bladedtoys

1. Apparently there is no particular velocity that can be called absolutely stopped or special in any way: every velocity is just as valid as every other.

2. Observers moving at different velocities disagree on 3D distances and time intervals between events.

3. But they all agree on the spacetime distance between events. Which is to say, there is a simple formula that resembles a distance formula in 4D where one of the dimensions is time.[0] We know that using this formula, all observers at all velocities get the same result.

gravity is not being discussed but relativity addresses it as well.

So relativity explains actual (but counter intuitive) observations. If we had the simpler Newtonian universe then we could fly around at unlimited relative speeds and time would flow unambiguously at constant rate and be completely unconnected to distance/space. But by direct observation, we see we don't live in such a universe.

If causality could percolate at unlimited speeds then we would not observe any these things and the formulas for relativity would not work but the formulas of Newton would. For one, there would be infinite frames of reference for which you arrive before you depart and these frames of reference could use faster than light travel reverse casualty.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime#Spacetime_interval

Comment · 6 years ago

Molecules are much lower density than black-holes. If an object were infinitely small, it would never be hit by physical collisions. If it were infinitely massive it would never be affected by them.

I would have thought that any model of a black hole in this scenario essentially approximates one of those conditions.

Comment · 6 years ago

The most common hundred words is challenging.

But maybe not the most common hundred concepts. "Turn out" is ambiguous but the notions of "expulsion" or "away" or "count" and "people" may not be.

It would be extremely useful to have a list of the most common core concepts shared by all cultures. Some maybe tricky like colors, but there must be a great many in common because it is possible to communicate after all.

Comment · 6 years ago

> Teleautomation [controlled by] Hertz'ian radiations [0]

Unusual language describing how we actually do remote control today. With a picture of an example boat no less!

[0] Hertz'ian radiations undoubtedly refers to EM

Comment · 7 years ago

You can construct a cool game out of non-transitive dice that does this on the very first move but in a completely counter-intuitive way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontransitive_dice

Comment · 7 years ago

Unless the second is defined on a Hubble flow co-moving observer, it's ill-defined enough to be ambiguous by at least 2 years out of 4 billion.

Comment · 7 years ago

Maybe tangential but I notice that faith in machines seems to create consensus out of ambiguity (whether appropriate or not).

For example, in Tennis, replay shown by the Hawkeye system is not video but reduced to a computer animation. The animation shows the ball impact with an unreasonable shape and with sharp outlines of infinite resolution of both ball and line on every surface, even grass. Yet the result is accepted with little or no argument. So while ambiguity still obviously exists to the same degree, the final decision has been delegated to software and machinery rather than publicly reviewing the actual event via video.

I find two interesting things about this. 1) apparently having a human review the video and rendering the final verdict would cause more argument than black-box software and 2) Hawkeye has become part of the rules and so some players have found ways of using the psychology involved to their advantage.