HTF did this thread get started on Quantum Mechanics and fake nukes? LOL You guys are funny.
I found out that I’m “part of the problem” because I didn’t vote in the general election. I thought this was very insightful and fascinating since I could have sworn that Obama and Romney are Keynesian puppet statists who care nothing about me and that coercing people out of the fruits of their labor are both clearly part of the problem, but now I see the error of my ways.
Also, we can’t legalize drugs because the same family member who informed me of my participation in “the problem” (clearly a bastion of enlightenment) doesn’t want them available to her kids. This was mentioned without the slightest bit of irony as she swirled her glass of wine at the dinner table which sits 2 feet from a bar laden with bottles of wine, scotch, and beer.
Let’s get real, what we have are Republicans and Democrats. The Libertarian Party is “this” small, she gestured. I never even mentioned the LP and was never asked for why I didn’t vote and certainly not which principles guided my decision. It was in this moment that I truly understood the impenetrableness of a person’s belief system built upon and sustained by emotion.
Thanksgiving was fun. Can’t wait until Christmas!
It’s very elegant and beautiful nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless. Bending space… how absurd! Space is a category of human knowledge. Think about that for a minute and ask yourself again whether it makes any sense whatsoever for space to be “bent”.
Clayton -
Hasn’t general relativity been experimentally verified repeatedly? “Bending” starlight around the sun? How do you feel about special relativity?
What do you feel about diffraction? There’s a “bending” involved there. General relativity describes a relationship between mass, what it does to space-time, and the resulting motion created by that presence.
The “bending” is simply a term to describe the motion of mass in space. There is an intimate relationship between the mass and how it corresponds to the properties of space.
This is disputable. Gravity Probe B was the first experimental evidence that could conceivably verify GR but it still misses the larger point.
Well, it’s light that is bent and light is something rather than somewhere (space).
Precisely. The bending is a description of the underlying mathematics.
Yes, but anything that moves in an ellipse (hyperbolic geometry) can be said to be “bending spacetime” in the same sense… in other words, it’s still just a reification of the mathematics. Of course, if something moves in an ellipse, it moves in an ellipse… the data are irrefutable. And anything that moves elliptically can be said to “bend space” around it in a certain mathematical metaphor. No one can dispute that the mathematics of SR is the mathematics of the physical world but it misses the point that “bending space” implies that there’s something “deeply counterintuitive” about the “true structure” of the physical world which is a) subjective and b) a superfluous point. What matters is that if you want to measure a physical variable here or there, you will have to move to here or there to measure it. The “curvature of space” between here and there is just a mathematical abstraction. SR is just an elegant and efficient organization of the computations required to assess “where” and “when” you are measuring a physical variable beyond the horizons of unaided observation.
Clayton -
Clayton, are you saying that there are thousands of people in government who know there are no nukes and lie about it (including Presidents and Prime Ministers) or do these people honestly and incorrectly believe that nukes exist?
If I’m right, I would think it is the most tightly controlled secret of all. I would imagine that the smallest possible number of people would be admitted to the “club”.
Or maybe I’m just crazy. 
Clayton -
This is almost like complaining about the constant acceleration equations describing the parabolic motion of a projectile. Of course, it’s parabolic! That’s what the mathematics yields. It’s a parabolic equation!
How do you feel about action-at-a-distance? Fields are based on a somewhere and describe how a something will behave.
Nothing is being bent. It’s almost the sci-fi travesty of “ripping a hole in the space-time continuum.” There’s no ripping of anything. What about the gravitational and intertial mass equivalence?
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. No one claims that a projectile “bends the gravitational field” around itself in parabolic geometry. If you roll a lead ball perpendicularly through a strong laminar flow of water, it will move in roughly a parabolic motion. There’s nothing “inherently” parabolic about water flows and lead balls, it’s just that when you move an object through a “field” of constant force in one direction, it will move parabolically.
Fields can be constructed from completely local mathematics (Do you think that air currents are non-local? Do they not form a mathematical field under certain constraints?) When we say “the Sun’s magnetic field” what we are really talking about is the net effect of the Sun on our local magnetic environment.
Again, I think it’s getting carried away with thought-experiments. An Indian-burn generates heat on the skin… the Sun also generates heat on the skin. If I closed my eyes and ignored friction, I could not tell the difference between and Indian-burn and the Sun. Hence, an Indian-burn is a microscopic Sun and vice-versa. The purpose of an equivalence principle is not to “elegantize” our theory but, rather, to increase our mental grasp of the phenomena. Modern physics obfuscates which is precisely the opposite of what physics is supposed to be doing. Physics should lay bare the phenomena and render the phenomena as readily accessible to human comprehension as possible. “Advanced mathematics” is no excuse for obfuscation as the mission of mathematics is no different: to clarify and lay bare the deductive phenomena of mathematical abstractions.
Clayton -
You’re trying to make the case that general relativity has no physical significance whatsoever. It’s simply mathematics. I would agree that it is the case for string theory. It’s not so for general relativity as it’s falsifiable through practical experimentation. There’s exists no contemporaneous method to test string theory.
The equivalence is the identity of the quantiative measure of inertia in Newton’s Second Law and the classical gravitational force. There’s an important physical connection in the equations. It’s not simply mathematics. Physics is an observational science. The mathematics must be constrained by physical reality.
I disagree. The way the energy would be distributed is probably markedly different. The situation can become more complicated depending on the physical phenomena you want to describe. Do you take issue with special relativity and quantum mechanics being more complicated than classical mechanics? What about Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics? They are more fundamental than Newton’s mechanics but can be used to more easily model a system than say using Newton’s equations in rectangular coordinates. The mathematics in the theories becomes more complicated as the theories becomes more general. It’s simply the way quantitative understanding works.
Falsifiability is neither here nor there. That only matters to positivists; I’m no positivist.
I think the biggest problem with SR is the leap from non-observation of luminiferous ether to the idea of a “universal speed-limit”. Some of the arguments given for the speed limit of light are circular but the gravest error in this regard seems to me to be the common assumption that the mathematics of relativity themselves imply a speed limit of light… they do not! No one can dispute that the Einsteinian equations of motion are the physics of our world but while these equations assume a speed limit of light, it does not necessarily follow from the fact that they are consistent with the physics of our world that there is, in fact, a speed limit of light! Nor is it necessary to deny a finite propagation speed of information or causality (a corollary of locality) in order to admit an arbitrarily large, finite velocity.
What is physical? I don’t even understand what it means for there to be a “physical connection”… physical as opposed to what, supernatural?
Well the complications of modern physics is a symptom of an underlying problem, that the discipline of physics is itself deeply confused. This is what lay people always suspect but, of course, never say aloud for fear of being laughed at like the boy who saw the emperor has no clothes.
The mathematics of a lever is “complicated” to someone who doesn’t have the basic arithmetical tools of geometry, division, and so on. But once all the conceptual tools are in place: geometry, ratios, moments, etc. the theory of the lever is enlightening and does the opposite of complicating the world, it simplifies the world in respect to the use and manipulation of levers and provides even more payoffs in terms of metaphors or even literally true abstractions of complex phenomena that might not at first appear to have anything to do with levers (e.g. an electronic amplifier).
Modern physics, by comparison, is muddled and confusing. There are exceptions, of course, and there is a tiny number of “guerilla thinkers” who continue to do real science (Google Seth Lloyd). For example, here’s a wonderful lecture by Ron Garret demystifying the most “bizarre” aspects of QM:
Clayton -
Falsifiability is integral to the scientific method. The mathematics of physics is not merely mathematics. At the subatomic levels, the energy levels are not continuous as classical physics would indicate. Quantization is indeed a fact of reality. The mathematics incorporates this truth into the quantum theory. That’s the physical connection.
The propagation of light is medium(density)-dependent. The highest observed and analytical value is c.
Your assumption that physics needs to be more universally understandable is a bit silly. If this is true, then neurosurgery should become increasingly more lucid to the masses, too.
No, it really isn’t… the positivists and empiricists have whipped themselves into a frenzy over falsifiability (the contrary of verifiability) because of their nonsensical epistemology.
Any resonant system exhibits quantization. The quantization of energy does not tell us that the world is “fundamentally discrete” as many popularizers of QM claim. And yes, the mathematics of physics is merely mathematics. That’s the whole point. Mathematics is only a tool that is (sometimes) useful in grokking the phenomena, nothing more.
The analytical value of c says nothing about the correctness of c as the speed limit of light.
Who said anything about the masses? The experts themselves are confused! Anyone who can say, without blinking and without qualification, “mass bends space and time”, is deeply confused. All the experts say this. They’re all confused. I’m not saying they’re not doing science at all but modern science is hobbled by what Hal Lewis calls “the money flood”… all research is directed to a very narrow target and the orthodox notions of where the breakthroughs will likely be are virtually unchallengeable and, thus, rigidify science and modern notions of the natural world.
Clayton -
Clayton, a 1-d line can be curved in a 2-d plane and in a 3-d space. A 2-d plane can be curved in a 3-d space. Any N-d space can be curved in a (N+k)-d space, for any k > 0. If we define existence as: “being (or being able to interfere with) a 3-d object in 3-d space”, then I don’t see why N-d objects (where N=/=3) could not interfere with 3-d objects in 3-d space even though their “existence” spans dimensions below/beyond 3-d space.
Why is it inconceivable that 3-d space (the only one we are able to perceive as 3-d beings) could be curved in N-d space (for N>3)? Humans use logic/reason to inter/extrapolate the existence of things that are not apparent to their senses all the time (the cow behind the barn).
What am I missing?
Perhaps this should be a separate thread and leave this one for holiday dinner stories.
There is an important distinction between my thinking of “the cow behind the barn” and, for example, a 4-dimensional object.
In the first case, I can think of the cow by imagining a sort of cutaway diagram of the cow showing through from behind the barn, as if the walls were see-through. Or I can mentally imagine quickly going behind the barn and having the cow come into view.
But how about a 4D object? Well, some claim they can imagine such an object, like a tesseract, but most seem to claim it is impossible to visualize. This presents a serious problem for anyone even talking about 4D objects: how is anyone even supposed to be able to interpret those words?
And to those who claim it cannot be visualized, what’s going on in your own head when you utter the words “4D object” or “tesseract”? Certainly not a visual, so what - a sound, a smell, a feel? If the speaker himself cannot even comprehend whatever the words refer to, how is that different than speaking nonsense?
Well put.
Well, in a way, practically nothing from math can be visualized, either.
Or at least, not to any degree of accuracy.
How do you visualize 345/567?
Indeed.
A lecturer I saw recently said it this way: “Anyone who accepts modern science believes in the existence of at least one direction that one cannot point.” There is no more succinct way to put it than that.
I fully comprehend the idea of a surface being curved in higher dimensions but the point is that the theoretical physicists conflate ordinary and technical language. A “dimension” of “space” means one of the three orthogonal directions that one can point. If mass-energy equations can more elegantly be written down as if the world has an extra, unseen dimension, so be it. And I fully grant the mathematicians the right to use the words “space” and “dimension” in a specialized sense, they just need to always be clear that the “extra” dimensions that they “discover” are, in fact, constructs that do not stand on a par with the three directions of Euclidean, perceptual space.
One way to “visualize” a 4-d surface is as a 3D colored volume. It’s not perfect, nor does it comprehend the “structure” of 4D but it’s good enough for some applications.
Clayton -
But “visualization” isn’t the issue… the issue is that real space is a human category but non-Euclidean, non-3D mathematical spaces can only be “mapped” to real space through some kind of mathematical “transform” - that is, only Euclidean, 3D space (for all its mathematical shortcomings) can be mapped to real (physical) space without translation.
Clayton -
Anyone ever see that Marx brothers movie where at the end people keep having a boring conversation and Harpo makes a funny face, walks out and gets hammered everytime someone does it (The Coconauts I think?)? I couldn’t find a clip of it on you tube.
Anyway, I kind of do that anytime I’m stuck listening to jackass’ talking / arguing on their soapbox and I have the option of opting for liquor. This is most political conversations for me, including libertarian ones.