Why in the world would Einstein suggest....

I have obviously overestimated your language skills. Never mind, one lives and learns.

That's okay. It happens to me too. I've once overestimated your intelligence for an entire half-second.

Threechez!

???

Anyway, empiricism is about observation, right. Who observes what? A human being (generally) observes a phenomenon, not vice versa. Empiricism also says that such observation can be consensual among people, i.e. that two people will usually read the same value from the same instrument in the same circumstances, making that reading objective or at least more than subjective. And furthermore, empiricists believe that such objective data or 'readings' should be the final arbitrers of our theoretical musings. The distinction between theory (i.e. the imagined explanation in one's mind) and data (i.e. the consensual reading of instruments) is the essence of dualism.

See new thread.

You can run, but you can't hide...

I'm waiting. Have you got lost ?
http://able2know.org/topic/268503-1

Why a new thread? This is a minor issue.

That's fine. Are you at all interested "rambling for relativity?"

I'd be curious to know, if you care to respond, Oliver, it you continue to adhere to these claims, for relativity.







I have already indicated to you that I disagree with these assertions, and have stated my reasons why.

Quite a few people have come into this thread and made some assertions about relativity. But, to a man, they seem to falter, then suddenly quit posting if their assertions are in any way questioned.

If that's the route that you also prefer to take, that's fine. Like I said, you won't be the first. I had initially got the impression that this was a subject you wanted to discuss, but maybe that was then, and this is now, eh?

I find SR dubious, that's true. Not as a mathematical theory; the math works fine. It just the physical explanations of that math and certain non-mathematical claims SR makes that I find unsatisfactory. But it's not like a political topic or anything for me. By that I mean that I don't look at it as though I'm arguing AGAINST the Democratic party or AGAINST the Republican party, or anything else that people might have their fundamental values attached to. It's not an emotional topic for me. Is it for you?

Not even. I'm puzzled by some of this stuff just like you are, but I lose no sleep over them... And none of the posters here are even remotely qualified, you and I included, to make sense of these things. Some may pretend they are, and others may be foolish enough to think they are qualified. But they aren't.

To the extent that I was aware of the twin paradox and knew of a solution, i tried to help. That's all.

People are just passing time here. None of what we discuss re. sciences makes any difference in a lab. It serves no purpose or emotional need to get all worked up about special relativity.

The sun has gone down ! Stay here at your own risk !

Don't worry about me. Have fun dealing with them pesky scientific idealists...

I don't agree with that nor, apparently, do most educators. Many books and treatises have been written about SR which are intended for the layman. Leaving out the math, I think the basic concepts can be understood by virtually any intelligent person.

I do think that very few put much effort into understanding it, though. From what I've seen in this thread, people are inclined to repeat things they've been told (or think they've been told) about SR, but those are often things they've never taken the time to seriously analyze.

I don't pretend to be any "expert" on SR. But I do think I've thought about the basic concepts, and how they fit together (or don't fit together), more than most, if not all, of those who have posted in this thread.

THE Ad Hominem when people start to get desperate!

Forgotten that there were qualified people who very cery critical of these stupid theories? Conveniently forgotten? Selective evidence?

That's where I think you are wrong. I studied relativity at school, not in depth though, but enough to realize, whenever I see one of these "educational simplification" where a guy is in a train and another not in the train etc..., the massive dumbing-down that is necessary to get a few relativist concepts across.

Most trained physicists did not understand relativity for years after the theory was published.

Just to give an example, you said that relativity requires each observer to assume he is immobile... This is likely the result of a misunderstanding of one of these "relativity made easy" attempts. But evidently, many people are perfectly fine when traveling on a train and thinking they and the train are moving... That's exactly what they want in fact: to travel from point A to point B... Relativity is not a psychological theory, and it does not claim that traveling people are somewhat obliged to think they are not traveling...

Of course not. Not as a practical matter. In real life, EVERYBODY on a train will immediately concede that, relative to the tracks, it is the train that's moving, not the tracks. They will acknowledge even though they don't "feel" motion and even if, for a brief moment, they have the "sensation" that it is the trees, etc., that are moving.

You're missing the point, Oliver, which is essentially one of mathematics, not "real life." As a matter of theory (only) they MUST view each other that way or else the whole theory of SR completely falls apart. If A, on the ground, "says" the train is moving, and B, on the train ALSO "says" he is moving, and the calculations are done ON THAT BASIS, then the speed of light will not be isotropic, etc.

Relativists always use the word "sees," but that is just a misleading verb in this context. What they really means is that each observer "assumes" (not sees) that the other is moving. And all they really mean by that is that they, the relativist doing calculations, assume it--not the observer, really. That is the NECESSARY assumption, for mathematical purposes. Of course that mathematic assumption cannot be accepted as a matter of "reality." The mathematicians merely impute "their" assumptions onto real life observers who would NEVER adopt those assumptions. An astronaut travelling to the moon would NEVER assume that he is motionless and that the earth is moving away from and the moon toward him.

That's one of the points I've been making here: Although mathematically self-consistent, SR requires assumptions that contradict objective facts that are accepted by every other branch of physical mechanics. There are other, equally valid, theories of motion which do NOT do this, and which dispose of all such practical absurdities. So it's not like we have no choice, except to accept SR, and its absurd premises.

The problem is that SR IS a "psychological theory," insofar as it makes strictly subjective illusion its very foundation. It is NOT a physical theory in that sense. It is merely a mathematical theory. The rest is metaphysical ideology, not physics.

Yeah, Q, that is an accurate quote. In essence the mathematicians (Minkowski) high-jacked Al's physical theory, which presupposed that clocks (not "time itself," in the abstract) actually slow down, and made it their domain. They stripped it of all meaningful physical content.

The appeal to physicists is that it "simplifies" things, from a purely mathematical perspective, and makes calculations easier. Lorentz developed the concept of "local time," which he (properly) said was merely a mathematical shortcut with no physical meaning. He did it because it greatly simplified the process of doing calculations. Al took Lorentz's fictional "local time" and called it "time." He took Lorentz's "mathematical trick" and presented it as "reality."

Einstein wouldn't have suggested that. Both statements "the train is moving relative to the Earth" and "the Earth is moving relative to the train", are true. And that's not a new idea of Einstein's. Galileo would have agreed long before trains even existed.


Unfamiliar, perhaps, but no, not absurd. If the observer's train compartment had a lab for physical experiments in it, the assumption of an unmoving train would not introduce any conflict between any physical law and any observable fact.


Someone who thinks the conductor is physically literate. But given that the statements "the train is moving relative to the Earth" and "the Earth is moving relative to the train" are both correct equally valid to ask "will this train stop in Chicago?". It is also less likely to confuse physically-illiterate conductors.


If "this presumption" involves the claim that the train is NOT moving relative to the Earth, then no. Einstein never said that. He (and Galileo before him) merely said that "the Earth is moving relative to the train" and "the train is moving relative to the Earth" are equally correct.

Einstein did, in effect, say just that, Thomas. I have demonstrated this repeatedly throughout this thread. Most recently in just the last few pages with posts addressed to Oliver.

The guy on the train must consider himself to be MOTIONLESS for the math to work out in a way that is consistent with Einstein's postulates.

There is indeed "relative motion," but the guy on the train is PROHIBITED, by SR, from contemplating that perhaps it is the train, and not the tracks, that is the one "in motion."

In that sense it's not relative at all, and the two frames are not "equally valid" for him. It must be "the other guy" who is moving, NEVER him.