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From: Peter Webb on 9 Jun 2010 09:14

"Koobee Wublee" <koobee.wublee(a)gmail.com> wrote in message
news:965623e5-d8fd-452c-9c4d-6657543a2d1d(a)h13g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
> On Jun 8, 7:08 am, "Peter Webb" wrote:
>> Koobee Wublee wrote:
>
>>> Is the Lorentz transform is unique among them
>>> because it satisfies the principle of relativity?
>>
>> If you accept Maxwell's equations to be correct, then the answer is yes,
>> because Maxwell's equations transform using Lorentz and so by equivalence
>> everything else you can measure must transform in the same way.
>
> Maxwell's equations can easily be transformed using any of the
> infinite numbers of transforms that explain the null results of the
> MMX but do not satisfy the principle of relativity. One example is
> Larmor's original Lorentz transform that does not satisfy the
> principle of relativity. <shrug>

Lots of transforms don't satisfy the principle of relativity.

So what?

Have I answered your question concerning why the Lorentz transform uniquely
satisfies the principle of relativity, assuming Maxwell?

And did you have some point to make by this question?



From: PD on 9 Jun 2010 12:53
On Jun 9, 7:56 am, "Me, ...again!" <arthu...(a)mv.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Jun 2010, PD wrote:
> > On Jun 8, 4:36 pm, "Me, ...again!" <arthu...(a)mv.com> wrote:
> >> On Tue, 8 Jun 2010, PD wrote:
> >>> On Jun 8, 9:32 am, "Peter Webb" <webbfam...(a)DIESPAMDIEoptusnet.com.au>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>>> Since the controversy -- as I've demonstrated with two dozen books written
> >>>>> in the last ten years--is ongoing, the only generous conclusion I can make
> >>>>> is that science has failed to resolve the controversy decades after E/R
> >>>>> came out.
>
> >>> I'm also curious about your apparent belief that if a theory were
> >>> really accepted scientifically, then there wouldn't be any dissenting
> >>> opinions.
>
> >> Here are (I think) two examples: first, the value of pi is 3.1416, and
> >> second, if I said "The sun came up yesterday", I would expect that there
> >> wouldn't be any significant dissent.
>
> > First of all, those are not theories in the sense that there is a
> > model of the behavior of nature that makes predictions of measurable
> > behavior under specified sets of circumstances. The value of pi is a
> > constant that sometimes appears in such theories, such as the theory
> > surrounding electrodynamics. The *observation* that the sun came up
> > yesterday can certainly be used as experimental support or
> > falsification of a theory that would have made predictions about that
> > behavior occurring yesterday.
>
> > Can you try a little better? Since you have a doctorate in a major
> > field of science, I would think that you would be able to distinguish
> > a theory from an observational fact or a numerical constant.
>
> It may seem trivial to you, but the value of pi derives from a
> mathematical formula and is both commercially useful and and of
> theoretical interest for those few people who like to calculate its value
> out to gazillion decimal places in the hopes of learning something
> profound of mathematical obscure significance in, shall I say,
> "numerology". My own realm of interest is _more_ in the Great Recession
> and the oil leak in the Gulf.
>
> My interest is also in _truth_ (or whatever enters our brains as knowledge
> [instead of superstition, etc]). I have this theory of my own that there
> really is very little truth; instead, we have tons of speculation,
> opinions, conjecture, belief, huffing-and-puffing, propaganda, disbelief,
> and somewhere I wrote down another two dozen terms.

To tell you the truth [ :) ] I agree with you to an extent.
Tom Roberts will also tell you that we do not, in physics, know
anything about nature itself. We only have models about nature and we
rate the performance of models according to certain criteria that are
central to the scientific method. I would claim that this method does
manage to secure some connection between the models and nature that is
beyond opinion, conjecture, beliefs, propaganda, and so on.

I would further comment, though, that there are lots of different
kinds of statements we call knowledge, and only a small fraction of
them are what would be classed as scientific theories. Furthermore,
there are whole realms of investigation that might result in knowledge
that are wholly unsuited for scientific methodology. An example would
be most one-off events, because science strongly favors the
reproducible.

>
> The "sun came up" statement was an attempt to find something that would be
> hard to argue against but it is a part of the "prediction theory" that
> says the sun comes up every day. Some "difficult" philosopher could argue
> that the sun does not come up every day, or that if I talke about the sun
> came up today, he could give me a difficult time on that, too.
>
> A very practical problem with theories is when people try to establish
> cause-and-effect relationships by using correlations. In complex worlds
> (eg. ours), correlations are imperfect evidence of cause-effect, but they
> do get publications from scholars who don't have the resources to design
> proper experiments since it would require the study of very large numbers
> of variables. Do you want specific examples?

This is where the control of variables in an experiment becomes
especially important, as is the analysis and estimate of the size of
the effect due to uncontrolled variables, which is often quoted as an
experimental uncertainty in the measured result. There are also
indicators of signal significance above recognized backgrounds, as
well as other statistical methods to evaluate the confidence that the
match to theory is not an accident. These methodologies are common in
biology as well as in physics, especially where there are populations
studied in their native environments.

>
> To get closer to what I think might satisfy YOU, I opened up that quantum
> mechanics (text, 668 pages so its not a comic book) book authored by
> Morrison (c 1990, so its not obsolete) to the chapter I read just
> recently on the wave-particle duality. He is a faculty member, so people
> can't as easily call him a nut-case because he is a practicing physicist,
> and the book is full of math, so he's not a kindergarten-level dumb twit,
> either [but he might have enemies in academia, as is not uncommon among
> competitors and I know about this as fact]). He cites another book he
> wrote (also physics) so its not a one shot deal, and at the end of
> chapters, he cites relevant and significant sources (in about 20 books),
> some by the famous names, that have appeared going back many decades. He
> gives a very nice, undogmatic discussion of the duality and I will discuss
> that because its a "simpler" _problem_ than E/R. And, if you want, I'd be
> glad to scan 2-3 pages into, say, a zipped .bmp file or .jpg (I'm not
> going to type up all those pages for you, and although I have an
> OCR program somewhere, its buggy and would take longer to set it all up)
> to see how an open-minded guy can be professional, academic, and
> intellectually honest about "theories." He discussed interpretation as
> a major problem area for developing knowledge from experiments (which
> themselves are limited and subject to design, errors, etc). He has many
> well thought out sentences. Here is a string of several short ones:
> "Electrons are not particles. They aren't waves either. They are something
> else for which we neither have a name nor a classical model. Properly, we
> should follow deBroglie's lead and refer to them as 'fragments of energy,'
> but that would be awkward. Or, we could follow Eddington and call them
> 'wavicles,' but that would be silly." So, in these pages I thought the guy
> was being knowledgeable, careful, wise, and...above all...undogmatic.

This quoted sentence almost exactly mirrors what I told you about
particles and waves. Electrons and light are neither particles nor
waves, but are some OTHER kind of entity that exhibits some particle-
like properties and some wave-like properties. I just wrote the same
thing a slightly different way. In my mind, I am in agreement with
your chosen author. Is there a distinction you see that you would like
to elucidate?

PD


From: PD on 9 Jun 2010 12:55
On Jun 9, 2:46 am, Koobee Wublee <koobee.wub...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jun 8, 7:08 am, "Peter Webb" wrote:
>
> > Koobee Wublee wrote:
> >> Is the Lorentz transform is unique among them
> >> because it satisfies the principle of relativity?
>
> > If you accept Maxwell's equations to be correct, then the answer is yes,
> > because Maxwell's equations transform using Lorentz and so by equivalence
> > everything else you can measure must transform in the same way.
>
> Maxwell's equations can easily be transformed using any of the
> infinite numbers of transforms that explain the null results of the
> MMX but do not satisfy the principle of relativity.  One example is
> Larmor's original Lorentz transform that does not satisfy the
> principle of relativity.  <shrug>

However, those transforms do not respect the OTHER experimental
measurements that have been made beyond the MMX.
From: Me, ...again! on 9 Jun 2010 18:52


On Wed, 9 Jun 2010, PD wrote:

> On Jun 9, 7:56 am, "Me, ...again!" <arthu...(a)mv.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, 8 Jun 2010, PD wrote:
>>> On Jun 8, 4:36 pm, "Me, ...again!" <arthu...(a)mv.com> wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 8 Jun 2010, PD wrote:
>>>>> On Jun 8, 9:32 am, "Peter Webb" <webbfam...(a)DIESPAMDIEoptusnet.com.au>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> Since the controversy -- as I've demonstrated with two dozen books written
>>>>>>> in the last ten years--is ongoing, the only generous conclusion I can make
>>>>>>> is that science has failed to resolve the controversy decades after E/R
>>>>>>> came out.
>>
>>>>> I'm also curious about your apparent belief that if a theory were
>>>>> really accepted scientifically, then there wouldn't be any dissenting
>>>>> opinions.
>>
>>>> Here are (I think) two examples: first, the value of pi is 3.1416, and
>>>> second, if I said "The sun came up yesterday", I would expect that there
>>>> wouldn't be any significant dissent.
>>
>>> First of all, those are not theories in the sense that there is a
>>> model of the behavior of nature that makes predictions of measurable
>>> behavior under specified sets of circumstances. The value of pi is a
>>> constant that sometimes appears in such theories, such as the theory
>>> surrounding electrodynamics. The *observation* that the sun came up
>>> yesterday can certainly be used as experimental support or
>>> falsification of a theory that would have made predictions about that
>>> behavior occurring yesterday.
>>
>>> Can you try a little better? Since you have a doctorate in a major
>>> field of science, I would think that you would be able to distinguish
>>> a theory from an observational fact or a numerical constant.
>>
>> It may seem trivial to you, but the value of pi derives from a
>> mathematical formula and is both commercially useful and and of
>> theoretical interest for those few people who like to calculate its value
>> out to gazillion decimal places in the hopes of learning something
>> profound of mathematical obscure significance in, shall I say,
>> "numerology". My own realm of interest is _more_ in the Great Recession
>> and the oil leak in the Gulf.
>>
>> My interest is also in _truth_ (or whatever enters our brains as knowledge
>> [instead of superstition, etc]). I have this theory of my own that there
>> really is very little truth; instead, we have tons of speculation,
>> opinions, conjecture, belief, huffing-and-puffing, propaganda, disbelief,
>> and somewhere I wrote down another two dozen terms.
>
> To tell you the truth [ :) ] I agree with you to an extent.

I like that sentence. Because, if you completely agreed with me, then I'd
think there was something wrong. Nobody agrees completely with me, I don't
agree with anyone else completely. I appreciate 'gradations' and overlap
in "understanding."

> Tom Roberts will also tell you that we do not, in physics, know
> anything about nature itself. We only have models about nature and we
> rate the performance of models according to certain criteria that are
> central to the scientific method.

I like that one, too.

I would claim that this method does
> manage to secure some connection between the models and nature that is
> beyond opinion, conjecture, beliefs, propaganda, and so on.

And, I will go along with a lot of that, too.

> I would further comment, though, that there are lots of different
> kinds of statements we call knowledge, and only a small fraction of
> them are what would be classed as scientific theories. Furthermore,
> there are whole realms of investigation that might result in knowledge
> that are wholly unsuited for scientific methodology. An example would
> be most one-off events, because science strongly favors the
> reproducible.

There are nice things about science, and I'm grateful that a lot of us are
out of the "mystical" and the "superstitious" lines of thinking (eg. the
gods are mad because we did something wrong, and brought earthquakes,
thunder, floods, famine, disease, etc).

Reproducible? Yes, your experiments have to work.

>>
>> The "sun came up" statement was an attempt to find something that would be
>> hard to argue against but it is a part of the "prediction theory" that
>> says the sun comes up every day. Some "difficult" philosopher could argue
>> that the sun does not come up every day, or that if I talke about the sun
>> came up today, he could give me a difficult time on that, too.
>>
>> A very practical problem with theories is when people try to establish
>> cause-and-effect relationships by using correlations. In complex worlds
>> (eg. ours), correlations are imperfect evidence of cause-effect, but they
>> do get publications from scholars who don't have the resources to design
>> proper experiments since it would require the study of very large numbers
>> of variables. Do you want specific examples?
>
> This is where the control of variables in an experiment becomes
> especially important, as is the analysis and estimate of the size of
> the effect due to uncontrolled variables, which is often quoted as an
> experimental uncertainty in the measured result. There are also
> indicators of signal significance above recognized backgrounds, as
> well as other statistical methods to evaluate the confidence that the
> match to theory is not an accident. These methodologies are common in
> biology as well as in physics, especially where there are populations
> studied in their native environments.

Agreed.

>>
>> To get closer to what I think might satisfy YOU, I opened up that quantum
>> mechanics (text, 668 pages so its not a comic book) book authored by
>> Morrison (c 1990, so its not obsolete) to the chapter I read just
>> recently on the wave-particle duality. He is a faculty member, so people
>> can't as easily call him a nut-case because he is a practicing physicist,
>> and the book is full of math, so he's not a kindergarten-level dumb twit,
>> either [but he might have enemies in academia, as is not uncommon among
>> competitors and I know about this as fact]). He cites another book he
>> wrote (also physics) so its not a one shot deal, and at the end of
>> chapters, he cites relevant and significant sources (in about 20 books),
>> some by the famous names, that have appeared going back many decades. He
>> gives a very nice, undogmatic discussion of the duality and I will discuss
>> that because its a "simpler" _problem_ than E/R. And, if you want, I'd be
>> glad to scan 2-3 pages into, say, a zipped .bmp file or .jpg (I'm not
>> going to type up all those pages for you, and although I have an
>> OCR program somewhere, its buggy and would take longer to set it all up)
>> to see how an open-minded guy can be professional, academic, and
>> intellectually honest about "theories." He discussed interpretation as
>> a major problem area for developing knowledge from experiments (which
>> themselves are limited and subject to design, errors, etc). He has many
>> well thought out sentences. Here is a string of several short ones:
>> "Electrons are not particles. They aren't waves either. They are something
>> else for which we neither have a name nor a classical model. Properly, we
>> should follow deBroglie's lead and refer to them as 'fragments of energy,'
>> but that would be awkward. Or, we could follow Eddington and call them
>> 'wavicles,' but that would be silly." So, in these pages I thought the guy
>> was being knowledgeable, careful, wise, and...above all...undogmatic.
>
> This quoted sentence almost exactly mirrors what I told you about
> particles and waves. Electrons and light are neither particles nor
> waves, but are some OTHER kind of entity that exhibits some particle-
> like properties and some wave-like properties. I just wrote the same
> thing a slightly different way. In my mind, I am in agreement with
> your chosen author. Is there a distinction you see that you would like
> to elucidate?

Not unless you want to see those other 2-3 pages. I'm planning to read
more of the book. The guy is very nice about "interpretation" and being
frank and undogmatic. I think I can get a lot out of the text passages
without having to struggle with the equations (its been decades since I
did any algebra & calculus, so I'm too rusty). And, I have paged through
the book over the last 1-2 weeks. But, I also have a large stack of other
books to read, too.

And, anytime you want a quality perspective on globalization economics,
let me know. This is an area where I've done substantial reading (at least
20 books on economics overviews [by serious big names] and economic
history). Globalization economics is seriously full of hype and
hucksterism; much worse than E/R problems.

> PD
>
>
>
From: Koobee Wublee on 9 Jun 2010 20:28
On Jun 9, 2:20 am, "n...(a)bid.nes" <alien8...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jun 9, 12:37 am, Koobee Wublee wrote:

> > Physics with math is philosophy. In physics, there is the valid and
> > the invalid; in philosophy, there is no right and no wrong. <shrug>
>
> Screw philosophy; I'm talking phenomenology. You can twist things up
> with math any way you want them to go, but phenomena will expose
> trickery every time.

It does not matter how you want to contort it. Physics with math is
philosophy. <shrug>

> > So, am I correct? Gold absorbs all wavelengths of life except
> > yellow. There is why it appears to be yellow. <shrug>
>
> No, you are wrong.

You are indeed a crank. Take a hike.
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