Re: Difference between predictions of SR and LET - perhaps!


"Ilja" <ilja.schmelzer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:7734023e-a8cd-48e7-8753-927f5cf021fb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 27 Aug., 02:44, "K_h" <KHol...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Ilja" <ilja.schmel...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
"Ilja" <ilja.schmel...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
A completely different question. You cannot test that
the events which will happen in 2 Gyears already
exist in some sense. This is a highly metaphysical
consequence of the SR Minkowski spacetime.

It depends on how you define metaphysical. But yes,
spacetime as a whole does exist and so Einstein is right
when he points out that the flow of time is a stubborn
illusion.

He is not right, but we don't know if he was right or not,
because the question is metaphysical. All observable
facts
may be explained without this worldview.

No, there is no explanation of the observable facts apart
from relativity. Your first sentence here is self
contradictory. You cannot claim Einstein is wrong and then
claim it is not known if he is wrong.

To test
that the spacetime of relativity is true physically,
scientists only need to use rulers, clocks, and other
instruments to verify that space and time are structured
the
way relativity says.

No. You have to assume your rulers are undistorted, and
all
clocks run equal.

Again, science assumes that empiricism is reliable. If
empiricism is not reliable then science, by definition,
cannot be done. By definition, science assumes empiricism
and empiricism assumes rulers (and other measuring devices)
are not distorted. If measuring devices are distorted then
every experiment science has ever done is dubious. In that
case there can be no such thing as science.

No. What we measure is something happening in a
three-dimensional space, or at least explainable
in this picture as well. That what we measure
with clocks and rulers is some "shape" is purely
metaphysical interpretation.

No, science assumes that empiricism is reliable.

Stop to equate your own confusion with science.

Stop claiming that I am confused. I am not confused.

No, any theory that has one or more untestable
hypotheses
is unscientific.

Wrong. The hypothesis that there exists a
four-dimensional
manifold
is untestable. But this does not make SR unscientific.

The existence of the four-dimensional spacetime is not
untestable. In fact, it tests true under the assumption
that empiricism is reliable (as explained above).

Your explanation is nonsense. There are lot's of distorted
measurement instruments around us, and a scientific
methodology
which would be unable to take this into account (by
postulating
from the start that they are all reliable) is nonsense.

As I have already explained many times now, empiricism is
based on the assumption that measuring devices are not
distorted. That means that empiricism is reliable. If
measuring instruments were distorted then data from them is
meaningless and there is no way to understand anything from
them. Science, then, could not be done. By the way, the
explanation I provided is the mainstream view and it is
sensible.

Of course, the religious background in your example is
in no way related to the scientific theory, so it is
easy
to split the two parts and throw away the religion. But
adding the religion does not make the whole
unscientific.

Yes it does because the theological hypothesis I
presented
is not a testable hypothesis.

I present you another example.

Theory A is as your, has some set of hypotheses Ai, all
directly
testable.

Theory B has some other set, Bi, not (or not all)
testable.
But
combining
them and doing some math, one can derive all testable
hypotheses Ai as
predictions, and, moreover, some more testable hypotheses
Ci.

Theory B is not a scientific theory by definition. Theory B
is an unscientific theory.

Following Popper, we have a clear criterion of empirical
content,
which requires to prefer B: Every observational
falsification of A
(means, one of the Ai appears false) falsifies A and B,
any
falsificiation of the Ci falsifies only B.

Please show me where Popper advocates this. But anyway, if
any one of theory A's hypotheses are experimentally
falsified then theory A is scientifically false. About your
other claim, by definition, the testable hypotheses Ci do
not test the untestable hypotheses of theory B. So there is
no basis for preferring the untestable theory B to the
testable theory A. If theory A is tested to be false then
it is rejected. Theory B is untestable and therefore
unscientific.

Following you, we would not even prefer B, but reject B as
unscientific. You have it completely wrong, in other
words.

Your definition is wrong. Every scientific theory makes
lots of such assumptions. Starting with the use of real
numbers, in a situation where tests can give only
finite
accuracy.

The definition I provided is the correct and mainstream
one.

It is certainly not correct, but I would concede that
there
are
sufficiently many completely uneducated in scientific
methodology
physicists who may think otherwise.

You are simply wrong about this. That a scientific
hypothesis must be testable is something I learned back in
high school, college, and it is even in those old text books
I still have. I just did some web browsing and found dozens
of web sites that explicitly state that and I have included
a few of them below.

http://www.bio.miami.edu/~cmallery/150/scimeth/scimeth.htm
From this site: "science does not deal with hypotheses that
are NOT EXPERIMENTALLY TESTABLE..."

http://www.trap17.com/index.php/Science-Scientific-Method_t33850.html

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Explain_why_a_hypothesis_must_be_testable

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Hypothesis
From this site: "Thus a hypothesis must be testable in order
to entertain it as a possible explanation of scientific
phenomena."

http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Scientific-hypothesis

http://physics.about.com/od/physics101thebasics/a/hypothesis.htm
From this site: "A scientific theory or law represents a
hypothesis (or group of related hypotheses) which has been
confirmed through repeated testing, almost always conducted
over a span of many years. Generally, a law uses a handful
of fundamental concepts and equations to define the rules
governing a set of phenomena. "

http://course1.winona.edu/mdelong/principles/Lab%201%20-%20Science%20Investigations.html
From this site: "The critical thing is that it must be a
testable hypothesis."

http://www.experiment-resources.com/falsifiability.html

http://capital.osd.wednet.edu/staff/cope/pre-ib/student_lesson_4-writing_a_scientific_hypothesis
Check out this high school assignment: "Welcome to the
Scientific Hypothesis Page. This lesson will help you write
a testable hypothesis for your research topic. This
hypothesis will be the basis for your experimental design."

http://www.batesville.k12.in.us/Physics/PhyNet/AboutScience/Hypotheses.html

Both of these particular hypotheses have
been tested independently and numerous consequences of
both
of them have been tested as well.

Yes. Consequences have been tested, not the claims
themself,
at least not in general. You can always test only
particular
instances in a particular accuracy. Look for "induction
problem".

No. Yet again, under the assumption that empiricism is
reliable, the claims themselves have been tested and they
pass these tests with flying colors.

The scientific community has already recognized one
point
of
such evidence - the violation of Bell's inequality. It
will
recognize others too.

Bell's inequality if perfectly consistent with
relativistic
quantum field theory. Bell's inequality is not evidence
for
any kind of space filling medium.

Any field theory is evidence for something space-filling,
name it medium as you like, name it vacuum if you don't.

No, the field theory is a series of ideas and concepts in
mathematical form. Obviously the quanta occupy space and
the quantum fields are energy propagated through the void.

But you have to give up classical realism or causality if
you want to save relativity in the light of the violation
of Bell's inequality. That's stupid, but I concede here
that
the mainstream does not yet recognize this.

It is not stupid, classical realism is incompatible with
experimental observations.

Your definition is not the definition of science. It is
age-old
positivistic nonsense.

No, it is the current definition. You can easily confirm
this for yourself by going to your local library and
browsing the web. For example, check out this link.

http://www.experiment-resources.com/testability.html

Read it yourself, it contains phrases like

"A theory will always remain falsifiable at some point in
the future,
however compelling the present evidence."

so that there is no possibility for your verification.

This is a different issue than the reliability of
empiricism. Under the assumption that empiricism is
reliable, relativity has been experimentally proven beyond a
reasonable doubt. If empiricism itself was falsified then
there would be no basis to falsify and test anything. In
that case Popper goes down the drain as well because his
whole idea of falsification assumes that empiricism is
reliable. To falsify something means that empiricism is
able to falsify it but that can only happen if empiricism
itself is reliable.

Just to clarify: I do not question the central role of
testability/falsifiability in science. I question that
falsfiability should be a property of particular
statements.
Instead, it should be a property of whole theories or even
combinations of theories.

It isn't. Learn to read. See theorem 4 of
gr-qc/0205035.

Theorem 4 does not derive L_GR from equations (A) through
(E). No parts of any of your papers do that either.

(A) g00*sqrt(-g) = rho
(B) gi0*sqrt(-g) = rho*vi
(C) gij*sqrt(-g) = rho*vivj + pij
(D) @_t(rho) + @_i(rho*vi) = 0
(E) @_t(rho*vj) + @_i(rho*vivj + pij) = 0.

LOL. Of course, not. (A-C) is a transformation of
variables,
something one does not need to "derive" somehow. (D,E) are
consequences of this variable transformations from the
harmonic
equation. Why do you think I have written a section about
the
axioms if I would have liked to "derive" the Lagrangian
from
A-D?

Okay, so we agree that EEP is not derivable from (A) through
(E).

So you cannot claim to derive Einstein's
equivalence principle from formulas (A) through (E).

I can. The EEP does not depend on the E-H term in the
Lagrangian,
but depends on the general form of it's matter part.
Covariant
matter part -> EEP.

No, the EEP depends on the E-H term. Proof: leave
everything the same and use something else other than the
E-H term. Whatever else you use won't satisfy EEP because
only L_GR satisfies the strong equivalence principle. So
you get a theory, based on (A) through (E), which is
incompatible with the EEP.

And about Popper, no need for references to him.
Popper, like Bacon and others, was just a philosopher of
science and he does not lay down what science is for the
scientific world.

No basis for a rejection, because his arguments are much
better then those of others, and even those who do
positivistic nonsense pay usually at least lip service to
him, so that one can find wide agreement in the scientific
community that Popper has got it right.

I haven't rejected Popper; in fact the links I provided
above clearly show that Popper demanded that a scientific
hypothesis must be testable. So you are the one who is
actually in a dispute with Popper.

From what reading of Popper I have done,
I don't recall anything he wrote that justifies your
claim
that untestable hypotheses qualify as scientific.

What makes a particular scientific statement scientific is
that it
is part of a scientific theory. What makes a theory
scientific is
that it makes falsifiable predictions. You simplify this
into
one "every scientific statement should be testable", and
this
simplification is wrong.

NO!! Just read the links I have provided above.

Learn how to define a theory. It works this way:
You make some assumptions about reality, and then
you derive testable consequences from these
assumptions.
If the testable consequences coinside with those of
some standard theory, this standard theory has been
reproduced, and the theory is at least as scientific as
this standard theory.

Only if all of the assumptions of the theory are
testable.

No. If all the assumptions, taken together, (and possibly
even
with things taken from other theories) leads to new
falsifiable
predictions (impossible with the other theories taken
alone).

Only if every part of them is testable.

You know, for example, that the Einstein equations taken
by themself are unfalsifiable?

Einstein's equations are falsifiable but no experimental
test has ever falsified them.

No, I make a postulate about the energy-momentum tensor
of my theory and obtain the most general Lagrangian
which
fulfills these assumptions.

No, it is still cheating because you haven't justified
assignments like g00*sqrt(-g)=rho and, more generally,
why
you use metric equations at all.

Since when should I justify transformations of variables?
That's
a definition.

You equate a matter density to the time-time component of
the metric. Why would your alleged ether satisfy this
equation? Why not g00*sqrt(-g)=(rho-rho_0)? Why not
g00*sqrt(-g)=(rho)^2 or g00*(-g)^2=rho?

No, it is still cheating because you haven't justified
assignments like g00*sqrt(-g)=rho and, more generally,
why
you use metric equations at all.

Since when should I justify transformations of variables?
That's
a definition

You could ask why, if this is simply a definition, it
appears why
we measure what we measure. This follows from the EEP,
or,
more
accurate, from the particular form of the matter
Lagrangian.

Here you claim that your definitions, like g00*sqrt(-g)=rho,
are justified and come from the EEP. In an earlier post you
claimed that the EEP was derived from these. Earlier in
this post you wrote "LOL. Of course, not" at the idea the
EEP was derived from what you call "transformation of
variables". What a mess.

k


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