Assertion of an "absolute now" from "What is 'spacetime' really"

[Michael Mooney]

Originally Posted by freeztar

I agree with jedaisoul. It gets to the heart of the ontological argument presented.
"Events" describe change. We may label such events, or change, as time. But, when we do so, it is important to realize that it is not "time" that is changing.

Where do you stand on "time dilation?"
How 'bout space contraction/expansion?

What are "time and space anyway?" Or has this question already been answered beyond all shadow of a doubt?
(The thread remains closed at this posting, so maybe admin. considers the question resolved.)
Michael

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by watcher

perhaps you feel that our theories and equations need no physical meaning or doesn't have the power to describe reality. perhaps the utility of our theories should be in its power to predict. ... if our theories do not point to realities, how come ...

Alfred Korzybski to the rescue!

In General Semantics, we disengage this dilemma by establishing TWO semantic objects, where only ONE was in use previously, but being used in TWO different ways.

"Space-time" shall be defined as the mathematical structure that humans have devised to represent and analyze "Space-time". This mathematical structure includes such concepts as "locations", "events" and "dimensions".

"Space-time" shall be defined as the name given to the associated properties or attributes of Reality that we experience as "distance", "area", "volume", "duration", "occurrence" and "simultaneity".

"Space-time" has no physical existence. It is merely a construct. But, it is extremely useful, because we humans have spent centuries crafting it to be useful.

"Space-time" is real; it is the Reality we live in, but it knows nothing about "locations", "events" and "dimensions".

However, if you want to solve problems in "Space-time", like predicting when something will occur, or where, then you must use "Space-time".

[maddog]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

Alfred Korzybski to the rescue!
...

"Space-time" has no physical existence. It is merely a construct. But, it is extremely useful, because we humans have spent centuries crafting it to be useful. ...

Seem like an echo, or Deja' Vu or something... Didn't I say about 10 or times in the other
thread.

Great Job Pyrotex !!! I do hope this simplifies that...

maddog

[HydrogenBond]

If space-time is a construct, when gravity bends space-time, does than imply reality is not what is bending, but only the construct? If this was true, it would imply the mind gets bent, creating the impression reality is bending.

[Michael Mooney]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

Alfred Korzybski to the rescue!

In General Semantics, we disengage this dilemma by establishing TWO semantic objects, where only ONE was in use previously, but being used in TWO different ways.

"Space-time" shall be defined as the mathematical structure that humans have devised to represent and analyze "Space-time". This mathematical structure includes such concepts as "locations", "events" and "dimensions".

"Space-time" shall be defined as the name given to the associated properties or attributes of Reality that we experience as "distance", "area", "volume", "duration", "occurrence" and "simultaneity".

"Space-time" has no physical existence. It is merely a construct. But, it is extremely useful, because we humans have spent centuries crafting it to be useful.

"Space-time" is real; it is the Reality we live in, but it knows nothing about "locations", "events" and "dimensions".

However, if you want to solve problems in "Space-time", like predicting when something will occur, or where, then you must use "Space-time".

Thank you Pyrotex. If anyone can find one of my statements in the "spacetime" thread which contradicts the above, please inform me and maybe we can still discuss the ontology of "spacetime" somehow somewhere, even with the appropriate thread remaining closed... and my last two posts there still under house arrest!

The last statement quoted above is a statement of the obvious: If you want to predict when something will occur , you must locate the event in time... without making "it" (time) some "thing"... , and if you want to designate an event/object's location you will need to specify "where" it is. Ontologically, of course, neither designation... of the when or the where makes time or space into a "thing"....
Which was the central point of my whole "spacetime" thread.

BTW... Your further commentaries on spacetime in this thread, Pyrotex, ... allowed as such is preferential treatment for you as a moderator, while I still am not allowed to have my last two posts in the locked thread posted. (To whom it may concern.)

Michael

[arkain101]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

If space-time is a construct, when gravity bends space-time, does than imply reality is not what is bending, but only the construct? If this was true, it would imply the mind gets bent, creating the impression reality is bending.

In a sense, yes, the bending is only realized by the scale of reality produced by 'the mind'; the scale of the macroscopic. This does not mean that gravity is in the mind, it only suggests that picture we produce in the macroscopic is in the mind, while the incredibly small is a much different picture.

The extent I can carry you into the world of the very, very small is limited, based on my knowledge. However, lets think for a moment of space,time, and the universe we are familiar with. There is a lot happening at the scale of the very, very small. It is a body of potential; and what I mean by this is that quite literally when we pick out any 'object' (which we can think of as material or momentum) the direction it moves, and the velocity it travels can have interpretations of "states", relative to other specific locations. Even on the macroscopic scale, what we think as persistent matter -take a sphere in space- can have as different directions of travel, length, and passage of time as their are differentiating observers of the object. Relativity treats an observers frame as non-special, and everything the observer observes, can never be more special than any other observers frame. This exemplifies the notion that what we observe is a potential to produce relative form.


Searching for an online source of information, I've come across this, which helps in some way.

Spacetime May Have Fractal Properties on a Quantum Scale

Compared to a Euclidean sphere, a quantum sphere’s curvature and uncertainty make it a noncommutative space. When calculating the spectral dimension of the quantum sphere, Benedetti found that it closely resembles a standard sphere on large scales; however, as the scale decreases, the dimensions of the quantum sphere deviate and go down to zero. He describes this phenomenon as a signature of the fuzziness, or uncertainty, of the quantum sphere, and also as resulting from fractal behavior at small scales.

In the second kind of space, k-Minkowski spacetime, the dimensions also deviate from the constant behavior of classical Minkowski spacetime. While the latter always has four dimensions, independent of the scale, the number of dimensions in the quantum version decreases to three as a function of the scale. In both k-Minkowski spacetime and the quantum sphere, the dimensionality becomes non-integral, which is a typical signature of fractal geometry.........................................

The main problem with gravity is that apparently it cannot be quantized as other field theories; in jargon it is said to be non-renormalizable,” he said. “This problem is specific to four-dimensional spacetime. If spacetime had only two dimensions, then quantum gravity would be much simpler and treatable. The problem with a two-dimensional theory is that it is unphysical, as we see four dimensions at our scales. Things can be solved combining four and two dimensions at different scales. That is, if gravity itself provides a mechanism by which the dimension of spacetime depends on the scale at which we probe it (four at our and larger scales and two at very short scales), then we could have a physical theory (compatible with observations) that is free of quantum (short scale) troubles.”

Fractals aside, it talks about scale, and the different ways in which reality can be represented and/or though as.

There is only ONE place things travel slowly (by slowly I mean significantly less than C) and that is in the mind. For example, when our mind identifies an object like sphere in space, even those that object is 99.99% empty space, we treat it as one entity. However, if we were to perform the same methodology on the macroscopic would could consider that every body in out local solar system is one overall object. Every rock, gas cloud, dust particle, planet, moon, and chuck of ice, we could exclude their "individuality" and imagine the overall shape of all these objects as a squished sphere. If we were to treat ourselves as giants, and imagine that our solar system of objects all emitted a huge amount of photons, our Giant eyeball light years away, could in the same methodology -as we treat objects- , treat our solar system like one object.

What one can imagine to observe of "space-time" is dependent on the scale that we attempt to interpret reality. It is not possible to observe space-time in the same experience as we do in our macroscopic respect. For example, if we are to imagine hitching a ride with an electron; our macroscopic scale can not blend or make this kind of direction transition into the sub-atomic scale of reality, nor should we expect it to. We form our picture of solid state, persistent reality, through a hertz machine (our body). We take super high frequencies of meaningless information, and convert them. Our body, with all of its senses, takes time separated snap shots of this incredibly densely packed information of both light and matter and compiles an averaged assumption product out of it. For example; The strumming of a string on a guitar, our brain doesnt count the number of individual ocillations by means of a number, it summarizes those numbers into a average product we experience as a pitch; Our eyes essentially take snap shots of information in the range of 60hertz(to my knowledge), and our brain is adapted to only require that much data per second to produce a smooth coherent process and expectation of time. A complex process is involved for our vision, but we can see how this is true with our computer screens and films. Films can run as low as 15frames per second and our brain will make coherence of the information, and by doing so it will predict direction and velocity of objects and motion giving us a scene. Meanwhile, there is trillions of smaller values of 'packets' of information being entirely excluded in our production of a mental construct space-time universe.

This is why I stress, that we should expect reality on smaller scales to display incredible inconsistencies with our mind has come to assume the nature of reality. Due to this, we shouldnt doubt inconsistencies, or close our view of what other interpretations can tell us about the nature of, well, nature.

All of this being said, I can summarize a response;

when gravity bends space-time, does that imply reality is not what is bending, but only the construct?

Our construct model of our typical impression of space-time imagines a way in which it is bent (space-time), but the ways we can imagine it is bent or bending, is not limited to our typical impression and can be expressed in a number of ways.

I tried to avoid speculation, but if I were to speculate for a moment, I would suggest to you to think of the universe as shrinking and bending and expanding and dilating millions of times per second, and with so much noise of this change and dynamic perspective of reality, our macroscopic sense of reality simply can't be imagined at the same time, it fades out of meaning. With so much dynamic states at the small scale, anything persistent (akin to the macroscopic) can be relatively thought of as meaningless, because in this small scale no state lasts for even a brief moment... in the same kind of way we picture quantum weirdness the very small as somewhat ghostly and beyond, because it just does not blend with our mental model of reality.

We use tools to observe reality. Our minds are one of these tools, and it produces specific kinds of results. Other tools are high accuracy technology that produces entirely different results. We then produce theories based on what tools can tell us, but we should recognize which tool we are using when talking about a result.

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

If space-time is a construct, when gravity bends space-time, does than imply reality is not what is bending, but only the construct? If this was true, it would imply the mind gets bent, creating the impression reality is bending.

Well, making sure we keep our semantic objects straight, gravity appears to have an observable affect on nearby objects and their behavior. So, we can say, that gravity affects Space-Time.

To understand how gravity affects Space-Time, we discover that we must "bend" Space-Time -- for only in this way can our mathematical construct give the observed behaviors and make correct predictions.

Gravity definately does something to Space-Time. We "bend" Space-Time so that the construct accurately models the Reality.

Therefore, we are justified in saying that Gravity "bends" Space-Time.

[Michael Mooney]

Pyrotex:

]Well, making sure we keep our semantic objects straight, gravity appears to have an observable affect on nearby objects and their behavior. So, we can say, that gravity affects Space-Time.

Well... if space is empty volume (note the "if" as a philosophical/ontological premise)_ then it is not an entity and therefore can not be effected by mass's gravity.
*if* that is true (and it may well be in spite of your belief to the contrary) then masses pull on on all other masses inversely with the square of the distance between them and directly with their massiveness. (Just like we learned in high school.)
In this case, space is still no "thing" (not something effected by gravity)

To understand how gravity affects Space-Time, we discover that we must "bend" Space-Time -- for only in this way can our mathematical construct give the observed behaviors and make correct predictions.

You are a True Believer in the mythical fabric "spacetime," and you are here proselytizing that mainstream *dogma* of that invention by none other than the *revered* Einstein and his mentor in this invention, Minkowski.

Gravity definately does something to Space-Time. We "bend" Space-Time so that the construct accurately models the Reality.

Gravity definitely is the cosmic force of attraction among all masses. Spacetime remains a mythical fabric. I counsel everyone here to refrain from from accepting Pyrotex's statements above as establisshed facts!

All observable gravitational phenomena can better be understood by disregarding the assumption that 'spacetime" is a malleable entity and realizing that "action at a distance" happens without a fabricated... well... fabric... as a medium between masses.

Therefore, we are justified in saying that Gravity "bends" Space-Time.

You have just completed an argument based on either false or debatable assumptions (reifying spacetime) and called that "justified."
Have you even grasped after all those "spacetime" pages what an ontological inquiry *is?* It does not assume that your above premise is correct.
I'll send you my notes from a graduate student class on "Logic and the Scientific Method" if you need remedial reading on the subject.

Michael

[maddog]

Originally Posted by arkain101

There is only ONE place things travel slowly (by slowly I mean significantly less than C) and that is in the mind. For example, when our mind identifies an object like sphere in space, even those that object is 99.99% empty space, we treat it as one entity. However, if we were to perform the same methodology on the macroscopic would could consider that every body in out local solar system is one overall object.

I would question that. This not to invalidate your statement. It is just that I conjecture
that maybe our consciousness is more than signals traveling down neurons. I have no
physics to back this up. Pure conjecture at this point. Were to happen from QM it would
require that said "extra-sensory" communication would require to be done as Virtual particles.
You are no longer required to meet the C speed Law.

Just similar the lyrics of a Moody Blues song "Thinking is the Fastest way to Travel...".

maddog

[maddog]

Originally Posted by Michael Mooney

You are a True Believer in the mythical fabric "spacetime," and you are here proselytizing that mainstream *dogma* of that invention by none other than the *revered* Einstein and his mentor in this invention, Minkowski.

Just as much as you are a True Believerof Euclid....

Originally Posted by Michael Mooney

Gravity definitely is the cosmic force of attraction among all masses. Spacetime remains a mythical fabric. I counsel everyone here to refrain from from accepting Pyrotex's statements above as establisshed facts!

So now you are claiming "Constructs" or "Models" are "Mythical". How odd. True in that
all these have something in common. They are concepts only held with the brains of humans. The difference is that Myths are concepts of "old" from the past. Constructs/Models
are concepts of current in the present and used (have utility). Were you to shoot an arrow
as well as orate, I would dare say whether you could "hit the broadside of a barn".

maddog