The Relative Simultaneity Of Special Relativity Is Only Plausible To Solipsists

[Moronium]

Leaving ideology aside, it should be self-evident that I can know something "is" moving, even if I can't readily know its speed.  Like when i watch a car go down the highway from a distance or watch a jet plane go overhead, for example.

 

 

For the same reasons, you would think it would be readily conceded that "not knowing" the true speed of an object does not mean that it doesn't have an actual speed, and in particular, it does NOT mean that every baseless speculation about "who" is moving must be "correct."

 

But don't ever, EVER, I SAY(!), try to tell some solipsist that.  Or a relativist.  But I repeat myself.

 

It is that kind of confusion of epistemology with ontology that leads some here to say that something can be "true" only if we know it to be true.  Like the example I gave where I have flipped a coin, and it has landed on my desktop, but I have immediately covered it with my hand.  I am then told, by some here, that the chances of it being heads are 50%.

 

The "chances" (a word which doesn't even apply here) are either 0% or 100%, but not 50%.  What we "know" does not, and cannot, change what "is."

 

If one guy guesses that it's "heads" and another guesses that it's "tails," it's impossible for "both" to be correct.  Well, unless you're a solipsist, I mean.

 

This was the entire point behind Schrodenger's "cat" puzzle.  He was NOT a solipsist.  But the solipsistically inclined take the cat example to prove that his cat is BOTH dead AND alive.

Edited May 25, 2018 by Moronium

[Moronium]

This was the entire point behind Schrodenger's "cat" puzzle.  He was NOT a solipsist.  But the solipsistically inclined take the cat example to prove that his cat is BOTH dead AND alive.

 

 

According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead until the state has been observed. Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; on the contrary, he intended the example to illustrate the absurdity of the existing view of quantum mechanics.  However, since Schrödinger's time, other interpretations of the mathematics of quantum mechanics have been advanced by physicists, some of which regard the "alive and dead" cat superposition as quite real. 

 

 

In a letter to Schrödinger dated 1950, Einstien wrote:

 

You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality, if only one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality—reality as something independent of what is experimentally established...Nobody really doubts that the presence or absence of the cat is something independent of the act of observation.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat

 

In my book it's an embarrassing oxymoron for someone who denies all objective reality to call himself a "physicist."

 

He is a metaphysician, dealing in pseudo-science, that's all.  The kind who will unblushingly concoct an absurd, fictitious, and non-falsifiable 'many worlds" tale, and claim it is "science," like hugh Everett did in his attempt to account for the subjectivist "copenhagen interpretation."

Edited May 25, 2018 by Moronium

[Moronium]

 I am finished delving into what you discuss, because you are unwilling to discuss the objections, such as experimental evidence contrary to your ... firm yet misguided beliefs about relativity. 

 

 

Show me one single iota of "experimental evidence," or any other kind of "objection," that I have been unwilling to discuss, eh, Six?

 

ONE.

 

You can't.

 

You, on the other hand, say you will not "delve into what discuss."  Ya aint got much game, boy.  That's cool.  If ya aint no playa, best to just stay off the court.

Edited May 26, 2018 by Moronium

[Moronium]

My post #54 from page 4 of this thread:

 

 

Dubbelosix, on 20 Apr 2018 - 1:09 PM, said:

. There are simply no preferred frames at all.

 

Posted 20 April 2018 - 07:51 PM by me, in response:

Here's a friendly suggestion for you.  Type that 100 MORE times.  Then type it 1,000 times; then 10,000.

 

When you finally get tired of endlessly repeating that claim without any elaboration whatsoever, try revealing and explaining exactly what you base it on and what evidence you have for it.

 

Needless to say, you have never taken my suggestion, eh?  For about the 10th time I have recently, in post #249, explained why this dogmatic assertion came to be.   It has not, will not, and can not ever be proven to be true, yet you assert it as indubitable fact.  As I have already repeatedly shown, it is a proposition that is rejected by modern physics.  When you say I "fail to discuss" objections, all you really mean it that I fail to affirm and ratify your totally unsupported and unwarranted claims.  Nice try.

 

Perhaps you would care to look at said post #249 and point out how it "fails to discuss objections," eh?

 

Then again, probably not.  Failing to discuss objections is the game you play, not me.

Edited May 26, 2018 by Moronium

[Moronium]

...the whole theory is absolutely dependent on different observers making mutually exclusive claims and then defending those views to their death. In addition, you are required to say that "both are right."  

 

(Post 249)

 

This is the basic problem that no one in this thread has directly addressed.  Why in the world are we REQUIRED, by SR, to claim that two subjective observers making mutually exclusive claims about reality are "both right?"

 

Just reciting that each is basing his conclusions on different assumptions and therefore each "thinks" he is right, explains nothing about reality.  It just explains why subjective conclusions can differ due to one or more parties being mistaken in their assumptions.  There is a difference between believing you are right, and actually being right.

 

Only a solipsist can see no possible difference.

 

Instead of getting any kind of substantive answer to this question, I am merely told that I "don't understand SR."  I understand SR.  I just don't subscribe to the metaphysical nonsense of solipsism.

Edited May 27, 2018 by Moronium

[Moronium]

Why in the world are we REQUIRED, by SR, to claim that two subjective observers making mutually exclusive claims about reality are "both right?"

 

 

 

Anybody?....Anybody?....Bueller?

 

Does anybody who is not a solipsist have a rational answer to this question?

[Moronium]

What sense does it make for SR to posit an infinite number of motionless (aether) frames?  What does that get you?

 

Suppose you had a chunk of land (say 160 acres) which you wanted to turn into a residential subdivision with roads, sewer lines, utility lines, distinct lots, etc.  Where would you start?

 

One of the first things you would want to do is create a topographical map.  Let's assume that the land is not perfectly "level," but has some hills, mounds, depressions, and such and that therefore some grading and earth moving will be desirable.

 

A surveyor would first establish a "benchmark" elevation to which all other elevations would then be compared.  This would be a solid point, like a point on an existing concrete sidewalk, but could otherwise be chosen arbitrarily, as convenience dictates.

 

Let's assume the engineer knows, or is capable of knowing, that the elevation of that benchmark is 763.37 feet above sea level.  Would he call it that?  No, he would call it 100.  Now a point in that subdivision which is one foot higher would be called 101 and one one foot lower would be called 99.  This would make it much easier to compare relative differences in elevation.  One would quickly see that 97 would be 5 feet lower than 102.

 

The point?  The engineer does not need an "absolute" elevation.  He's dealing strictly on a local scale of 160 acres, not the entire earth.  For his purposes, he just needs to know relative differences.  Likewise, you don't need an "absolute" benchmark for speed in a preferred frame theory to compute local differences.  You do, however, need to select the "correct" point to use as a benchmark.  In that case you could not just arbitrarily select one and still expect to generate accurate predictions.

 

But an engineer would NEVER do what SR does.  He would not go to an elevation 1 foot below his benchmark, and then also call it 100.  Then go to an elevation 1 foot higher, and call IT 100, etc.  If he did that, all the data he collected would be worthless.

 

In the H-K experiment (where 3 clocks were involved) the ECI was used as a benchmark, and the actual clock readings of the 3 clocks were accurately predicted.

 

Suppose SR had been used. It assumes that clock retardation is strictly a function of the relative motion (not absolute motion) between clocks. So, using SR, each clock would be treated as motionless and you would end up with 3 different predictions for (i.e. from) each clock.  And none of the nine predictions would have matched any one of the clock readings as actually measured.  Needless to say, each clock ends up showing 1 amount of elapsed time, not 3, and not 9..  So what can you predict with SR?  Nothing.  And certainly not anything meaningful.

 

Now it's true that you would get the same predictions using "SR," IF you selected the ECI for a benchmark (because, like LR, SR uses LR lorentz transformations) AND if you only looked at a part of the SR "picture." But then you are no longer "using" SR.  You are using a preferred frame theory.  Furthermore, SR would also require that all other clocks speed up relative to the one located at the ECI (which they don't), because in SR all transformations must be "reciprocal" (and each clock is "correct").

 

Do any of you "SR has been proven 1 million times" cheerleaders care to show otherwise?  Do you ever even ask yourself such questions?

Edited May 30, 2018 by Moronium

[Moronium]

The point?  The engineer does not need an "absolute" elevation.  He's dealing strictly on a local scale of 160 acres, not the entire earth.  For his purposes, he just needs to know relative differences.  Likewise, you don't need an "absolute" benchmark for speed in a preferred frame theory to compute local differences.  You do, however, need to select the "correct" point to use as a benchmark.  In that case you could not just arbitrarily select one and still expect to generate accurate predictions...

 

In the H-K experiment (where 3 clocks were involved) the ECI was used as a benchmark, and the actual clock readings of the 3 clocks were accurately predicted.

 

So why is the (non-rotating) ECI selected as the benchmark?  Why is it the "correct" one?  Because, relative to that point, every other point on, or in, the earth is moving while the ECI remains relatively motionless.  Same with objects such as planes or satellites in the atmosphere, and which are not stationary with respect to the ECI.  Trying to use, for example, the clock which is 'stationary" with respect to the (moving) earth's surface would not work.

 

Of course, being the center of  gravity, the ECI is also the logical "benchmark" to use for computing clock retardation due to elevation (GR).  This would vary depending on latitude, whether you were on a mountaintop, in a coastal city, or in a submarine travelling under the ocean's surface.

 

For local purposes, it doesn't really matter that the earth is orbiting the sun or that the entire galaxy is also in motion, because that is a common motion shared by all objects involved.  It doesn't change the relative differences in speed amongst them.  The earth's rotation is quite significant, however, because that affects all objects on the surface differently, depending on longitude and latitude.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Moronium

[Moronium]

What sense does it make for SR to posit an infinite number of motionless (aether) frames?  What does that get you?

 

 

Since the stout "defenders" of SR are not offering any answers, I'll answer this myself.

 

In a PFT, the speed of light is isotropic only in the preferred frame.  SR is doing it's best to mimic the results generated by a PFT.  Einstein asserted, as a postulate, no less, that the speed of light is constant in all inertial frames.  So, to accommodate this claim, all inertial frames must be treated as a preferred frame which is absolutely at rest.

 

It tends to accomplish the stated task (Einstein elevated the relativity principle to a universal "law of nature," because he liked the symmetry of it all), so that's what it gets you.  But it makes no sense to say that EVERY frame is at absolute rest.

 

Galileo, Newton, et al, had absolutely no reason to even suspect that clocks slowed down with extreme speed.  So, in their formulation of transformations, the "t" (for time) was always the same in every frame. 

 

The Lorentz transformations take this relativistic clock retardation into account, but they do not change time itself. 

 

Since, according to the LT, clocks slow down in a moving frame to the precise degree required to make the speed of light "appear" to be constant in that frame, it was easy for Einstein to say that appearances are reality.  But, again, the problem with this is that one must adopt ontological solipsism in order to find the substitution of false appearances for objective reality convincing.

 

Treating appearance as reality superficially "saves" the 'principle of relativity," but only at the cost of effectively rejecting all objective standards for assessing motion and computing speed.  Every observer must now insist that his, and only his, clocks are accurate (which just another way of claiming that he is at absolute rest--when he isn't).

Edited May 30, 2018 by Moronium

[Moronium]

Since the stout "defenders" of SR are not offering any answers, I'll answer this myself.

 

It tends to accomplish the stated task (Einstein elevated the relativity principle to a universal "law of nature," because he liked the symmetry of it all), so that's what it gets you.  But it makes no sense to say that EVERY frame is at absolute rest..

 

In order to understand the genesis of SR, it helps to remember that Einstein said that he had been struggling for 8 years to reconcile Maxwell's equations with Galileo's transformations pursuant to the relativity principle.  He was, he said, finally ready to give up on any resolution, defeated.

 

Desperate circumstances call for desperate measures.  Finally, in desperation, he hit upon the notion of relative simultaneity, which treats mistaken appearances as reality.  He decided that he must say that Lorentz's fictitious "local time" was "true time."  In effect, he made every subjective observer, with his own idiosyncratic perspective, the ultimate arbiter of all "truth," just as Berkeley, the solipsist, had done before him. He didn't need to make any new arguments for this subjectivism, because Berkeley had already done an excellent job of that for him.  Berkeley merely took extreme empiricism to its logical conclusion.

 

For a number of reasons, Einstein was never satisfied with SR and he immediately went to work on GR, in the (ultimately dashed) hopes that he could create a theory of relative motion where the speed of light was constant in all frames, not just inertial ones.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Moronium

[Moronium]

A PFT establishes one preferred frame. SR has an infinite number of them.  It reminds me of a line from the movie 'The Patriot," set in revolutionary war times.  The subject was how to establish a workable government without monarchy.  A character says (paraphrasing):

 

"It's better to have one tyrant, three thousand miles away, than to have three thousand tyrants one mile away."

[Moronium]

  In effect, he made every subjective observer, with his own idiosyncratic perspective, the ultimate arbiter of all "truth," just as Berkeley, the solipsist, had done before him. He didn't need to make any new arguments for this subjectivism, because Berkeley had already done an excellent job of that for him.  Berkeley merely took extreme empiricism to its logical conclusion.

 

 

For those who may not be familiar with Berkeley, here's a couple of brief excerpts from a wiki article about him and his philosophy:

 

George Berkeley was an Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others).  This theory denies the existence of material substance and instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are only ideas in the minds of perceivers and, as a result, cannot exist without being perceived. 

 

Berkeley argued against Isaac Newton's doctrine of absolute space, time and motion in De Motu.   His arguments were a precursor to the views of Mach and Einstein.

 

It represents an extreme empiricist view of scientific observation that states that the scientific method provides us with no true insight into the nature of the world. Rather, the scientific method gives us a variety of partial explanations about regularities that hold in the world and that are gained through experiment. The nature of the world, according to Berkeley, is only approached through properly metaphysical speculation and reasoning.  Berkeley’s theory relies heavily on his form of empiricism, which in turn relies heavily on the senses. 

 

The theory was largely received with ridicule, while even those such as Samuel Clarke and William Whiston, who did acknowledge his "extraordinary genius," were nevertheless convinced that his first principles were false.

 

 

 

 

 

^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley}

 

Although he was a devout disciple of Mach in 1905, Einstein later completely disavowed the philosophy of Mach and Berkeley.  Unfortunately, younger physicists, like Bohr and Heisenberg, who had been inspired by SR to embrace subjectivism, did not (to Einstein's chagrin).

Edited May 30, 2018 by Moronium

[Moronium]

The theory was largely received with ridicule, while even those such as Samuel Clarke and William Whiston, who did acknowledge his "extraordinary genius," were nevertheless convinced that his first principles were false.

 

 

The "first principle" of SR is not the first postulate.  Nor is it the second.  Before you can ever formulate those postulates with any seriousness, you must start with a prior "first principle," to wit:  That there is no objective reality, only subjective reality.

 

That first principle is almost universally believed to be false.

 

Think about it. Go to any one of thousands of university websites containing information about astronomy, etc.  Without exception they will tell you that the earth is rotating at a certain speed, that it is orbiting the sun at a certain speed, etc.

 

In the many centuries since the Copernican revolution nobody of merit has seriously argued that we can't tell if the earth is moving and that a geocentric view is just as valid as a heliocentric one.  With very good reason.

 

The only time you will EVER hear that claim being made is when someone is trying desperately to assert that SR reflects "reality."  In SR an earth observer is obliged to claim that he is at rest.  Nobody pays the least bit of attention, though.  They just continue to use a different preferred frame theory to ascertain absolute motion. 

 

I say "different" preferred frame because SR too adopts a preferred frame, notwithstanding the incessant insistence that none exist.  In SR the preferred frame is the earth, if you're an observer on earth.  So SR does prefer a frame in those circumstances and, in effect, says that the geocentric viewpoint is the ONLY valid one.  Maybe Ptolemy was reincarnated as Einstein.  Who can prove that he wasn't?

Edited May 31, 2018 by Moronium

[Moronium]

I have sold Berkeley a little short.  He always stuck by his "to be is to be perceived" maxim.  But he did not actually deny an "objective" reality--although he still denied that there was any material world.  The reason, he said, that the moon is still there even when nobody is looking at it is because an omniscient God is ALWAYS there to look at it. Without God it would cease to exist when you turned your head away. So at least he had some kind of independent standard for truth, etc.

 

His faith was placed in God.  Relativists' faith is placed in SR.  The belief system is devoutly maintained with equal fervor in each creed, so there's that, anyway.  If the facts contradict your theory, well, then, so much worse for the facts, eh?

Edited May 31, 2018 by Moronium

[Moronium]

Again, that's simply incredulity on what's actually going on.

 

 

This "argument" was presented to "refute" my observations several times in this thread.  An "argument from ignorance" (of which the argument from incredulity is a form) is a known informal logical fallacy, sure..  But the only fallacious logic going on here is found in the the claim that my statements, supported with reasons, are merely "arguments from ignorance."

 

Suppose some hallucinating person tells me that there are 1000 rattlesnakes on the floor of the room we're in.  I look down, see none, and say "No, there aren't."

 

Is every denial of an unsupportable claim simply an "argument from ignorance?"  If you say "yes" then you're the one who doesn't understand logic.

 

I have never denied that SR is "true" on the mere ground that I don't personally believe it, and I never would.  It's true that I don't believe it, sure.  But that's because, in light of everything else we know (such as looking at the floor and seeing no snakes), the claim is simply "unbelievable" to anyone other than the hallucinating person.

 

Of course, for a relativistic solipsist, the mere fact that the hallucinating person "sees" snakes makes his claims true.  Nobody can dispute him.  He sees what he sees, whether you see it, like it, or not.  So the claim is true, they reason (again, fallaciously).

[Moronium]

There is a corresponding logical fallacy called (in latin) "Certum est quia impossibile est."  Translated, this means "It is certain because it is impossible."  Goebbels recognized, and appealed to, this fallacy when he noted that "small" lies may be disbelieved by many, but a "big" lie will often be readily accepted as true.

 

This "reasoning" is subscribed to by those who reject rationality as a means of determining truth in favor of a faith-based criterion.

 

The argument may be paraphrased as, "Christianity is too weird to have been invented."

 

 

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Certum_est_quia_impossibile_est

 

Many relativists do in fact resort to this type of reasoning.  They think that because the contradictory claims made by SR are hard to believe, they must be true.  Accepting them as true proves how superior that believer is because he has "overcome" the stupid prejudices of the common riff-raff and thereby gained insight into the hidden "truth."

 

To the hallucinating snake-seer, he alone is in possession of the truth, and everyone denying his claims have simply been badly deceived.

Edited May 31, 2018 by Moronium

[OceanBreeze]

I do agree with some of your arguments. You obviously are intelligent and have given this a lot of thought.

Let me ask you this; do you honestly think you can overthrow the theory of special relativity, by posting on some internet forum?

If not, why do you do it?