Philosophy Now Forum

Scott Mayers wrote:I didn't say it was always 'dimensionless'. But you are correct that I need to supply the philosophical argument prior to this and demonstrate how others arise. I already have the answer and a full first draft of my theory complete. I can't argue against the Higgs field but believe this can be derived from Einstein's initial interpretation of space-time. I'm with Obvious Leo here that a simpler explanation applies. Gravity can be reduced to another known phenomena: a Kasimir effect.

Yep. I'll go for parsimony every time; personally, I think gravity can be explained as refraction, if you assume that there is some physically 'real' stuff, a field of some sort, the kind of thing that physicists, as you note, are too coy to call aether. I'd be interested to see how you think the Casimir effect can work over the distances that gravity clearly does.

Scott Mayers wrote:When you reduce everything absolutely, you achieve a structural form of information at a point which can describe each point in space as having a quantized set of directions defined by both linear and circular such that the sum 'speeds' (not simply velocity) add up to each point as moving constant. This is my own addition to the idea that nothing goes faster than the speed of light. Rather everything at every point exchanges information at this rate but through different directions.

If we reduce mass to a point "on it" these are represented as real spin directions that create curves, whereas non-material points act in simple vector directions at a point. Since these points lack "mass", this directional vector is a pure momentum of information. Thus, I describe the difference between matter and energies (which reduce to momentum at a point where it can be intuitively described as an electromagnetic wave with infinite frequency and which loses its magnetic property at that rate) as perpendicular phenomena. The circular direction (spin of a point) acts as another dimension after the vector one. If a point has all spin, it is pure matter at a point; if it has no spin but only straight-lined vector, it is pure momentum (energy without material velocity) and all that is in between are variations of energy (and matter). The information of each of the three linear directions plus the spin directions add up to a constant. This is part of my own developing theory and must be based on a re-inspection of logic.

This makes both relativity and QM fit upon the correct interpretations.

You're on the right track, Scott, but you need to take Occam's razor to these ideas with a vengeance. You said elsewhere that you agreed with me when I stated that 3 dimensional space is a construct of human consciousness and not a physical property of the universe. If this is true then these dimensions can have no place in any true physical model. Chuck them in the bin and all will become clear. Reality is a PROCESS and processes occur only in time.

Obvious Leo wrote:Reality is a PROCESS and processes occur only in time.

That's one way of looking at it. Alternatively, there are processes and it is by counting them that we get the illusion of time: the orbit or spin of the Earth, swinging pendulums, the vibration of atoms. You can chart processes and events using three spatial dimensions, ie left a bit, back a bit, up a bit or something, but it doesn't follow that dimensions are real. x, y and z will give you the location, but to identify a particular event in that location, you need to add t, last Tuesday, for instance. All coordinates are relative to any point you take as your starting point. In other words, you can dump the 'dimesion' of time too.

uwot wrote:

Obvious Leo wrote:Reality is a PROCESS and processes occur only in time.

That's one way of looking at it. Alternatively, there are processes and it is by counting them that we get the illusion of time: the orbit or spin of the Earth, swinging pendulums, the vibration of atoms. You can chart processes and events using three spatial dimensions, ie left a bit, back a bit, up a bit or something, but it doesn't follow that dimensions are real. x, y and z will give you the location, but to identify a particular event in that location, you need to add t, last Tuesday, for instance. All coordinates are relative to any point you take as your starting point. In other words, you can dump the 'dimesion' of time too.

If you deny the ontological reality of the time dimension then how do you account for the fact that our universe is comprehensible? In fact this was one of Einstein's deepest misgivings about the 4D continuum and its implied eternalism.

"The most Incomprehensible thing about our universe is the fact that it is comprehensible"....Albert Einstein.

Like anybody with a lick of sense Einstein made no distinction between our notions of time, change and causation, merely regarding them as three different ways of expressing the same thing. He also provided us with the only useful definition of time I've ever seen as well.

"Time is what clocks measure".....Albert Einstein.

If our clocks are not measuring the passing of time then what are they measuring, uwot? How can our universe evolve from the simple to the complex if effects are not preceded by their causes in an orderly and causal manner? In the absence of time how do you account for your own existence? Why can't time be exactly what it appears to be, an infinite sequence of moments?

I have many more such questions which make the argument for the passing of time as a physically real phenomenon and trotting out a few tired old mathematical models which seem to suggest otherwise does not constitute an argument when those models are describing a universe which makes no sense. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and no such proof has ever been presented.

Obvious Leo wrote:If our clocks are not measuring the passing of time then what are they measuring, uwot?

They are not really measuring anything; clocks count events, the 'vibrations' of atoms for example. As I point out in my blog ( http://willibouwman.blogspot.co.uk/2014 ... ou-go.html ) there is an obvious reason why less events happen the faster you go, as predicted by Special Relativity. I haven't got round to General Relativity in the blog, but in my view, the dilation of time experienced in gravitational fields is due to 'spacetime', the 'aether', whatever you want to call the stuff the universe is made of, being denser around matter (hence gravity is refraction).

uwot wrote:They are not really measuring anything; clocks count events, the 'vibrations' of atoms for example.

Exactly. The speed at which time passes could equally as well be defined as the speed at which events can occur, or the rate at which a physical entity can change its form. However Einstein's mass/energy equivalence principle tells us that matter is simply an emergent property of energy. In a very simplistic way we might say that a given sub-atomic particle is merely a metric for a specific quantity of massless energy which is organising itself in a particular way. We know as an absolute certainty that all massless energy moves at the speed of light which means that sub-atomic particles must be continuously changing their form at the speed of light. This means that the speed of light and the speed at which time passes are one and the same thing. Incidentally this proposition contradicts nothing claimed by modern physics but it is a paradigm shift in the way to think the world. It means that the universe is continuously being created at the speed of light, a conclusion so blindingly obvious that a whole century of physics has gone by without anybody noticing it. The universe is not a place, it is an EVENT.

I have no comment to make about your aether theory except that no evidence for such a substance exists.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote:When you reduce everything absolutely, you achieve a structural form of information at a point which can describe each point in space as having a quantized set of directions defined by both linear and circular such that the sum 'speeds' (not simply velocity) add up to each point as moving constant. This is my own addition to the idea that nothing goes faster than the speed of light. Rather everything at every point exchanges information at this rate but through different directions.

If we reduce mass to a point "on it" these are represented as real spin directions that create curves, whereas non-material points act in simple vector directions at a point. Since these points lack "mass", this directional vector is a pure momentum of information. Thus, I describe the difference between matter and energies (which reduce to momentum at a point where it can be intuitively described as an electromagnetic wave with infinite frequency and which loses its magnetic property at that rate) as perpendicular phenomena. The circular direction (spin of a point) acts as another dimension after the vector one. If a point has all spin, it is pure matter at a point; if it has no spin but only straight-lined vector, it is pure momentum (energy without material velocity) and all that is in between are variations of energy (and matter). The information of each of the three linear directions plus the spin directions add up to a constant. This is part of my own developing theory and must be based on a re-inspection of logic.

This makes both relativity and QM fit upon the correct interpretations.

You're on the right track, Scott, but you need to take Occam's razor to these ideas with a vengeance. You said elsewhere that you agreed with me when I stated that 3 dimensional space is a construct of human consciousness and not a physical property of the universe. If this is true then these dimensions can have no place in any true physical model. Chuck them in the bin and all will become clear. Reality is a PROCESS and processes occur only in time.

I don't recall your point on 3 dim space as a human conscious construct and don't support that interpretation. I believe time as a property as a resulting effect defined by another dimension and can be understood as a continuous static set of 'frames' of three dimensions that have consistency. I responded to your philosophy that doubts any meaning to reality or existence without time in two different threads but the one I expanded on this was lost upon attempting to publish.

Time is a measure of continuous 'moments' but unless you define a 'moment' as always consisting of some minimal absolute unit, it reduces to an event that becomes zero time or point of many. And thus all time is no different than Euclid's initial description of a point as that which has no space extended to defining a static 'frame' of three dimensions as a point in the time line as another geometric measure. The points are pre-required to create a line, a line is prerequired to form a plane, a plane is pre-requisite for a static three-dimensional 'frame' and, thus, these three-dimensional frames are prerequisite for time, and so on.

uwot wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote:I didn't say it was always 'dimensionless'. But you are correct that I need to supply the philosophical argument prior to this and demonstrate how others arise. I already have the answer and a full first draft of my theory complete. I can't argue against the Higgs field but believe this can be derived from Einstein's initial interpretation of space-time. I'm with Obvious Leo here that a simpler explanation applies. Gravity can be reduced to another known phenomena: a Kasimir effect.

Yep. I'll go for parsimony every time; personally, I think gravity can be explained as refraction, if you assume that there is some physically 'real' stuff, a field of some sort, the kind of thing that physicists, as you note, are too coy to call aether. I'd be interested to see how you think the Casimir effect can work over the distances that gravity clearly does.

I missed this before I posted above. I partially agree with you that gravity is a type of 'refraction'. But this is due to the Casimir (I thought of whether I spelled this later upon reflection.) Effect. In my theory, a kind of 'refraction' occurs when a momentum-line (not actually momentum since it loses the quality of having mass) meets a curved line. If it hits it from the concave side of such curves, the 'side' of such strings on this side is greater than the convex side on the opposite side. Thus the information cannot simply transfer through the curve and retain the same direction because the point on that curve is still trying to maintain its own movement through the curve and so alters the direction of the linear information's direction. This is the same effect as refraction. The Casimir effect can only be observed on a small scale; since gravity is just as weak, we can't see this except on such small levels as is presented through these experiments. They use a vacuum with separated foils of material that attract one another. When you measure universal gravitation, you can take use a balanced bar suspended by a string with small masses on both ends and two fixed masses as:
This demonstrates how both relate. See Casimir Effect:

Scott Mayers wrote:Time is a measure of continuous 'moments' but unless you define a 'moment' as always consisting of some minimal absolute unit,

This was already done a century ago. Time does have a minimum possible unit value called the Planck interval and it has been very precisely calculated as 5.4 x 10(-44) seconds. However this is not an absolute value because it is entirely determined by gravity, which is continuous all the way down to the Planck scale, which means that each moment of time exists solely in its own referential frame. Minkowski's co-ordinate time is a very useful mathematical convenience but GR shows us that it is a mythical abstraction.

Scott Mayers wrote:And thus all time is no different than Euclid's initial description of a point as that which has no space extended to defining a static 'frame' of three dimensions as a point in the time line as another geometric measure. The points are pre-required to create a line, a line is prerequired to form a plane, a plane is pre-requisite for a static three-dimensional 'frame' and, thus, these three-dimensional frames are prerequisite for time, and so on.

You're simply using the model to define reality rather than relying on reality to define the model. Nowadays logical positivism has been softened somewhat and replaced by the idea of model-dependent realism but it makes the same Platonist error and assumes that the map is synonymous with the territory. In fact the Standard Model only works if the sub-atomic particles are regarded as zero-dimensional points with no spatial extension, which makes it a significant improvement on traditional QM but utterly incompatible with GR. If the 3 spatial dimensions are defined solely as observer constructs then this incompatibility disappears.

On the grounds of Occam economy, why should this explanation not be preferred? It certainly offers a very simple explanation for the Casimir effect!!

Try this as a thought experiment and you may be able to get what I'm banging on about. Think of yourself as a vast collection of atoms configured in a particular way which defines you as YOU. You are not defined by what these atoms are because every physical entity in the cosmos can be specified in terms of much the same atoms. Therefore you are defined in terms of what these atoms ARE DOING. YOU ARE THE EMERGENT CONSEQUENCE OF A DYNAMIC PROCESS. This means that the YOU that is YOU is continuously changing into a new YOU. How fast is this process occurring? To understand this you'll need to get right inside the atom because atoms change at the speed of light. This means YOU are changing at the speed of light. However this is where nature reveals her deepest and most important secret because the atoms in your head are changing faster than the atoms in your feet, an incontrovertible fact revealed by GR. The speed of light is not only faster at your head than it is at your feet it is the most inconstant speed in the universe, being variable all the way down to the Planck scale. The speed of light is determined by gravity, the cosmic metronome, and it is exactly the same physical construct as the speed of time. This means that every single sub-atomic particle in your body is changing according to its own temporal imperative and exists only in its own temporal referential frame. You are quite literally COMING INTO EXISTENCE at a speed which is inconstant all the way down to the Planck scale.

You should be very grateful for this fact because it is this simple truth which is holding you onto the surface of the planet.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote:Time is a measure of continuous 'moments' but unless you define a 'moment' as always consisting of some minimal absolute unit,

This was already done a century ago. Time does have a minimum possible unit value called the Planck interval and it has been very precisely calculated as 5.4 x 10(-44) seconds. However this is not an absolute value because it is entirely determined by gravity, which is continuous all the way down to the Planck scale, which means that each moment of time exists solely in its own referential frame. Minkowski's co-ordinate time is a very useful mathematical convenience but GR shows us that it is a mythical abstraction.

If time had an absolute minimum measure, even this 'quantized' size would have to act in discrete 'jumps' as unit time in wholes and appear indistinct as a point without time. That is, you couldn't have a continuous flow to the next moment without begging that each new moment consists of degrees of size that goes from zero to this "Planck interval" for each following moment.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote:And thus all time is no different than Euclid's initial description of a point as that which has no space extended to defining a static 'frame' of three dimensions as a point in the time line as another geometric measure. The points are pre-required to create a line, a line is prerequired to form a plane, a plane is pre-requisite for a static three-dimensional 'frame' and, thus, these three-dimensional frames are prerequisite for time, and so on.

You're simply using the model to define reality rather than relying on reality to define the model.

Reality is a collection of particular things or events of which the common factors can be reduced to a definition classifying anything else that fits the form (formula) that represents a set of general things. I can, for instance, create a term or symbol to map onto one unique and real referent by denoting it (pointing to it). I might point to a chair and speak the word, "chair", to beg you to understand the association. But while the symbol is required for me to communicate this later on if I use it, the term, "chair" is only meant to remind you semantically of the thing I was originally pointing to. You might deny that the word, as a model, is itself NOT real but respect that the referent it belongs to IS.

This is fine for one unique object I labelled as, "chair". But assume this denoted chair is made of wood. Then this first "chair" I reference seems to include all that the object is. But then we come across another object made of iron to which I also beg you to call, "chair". Thus the thing I'm denoting is also real by observing but in order for you to interpret this meaningfully, you must re-interpret the meaning of "chair" to represent the common factors between the two. Does this now change your interpretation that the reference denoted by the term is somehow not real now? ...less real? You can judge the symbol referencing the denoted realities you don't deny as existing, so what is wrong with using reference symbols to map onto a general formula that minimally describes a class of things without having to denote each one. This general formula itself is thus just as real as the original objects. They just reduce the efforts to have to point to each and every existing object that can be referred to by the symbol. So it is you who is confusing the model for reality since you presume the symbols of language we use to describe something as what Platonic "forms" refer to. These 'forms' reference any of a potentially infinite things, places, events uniquely.

Now, if I died, my personal understanding of interpreting meaning even upon any real particular chair is lost. But does this assure me that even this given "chair" is no longer existent? It should be meaningless now to me since I have no conscious mind to be able to judge one way or the other. But let's say I don't die but simply walk out of the room where that chair was. Now I actually still lose actual capacity to denote this object and so does that chair no longer exist? I think you can see that this kind of thinking reduces to a form of solipsism.

On the other hand, I can use the term, "chair" to communicate the previous denoted chair. The idea is still the real chair that I'm using a symbol to remind you of that thing. And just as I showed how you can further add more objects I denote as "chair"s, for each one, the form reduces to only describing those principles that they have in common AND those principles that they differentiate each member commonly. The last factor that such a term must do is to mutually exhaust all possible differently denoted object we refer to as "chairs". This is what a formal definition in logic does. Thus, the definition exists if it is based upon at least some real sample we initially can denote. This means that we cannot simply create a definition of "God" that references the historical supreme being that acts with supernatural powers and assert that it is certainly real. Such a definition can refer to ideas. But where there are definitions that point to forms of reality we can sample, then the idea or form still indirectly denotes the referent (called, connotation).

Since I've had real samples of "chairs" I can be certain that the idea that a chair can exist even where I'm not directly witnessing one by my senses also exist.

Obvious Leo wrote: Nowadays logical positivism has been softened somewhat and replaced by the idea of model-dependent realism but it makes the same Platonist error and assumes that the map is synonymous with the territory. In fact the Standard Model only works if the sub-atomic particles are regarded as zero-dimensional points with no spatial extension, which makes it a significant improvement on traditional QM but utterly incompatible with GR. If the 3 spatial dimensions are defined solely as observer constructs then this incompatibility disappears.

I've already demonstrated how the map is only an indirect reference to the real territory which is communicated by its 'form' and how it is you misinterpreting this fact.

As to space, I'm not sure why you'd deny the three spacial dimensions yet accept time. To understand time requires being able to reference any frame of experience and comparing it to another that at least has something in that frame with at least some minimal difference in spacial description. But these 'frames' are three-dimensional factors. Time itself isn't any more real if you doubt ideas.

[quote="Obvious Leo]
Try this as a thought experiment and you may be able to get what I'm banging on about. Think of yourself as a vast collection of atoms configured in a particular way which defines you as YOU. You are not defined by what these atoms are because every physical entity in the cosmos can be specified in terms of much the same atoms. Therefore you are defined in terms of what these atoms ARE DOING.[/quote]
This is not complete. You are defined by the particular form by a minimal description of all dimensions which also includes time. Time describes change. But if you do not have two different frames in 3-dimensions to compare what is 'time' mean without?

Scott Mayers wrote:If time had an absolute minimum measure, even this 'quantized' size would have to act in discrete 'jumps' as unit time in wholes and appear indistinct as a point without time. That is, you couldn't have a continuous flow to the next moment without begging that each new moment consists of degrees of size that goes from zero to this "Planck interval" for each following moment.

Have a chocolate, Scott, because you're absolutely 100% correct and you now understand what quantum gravity is. However you mustn't get too carried away because this was already well known by the pre-Socratics and carefully explained by Zeno's paradox. Time cannot be infinitely divisible and since time and gravity bear a precise mathematical relationship to each other which is inversely logarithmic in its nature then gravity cannot be infinitely divisible either. Time and gravity are merely two different ways of expressing the same fundamental truth of nature and can thus be quantised equivalently. In my philosophy I call this fundamental unit of physical reality a MONAD, and it is the only thing in the universe which can be said to objectively exist. The monad is the ding und sich.

I don't share your Platonist fantasies about the nature of objects. The chairness of a chair is no more a property of the chair than the quarkness of the quark is a property of the quark. You seem to think that our cognition is specified by the objects we observe but I claim the exact opposite. It is not our objects which specify our cognition but our cognition which specifies our objects. This is mainstream orthodoxy in every science except physics, a science which coincidentally makes no fucking sense.

Obvious Leo wrote:The speed at which time passes could equally as well be defined as the speed at which events can occur, or the rate at which a physical entity can change its form.

Since 1967 a second has been defined as: "The duration of 9192631770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom."

Obvious Leo wrote:However Einstein's mass/energy equivalence principle tells us that matter is simply an emergent property of energy.

What do you think that means in practical terms? What is 'energy' that it can turn into 'matter'?

Obvious Leo wrote:In a very simplistic way we might say that a given sub-atomic particle is merely a metric for a specific quantity of massless energy which is organising itself in a particular way.

Well, 'massless energy' is essentially an 'excitation' moving through a Quantum Field, according to the theory. It's 'mass' depends on how it interacts with the Higgs Field, again; according to the theory.

Obvious Leo wrote:We know as an absolute certainty that all massless energy moves at the speed of light which means that sub-atomic particles must be continuously changing their form at the speed of light.

Why should sub-atomic (do you mean fundamental?) particles be changing their form? If they change their form, they are no longer the specific set of characteristics that identifies a particular particle, but yes: any energy that transforms a particle can travel at a maximum of c.

Obvious Leo wrote:This means that the speed of light and the speed at which time passes are one and the same thing.

How does that follow?

Obvious Leo wrote:Incidentally this proposition contradicts nothing claimed by modern physics but it is a paradigm shift in the way to think the world.

Writing a story that is consistent with the observed data is easy compared to coming up with something that makes predictions for observations we are not yet aware of. Do that and the Noble Prize is in the post.

Obvious Leo wrote:It means that the universe is continuously being created at the speed of light, a conclusion so blindingly obvious that a whole century of physics has gone by without anybody noticing it. The universe is not a place, it is an EVENT.

Yes, but what is this EVENT happening to?

Obvious Leo wrote:I have no comment to make about your aether theory except that no evidence for such a substance exists.

Well there is conclusive evidence that there is no absolute aether that we are moving relative to, which has been known since Michelson-Morley. The Higgs field has been equated with 'the aether' and according to Quantum Field theories, QED and QCD, particles are excitations of 'fields'. The term field can be confusing, because it can be used to mean 'field of influence', as in the area where particular behaviour can be observed. That is similar to what you say about the 'logical positivist' basis of physics or instrumentalism/shut up and calculate. By identifying 'fields' with substances, you allow them 'physical' properties and elimininate 'spooky action at a distance'. It's only a hunch, but I think the most plausible explanation of all the phenomena that give the impression that the universe is made of something, is something the universe is actually made of.

uwot wrote:Since 1967 a second has been defined as: "The duration of 9192631770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom."

I've pointed this out many times as evidence that the duration of the second is the most inconstant time interval in the universe. It makes no difference whereabouts in the universe this clock is placed because the caesium atom will still swing between states the same number of times per second. So accurate is such a clock that if two were to be placed even 1cm apart it would be impossible to synchronise them because gravity would affect them differently. Two such clocks would show that time passes more quickly on the carpet than it does on the bare floorboards beside it. However this clock is a sundial compared with Superman's clock, which can distinguish time intervals on the Planck scale. Such a clock would show that time passes at a different speed for every sub-atomic particle in the atom because they all have different masses and they all move at different relativistic speeds. It is this inescapable fact drawn from GR which gives rise to the strong and weak nuclear forces and electro-magnetism. This is the elephant in the room of physics, the truth hidden in plain sight. THIS IS QUANTUM GRAVITY. THIS IS THE GUT. THIS IS THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING.

uwot wrote: What do you think that means in practical terms? What is 'energy' that it can turn into 'matter'?

I think to say that energy "turns into" matter is a conceptually flawed way to think of this. I prefer to say that energy "encodes for" matter or that matter is an emergent form of energy. Emergent entities are only definable by their physical properties and are thus solely observer constructs. To think of matter as objectively real bits of "stuff" is completely wrong-headed. Imagine an alien civilisation in a far-flung galaxy which evolves to the same technological level as we have. Do you seriously reckon they'll have invented the same matter particles as we have to model the world around them? The odds of this happening twice, even in a universe this huge, is infinitesimal because there are probably an infinite number of possible ways in which we could model the sub-atomic world, all of which would require different mathematical tools but all of which would work and yield testable predictions. I accept that there is such a thing as an objective reality but I do NOT accept that this reality can be modelled other than subjectively. In the final analysis physics is an exclusively subjective narrative.

uwot wrote: Well, 'massless energy' is essentially an 'excitation' moving through a Quantum Field, according to the theory. It's 'mass' depends on how it interacts with the Higgs Field, again; according to the theory.

I have no interest in aether theories because no evidence exists to support the aether. To suggest that energy behaves in accordance with the dictates of a field is an action-at-a-distance hypothesis so this ontology of fields is utterly bogus in the absence of an aether because it places effects before their causes. Matter and energy behave according to the dictates of gravity and for no other reason. It is this behaviour which the observer models as a "field" but the field itself does not exist. Physicists can invent as many particles, fields and forces as they choose to describe their observations because their paradigm of model-dependent realism is simply "physics is what works". Don't make the mistake of equating the map with the territory. All this quantum field bullshit is completely unnecessary in a spaceless model, which means that all the mind-numbing mathematics which was invented to model these non-existent fields was a spectacular waste of intellectual energy hauntingly reminiscent of Ptolemy's epicycles.

uwot wrote: Why should sub-atomic (do you mean fundamental?) particles be changing their form?

To suggest that sub-atomic particles are fundamental entities is absurd because they each have different physical properties and they each move slower than c. Clearly these properties are being encoded for at the Planck scale, which is 20 orders of magnitude smaller. The string theorists were barking up the wrong tree altogether but I'll give credit where it's due all the same. They knew bloody well that the particles of the Standard Model were NOT fundamental.

uwot wrote:If they change their form, they are no longer the specific set of characteristics that identifies a particular particle, but yes: any energy that transforms a particle can travel at a maximum of c.

This is more like it because it gets closer to the confusing notion of the so-called "quantum uncertainty". Think of a particle as literally changing into a different particle at the speed of light and you'll get an idea of what's happening at the Planck scale. The particle has emergent properties which the energy which encodes for it doesn't have, a fact which Newtonian physics cannot accommodate. Then think of the particle in its emergent form doing all manner of different things as a result of these changes and you'll get an idea of how an atom is encoded for. The atom then has properties which its sub-atomic constituents doesn't have and can thus encode for molecules, etc. This is a model of a non-Newtonian world because it is entirely self-organising, completely deterministic and utterly beyond prediction. This should be a very familiar model to anybody with a reasonable knowledge of physics because galaxies operate in exactly the same way and all the hierarchical levels of reality from the Planck scale to the cosmological scale are thus nested within each other like matryoshka dolls. Such a non-linear dynamic system is exquisitely modelled in the Mandelbrot set.

uwot wrote: Obvious Leo wrote:
This means that the speed of light and the speed at which time passes are one and the same thing.


How does that follow?

The speed of time is determined by gravity and the speed of light is determined by the speed of time. Obviously light cannot travel faster than time, which was the point of my gravitational lensing thought experiment. Think of reality as a computation and think of the speed of light as the processing speed of this computation.

uwot wrote: Writing a story that is consistent with the observed data is easy compared to coming up with something that makes predictions for observations we are not yet aware of.

A very good point, and one which I am acutely aware of. However my philosophy doubles as a legitimate scientific hypothesis because it yields a testable prediction which, if validated, would unambiguously falsify current theory. It took me a lot of years to find such a prediction but as often happens in such predicaments it was actually sticking out like dog's balls all along. Think about what entanglement is if space is merely an observer effect. Unfortunately there'll be no Nobel for me in this because this is not physics and there is no category for philosophy.

uwot wrote: Yes, but what is this EVENT happening to?

The universe is itself becoming. It is the journey of information through time. Spinoza 101.

uwot wrote:Well there is conclusive evidence that there is no absolute aether that we are moving relative to, which has been known since Michelson-Morley. The Higgs field has been equated with 'the aether' and according to Quantum Field theories, QED and QCD, particles are excitations of 'fields'. The term field can be confusing, because it can be used to mean 'field of influence', as in the area where particular behaviour can be observed. That is similar to what you say about the 'logical positivist' basis of physics or instrumentalism/shut up and calculate. By identifying 'fields' with substances, you allow them 'physical' properties and elimininate 'spooky action at a distance'. It's only a hunch, but I think the most plausible explanation of all the phenomena that give the impression that the universe is made of something, is something the universe is actually made of.

Our positions are much closer than might appear at first blush. However you seem to be ignoring the role of the observer in defining the observation. In the final analysis reality is simply self-organised information which we are left to make sense of.

"The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is the fact that it is comprehensible"...Albert Einstein.

Albert didn't understand the role of the observer either, but Kant bloody did.

Obvious Leo wrote:

Scott Mayers wrote:If time had an absolute minimum measure, even this 'quantized' size would have to act in discrete 'jumps' as unit time in wholes and appear indistinct as a point without time. That is, you couldn't have a continuous flow to the next moment without begging that each new moment consists of degrees of size that goes from zero to this "Planck interval" for each following moment.

Have a chocolate, Scott, because you're absolutely 100% correct and you now understand what quantum gravity is. However you mustn't get too carried away because this was already well known by the pre-Socratics and carefully explained by Zeno's paradox. Time cannot be infinitely divisible and since time and gravity bear a precise mathematical relationship to each other which is inversely logarithmic in its nature then gravity cannot be infinitely divisible either. Time and gravity are merely two different ways of expressing the same fundamental truth of nature and can thus be quantised equivalently. In my philosophy I call this fundamental unit of physical reality a MONAD, and it is the only thing in the universe which can be said to objectively exist. The monad is the ding und sich.

I don't share your Platonist fantasies about the nature of objects. The chairness of a chair is no more a property of the chair than the quarkness of the quark is a property of the quark. You seem to think that our cognition is specified by the objects we observe but I claim the exact opposite. It is not our objects which specify our cognition but our cognition which specifies our objects. This is mainstream orthodoxy in every science except physics, a science which coincidentally makes no fucking sense.

I'm struggling to figure out your stance on physics. Note that I've begun reading your blog that you linked to me on another thread, but my response so far from what I read (about a tenth of the way through) requires me to ask you some questions. I'm having full connection problems with all my communications lately due to some relay router of my provider. So I'll wait to post later on that.

I had that chocolate, thank you. But I don't think that you understood me a I wasn't agreeing with your stance and was showing how regardless of any potential "unit" that nature defines for time, if it operates in wholes discretely, we could not perceive it since continuity is required for that. The idea would not be completely absurd (a minimum fixed unit of time), but it could not actually be realized any different than a point of no time.

It would help if I could create illustrations to aid in explaining -- and I can -- but it takes a lot of effort I'll hold off for now.

I'll try a different way to explain.

Assume some absolute measure to a "unit" of time with respect to the universe, we'll simply call, "Tunit" (for Time unit).
Nature could define this as any measure with respect to how we measure things. But if this is a fixed unit, then no such smaller unit, like (1/2 Tunit), could exist. Thus each moment would jump whole from Tunit to Tunit. But if this is the case, to us (including anything that could possibly measure it), this could ONLY be realized or measured as distinctly, zero. Thus, I'm not sure about this Planck Interval (meaning a Tunit, here) is true but am guessing that unless I inspect the origin of this, if it has meaning, I am certain that you've misinterpreted it as I cannot see how Planck would presume your interpretation. It is absolutely impossible by your interpretation.

I thought I made a good explanation of what 'form' means and you still resist interpreting it as Plato or others actually understand it. From your own interpretation, no actual chair could exist either as it is 'symbolized' by the brain (given a formula definition in our brains). That is, you couldn't even speak of anything that isn't denoted (that you can point to) in your presence.

Okay, I just looked at the Wikipedia entry. You are definitely misinterpreting this. From there,

Because the Planck time comes from dimensional analysis, which ignores constant factors, there is no reason to believe that exactly one unit of Planck time has any special physical significance. Rather, the Planck time represents a rough time scale at which quantum gravitational effects are likely to become important. The nature of those effects, and the exact time scale at which they would occur, would need to be derived from an actual theory of quantum gravity.

This asserts that it is only being used as a defined unit only by incorporating the Planck constant and the speed of light for practical purposes. It is used as a human-only definition to describe things on a quantum level.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time