Eise

AFAIK this is the way at least some neurologists see it this way, and I think it has its merits. E.g. it gives an explanation of the effect of training. Consciousness is notoriously slow, and where fast action is needed, like in sports, you must train, so that most actions really bypass consciousness. But that has no impact on the matter of free will: the origin of the 'consciousness bypassing action' is still you (that bag of water...), and you will notice when an unconscious action is blocked. Imagine Roger Federer is playing a tennis match, but then somebody comes from behind, and suddenly holds Federer's tennis racket. Federer immediately will notice that his partially unconscious 'trained tennis program' is interrupted, and will be able to report that he just wanted to play the ball in the utmost left corner, before he was blocked. This reporting maybe consciousness after the fact, but that is no problem: as long as you recognise the action as your own, see the motives behind them, you will also recognise when you are blocked, i.e. when you cannot act according your own motives. So the simplest of definitions of free will, being able to do what you want, is not touched by this. It is only the heavily metaphysically loaded definition of 'uncaused consciousness always must cause our actions (and therefore precede it) for an action to be free', that is refuted by such mechanisms. But in a naturalist world view such a definition makes no sense from the beginning. It probably makes no sense at all.

Do not forget that also in the physical 4D-world, the time dimension does not stand on equal footing with the space dimensions. Pythagoras in spacetime is: x2 + y2 + z2 - (ct)2 = d2 Note the minus-sign. So in some sense we experience a 4D world: we need 4 coordinates to define the spacetime location of events. But time- and space dimensions do not behave exactly the same.

There is so much wrong with this... In the first place, the fictional light clock and atomic clocks work on completely different principles, so I have no idea why you throw them in one bucket. Secondly, you should not forget that SR is based on 2 postulates: one is the invariance of the speed of light, and this is used in the example of the light clock. The other postulate is that there is no physical experiment that can show you that you are in absolute rest: observers in all inertial frames see exactly the same laws of physics. But if clocks based on other principles than the light clock would run at different rates, one would have a criterion to say who is at rest, and who is moving. The light clock is just a nice example to easily explain time dilation to lay people. But there are derivations of SR that are much more fundamental, than this. (Why do you think the original article of Einstein was titled 'On the electrodynamics of moving bodies'? There appears no light clock at all in this article.) Do not think that SR is based on the example of the light clock!

Don't go there. Unless you are a conspiracy theorist yourself. Then you can give your life a meaning, and join the tribe. It remembers me of the one million dollar challenge of James Randi. The idea is simple: both (Bjorkman and Randi) know that the task is impossible, therefore they can safely bet their one million. Bjorkman can then say "See nobody can prove that buildings collapse like that, they can't even build a scale model!", not bothering that a scale model never can reproduce the real collapse.

I would suggest to think about the crew of a submarine. Do they move normally, or are they lighter as soon as the submarine is under water? So what value of g would they measure?

It is at least difficult to imagine... But this brings me to another point. If it is correct what Kip Thorne says (which I strongly assume, knowing what kind of expert he is), then we have 2 completely different 'pictures' based on which interpretation we choose: gravity curves spacetime, and all free moving objects follow geodesics in spacetime gravity is a force, which affects paths of free moving objects, durations and distances But especially my use of 'force' seems to completely contradict the way GR is usually presented: that gravity is not a force. How could one formulate the second interpretation in a better way? Maybe I should stick to Mordred's view: it seems to have the least metaphysical baggage of all descriptions of GR. Word of the day... So glad that Wikipedia exists... OK, now I play for a moment devil's advocate (in this case as a Kantian philosopher): the concept of curvature only makes sense when there is a higher dimension. A line is said to be curved because there is one dimension more, namely the second (wow, that sounds stupid. And as I think to understand, for a 1-D organism there is no chance, not even with differential geometry, to discover that his universe is curved.); a surface is said to be curved, because there is one dimension more in which it is curved. But a 2-D organism can at least discover that, by measuring angles and distances. But how can he conclude that this 3rd dimension does not exist, and that the curvature of his world is intrinsic only? And of course the same questions for 3-D organisms, that discover that their world can best be described as if it is curved? Shouldn't they conclude that there is one dimension more? Or locally diffeomorphic?

Yes, it was in Thorne. He says that one can formulate GR in flat spacetime, where gravitation deforms lengths and durations, whereas the standard interpretation is that lengths and durations stay the same, but spacetime is deformed by the presence of matter/energy. The results are the same, but it seems the math is not completely, and so, dependent on the kind of problem, one can use the interpretation that makes the calculations easiest. And he explicitly says that the question if spacetime is really curved is a philosophical question that does not bother physicists.

I understand, but with some hesitation. Maybe it is because of my (stupid?) idea that intrinsic curvature is the way out for 'n-D' organisms to discover that they live in a curved space, because they cannot access the n+1th dimension to actually see it. But you are saying they cannot discover that they are living in a cylindrical universe based on its intrinsic curvature: the metrics of a flat universe and a cylinder universe are the same. Wow! And I thought one extra dimension would suffice... Obviously that is when one, like me, only has a very superficial understanding of differential geometry, and has to do with analogy arguments. (I am not @scuddyx, who talks about 'tensor force' as if he is understanding what he is talking about...). Gasho, Eise

Isn't that an example of a 2-D object with intrinsic curvature? (And for which we can make a 3-D model.) My idea (hopefully), was even simpler, say the curvature of the surface of a ball (the ball is 3-D, but the surface is 2-D). Isn't it true that one can use both descriptions? In that case we see the 3-D space in which the 2-D surface of the ball is curved, so we can describe it extrinsically. The most important lesson about this in GR, that I thought I learned, is that one can describe curvature intrinsically, and therefore, because we cannot observe 4 dimensions, the question in what the 3-D universe is curved is a metaphysical question (and therefore physics can do without it). Therefore also my 'as if' in my previous posting:

scuddyx, see this video. Much closer to what GR says than the rubber sheet analogy. Are these two types of curvature, or are these different ways to describe curvature? E.g. one can describe the curvature of the surface of a 3 dimensional object in 3 dimensional space in both ways, no? And my understanding of the 'curvature' of the universe is that it is as if it is curved. If I remember well, Mordred said that GR only says how worldlines of free moving objects in the universe look like. In some book I read that one can formulate GR without the use of curved spacetime, which for some kind of problems seems to make the calculations easier (I think this was in the book about black holes of Kip Thorne).

In line with the answers already given: if 2 particles are entangled, then they: were entangled themselves, which means at least they were interacting directly in such a way that we only can know the wave function of the two particles together, not for the particles individually ('normal' entanglement) or they share a history in which the quantum state of the particles is determined by two particles that were entangled (that would be 'quantum-teleportation') See the second point above. If they 'incidentally' share a history based on an entangled pair, then yes. And thereby it does not matter how they got entangled, by human intervention, or just some 'blind physical process'. Otherwise no. But do not forget: locally, an observer can never find out that the particle he measures is entangled with another. The entanglement only shows up when two observers compare their measurements of the entangled particles. Then it shows that their measurements are correlated.

Then stop posting meaningless mathematical looking symbols. LOL. Everything is wrong with your physics.

Strange, do not feed the troll... 'Complexity' has shown not to understand any physics and math at all. And he doesn't want to learn, so what is the use?

Search answers yourself first. Google. Wikipedia. Whatever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_battery#Self-discharge

That is only half of the story: the current is flowing from one pole of the battery to the other, through the fan. So the answer is: none. The only force is that coming from the potential difference between the two poles of the battery. I saw your postings in some other threads. Your understanding of physics is so bad, that you cannot even ask the correct questions. Please, read some introductory physics books, get a course in physics, but stop asking stupid questions. I would propose that nobody here answers your questions anymore, unless they are questions that arise from you reading a physics book, or following a physics course. But questions that arise out of the conflict between your world view, and not accepting the answers because these do not fit your world view, is simply a waste of time for us all, including yourself.

@koti: Did you see3 this? Nobody objected.

That is a good point. Of course a system where nothing happens is impossible, but I think my example shows that one can only speak of time when there are changes; and also the other way round. However, we cannot observe time, but we can observe changes (especially hands of a clock), which for me makes 'change' the more primitive concept. As in a thread a long time ago (i.e. many changes happened since then...), about the same topic, you said 'time' is an abstraction, to which I only added "yes, to be specific, an abstraction of change". I find this an unfair comparison. Take such a 4D manifold, and compare it for T = 0 and T = 1. If everything else is the same, then there was no change; if not there was. I do think that time exists, but it exists in another way than physical objects, that exist in time (and space, of course). It is similar to the question if the laws of nature exist. There I also say they exist, but again in a different way than physical objects. When one does not account for this different ontological status of physical objects, time and space, and laws of nature, it can lead to all kind of stupid philosophical questions (as we had here several times) like 'how do the laws of nature govern the universe'.

But it isn't caused by time either. Causality is a relationship between events. One event can cause another, and the cause precedes the effect. That means we need the concept of time to describe causal relationships. But time itself causes nothing: it is a concept we need to describe our observations.

So one has a period where there are changes, and periods there are not. So say we have a clock perfectly measuring time during the changes. But then, when there is no change, the clock does not change either. Say it says 13:03h at the end of a change period. Then, at the beginning of the 'new change period' it will still saying 13:03h. So there is no way of telling there was a gap. The clock itself introduces the change. No change, no clock.

How could one decide that there are gaps?

There is no way to know that, and you know that. 😏 It is impossible to have a system with a time measuring device, and nothing happens: at least the times measuring device is changing. (A clock that never changes is pretty useless, isn't it?).

Here is your error. the causal connection is already know since more than 150 years. E.g. are Venus and Mars are warmer than one would expect from their distance from the sun. Mars' tropics can reach 35oC, average temperature on Venus is 464oC. Both have an atmosphere of mainly CO2 (Mars very thin, Venus very thick). You are right that correlation does not mean causation. To take another example: the effect of cell phones on our health. Some studies suggest a connection (most don't, just for the record). But what especially is missing is a causal explanation: how can such low energy radiation (it is non-ionising radiation) cause brain tumors? But with global warming, we exactly know the cause: greenhouse gases, like CO2, methane, water vapour, and some more. We need computer models to try to predict how this global warming works out. The biosphere is a highly complex system, and what will happen due to global warming is not easy. And locally the impact might be very different. Some places on earth might even get colder, others more wet, still others drier and much warmer. But all these models have in common that the expected concentrations of greenhouse gases is one of the input parameters. So the computer models are not just extrapolations of present trends. They implement known causalities on one side, and empirical knowledge about atmospheric and oceanic physics on the other. In the latter we surely do not know everything, but obviously the trends are predicted very well. Even computer models that were made 50 years ago predict quite well what actually has happened. Global warming is happening, and anthropic greenhouse gases are the cause, there is no scientific doubt about it whatsoever. Everybody who denies this is deceiving himself and/or others.

Yes, and no. If you want to formulate it in terms of set theory, I suppose it becomes something like this: a set has 20 elements. How many subsets of 4 elements can you create, where no element appears in 2 subsets? The same question would be: how many times can you take 4 elements away, until the set is empty?

Remembers me of the mechanical calculator, standing next to the Apple II during my physics study. It was pretty fast with addition, subtraction and multiplication. But division... It subtracted the divisor, again and again, counting how many time it could do. So you can imagine how long it takes to divide a huge number by 1... Yes, we are so used to the fact that multiplication and addition are commutative, i.e. give the same results, that we do not realize that the meaning of (a + b) and (b + a), resp (a * b ) and (b * a) is not the same. It is a bit like the 'morning star' and the 'evening star'. According to their meaning, they are definitively not the same. You can't see the morning start in the evening, per definition. In this case it was an empirical discovery that they refer to the same object, the planet Venus. With commutativity of multiplication and addition, one can proof they always yield the same result; in case of Venus, it was an empirical discovery.

Seems to me you are at the brink of an important discovery, namely that of division. First, I would plead to write 1 + 1 + 1 as 3 * 1, not as 1 * 3. In words: add 1 3 times. So where 2 * 3 and 3 * 2 have the same result, the operations are slightly different: 2 * 3 means 3 + 3, and 3 * 2 means 2 + 2 + 2. It is a mathematical proof that these different meanings always lead to the same result. Now the opposite question is: how many 1s do you need if you want to reach 0? So take 3, and count how many 1s you can subtract until you get at 0: 3 -1 -1 -1 = 0. count the 1s: there are 3 of them. This works for all natural numbers. As you see yourself, your '|' operator leads to ambiguous results: 1|4 = 1 -1 -1 -1 = -3, or 4. Who would need such an operator?