Quantum Level Collapse

[cgraye]

The Pythagorean theorem is used to precisely solve the Sagnac effect.

I'm not talking about light in particular or anything in motion.  I'm just pointing out that in the absence of a gravitational field you can use the Pythagorean theorem to calculate the spacetime interval between events.  In the presence of a gravitational field you cannot, without introducing the proper correction factors.

People object because it allows the speed of light to vary, which is circular logic.  And Sagnac guidance systems are an example of locally observing photons traveling at speeds slower than and greater than "c".  You can explain the observed different speeds with various theories, however the only theory that has an ontology is accepting that the speeds are different.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.  No one expects the speeds to be the same in a Sagnac system, because it is not an inertial frame.  Or, taking the perspective of an outside observer, the speeds are the same, but the distances traveled are not.  This would be the same in a classical system.  But why do you think this tells us something about ontology?  You deny that distance has any existence or that time has any strict existence, so why should speed, which is just distance divided by time?

Distance is the immaterial map of the material world.  It doesn't materially exist.  It appears to be similar to a transcendental like "being" and "thing" or perhaps better described as a qualia.

Perhaps, and I don't think Einstein would disagree with you there.

[james03]

But why do you think this tells us something about ontology?

It is going to have to come back to ontology, just as QM had to eventually address it.

So we have the classical thought experiment of bouncing a photon off a roof mirror in a moving train car.  The path has two different lengths depending on whether you are on the train or a stationary observer.

Einstein's ontology: We state that the speed of light is the same in both reference frames, so by necessity something else is changing.  Doesn't really give us a cause.

Here's a better thought experiment.  You use a doppler radar on an object moving towards you.  The source and the receiver are in the same reference frame.  What caused the frequency shift (blue shift)?

From a Galilean Relativity perspective, this is easy to answer.  The photon was reflected at a relative speed > c, which causes the frequency shift.  There is no way to answer this with special relativity.

[cgraye]

It is going to have to come back to ontology, just as QM had to eventually address it.

But why does it have to come back to ontology in this case?  Here we are only talking about about distances and times, and if those things do not have existence, there is no ontology to speak of.

So we have the classical thought experiment of bouncing a photon off a roof mirror in a moving train car.  The path has two different lengths depending on whether you are on the train or a stationary observer.

Einstein's ontology: We state that the speed of light is the same in both reference frames, so by necessity something else is changing.  Doesn't really give us a cause.

But by your own categorization, that's not an ontology, since it concerns things that do not exist.  But whether they do or do not exist, rather than an ontology, I would call the invariant speed of light a postulate.  Not in the sense of merely being an assumption, but rather a conclusion from other facts and observations.  First we have Maxwell's Equations, which match observations.  Those equations contain a speed of light, c, which makes no reference of anything to which that speed might be relative.  Nevertheless, physicists did not immediately jump to the conclusion that c was the speed of light relative to anything in inertial motion, but rather that it was relative to some medium through which light was propagating.  So they did the obvious thing and ran experiments to try to detect that medium and varying speeds of light, all of which had negative conclusions.  So either the speed of light is invariant or it propagates through a medium that we have not been able to detect that, if it does exist, would have truly fantastical physical properties that we have never seen in anything else.  Possible, certainly.  But without proof, we cannot conclude it exists.

Here's a better thought experiment.  You use a doppler radar on an object moving towards you.  The source and the receiver are in the same reference frame.  What caused the frequency shift (blue shift)?

From a Galilean Relativity perspective, this is easy to answer.  The photon was reflected at a relative speed > c, which causes the frequency shift.  There is no way to answer this with special relativity.

Special relativity answers this question easily and in a way that that more closely matches the physical situation - the frequency shift is caused by the relative motion of the source and the observer.  Because once the light hits the mirror, the mirror is the source.

[james03]

But why does it have to come back to ontology in this case?  Here we are only talking about about distances and times, and if those things do not have existence, there is no ontology to speak of.

Fundamental laws like identity and non-contradiction come from ontology.

Time is a weird one, and I've given Einstein credit for pointing out that you need it to map reality.  And it may even have some "materialness" to it, like the transcendentals.  Distance, coordinate systems, and direction have existence in the immaterial/spiritual world.  They are akin to qualia, and may even be qualia.

Space is null and devoid of information.  If you try to conceptualize space, whatever you think of is by definition not space as whatever you thought of you've given it information.  Note I'll use common parlance and talk about "space" to avoid being pedantic, which is annoying.  I think when we say "space" we mean "manifold".

So they did the obvious thing and ran experiments to try to detect that medium and varying speeds of light, all of which had negative conclusions.

The experiments match the photon view of light also.  The photon leaves the source at the same speed no matter what direction it is pointed. 

Special relativity answers this question easily and in a way that that more closely matches the physical situation - the frequency shift is caused by the relative motion of the source and the observer.  Because once the light hits the mirror, the mirror is the source.

First, a mirror doesn't emit photons and can't be a source.  Second even if we convince ourselves somehow that a mirror is a source, it doesn't help.  In the train thought experiment, you have 2 observers.  In this thought experiment you have one observer.  The radar observes the frequency of transmitted photons for the baseline, and observes the frequency of the reflected photons.  You can't give the same observer 2 clocks or 2 "lengths".

Imagine you have an oncoming train, and you launch tennis balls at it at 50 mph and a frequency of 1 per second.  You record the return frequency at 1.1 per second.  You can calculate the speed of the reflected tennis balls and the speed of the train.  You can also explain the "blue shift" of the reflected tennis balls: they are now traveling at a higher velocity.

Now substitute photons for tennis balls.

[cgraye]

Distance, coordinate systems, and direction have existence in the immaterial/spiritual world.  They are akin to qualia, and may even be qualia.

"Distance", etc. may have immaterial existence, considered as abstractions, but they are also present in the material world in specific material things.  A cat is a material thing, and there is a distance from its head to its tail.  There is nothing immaterial about this example.

Space is null and devoid of information.  If you try to conceptualize space, whatever you think of is by definition not space as whatever you thought of you've given it information.  Note I'll use common parlance and talk about "space" to avoid being pedantic, which is annoying.  I think when we say "space" we mean "manifold".

All you are saying with this is that space is not a material substance.  But no one is saying that it is.  Think of something like temperature.  At each point in space (given by whatever x, y, and z coordinates that you want to use) at each point in time (however you want to label it), you can say what the temperature is.  So you can say that spacetime possesses temperature and express temperature as a function of spacetime, but that is not a claim that spacetime is a substance and that temperature is a property of it, which is definitely not true.

The experiments match the photon view of light also.  The photon leaves the source at the same speed no matter what direction it is pointed.

Sure, no one doubts that.

First, a mirror doesn't emit photons and can't be a source.

The mirror must be considered the emitter of the photon heading back toward the first source.  Regardless of the particulars of the physics of light or mirrors, the light heading away from the mirror has the opposite momentum of the light that was earlier heading toward it.

Imagine you have an oncoming train, and you launch tennis balls at it at 50 mph and a frequency of 1 per second.  You record the return frequency at 1.1 per second.  You can calculate the speed of the reflected tennis balls and the speed of the train.  You can also explain the "blue shift" of the reflected tennis balls: they are now traveling at a higher velocity.

Now substitute photons for tennis balls.

But the "frequency" of photons is not a measure of how often they are detected.  Even a single photon has a frequency, which is a measure of its energy.  But even just considering the case with tennis balls, this entire description assumes that velocities simply add.  And they basically do, at the every day speeds of tennis balls and trains.  But if you had a sensitive enough measuring device, you would see that they do not quite perfectly add.  If they did, then we would have no problem accelerating electrons in particle accelerators to speeds faster than c.  And we can get them up to 99.9% of c fairly easily.  But no matter what we do, no matter how much energy we put it, we cannot accelerate them to c.

[cgraye]

Also, here's a new interview with Barandes from the same YouTube channel as in the original post:



I am slowly making my way through it.  I am not even halfway through it yet, but Barandes does mention General Relativity in this one, with no philosophical objections to any of its content.

[james03]

A cat is a material thing, and there is a distance from its head to its tail.  There is nothing immaterial about this example.

And the cat is gray, which is immaterial like distance.  Distance is a kind of qualia, and might actually be a qualia.  And qualia are immaterial.

Think of something like temperature.  At each point in space (given by whatever x, y, and z coordinates that you want to use) at each point in time (however you want to label it), you can say what the temperature is.

Temperature doesn't materially exist.  It is a gage of the movement of particles.  A "hot" liquid will evaporate because more hot particles will jump into the vapor than cold particles in the gas join up with the liquid.  We can express this with a delta temperature and even map out the progression of the system to equilibrium, however the underlying ontology is the movement of the particles.

Regardless of the particulars of the physics of light or mirrors, the light heading away from the mirror has the opposite momentum of the light that was earlier heading toward it.

I'm retracting my example.  I'm not convinced it proves anything.  I think my earlier intuition that you need a three-path experiment to test SR might due the trick, but don't know right now.

But no matter what we do, no matter how much energy we put it, we cannot accelerate them to c.

That is based on circular reasoning.  We can accelerate two streams of electrons to say 0.9 c and collide them.  The relative velocity will be 1.8 c.  However the physicists will say that what we did was "increase the energy" of the electrons, and in fact due to Lorentz transformations the "real" relative velocity was perhaps 0.9999 c.

[cgraye]

And the cat is gray, which is immaterial like distance.  Distance is a kind of qualia, and might actually be a qualia.  And qualia are immaterial.

I have been thinking about this and trying to understand what you mean when you say distance is a kind of qualia.  I just can't really see what you are getting at with this.  Qualia are the subjective, qualitative feelings of sensory experiences.  Something like the "redness" of red that you experience.  How is distance like this?  We don't have any subjective, qualitative feelings of distance.  It's something we measure.  I have never seen any philosopher suggest that distance is a kind of qualia.  Distance is usually given as a prototypical example of something that is not a kind of qualia.

Temperature doesn't materially exist.  It is a gage of the movement of particles.  A "hot" liquid will evaporate because more hot particles will jump into the vapor than cold particles in the gas join up with the liquid.  We can express this with a delta temperature and even map out the progression of the system to equilibrium, however the underlying ontology is the movement of the particles.

Sure, but the point is not what temperature is.  You can pick whatever you like to substitute for temperature.  The point is that temperature (or whatever) can be given as a function of spacetime, even though spacetime is not a material substance.  The point is that neither space nor time have to be substances or material "things" to use them in this manner.

That is based on circular reasoning.  We can accelerate two streams of electrons to say 0.9 c and collide them.  The relative velocity will be 1.8 c.  However the physicists will say that what we did was "increase the energy" of the electrons, and in fact due to Lorentz transformations the "real" relative velocity was perhaps 0.9999 c.

Their "relative velocity" will only be 1.8c to a third internal observer.  If you want to look at it from the point of view of such an observer, then you can just say that we have no way to make this relative velocity greater than or equal to 2c and the issue remains.

[james03]

I have been thinking about this and trying to understand what you mean when you say distance is a kind of qualia.  I just can't really see what you are getting at with this.  Qualia are the subjective, qualitative feelings of sensory experiences.

Qualia are not "feelings", it is more correct to say they are part of perception.  And there is no way to tell if they are subjective or objective.  I can't show you my perception of "red".  If, per impossibile, I could, you might say, "That's not red, that's blue.".  I suspect that God made the perception of "red" the same for everyone.

A quick aside, space is nothing, it is null, devoid of information.  End of aside.

Distance is like qualia in that it is immaterially real and there is some interaction or participation with it in the material world.  I believe I said distance is like a qualia.  I think it might be a qualia, but I'm not convinced of that.

Their "relative velocity" will only be 1.8c to a third internal observer.

That is Galilean relativity.  I don't know if SR holds this.  It would say the third internal observer would measure 0.999 c.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

[cgraye]

Distance is like qualia in that it is immaterially real and there is some interaction or participation with it in the material world.  I believe I said distance is like a qualia.  I think it might be a qualia, but I'm not convinced of that.

How is distance like a qualia?  There is no experience of the "2 meter-ness" of the perception of 2 meters in the same sense as there is the experience of the "redness" of red.  Or if there is, it does not seem relevant to physics, since the important part of "2 meter-ness" is that everyone can take a meter stick, measure it, and agree that the result is 2 meters.  This is objective and quantitative rather than subjective and qualitative.

That is Galilean relativity.  I don't know if SR holds this.  It would say the third internal observer would measure 0.999 c.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

There is no difference between the two in this example.  If a person who perceives himself at rest measures a particle coming toward him from the left at 0.9c and another particle coming toward him from the right at 0.9c, he would consider the relative speed between the two to be 1.8c in either Galilean Relativity or Special Relativity.  The speed limit of c in Special Relativity only applies to how fast one observer will measure the speed of one other object.  So the difference would be apparent when shifting to the perspective of the particle coming in from the left.  In that case, in Galilean Relativity that particle would measure the speed of the other particle coming toward it as 1.8c, but in Special Relativity it would measure it at 0.999c.

[james03]

since the important part of "2 meter-ness" is that everyone can take a meter stick, measure it, and agree that the result is 2 meters.  This is objective and quantitative rather than subjective and qualitative.

Good point.  In short, I can show you my perception of distance.  I can't show you my perception of "red".  So distance is not a qualia.

It is like a qualia in that distance qua distance is purely immaterial.  And it is like a qualia in that the material world "participates" in the immaterial "red" and the immaterial "distance".  If I move a red ball, the "red" I perceive also moves, even though "red" is not materially present.

Same with distance.  If two objects are two meters apart, they may keep "it" or "it" can change, even though "distance" is not materially present.  The only thing present are the two objects.  This also solves the Greek problem of change not being possible, because you have to cross infinite points.  The distance isn't "there" nor the "points".  Just the two objects, so there is no physical restriction against change.

There is no difference between the two in this example.

Got it, thanks.  That was always a big problem for me and why I rejected SR out of hand.  So on Earth we can observe 2 galaxies separating at speeds faster than c, assuming each has a red shift showing a speed > 0.5 c.

[cgraye]

Good point.  In short, I can show you my perception of distance.  I can't show you my perception of "red".  So distance is not a qualia.

It is like a qualia in that distance qua distance is purely immaterial.  And it is like a qualia in that the material world "participates" in the immaterial "red" and the immaterial "distance".  If I move a red ball, the "red" I perceive also moves, even though "red" is not materially present.

Same with distance.  If two objects are two meters apart, they may keep "it" or "it" can change, even though "distance" is not materially present.  The only thing present are the two objects.  This also solves the Greek problem of change not being possible, because you have to cross infinite points.  The distance isn't "there" nor the "points".  Just the two objects, so there is no physical restriction against change.

I see what you getting at here, but aren't you really talking about forms more than qualia?

Got it, thanks.  That was always a big problem for me and why I rejected SR out of hand.  So on Earth we can observe 2 galaxies separating at speeds faster than c, assuming each has a red shift showing a speed > 0.5 c.

Yes, but it's even more than that - on earth we can observe a distant galaxy moving away from us at greater than c.  This is not possible with SR, but SR does not apply across distances where gravity is a significant factor.