Farsight

Snail: I've got a separate essay called ENERGY EXPLAINED. When I first wrote it I used money as an introductory analogy to demonstrate how much people take for granted. However the the overall result was too long. So I separated MONEY EXPLAINED out and made it a separate little essay. The trouble is ENERGY EXPLAINED is still too long, so I need to do some more work on it, and I've been busy this last week or so. Here's an excerpt: Let’s start by saying that energy is the property of a thing. It is not a thing in its own right. To illustrate this, I can talk about a red ballon, a red bus, or a red red ruby. All these things have the property that we call red. A thing can be red, but you cannot remove this red, or purify it, or hold it in your hand. You could remove the paint or the dye and hold that in the palm of your hand, but you cannot then remove the red from the dye. Yes you can use red when you make things, but it’s red paint in your workshop, a thing that is red, not pure distilled essence of red. When you imagine red, the blotch in your mind’s eye is a thing. Your image is a thing. You always need a thing to be red. There is no such thing as “raw red” or “pure red”. In similar vein there is no such thing as “raw energy” or “pure energy”. You can’t make buses out of red, and you can’t make things out of energy. But you can use energy to make things, just as you can use red when you make buses.

Field quantum sounds good to me, Severian. It sheds that baggage. I like entity as well, it's nicely insubstantial in a "ghostly" kind of way. Are there any words or phrases the pros use in lieu of "particle"?

Sorry Trigger, you're wrong. The space is there. Things exist, and they move. Through space. It isn't a figment of your imagination. What is a figment of your imagination, is your consciousness.

Oh, the irony.

No, colour perception and heat etc are not analogies of time! You want to label them as analogies so you can then say they're weak/false analogies, and all you're doing is showing that you're clutching at a straw man argument. The essay is all about challenging the "time is a length" axiom. To defend this axiom you're accusing me of holding axioms. What axioms? Are you going to say my challenge to your axiom is an axiom and is therefore disqualified? More of the same. All you've got disprove the essay is your axiomatic concept of time which the essay challenges. This is yet more of the same proof by axiom. If you've proven what you think you've proven, you've also proven that temperature is a dimension. No you haven't. If you think you have, use this as the point I referred to in my previous post. Let's home in on that point and debate it until we're both satisfied. The rest of your post is a claim that you've used careful reason and logic to prove that TIME EXPLAINED is false. No way have you done this. And instead of repeating your proof or a vital element of it, you repeat your assertation of proof. Come on Ed, repeat your most telling point, let's focus in on it and nail it.

Nobody has used that phrase in this thread, but see your post #24. More insiduous digs I see, proclaims and poor job and yes, out comes the crackpot. You can't tackle the argument, so you attack me instead. And in the same breath you lecture me about being scientific. Hmmn.

Ed, they weren't analogies. Those are things we experience, and they're all derived from motion. Look up ontology. TIME EXPLAINED is an essay, with ideas, and you're trying to dismiss them because I can't prove time travel is bunk? If I could prove it I'd be up for a Nobel Prize. And now you're saying the essay contains axioms? When it challenges the axioms you've been pretending to disprove it with? It contains rigourous thinking and logic. And I haven't seen any rigourous thinking and logic to disprove it. Just pretend-science that says "time is a length ergo your essay is wrong QED", and pretend-science that dismisses it as "metaphysics of little merit". This is downright dishonest Ed. I explain at great length. You ignore the explanation like you ignore the whole point of the essay. Just as you ignore the evidence. Time is not a length. You cannot move through it. It is always now. The evidence is staring you in the face. And don't pretend that I contradict myself. I don't. Show me your best bit of "rigourous thinking and logic" to disprove the essay Ed, and I'll explain again why you're wrong. Home in on one particular point so I can nail it down to your acknowledged satisfaction. Do not move off that point until we have resolved it.

Thanks for the link, Spyman. I can empathise with the "experience" here. I experience the moment "now," or, expressed more accurately, the present sense-experience (Sinnen-Erlebnis) combined with the recollection of (earlier) sense-experiences. That is why the sense-experiences seem to form a series, namely the time-series indicated by "earlier" and "later." The experience-series is thought of as a one-dimensional continuum. I think he tussled with all this on and off throughout his life. This is from page 73 of ABOUT TIME by Paul Davies: Einstein himself wasn't to thrilled with the unified spacetime idea at first, dimissing Minkowski's new four-dimensional geometry as "superfluous" pedantry. Then on page 77 we see: Even Einstein confessed, near the end of his days, that the problem of the now "worried him seriously." In conversation with the philosopher Rudolf Carnap he conceded that there us "something essential about the now", but expressed the belief that, whatever it was, it lay "just outside the realm of science". There's another quote somewhere about how he was unhappy with something when he was formulating General Relativity and wished he'd pursued it. So I think he was unhappy with 4D spacetime, then happy, then unhappy. Something like that.

Can we all try not to be a little more pleasant? By all means correct any wrong view and respond to ignorance, but let's not descend into arguments. It happens too much on forums like this. ParanoiA: Yes, I'm saying photons are not point particles. They aren't waves either. They are what they are. Sometimes they look like waves, sometimes they don't. But that's just us. We always try to describe the subatomic world using something we can see in our macroscopic lives.

OK thanks Zanket, I agreed after I thought it through. Sorry, but I'm struggling with that introduction to your paper - on how the ball can traverse the vertical length of the rocket in an arbitrarily short time as far as the crew are concerned. If you could rephrase it in some way I'd be grateful.

Look at this, swansont. It's not on. And I don't care what "mathematics tells us" because real life tells us about long wave radio. Do not defend this supercilious intellectual arrogance with a skim of scientific fact.

Yes it is. But one has to start somewhere. With an idea. And you're being unreasonable again if you expect me to somehow prove that time travel is impossible. Let's not forget that TIME EXPLAINED is an essay under the "Speculations" heading of an internet forum. It isn't some grand authoritative paper. It isn't String Theory either.

I'm happy with thought experiments Edtharan. But you're saying "let us assume" and then using your assumptions to try to disprove what I'm saying. Agreed. Attempting maybe, but IMHO you've been trying to disprove my "theory" using the very axioms the essay challenges, and nothing else. No they don't. There's no experimental evidence or observations that disagree with the essay. NONE of the clocks record the absolute now. This should be apparent from the colliding clocks example. Regardless of the "passage of time" on my clock, it is always now as far as I am concerned. Regardless of the "passage of time" on your clock, it is always now as far as you are concerned. If we are separated by some large distance, we are unable to share a mutual event that always, for each of us, happens now. There's no contradiction of the essay. And there is no absolute time or universal time either. That's definitely not what I said.

Let's look at this "weak analogy" or "false analogy" matter. Let's look at what I said. Excuse me if I insert the omitted word "concept" on line 2. There's no analogies here. What is here are examples of ontological thinking.

Good one JohnB. ecoli, here's the background:

Yes, of course. Everybody knows that.

You go ahead and assume. That's not how I try to do science. No, for the umpteenth time the dimensional treatment was Minkowski's idea, and Einstein wasn't happy about it. No it doesn't. Do you actually understand what a straw man argument is? Don't bother answering. No. It's not a weak analogy. because it's not an analogy. It's an introduction to demonstrate something simpler that we take for granted and intrigue the reader to proceed with an open mind. Your inability to listen, or understand, or distinguish words doesn't make it an analogy. The only weakness is yours.

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It's not real money. It's just a piece of paper that says "I am real money". Money only "exists" only because people agree it "exists". Like insane-alien says, take away the people and the money's gone too. When have I been caught in a false analogy? In fact, What analogy? I don't think Money is the same as Energy. It's like I didn't say Colour is the same as Time in TIME EXPLAINED. The idea is to show the reader something obvious that's taken for granted, then move on to something a little more difficult. Sadly, some people just don't want to know.

There you go again, DH. You leap on the lack of a billiard ball and ignore an issue that affects generations of schoolchildren whilst skating over the first line of the dictionary definition: 1. A very small piece or part; a tiny portion or speck. I point out an issue and get a pile of insults like "looney" and "hypocrite". You know full well Edtharan tried to use a dictionary definition I quoted on a side issue to make out I was contradicting my own essay. This tendency you've got for dishonesty and offense is not how physics ought to be. ParanoiA: The word particle does imply mass to many younger people, which is the problem that earned me a kicking. However I'd say most people on these boards are happy with the idea of massless particles, and don't associate particles with mass. But I think some do still associate a particle with a speck. Ask DH to explain how long a long-wave photon can be, why it cannot be cut in half, and why David Deutsch thinks a photon in two places at once proves the existence of a Multiverse. The way to grasp the problem here is to yell OI! and then try to make any sense of the SHOUT particle.

Well sadly you're wrong. That's exactly what it does mean to whole generations of schoolchildren. http://www.answers.com/topic/particle What next? Will you be telling all and sundry that anybody who doesn't like the sound of "coloured" quarks clearly knows no mathematics, even less physics, invents language and axioms, and eats children for breakfast? Geddoutofit.

The above was the intro to ENERGY EXPLAINED, but it made the overall essay too long. So I've split it out. It's just a bit of "out of the box" fun really, but I hope it's interesting fun that demonstrates just how much we take for granted.

MONEY EXPLAINED I know this might not sound like physics, but bear with me, because Time is Money, isn't it? Show me some money, I say. So you pull out a £10 note. We both know that’s money right? Wrong. Check the small print: “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ten pounds”. Your tenner isn’t really money. It’s what’s known in the trade as a promissary note. A mere promise to pay money. Basically it’s an IOU, but from the Bank of England. OK if you’re in the States or Oz maybe you don’t get the small print, but your buck or buckaroo is still a promissary note, a mere IOU, it’s not really money. OK you say. How about this here penny? You hand it to me. I turn it over in my hand. It’s coppery and shiny. New. Freshly minted. But what is it? It’s a piece of stamped metal. Nowadays it's copper plated steel, but there’s been all sort of variations involving copper tin and zinc, usually alloyed as a bronze. I could make them in my garage. But it isn’t worth it, especially “Since May 2006, all circulation Canadian pennies from 1942 to 1996 have an intrinsic value of over $0.02 USD based on the increasing spot price of copper in the commodity markets...” Anyhow, a penny is similar to the milk tokens I remember from when I was a kid. And those useless slot-machine tokens I brought home from Blackpool. That shiny new penny is just a glorified milk token, acceptable to more than just the milkman. And what notes and coins are is cash. Money tokens. They aren’t really money. We have to forget about cash. Where do you keep your money? I ask you. In the Bank you reply. Where in the Bank? I say. In the vault, you say. To which I say: But that’s not money, that's just cash. You change tack and tell me your money isn’t in the vault. It’s in your account. You’ve got your salary going into your bank account every month. Whoa. Where is this account? I say. In the bank, you say. Where in the bank? I say. On the computer, you say. I could say "Where on the computer?" but I won't. Because now we’re getting somewhere. Your money is just intangible information, maybe on a computer somewhere. Before they had computers your money was in a ledger. It was just a bit of inky writing in a big black book. With as much real existence as a bit and a byte and a bar tab. And every month your employer tells your bank to reduce his glorified bar tab and increase yours. Did you get that? Money is just a glorified bar tab. An agreement about IOUs. Nothing is moving into anywhere, or out of anywhere else. Ah, I can hear you saying, what about the gold standard? Shrug. Gold was only “money” because everybody agreed that this nice and shiny metal was worth having. So were pretty little sea shells once upon a time. Imagine a pirate landing on a deserted island, the native people wiped out by some pestilence. The pirate kicks amongs the ruins, hawking and spitting at finding only sea shells and no gold. Because there isn’t any money if people don’t agree that its money. Because money doesn’t exist. Not really. That’s why when you spend money it doesn’t disappear. It isn’t destroyed. You’ve got less of it, and the shop’s got more, but nobody’s really got more or less of anything. It’s just a bar tab. Do you know how money is created? Governments allow banks to lend money to people who build houses and cars and flatscreen TVs that everybody agrees are valuable. Then the money that was magicked out of nowhere really does exist. But it doesn’t really exist because it was never really created in the first place. But it does. And it doesn't. But it gets things done, and it makes the world go round, and everybody wants it. Doesn’t really exist. Doesn’t get created or destroyed. Makes the world go round. Everybody wants it. Does that remind you of anything? Does that remind you of Energy? Oh yes, I can explain Energy.

Ed, if I could prove it I'd be getting phone calls from this mob: http://nobelprize.org/nomination/physics/ Yep, I've been thinking hard about that. Real hard Ed. Hah. You get recursion your way. People talk about "the speed of light" even though "speed" alters distance and time and speed is distance over time. And the photon sees those infinities you mentioned. I didn't. I've already told you about the big difference between perceiving colour and experiencing time. You perceive colour. You experience heat. You experience time. But you can't travel through heat or time.

How about this one guys: http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=10697