study authors, as it is fairly clear that at least one defrauded the Reviewers. This raises the question: Given the bulk of information, are we more likely to find diamonds in the rough by combing through everything, or are we likely to miss more common advances because we've decided that "standard" are an uncontrollable slippery slope?

Dont' take this the wrong way brainstorm, but please, take it to the Philosophy section, because you're not talking about physics, or even science. You're interesting, and intelligent, and someone I could see debating, but not about SR/GR on this thread. If you make a thread about Authoritarian vs. Authority vs. Appeal to Authority I'm in, but let's have it where we're not simply throwing Hoku's point about the degeneration of this thread back in her face. After all, one thing we both DID agree on, would be the rules of the forum, and I think we both know we're stretching them a little thin right now.