Sisyphus

What are we reading into it that we shouldn't be? You posted an article suggesting that people think he'll be specifically looking to appoint a woman, and Lan®12 and I said we hope those people are wrong.

I hope he doesn't take gender into account.

Mars. No, just kidding. You would become two different people.

You're not different. Your choices are just a lot harder to predict, because the physical processes in your brain determining them are much more complicated. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I wouldn't say we're the most complex life form over all (though we might be, I just don't know), but surely we can at least say we're a lot more complicated than one-celled organisms?

We, too, are "machines" that follow the laws of physics and chemistry. We're just a lot more complicated.

I would expect the same. His only judicial appointment to date, David Hamilton to the Seventh Circuit, apparently is known as liberal but moderate, with the support of both Democratic and Republican leaders. Conservative watchdog groups don't like him for stuff like ruling against school prayer, but he's about about the best Republicans could realistically hope for.

Again, I'm not following your math, but if you must be doing something wrong - maybe mixing up reference frames? Remember, the observer is always motionless in his own reference frame.

Without time, there can't be motion, by definition. Motion = change of position over time.

"Clocks" means all indications of the passing of time, including the speed of light and your own subjective experiences. There is no such thing as "absolute time" in the sense you want. Also, events which are simultaneous in one reference frame are not in another.

No, you couldn't. He's talking about real, physical forces, that have nothing to do with how we define them. Gravity would still obey the inverse square law, even if The Great Definition Authority decreed that it was instead an inverse cube. For that matter, it would still act at right angles to the surface, which happens to be the reason concrete stairs are perpendicular. It is not arbitrary, and is not the result of something peculiar to human minds. It is the result of physics. The force results from the perpendicular component of the motion.

Well, yes. But honestly, I don't see that that needs to be the only consideration. If it was scientifically determined that the absolute most effective economic stimulus would be to spend every last dollar genetically engineering a race of hyperagressive, radioactive, firebreathing owls big enough to carry off adult humans, we still probably wouldn't, because of the other effects of that spending: what we actually purchased. So yes, the main factor should be stimulus value, but that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't give some weight to other factors. I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't think "all spending is equally worthwhile" follows from "all spending is stimulus." I would argue against those things not because they couldn't stimulate the economy, but because they are things we either don't want or want much less than other things, regardless of their relative merits as stimulants. And on that, I agree wholeheartedly. Hopefully an enormous deficit will be sufficient motivation to keep most of it temporary.

Which, to take it further, is a good way of intuitively understanding why those things work in an inverse square law. "I make up X% of that thing's 'field of view.' If I moved to half the distance, I make up 4X% of the field of view, so all omnidirectional radiating-like effects should be 4 times stronger."

Right, but that's not really relevant to the question at hand, is it? The question is how does being in a different reference frame from a light source affect how the light propagates. The OP suggested that the lighted region would be elongated in the direction of travel. I'm suggesting it would be neither elongated nor compressed. (Although the observers in the two frames would not agree on the borders of the sphere, even if both agreed it was the same shape, because space itself would be compressed).

Hehe, was there a black hole added to this question when I wasn't looking?

Oh, sure, I'm pretty much discounting gravity. But it seems like any effect would be symmetrical, no? Maybe not. Anyway, it would still be a "sphere," in that every photon would be traveling at the same speed in "straight lines." It's just that those straight lines might not look straight from every perspective...

I, too, am not sure it's a well-posed question. I get annoyed sometimes when people say things like "but you don't know what it actually is" when they haven't considered what they're actually asking. Does what something "actually is" have any meaning separate from an exhaustive description of its behavior? I don't know. The fact that something could be described equally well in more than one way intuitively makes it seem like the answer must be yes, but I'm still not sure, mostly because I don't know of an example of what something "actually is" might be. Forget about proving it - just give any coherent answer to the question, "but what is gravity, really."

Alright, how about this: You arrange a series of detectors in a sphere (equidistant from a single point), all at rest to one another. Then you fire a projectile such that it will pass through the center of the sphere moving uniformly at a significant fraction of C, and as it does it flashes a light. What happens? This is, I think, equivalent to the original question. And the answer depends on your frame of reference. In the frame where the detectors are at rest, they will all receive the light signal at the same time. Of that I'm almost positive. Since that is entirely equivalent to passing a light source while moving yourself (deciding who is moving is entirely arbitrary), it is clear that the "ball of light" is neither "elongated" nor "flattened." As for what happens in the reference frame where the projectile is at rest and the detectors are moving, I think that's a bit more complicated. The sphere of detectors would be flattened in the direction of travel, for one thing, and when the light is emitted one side of the "sphere" will be traveling towards the source and one away, and the one traveling towards will receive the signal first. The ball of light itself, obviously, would still just be a uniformly expanding sphere.

I thought the idea behind stimulus spending was simply to spend more than usual without taxing more than usual, with the overall goal of increasing the velocity of currency in the economy and keeping people productive. It would be temporary because it's unsustainable, and the number of things the government is willing to spend on and the amount it's willing to spend would be temporarily increased. So, yes, there wouldn't necessarily be any particular category of spending included or excluded in the "worth it for stimulus, but not normally" pile. Hopefully it would focus mainly on things that aid the economy in their actual function, in addition to simply because money is being spent. Preventative healthcare, without getting into the specifics of this particular proposal, could certainly qualify for that criterion.

I don't really follow your logic, but I was thinking the implication of point 2 was that it was necessarily a perfect sphere, as viewed from any reference frame. So, from your perspective, you are motionless, and the light source is moving towards you at your relative velocity, say 0.5C. At some point, it flashes, and from that point, the light wave expands in a sphere moving at C in every direction, and the light source continues on its way moving at 0.5C, the forward wave moving ahead of it at 0.5C, the backward one moving behind it at 1.5C. In the reference frame of the light source, however, the source is at rest, you're the one moving, and the light is still moving at C in every direction, approaching you at 1.5C if you're still moving towards the source at the time of the flash (adding your velocities), or 0.5C if you're moving away. (Bear in mind, I'm not certain about any of this.)

Moved to general discussion.

What would be an example of a possible answer, outside the realm of science, to the question, "what is gravity?"

Yeah, I think you need to specify what the set up is. Anyway, the pertinent facts as I see them would be: 1) Distances compress in the direction of travel. 2) Light always travels at the same rate, C, in every direction relative to the observer, no matter what the relative velocity of the source to the observer. 3) You can't directly observe an expanding sphere of light like you would an expanding water wave.

You can't show me motion except over a period of time. The concepts are inseparable.

Motion, by definition, is change in position with respect to time. For motion, you need space and time. If time is an illusion, then so is motion. So what are you talking about, and how did you come to be so sure of yourself?

What determines the apparent size of something? The angle it takes up out of your total field of vision. Simplify to one eye, and 2 dimensions. Hold 12 inch ruler 12 inches away. What angle, at your eye, is there between lines pointing at one end of the ruler and the other? Now move the ruler to 24 inches away. What angle is there now?