Stephen P. King (stephenk1@home.com)
Tue, 17 Aug 1999 16:39:28 -0400
Hi Bill,
WDEshleman@aol.com wrote:
> Stephen,
> I tend to wonder what the maths would took like if Dr. Marmet
> had chosen for the size of atoms to decrease with the absorption
> of kenetic energy instead.
> Sincerely,
> Bill
Umm, I must say that I have no problems at all with the physics of Dr.
Marmet, it is just his philosophy. As to "the size of atoms decreasing
with the absorption of kinetic energy", well, that would imply that the
size of atoms would increase upon "emission" of kinetic energy. How
would that be observed?
What would absorption and emission processes be? Acceleration and
deceleration respectively. Umm, special relativity does not treat
accelerated frames. The use of "boosts" (instantaneous changes in
velocity) are use to kludge over this. It is inherently problematic!
My whole point about Dr. Marmet is that he seems to be a naive realist,
believing that "if a thing does not have its own existence, independent
of the observer, it is logically impossible that all independent
observers who are not aware of each other can always give a compatible
description by chance."
I do not debate that "things have *existence* independent of the
observer"! What must be understood is that existence, qua being, is
completely neutral. To say X exists, we merely need to show that it
*possibly* can be experienced. We have no way of knowing a priori, prior
to observation and verification (!), what particular properties X has.
Thus, X is just X, X = X, until it is observed and the act itself of
observation is the act of selecting what particular properties, say
mass, velocity, charge, color, sweetness, etc., X has. What I am
arguing with my notion (I don't have a name for it) is that The Universe
U is the totality of Existence, it is all that *is*. It has no time
associated, for it does not change with respect to itself. Subsets of
the Universe, like our X, can only change with respect to each other.
How is a change in X measured and what is it in X that changes? How
could we "know"?
We can not just say, well we measure a change in X with respect to the
Universe! Why not? Because the Universe in-itself has no properties, No
size, shape, charge, mass, hardness, etc., none. It just exists. We can
only know X from Y iff there is some way to compare the two and this can
not be done by U, for the reasons just given, it has to be another
subset of U, say, Z.
In my discussion of Pratt's work, I am turning Dr. Marmet's statement
upside-down. I say, the chance that a given pair (to make it simple) of
"independent observers who are not aware of each other" would give a
description that can be decoded by either is equivalent to the degree to
which the events in the histories of each can be matched. This, I hope
:-), captures the idea that each observer has its own measuring gauge
that is dependent on its prior "experiences".
Now, it appears that I am saying that the act of observation *is* time.
How is this so? When a quantity is measured there has to be an
irreversible change in the measuring system, as a minimal requirement.
If we consider a large number of subsets of U, each capable of change,
we could metaphorically consider that the subsets of U are constantly
measuring each other and the quantity that is measured is the "amount of
change" of the measured subset.
Does this make any sense?!
Kindest regards,
Stephen
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Sat Oct 16 1999 - 00:36:29 JST