Re: Are *observed* SR effects real?

mluttgens@xxxxxxxxxx <mluttgens@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
94597146-f329-4948-9b56-d3c8a0064ec8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Aug 22, 11:18 pm, PD <TheDraperFam...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 22, 3:58 pm, PD <TheDraperFam...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On Aug 22, 2:26 pm, mluttg...@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

When a is moving at 60 mph relative to
a tree, nobody except a SRist would claim
that the tree is moving wrt the car.

Think of the moving tree. You will never be
run over by a tree, but you could be knocked over
by a moving car. This is not a useless concept.

Oh, I dunno that "nobody except an SRist" would claim that. It's a
pretty basic physics principle. If you are in a car on a patch of ice
and your car and the tree are in relative motion, it makes no
difference physically whether you say the tree hits the car or the car
hits the tree.

Now, colloquially, we make the distinction because when there isn't
any ice, the car has the power to change direction to avoid the
collision where the tree does not. But when there is ice involved,
then even colloquially there is much more parity in how we talk about
this situation.

PD

On Aug 22, 3:58 pm, PD <TheDraperFam...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On Aug 22, 2:26 pm, mluttg...@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

When a is moving at 60 mph relative to
a tree, nobody except a SRist would claim
that the tree is moving wrt the car.

Think of the moving tree. You will never be
run over by a tree, but you could be knocked over
by a moving car. This is not a useless concept.

Oh, I dunno that "nobody except an SRist" would claim that. It's a
pretty basic physics principle. If you are in a car on a patch of ice
and your car and the tree are in relative motion, it makes no
difference physically whether you say the tree hits the car or the car
hits the tree.

Now, colloquially, we make the distinction because when there isn't
any ice, the car has the power to change direction to avoid the
collision where the tree does not. But when there is ice involved,
then even colloquially there is much more parity in how we talk about
this situation.

PD

One more comment about this. Why we say things the way we do when
we're in ordinary conversation is actually a pretty layered question.
When a car hits a tree, we fault the car for hitting the tree because
*in our mind* the car has the power to choose between hitting and not
hitting the tree. However, if the car in fact does nothing to avoid
the collision and the car hits the tree, then there is *physically* no
difference between the nothing that the car did to avoid the collision
and the nothing the tree did to avoid the collision. The distinction
is only in the unrealized *potential* that the car had to change that
outcome.

We fault the car for hitting the tree because the car
was moving relative to the road, not because the tree
was moving on the road, period.


The danger is in taking all these intangibles and dangling
interpretations that are entwined in the way that we talk
colloquially, and then making the mistake that there is fundamental
physical meaning to it.

[Stepping up on the low soapbox]
This is also the danger of trying to always associate a mental picture
to a physical process or concept. The problem in doing that is that
the only way we can do it is by mental analogy, likening it to
something commonly known to our senses. We tend to *visualize*
electrons to be like BBs, or light to be like water waves. But there
is an error in that, because when we make this mental analogy, we also
carry along all the baggage of the imagery that does NOT pertain. In
*some* ways, electrons are like BBs, but there are some properties of
BBs that electrons do NOT share, and using the visualization of the BB
does not make a mental distinction between which properties of the BB
are appropriate and which are not, and the result is we get confused
when electrons do not behave like BBs. The beauty of a mathematical
treatment is that it captures ONLY those properties of the model that
are appropriate, in a highly distilled form, without contamination by
inappropriate properties that are the baggage of a mental image.
[Stepping off soapbox]

The problem lies in the choice of the "appropriate"
properties.
Even if SR were mathematically beautiful,

More pollution on the mathematics of SR:

"SR FLAW":
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/mluttgens/SR%20FLAW.htm

"The Lorentz transformation (LT) are false, by M. Luttgens":
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/mluttgens/LTfalse.htm
"There is no length contraction":
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/mluttgens/mmx.htm

"The Twin paradox falsifies SR":
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/mluttgens/twinpdx1.htm
Dirk Vdm

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