From: tycchow@riesz.mit.edu (Timothy Y. Chow)
Subject: Re: invention of time
Organization: None.  This saves me from writing a disclaimer.
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 92 07:00:54 GMT

In <snodgras.715208128@crash> Snodgrass writes:
>In <26AUG199203454289@reg.triumf.ca> vincent@reg.triumf.ca (pete) writes:
>>       As far as working physicists are  concerned, don't fix it
>>if it ain't broke. It is well understood that the present model
>>of the universe is incomplete, but that doesn't prevent it from
>>providing a staggering amount of practical, useful results. 20th
>>century technology springs directly from 20th century physics.
>
>       A commonly expressed sentiment. The obvious
>question is: staggering relative to what? If another point of
>view had been adopted, we might now have created antigravity,
>developed supercheap energy, cured cancer, fed the world, and
>achieved world peace! Who knows?

It seems that you're missing the point here.  Of course, everyone will
agree that another point of view MIGHT solve all the problems of the world.
But this surely doesn't mean that we should shift points of view all the
time.  Do you agree?  If so, then you are basically agreeing with vincent,
who is arguing that a shift in one's point of view needs to be justified.

In article <snodgras.715123231@crash> snodgras@crash.cts.com (John Snodgrass) writes:
>it would be interesting to see the experimental design
>which can eliminate every possible cause affecting muon decay
>rate except time dilation. Especially since the reason for muon
>decay isn't even understood. This is an amusing facet of all
>these 'decay rate' verifications of time dilation.

Of course, if you have a desperate need to cling to the idea that time
dilation is absurd, and cannot bear to let go of your pet paradigm that says
time dilation is absurd, then you can continue to argue against time
dilation until the cows come home, in the same way that tobacco companies
continue to argue that smoking does not cause cancer.  No matter how many
controls and experiments are performed, you can still argue that time
dilation has not been proved, because the results of the experiments might
be due to some vastly complex, as-yet-undiscovered theory.  But this is
crankish behavior.  If you want to argue seriously, you must do more than
wave your hands and say, "source and environmental factors."  Such a
"theory" is the ultimate in "explaining away."

Physicist: I have done a control that eliminates the possibility that
           background radiation causes the discrepancy.
Snodgrass: Ah, but you haven't eliminated the possibility that it's just
           this particular source that creates muons with a different
           decay rate.
Physicist: Actually, I have...we created muons from a laboratory source,
           accelerated some of them, and observed that the accelerated
           ones decayed slower than the stationary ones, so time must have
           been dilated.
Snodgrass: Nonsense, time dilation doesn't fit my paradigm.  There must
           be some other background factor that causes the difference.
           No, better yet, I bet I can find some circularity in your
           reasoning...

Perhaps no physicist can boast this kind of experimental evidence, but I
think the point is clear---your attitude is bordering on being crankish.

>What we think of as 'laws of nature' such as Newton's laws of
>motion, how do we know these are not actually the result of the
>systems matter is made up of, interacting with each other?

Have you actually worked out your alternative theory in detail and shown how
it has greater predictive power than relativity?  If not, then it seems that
your proposals are nothing but empty speculation.  Nobody will be impressed
until you can produce a theory that predicts everything that relativity
predicts and that predicts a phenomenon tha relativity predicts incorrectly.

>       For sure, the atomic bomb development. Was there really
>that much reliance on the more esoteric theories we are discussing?

Perhaps not---I may have chosen a poor example.  However, consider,
say, manned moon landings.  These made heavy use of Newtonian
mechanics, which you also seem to reject as illegitimate, because of
its mathematization of reality, and notion of absolute time, and
geometrization of space, etc.  If these ideas are so outrageously
absurd, why have people who have believed them and acted on these
beliefs succeeded in obtaining so much control?

>       Those who have the more correct view will end up in
>control, both of education and wealth. The latter will of course
>happen first, since the academics are always the die-hards,
>loathe to revise their cherished cirriculums upon which their
>entire raison d'etre as individuals-who-profess rests.

Whether or not you have the "correct" view seems to have little to do with
whether or not you are flexible enough to give up your cherished ideas when
they're proven wrong.  This flexibility seems far more important in securing
control than a particular belief in the nature of science.
-- 
Tim Chow     tycchow@math.mit.edu
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs
30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh
only 1 1/2 tons.                               ---Popular Mechanics, March 1949
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech