Re: SR consistency is crap.

From: J.E. (troubled6man_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 11/30/04 

Date: 30 Nov 2004 15:13:22 -0800

Eric Baird <eric_baird@compuserve.com> wrote in message news:<edvkq09vd7afk7kol4jqm2kd3jgv701qcd@4ax.com>...
> On 24 Nov 2004 11:40:22 -0800, troubled6man@yahoo.com (J.E.) wrote, in
> message <39d6e584.0411241140.e731620@posting.google.com>:
>
> >eleatis@yahoo.gr (Mike) wrote in message news:<9c1b39be.0411240316.7f0b7da7@posting.google.com>...
> >> troubled6man@yahoo.com (J.E.) wrote in message news:<39d6e584.0411231204.5010b537@posting.google.com>...
 [snip]

> >> > > I took Physics 101 and Modern Phycsi 101 together during the same
> >> > > semester as soon as I started undergraduate. The mentor protested and
> >> > > argued I should take Modern Physics (Relativity) after I take
> >> > > Classical Mechanics, because that was a prerequisite. I protested, I
> >> > > argued it must be my choice not theirs. I won. I got a A- in Classical
> >> > > and an A+ in Modern.
> >> >
> >> > Good for you. I didn't even realize I liked physics until Modern
> >> > Physics (which for us covered QM, solid state, Stat mech, etc. too) I
> >> > just took it as "an easy class" since I was good at math.
> >>
> >> Yesy, interesting to see that while it is an easy subject for some
> >> people it is beyond comprehension for others.
> >
> >I think it's bad teaching. If I had a "good background" to easily
> >understand a fixed way of teaching the subject, that doesn't make "the
> >subject" inherently hard for others or easy for me, in means by
> >background and the teaching lined up well.
>
> Funnily enough, I found that it was actually very easy to explain GR
> principles to complete physics newbies, with a suitable choice of
> words.
>
> You just say things like, "increasing the strength of gravity in a
> region seems to make makes space seem more dense and time more
> rarefied, so that clocks there tick more slowly ... so if we want to
> create a map of the light-distances in a slice through the region, so
> that the distances in the map correspond to the distances in the
> region, we have to extrude the map in order ot be able to cram in the
> extra space (produce diagram of gravity-well, with a flourish).

I'd be interested in seeing that work in practise, you can really get
newbies to "see" that a parabola in space is a geodesic in spacetime?
 
> People seem to "get" that. You might get an occasional "Gravity makes
> local time appear to go by slower? Really?" "Yup!" "Oh, Okay then"
>
> But try to explain SR time dilation to the same person, and they'll
> usually get upset and insist that the thing is rubbish.

But how do you know you aren't using the "wrong" words? By thesis is
that SR is taught badly.
 
> So untrained people seem to be intuitively happier with supposedly
> "advanced" ideas like spacetime curvature than "simple" ones like SR's
> Minkowski metric (I found). They seem to find most of the GR-ey
> principles easier to visualise and accept, "stars bend light" or
> "gravity slows time" or "rotating stars pull stuff around with them"
> seem to be easier concepts to take onboard than "moving astronauts age
> slower than each other".

And there is an example of bad teaching. Astronauts don't age more
slowly than each other, you should discuss what the astronauts see,
and if they see each age slower then faster than themself, then who
aged more depends on what percentage of the observations were slower
versus faster.
 
> Maybe schools should teach the principles of general relativity first,
> and leave SR to the more "advanced" students. ;)
 
Maybe schools should teach things properly.
   
> >> > > I think this is the way to go. Teach students everything together as
> >> > > competing theories and not relativity as an advance extension to
> >> > > Newtonian Dynamics.
> >> >
> >> > I'd rather teach QM from the start, and get special relativity as a
> >> > limiting case of that, and then Newtonian dynamics as a special case
> >> > of that.
> >>
> >> Well, you are talking 1000 years from now when we will understand
> >> better how quantum uncertainty gives rise to macrocosmic certainty.
> >> For now, such approach can result only in confusion.
> >
> >You seem to have strong opinions about things you obviously don't
> >know. Bohm did a good job of explaining maro-certaintanty as a
> >statistical effect from a large number of quantum particles. And that
> >was decades ago. Teaching is always behind the cutting edge.
>
> I was taught at school that Newton's prism experiment proved that
> light was composed of seven colours, and we were made to memorise the
> seven colours and conduct the experiment ourselves and "see" the seven
> colours ourselves.
>
> Then we were given coloured filters to play with and were taught that
> white light was actually composed of three distinct colours, and we
> were shown how to conduct expeirments to prove /that/.
>
> No wonder the poor kids were a bit bewildered.
>
> I survived those classes by being arrogant enough to assume that if
> something sounded wrong it was probably bull***.

Good, most things are oversimplifications to the point where they are
wrong.

> Hopefully anyone going through that syllabus with a real talent for
> physcs woudl have realised that thge problem was not with them but
> with the teaching, but I do sometimes wonder how many "adepts" leave
> physcs because they think,wrongly, that their misgivings about certain
> subjects are becuase they arenlt good at the subject.
>
> If the people taking up the subject are predominantly people who are
> more prepared to suspend disbelief than the norm, then that might not
> be good for the subject. I suppose the people who already have a
> grounding in physcs before they take the class (eg family background),
> or those who are pig-headed enough to believe that they are right and
> the system is wrong, may still get through.

You don't have to be "simply" pig-headed, you can just call your
teachers on anything that doesn't make sense and then disregard their
assertion if they don't back them up well enough.
 
> I do notice that a strangely high percentage of physics people seem to
> have physicists or teachers as parents or as elder siblings etc,
> Perhaps a support network makes it easier for one to survive
> introductory physics classes without having one's brain scrambled.
 
I took introductory physics by not caring about the subject.
  
> >> > > But remember, you still have a problem. SR+GR are
> >> > > axiomatic systems. No different from Euclidean geometry in that
> >> > > respect. You gain understanding of the theories early on but also you
> >> > > raise the doubt in their foundations.
> >> >
> >> > Huh? You want to avoid doubt? Science has doubt, predictions are
> >> > made, the predictions can be compared to data, they might pass or
> >> > fail.
> >> >
> >> > > Eventually, someone will lose.
> >> >
> >> > Only theories can lose, not people, please explain more what you mean.
> >>
> >> I meant that popularization of SR, GR will turn out more questioning
> >> and eventually abandoment. This is the fate of every theory that
> >> becomes pupolarized.
> >
> >I seriously doubt that. I think that when the correct SR theory is
> >finally popularized the "incorrect alleged SR theories" will FINALLY
> >be adandoned, and not a moment too soon, yeak!
>
> I think that perhaps part of why SR is such a bad "subject" is that
> there are probably a lot of pro-SR people strenuously insisting that
> what they were taught is right, even when it isn't.
>
> I think the Penrose/Terrell case illustrates this nicely, we had a
> situation where professional physcists had supposedly been pushing a
> "wrong" result for decades, even though it disagreed with the math,
> because they had been /taught/ that moving objects are seen to be
> contracted under SR.
> Social conditionaing overrode mathematics and geometry.
>
> Penrose was a mathematician who snuck his result out as a
> non-peer-revirewed letter in an obscure local journal, Terrell was an
> undergraduate who struggled for years to get his paper through peer
> review.
> So the matter was eventually tackled by a newbie and a mathematican,
> not by mature "physics" people.
>
> For some reason, these things always seem to end up being corrected by
> outsiders, the highly-trained mainstream don't seem to be willing or
> able to do it themselves.
 
I've considered that there might be large numbers of physicists that
think clearly about SR, but just "assume" that everyone else does too
and hence don't get invovled in debates about it. The irony is that
all of these physicists could compute what people SEE correctly, if
only they CARED enough to do so.
  
> >> > > Those that are afraid of ending up with a loser keep SR+GR as advance
> >> > > subjects.
> >> >
> >> > I'd love to have GR and SR as grade-school subjects, does that mean
> >> > I'm not afraid of losing? I don't know what you mean by "afraid of
> >> > losing" or "lose", I do hope my predictions match the data, that's
> >> > because if it's easy to be wrong, so why bother learning a theory if
> >> > it makes wrong predictions?
> >> >
> >> > > Remember what happened to Euclidean geometry?
> >> >
> >> > What happened? It's still around!
> >> >
> >> > > As soos as
> >> > > they started teaching it, thousands attempted to disprove the Playfair
> >> > > axiom (parallel lines never meet). The result was a
> >> > > relative-consistency with spherical and hypoerbolic geometries.
> >> >
> >> > Elemetary euclidean geometry was proved consistent, you can drop
> >> > "relative-consistency" and just say "consistent" if what you mean is
> >> > that elementary hyperbolic geometry is as consistent as elementary
> >> > Euclidean geometry. And if you mean something other than elementary,
> >> > then that useally means bringing in sets and once you've done that
> >> > then all become equiconsistent with set theory.
> >>
> >> I agree. But I hope you recall that the consistency of Euclidean
> >> geometry was under question for some time.
> >
> >Well, the same grounding to elementary euclidean geometry applies to
> >elementary hyperbolic geometry, and I can do SR predictions with
> >ELEMENTARY hyperbolic geometry. If you want not instantaneous
> >accelerations, then I need FULL hyperbolic geometry, which is as
> >consistent as FULL euclidean geometry.
>
> Mmmm, but the GR experience has hopefully taught everyone that
> mathematical consistency is not necessarily enough -- in physics, a
> structure also has to be "appropriate".
>
> If basic Euclidean geometry is consistent, it doesn't neccessarily
> mean that it is appropriate or sufficient for describing lightbeam
> geometry in the presence of gravitational fields or accelerating
> masses (until you start adding dimensions), or even relativiely moving
> masses.

What was originally being debated was the internal consistency of SR
predictions. Therefore a constructed a slim version of SR without
frames or curves, just points and straight lines, which is KNOWN to be
consistent, and hence the internal consistency of the SR predictions
in my slim model should safe and garanteed.

And accelerating bodies can be handled to arbitrary precision. People
forget that the accelerating results of SR are KNOWN, and that THAT is
HOW we get the gravitational results in GR.
 
> So a theory or model can be completely consistent in its own
> (artificial) context, but physcally wrong when it comes to attempts to
> use it to model the behaviour of the real world.
> Mathematical theorems can appear to be rock-solid, but still be
> hopelessly wrong (or misunderstood) in the context of attempts to
> construct physical theory.
> Nuances of language can be incredibly important.

That's exactly what I'm doing, I'm contrasting a 4-d Newtonian model
that uses the manhattan metric with a minkowksi metric. Each is
internally consistent, but I'm asserting that the minkowski one would
match experiments, which I have GOTTEN to doing yet, because eleaticus
and Androcles are acting afraid of the model and I don't think you
guys are helping at all.
  
[snip]

> BTW, This is one of the reasons why I'm still an SR sceptic
> (even though I count myself as a harcore relativist): apart from the
> fact that many or most of the experimental SR proofs seem to have been
> badly compromised, and that there still seems to me to be at least one
> major theoretical loophole that hasn't yet been dealt with (and which
> IMO should have been tackled decades ago), it's the sheer badness of
> most of the analysis.
 
Have you studied particle physics? SR is tested all the time for most
particle physics experiments, and it comes up fine.

> I don't honestly believe that physics people are usually this bad,
> without good reason.

How many people want to test SR for a living? Most good people do
something else, like particle physics instead, so look for something
that USES the results of SR as a necissary component rather than
testing SR as an end to itself.
 
> If SR was wrong, and the community was heroically struggling along
> with a reference theory that didn't work properly, then perhaps those
> analyses might be the best that could be achieved without exposing
> apparent conflicts with SR, and perhaps then we'd have a logical
> reason why the analyses seem to be so consistently compromised.

It's just not consistent, and there aren't problems with SR theory,
but there *might* be problems with that *some* people think is SR
theory, which as I'm saying is a problem for physics education to fix.
 
> If SR is /not/ a correct physcal theory, then perhaps these repeated
> screwups make some sort of sense and tell a story.
> Otherwise, if SR really is correct, I suppose the explanation would
> have to be that the whole community is just hopeless at these sorts of
> calculations, period.

These are fallacies that "everyone" screws up. Physicis education
literature discusses screw ups and how to avoid them in teachers as
well as students. For instance look at me, I'm not special in any
way, just a normal educator, but I don't make these erros you accuse
other people of. And there are tons of people like me. I do tend to
find frames bad news, for instance if one person hops frames, then the
"distant events that were called *simultaneous*" change in mid hop, so
clearly the notion of simultaneous is rather limited in it's use.

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