The bolded part is the problematic part. That’s probably the core of our disagreement. I do believe that there is such a definition. It’s part of what we might call “folk wisdom”; or if you prefer, “folk ontology”. I think it was necessary for people to adopt one and the same concept of time. If we went back in time, say few hundred years back in time, and if we had a way to look at what kind of concept of time each person worked with, I’m sure we’d see that a very high percentage of people (if not pretty much everone) used one and the same concept of time. And I think such was the case (and still is, to some extent at least) because time is a pretty significant thing in life. And not any kind of concept of time but specifically the concept of universal time – the one that applies to everyone. Time had to be something that is the same for everyone. Even the number of ways to measure time had to be limited, so relativistic concepts were absolutely redundant. That’s also why Einstein’s theory had that shock effect when it was first presented to the public. It claimed that time isn’t universal – something that everyone believed up to that point – and that it is actually relative. The idea was that he discovered something about reality, when in reality, he merely invented a new ontology, i.e. a vocabulary, and pushed it against the existing one. His invention, in this particular respect at least, consisted in redefining the word “time”. And it doesn’t seem like he merely redefined it for his own specific purposes. Rather, the scientific establishment pushed it against existing concepts of time. Existing concepts of time had to be erased.
That time is universal means that the temporal distance between any two points in time is the same for everyone – regardless of their position in space, their velocity, their acceleration, etc.
James’s definition might be useful for certain ends, I don’t have any reason to doubt that, but I don’t think it aligns with the standard one. I believe that according to the standard definition of time, it’s logically possible (but not necessarily possible in reality) for the universe to be in the same state across time. James’s definition prohibits that. But that’s beside the point.
If there is anyone blockheaded enough to follow this ridiculous thread (ridiculous except for me and a couple of others), PLEASE try to get an education about this topic on your own. We live in a wonderful age in which Google is your friend. It will take you a few seconds to Google up hundreds and hundreds of quality pages that will show you Motor Daddy is wrong. You won’t get an education on a tiny message board like this.
Postulate 2 IS correct. If it were not, your GPS would not work and tons of other things would fail to work as well. Of course, Magnus does not even care to know what postulate 2 says, so he is as hopeless as Motor Daddy though for a different reason.
I will no longer pay attention to either of them, because they are wasting my time. I’ll discuss with others, though the level of scientific and philosophical competency on this board is so low I suppose I can count potential worthwhile interlocutors on the fingers of one hand at most.
I’m so wrong that you can’t tell me where the problem is in my diagram. All the facts are there, pood. Tell me where the error is.
You can’t find an error because there is none. MANY MANY serious mathematicians have had a go at it, and at least in one case told everyone to not waste time on the math, that it is correct.
The concept of my diagram is flawless in every imaginable way. You can not find a single error. It is absolutely correct whether you admit it or not.
It is also PROOF that Einstein’s 2nd postulate is BUNK!
We now see Motor Daddy denying that GPS tracking systems work even though they do. This is how far gone he is. And yet he seems to have at least one little puppy dog who follows him around, panting for attnetion!
I never said the system doesn’t work, I said that it needs to be constantly updated on a daily basis. If left alone for even a week the system would be so far out of whack it would be useless. Without daily corrections it is junk!
I think he’s referring to Magnus because Magnus is making some great posts and I agree with them. Pood doesn’t like that because Magnus is getting likes from me, but pood has nobody giving him likes.
He’s basically jealous of the attention Magnus is getting from me.
That “definition” (which it isn’t) declares that there is no relativity (whether there is or not).
James’ definition doesn’t prohibit anything. It is a description of what the word “time” means (to rational people anyway). It neither promotes nor prohibits time relativity - just like the definition of the word “God” doesn’t dictate whether God exists - and without an agreed definition of the words being used - debates are just nonsense.
Everything is always moving. That means there’s no initial point unless every part of distance is called an initial point. That means that for everything moving, no matter how fast or where it ‘starts’, there are an infinite number of starting points.
At this point I’m starting to shrug my shoulders that nobody debates me and everyone calls me the board idiot.
At this point, I may decide to switch to a different reality where people do actual philosophy.
That’s sort of true except that there is no way to find the “absolute still” because everything is comparison.
You can’t just go up to point A and say that the clock there is running faster than yours. You don’t have the required information to make the calculation. You have the current space-time coordinates for YOU and A but you need another pair of coordinates from a previous time.
The traveling twin synchronizes his clock with the earth clock (same position and time) and then after returning compares his clock to the earth clock (same position and two time values). He concludes that he was the one moving.
