Physicists continue work to abolish time as fourth dimension of space | Hacker News Reader

Physicists continue work to abolish time as fourth dimension of space

phys.org

20 pointsDiabloD315 comments

Sigh.

Article discusses a paper published in Physics Essays, a well-known crackpot journal.

That said, isn't timeless physics a thing? I know that at some point Eliezer Yudkowsky favored that interpretation. Now, I also know he is not strictly speaking a physicist, but he seems to be quite knowledgeable about physics.

That usage of 'timeless' is more or less unrelated to this.

Oh, I see. Thank you.

Congrats. Continue in the fine tradition of traditional science dismissing everything that falls outside of known worldview without thinking about or discussing it.

Yes. Let's have a discussion with crackpots.

Dr. Amrit Sorli is a researcher with the Osho Miasto, Institute for Meditation and Spiritual Growth, Siena, Italy. His research subjects are Unknown Vacuum Energies in Living Organisms and Direct Scientific Experience. Dr. Sorli is the author of several books and articles and currently gives courses on this theme.

More ad Hominem. You can have batshit beliefs and do proper math/science on the side. Prejudice due to the former may prevent a rational evaluation of the latter, as it happens here, and may also happen during peer review or editorial decisions.

I can't read the full text, but the abstract claims that their views are based on the interpretation of experimental data.

If you can read it, could you tell us if is it a mere thought experiment, or if they performed it? In the latter case, what's the flaw in their experimental setup or reasoning?

Edit: I've done a quick google scholar survey of the second author, and he's also used to delve far into the "not even wrong" territory... That being said, neither the abstract nor the phys.org summary ring any objective crackpot sign to my untrained eye. The claim that they proved Einstein wrong, their track record, and the journal the paper was published in are of course big red warnings. But that doesn't mean that the core of their argument has to be dismissed out of hand.

The problem with engaging with everybody that has an idea is that we don't have the resources to do so.

This was actually discussed in an episode of the Scientific American podcast. I can't find the episode, but they mentioned that they would need a member of staff working full time to reply to and debunk all the crack pot theories.

What's more important, staff doing research and teaching or answering crack pots that cannot be persuaded?

I know that. You don't need to engage with the authors, but assessing some of the papers once in a while may not hurt either.

In the abstract of this paper, they claim that they have experimental support for their theory. This is enough to lower my guard, and make me want to know if 1) they indeed do and 2) they bring something novel on the table.

The explanation given by phys.org sounds like it could make some sense (even though they are most probably beating an old misconception like a dead horse).

That's why I wouldn't mind if a physicist was kind enough to skim and debunk or validate the paper beyond simply bashing the authors.

That's why I wouldn't mind if a physicist was kind enough to skim and debunk or validate the paper beyond simply bashing the authors.

So hire one and pay him to do it. What do you think a physicist will rather do, read a paper published in a reputable journal that is highly likely to teach him something new, or paper that is enormously unlikely to be something else than crackpot theories?

Have there ever been any actual progress in physics coming from someone without academic credentials and/or published in crackpot journal, hm?

Attacking someone's work is not ad Hominem. If he called him an asshole or some other unrelated insult that would be ad Hominem.

If just listing the guys work comes off as insulting, you gotta wonder...

By attacking his previous work, you don't address the question at hand, and sidetrack the debate on the worth of the messenger.

Strictly speaking, you could say it's an ad opus attack, which is still fallacious.

Physicists are generally quite busy people, and the fact it was published it in crackpot journal is a pretty good indicator that reading it will be a waste of time. If the authors are physicists, they know what the reception of an article in crackpot journal will be. If they care, they will publish it in a journal with good reputation. If they cannot, it means that it's not worth reading.

Thanks; I was hoping someone would comment and save me the trouble of figuring out whether this is as bullshit as it appears, on first read, to be.

So what the paper proposes I proposed roughly in 1994. My view of the world changed after taking quantum physics in college (I was a science major). I have always been obsessed by time so couple of years later during the winter break I spent a lot of time in deep thoughts and everything came together.

I don't believe time exist as we have been thought. Time is a metric for rate of change (basically what these guys are suggesting at core) and nothing more.

Our perception of the world (cyclical orbit) and recollection (memory) creates our notion of the time.

Also based on my original proposal, time (or rate of change) is an average rate of change. However that depends on the sample size. If you take the sample size as the entire universe you get a very predictable rate of change.

But as your sample size gets smaller (very small system) then that rate of change becomes more uncertain (see where I'm going)

Also if you are in a spaceship (that becomes your sample size) and your velocity effects the rate of change in your sample size. The same with high gravity.

Gravity (especially at extreme level) can greatly dampen or constraint the rate of change (again slowing down of time)

Also based on my proposal it's probabilistically plausible for time (or rate of change) to stop. However that probability becomes very small as your sample size increases. Basically change is inevitable by probability since the universe is in constant state of change. As a result time progresses or move forward since that's the most probable condition.

Sorry for the long rambling. I know most of you will probably hate my comment. I can fully understand it. We have been thought through all of our schooling how to deal with time. But once you see time from the perspective of a metric for rate of change, then your view of the world will never be the same again.

I also proposed that once this new view of time becomes widely accepted and more importantly when we began to have young generation of science students and scientists enter science with this view of the world, we will see complete rethinking and revision of many our of physics laws giving us a new view of science and basically leapfrogging our rate of scientific progress.

I also believe the unifying laws of physic resides in this view of time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com