Re-writing Relativity

Originally posted by twhitehead
It is not ridiculous at all.
Your analogy of weight is a good one except you got it wrong. All weight is measured from zero so a weight of 1 ton is 1 ton away from zero. The current point in time (13.7 BYA) is 13.7 BYA away from zero and there is nothing wrong with it.
Some people are however claiming that time must necessarily have negative values. If ...[text shortened]... you show me an object which is minus 1 ton?

And yes, weight may very well have a maximum too.

How do you know there's no negative weight?

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/N/negative_mass.html

Originally posted by scottishinnz
It is based on evidence. I have faith that the universe exists, but is [b]not the same faith that you are trying to force upon the conversation. Your definition of faith (I believe because I was brought up (read "indoctrinated"😉 to believe) and my definition of faith (I think this is right based upon the evidence laid before me) are completely different. If English were a more dynamic language, I doubt they'd be the same word.[/b]

Perhaps a new word such as 'probalief' might do the trick.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
It is based on evidence. I have faith that the universe exists, but is [b]not the same faith that you are trying to force upon the conversation. Your definition of faith (I believe because I was brought up (read "indoctrinated"😉 to believe) and my definition of faith (I think this is right based upon the evidence laid before me) are completely different. If English were a more dynamic language, I doubt they'd be the same word.[/b]

You simply believe some thing and you think you have reasons that work for you for that belief. It does not mean that everyone will accept your reasons, or that they mean the same thing to them as they do you, but your reasons are good enough for you.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
You simply believe some thing and you think you have reasons that work for you for that belief. It does not mean that everyone will accept your reasons, or that they mean the same thing to them as they do you, but your reasons are good enough for you.
Kelly

And the pretty much the entire scientific community. But, hey, who am I to judge? You have your beliefs too, and presumably they're shared by the rest of the religious yokel community too?

Originally posted by twhitehead
It is not ridiculous at all.
Your analogy of weight is a good one except you got it wrong. All weight is measured from zero so a weight of 1 ton is 1 ton away from zero. The current point in time (13.7 BYA) is 13.7 BYA away from zero and there is nothing wrong with it.
Some people are however claiming that time must necessarily have negative values. If ...[text shortened]... you show me an object which is minus 1 ton?

And yes, weight may very well have a maximum too.

Your argument seems to suggest that all dimensions must always have positive values; that is, you are suggesting that since you claim weight must be positive or zero, all other dimensions must likewise be positive or zero, and that there must be an absolute zero point for every dimension of measurement. Is that correct?

I am definitely claiming that no dimension can be measured in terms of itself.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Your argument seems to suggest that all dimensions must always have positive values; that is, you are suggesting that since you claim weight must be positive or zero, all other dimensions must likewise be positive or zero, and that there must be an absolute zero point for every dimension of measurement. Is that correct?

I am definitely claiming that no dimension can be measured in terms of itself.

No, I am making no such claim. I am not even claiming that negative weight does not exist.
However I am claiming that negative weight is not a direct logical conclusion based on the existence of positive weight. There is no reason to believe that the weight dimension does not have a beginning.

Originally posted by twhitehead
No, I am making no such claim. I am not even claiming that negative weight does not exist.
However I am claiming that negative weight is not a direct logical conclusion based on the existence of positive weight. There is no reason to believe that the weight dimension does not have a beginning.

Whether or not negative weight actually exists, it is indeed a logical conclusion based on the existence of positive weight. Positive and negative indicate direction. Negative weight indicates a repulsion caused by gravity.

The question with respect to weight is not whether it had a beginning, but whether it has a weight, and if so, how much?

Can you lift the concept of weight or is it too heavy for you?

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Whether or not negative weight actually exists, it is indeed a logical conclusion based on the existence of positive weight. Positive and negative indicate direction. Negative weight indicates a repulsion caused by gravity.

The question with respect to weight is not whether it had a beginning, but whether it has a weight, and if so, how much?

Can you lift the concept of weight or is it too heavy for you?

So what are you saying? Does negative weight necessarily exist? If so why hasn't any physicist or scientist written any convincing work on the subject? The site you directed my to said it was speculated not a definite logical conclusion.

Of course the concept of weight does not have weight, that is ridiculous and you know it. But nobody has claimed that so why are you asking?

Originally posted by twhitehead
So what are you saying? Does negative weight necessarily exist? If so why hasn't any physicist or scientist written any convincing work on the subject? The site you directed my to said it was speculated not a definite logical conclusion.

Of course the concept of weight does not have weight, that is ridiculous and you know it. But nobody has claimed that so why are you asking?

Of course the concept of weight does not have weight, that is ridiculous and you know it. But nobody has claimed that so why are you asking?

But time has an age? That's just as ridiculous.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
[b]Of course the concept of weight does not have weight, that is ridiculous and you know it. But nobody has claimed that so why are you asking?

But time has an age? That's just as ridiculous.[/b]

Maybe not. I speak not from a biblical perspective, but from some of the latest theories of how the universe formed, string theory and m-brane theories and others similar project more than our usual 4 dimensions. So part of that says that our universe started some 14 billion years ago and so forth but the gist of that is, the beginning of our universe was simply the setting or resetting of a local clock to zero time, say at the barest beginning of the big bang or whatever it proves to have been when we get the main features correctly.
So in one sense, time can have an age: many universes come and go and so there would be some higher dimensional referance where there may be a 'master' clock or clocks. One of the very latest theories about the end of our universe puts bits and pieces of it billions of years from now sort of like a piece of paper getting torn into small pieces, each piece going on to form another universe, with its internal clock being set to zero, perhaps at the same time (viewed from a higher dimensional perspective) as ours, so if bits and pieces of our universe start new universes while our universe is still going on, then several clocks may be running, ours included, at the same time, but maybe with differant internal rates, picture a daughter universe which somehow the rules get changed for that universe and from our standpoint, their clock runs a million times faster so if we could see it with some futuristic instrument, a thousand years goes by here but a billion years goes by in that hypothetical universe, so the sum of all those time referants may have an 'age', but measured in a stretch of years incomprehensible to our minds, Trillions of quadrillions of googlpexes of years or some such because of the probably infinite nature of the big universe of which our universe is but a piece like a small asteroid orbiting the sun, accompanied by a whole family of similar but differant universes as are the planets around our sun.
Then there are other suns, separate sets of universes, each with its own bevy of parallel universes. Moggles the bind, eh.

Originally posted by KellyJay
It is still fuzzy thinking in my opinion, simply because there is a reference point means we have a before, during, and after. To dismiss one isn't logical, to say we have no guesses or theories about all points before the event would be an honest statement, not it isn't real. You may as well say we know we have a cube, but it only has two dimensions to it.
Kelly

The way I am trying to express things may be “fuzzy,” but I am actually trying to avoid fuzzy thinking by pointing out what cannot be thought clearly. The following questions, for example, are incoherent, nonsensical:

“Was there a time before time?”

“Where was everything before there was ‘where’ (i.e., spatial dimensions)?”

“Is there an uncaused cause of causation?”

“Is there anything beyond the totality of everything?”

Like Scotty, and others, I use the word “universe” to mean—by definition—the totality. However, I am happy to use just “totality” or “the whole” or “All.”

If the singularity is the “reference point” for time-space dimensionality, then it makes no sense to ask where and when beyond that point. Where and when are questions of dimensionality. Similarly if the singularity is the reference point for causality. The singularity is the point beyond which we cannot coherently speak. The error is to think of the universe as a collection of things that exist “within” dimensionality, when dimensionality is a property of the universe: they are not separable, just as my smile is not separable from my face.

Not only do I not know how to talk about, I also do not know how to think about a state of non-dimensionality; nor do I think that anyone else can either: I think it is a “concept” that has no coherence for us. Which is why people end up using dimensional “operators” (before, outside, etc.) when trying to ask such questions. Perhaps we could speak of a conceptual or philosophical “singularity,” as well as a physical/dimensional one...

That is why I think that a statement such as, “God is a being that transcends dimensionality (time-space),” is every bit as incoherent as to say that God is a being that exists “outside” of dimensionality—unless one means by that simply something like, “‘God’ is the word I use to refer to whatever there may be that transcends my ability to coherently think about....” I have always been willing to admit that there may be aspects of the totality that transcend our cognitive capacities: a mystery that may be experiential, but remains ineffable. And at that point, I either adhere to Wittgenstein’s dictum: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent,” or (more likely) I resort to poetry or Zen-like paradoxical language—attempts at what bbarr once called “elicitive,” rather than descriptive, language.

At its best, I think that religion is an aesthetic response to that sense of ineffable mystery (whether it lies solely in our minds or the world or both)—more like Beethoven than like biology—and that is where I think it’s justification lies.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Well, absolutely. Of course, as I've pointed out before, there is as much evidence for fairies at the bottom of your garden as there is for a before - even if there was, it wouldn't make any difference to the argument.

Is there evidence that time exists either? If time can not be shown to exist in real terms and be substantial in any way at all then it makes no sense to say that there can be no "before" the BB since saying this depends on time actually existing. It would be like someone saying "there can't be anything before the BB because it would need fairies to exist in and there can be no fairies before the BB"

If fairies cannot be shown to exist it's a meaningless objection.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
But time has an age? That's just as ridiculous.

Of course its ridiculous so why do you keep talking about it. Nobody has made such a claim.

However that in no way means that time cannot have a minimum or maximum.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
Oh, and you still haven't progressed past the idea that the "universe" is not a finite thing, like a brick.

So it's infinite then? I thought you were saying it had a beginning?

Originally posted by knightmeister
Is there evidence that time exists either? If time can not be shown to exist in real terms and be substantial in any way at all then it makes no sense to say that there can be no "before" the BB since saying this depends on time actually existing.

What on earth do you mean by "shown to exist in real terms"?
And please don't start with your nonsense about it having to have a color before it can exist.