Tommy,
BTW, I noticed you used bad language as well in your post. Are you sure you don't listen to Eminem?
Pretty sure. But don't be so surprised. Metallica was using bad language in their music back when Eminem was in grade-school.
Paul,
Yikes! Don't listen to him, Tommy! It's a plot to kill the brain cells of other humans. Stimpy is either a lying mongrel and doesn't listen to that stuff, or he's a freak of nature who can listen and not rot his brain. Anything past Black Sabbath is death music! Run away!
Maybe I am a freak. Most people say they can't concentrate when loud, aggressive music is playing. For me, it actually helps me concentrate. It's like their is a part of my brain that just wants to wander around, and won't let me focus. I have to distract it in order to be able to concentrate on anything. Heavy Metal does quite a good job of that. Plus, it relaxes and soothes me.
Ian,
You are talking out of your ass. It is not, in any way, necessary to introduce the notion of absolute space.
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I'm afraid it is. Let's make it even simpler. Consider what I quoted before:
"In Einstein's Universe, which has no reference point or common center of mass, inertial forces such as centrifugal forces for example, are generated even in the absence of the fixed stars, in
contrast to the earlier relativity theories of Berkeley and Mach. A
spinning Earth would, in a mysterious way, generate centrifugal force at the equator even if all other matter in the Universe was removed. This reverts back to Berkeley's argument, "How then can we say that the Earth is spinning and relative to what?""
http://www.colutron.com/download_files/chapt1.pdf
It could only conceivably be spinning relative to space. Therefore space must be absolute. Which is a nonsensical notion.
It is spinning relative to itself. Remember that the Earth is not a point particle. It is a whole bunch of particles, moving relative to each other, and interacting with each other via electromagnetic and gravitational forces. In a sense, it is like a whole Universe unto itself.
Think about it. If what you are claiming is true, then it would be meaningless to say that our entire Universe is or is not rotating. But it is not meaningless. If the Universe has net angular momentum, then according to GR, it should be possible to detect that this is the case, even from within the Universe.
Even if you take your example to the absurd limit of a Universe with just one electron in it, guess what? That electron will be spinning. From any reference frame you could imagine, that electron will have angular momentum of +-1/2 h-bar.
Counter-intuitive? You bet it is. But that is the way things appear to be.
There is more to the system than just the relative positions of the two spheres. You are, once again, applying your notoriously circular logic. You claim that the two scenarios are indistinguishable, and then when we point out that they are not, and how they could be distinguished by things like red-shift, length-contraction, and deformation do to centrifugal force, you assert that none of those effects are present.
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The point is there could not be any reason for them to be present since the 2 spheres could not be considered to be revolving around each other.
There is a very good reason to believe that they are present. And that is that General Relativity predicts that they would be.
Relativity is irrelevant? Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't you bring up this sphere nonsense as an example of how materialism treats indistinguishable objects? Are you now suggesting that materialism does not predict that your sphere example will function according to general relativity? If so, then it is you who are spouting off relevancies, not I.
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it has absolutely nothing to do with materialism. It's a question of basic logic. How can one say the earth is spinning in an otherwise empty Universe?? The problem doesn't go away simply because one is a materialist!
The only problem is that you have not thought the situation through. In any event, I think we can safely say that this spinning sphere nonsense has absolutely zero relevance to what we were discussing, namely what materialism predicts about the consciousness of duplicated people.
Although I know very little about physics and next to nothing about relativity, I'm just wondering if Stimp is correct here. Consider, if it has nothing to do with absolute acceleration then one might as well suppose that it is the whole earth (with the twin) accelerating away from the spaceship twin. The earth reaches very close to the speed of light, slows down and then stops relative to the spaceship twin. Then it reverses direction eventually reaching the spaceship twin. But by this reckoning the spaceship twin would have aged much more than the earth twin! This then suggests that it must be the acceleration and deceleration of the spaceship itself which slows down spaceship time relative to earth time.
In that case, the spaceship twin would have aged more than the Earth twin, because the spaceship twin would have remained in the same inertial frame for the duration of the experiment. There is no paradox, though, because the scenario you just outlined is not symmetric to the original scenario.
Consider this. Twin B takes off in a spaceship to Alpha Centaury, 4 light-years away, at 80% the speed of light (we will assume that acceleration time is negligible, to simplify the math), and returns. At 80% the speed of light, the factor by which time is dilated, and length is contracted, is about a factor of 2.
So let's look at the situation from both points of view, and see where the symmetry is broken.
Earth perspective. From the reference frame of the Earth, the total trip takes 10 years (8 light-years / 0.8 light-years/year). Clearly the twin on Earth must age 10 years. In addition, he will notice that while his twin's ship is moving relative to him at 0.8c, the ship appears to be only half of its normal length.
Spaceship perspective. To the twin on the spaceship, the reference frame of both the Earth and Alpha Centauri is moving past him at 0.8c. He therefore sees, as his twin did, a length contraction of everything in that frame, of a factor of 2. This creates the somewhat bizarre effect that, as soon as the motion starts, Alpha Centauri
will only appear to be 2 light-years away, instead of 4. This means that the whole trip will, from his point of view, take 5 years (4 light-years / 0.8 light-years/year).
Thus the symmetry is broken. There is no paradox. Each twin ages exactly the amount that he thinks he should age, given his perspective of the situation. And as I pointed out before, the difference which leads to the broken symmetry, is that the experiment starts and ends in the reference frame of the Earth. More to the point, the distance travelled is marked by objects which are in the reference frame of the Earth.
The 2 globes orbiting each other is comparable to a single spinning earth. If you like, consider the 2 spheres are joined up by a rope or whatever, so it can be considered a single object like the spinning earth.
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Another thought is that Stimp would define any tension in the rope as meaning that the globes are revolving around each other by definition. That is to say there is nothing over and above their revolving around each other apart from the tension in the rope. This is not what we would normally define as revolving, as we would normally say the tension is an effect of the revolving.
There is much more to it than just tension is the rope. There is also gravitational radiation due to acceleration, red/blue-shift of light being reflected off of the spheres due to their relative motion. Length-contraction and time-dilation due to their relative motion, and so on.
What you don't seem to be able to accept is that it is, according to General Relativity, possible to determine if a closed, completely self-contained system, has angular momentum or not, from within that system. I realize that this is counter-intuitive, but it is not incoherent. The math works out just fine, and our empirical observations all indicate that the math is correct.
Hammegk,
Blah! Ditch all of that crap. What you need is some good old-fashioned Heavy Metal. Start yourself off with some soft and melodic, like Iron Maiden or Black Sabbath, and then work your way up to stuff like Slayer and Pantera.
Dr. Stupid
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Damn, Stimpy. Way to go! Where would you fit Metallica?
They cover the whole spectrum of metal. Some of their more recent stuff is classic style metal, like Black Sabbath or Deep Purple, and their older stuff is hardcore speed metal.
BTW, could the problem in communication between you & Ian have something to do with as I understand it Ian has actually postulated two identical universes, not spheres in "the" universe. Question then is what contains 2 universes, and what laws control that?
That is what he originally suggested, until several of us pointed out that such examples contradict materialism directly, and therefore cannot be used to draw conclusions about what materialism says would happen.
Loki,
Let's not forget Anthrax - "We've Come For You All" is a fine return, nearly equal to "The Sound Of White Noise". Just gotta love "Refuse to be Denied".
I could never forget Anthrax. They are one of the greats.
Dr. Stupid
