On 1/15/2014 2:54 PM, Stephen Paul King wrote:
Dear Edgar,
I will have to agree with LizR here. SR in fact makes the notion of a present moment a
nonsensical concept, as SR shows how there does not exist, nay cannot exist any global
frame of simultaneity. This prevents the existence, if SR is correct and good evidence
tells us that it is, of any thing like a global present moment.
"That dog don't hunt!"
But notice that Edgar makes two kinds of arguments:
First, the local event argument - if two bodies interact it must be at the same moment (he
neglects to to mention that it must also be at the same place).
Second, the continuity argument - if two bodies interact at two different events than at
any given time between those two events both bodies exist and this means that they are
existing in the same moment, even though they are in different places..
Curiously, in his online blog about SR he takes the same approach as Lewis Carrol Epstein
in his excellent little book "Relativity Visualized". He notes that everything is always
traveling at the speed of light. If you're 'standing still' that means you're just
traveling in the time direction. So if you move in the space direction you must give up
some speed in the time direction. Epstein calls this a useful myth and doesn't misused
it. Edgar assumes that 'time direction' is fixed like Newtonian space.
Brent
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