Matrix Theory: Relativity Without Relative Space or Time

[Music] let us consider a classic relativity scenario your friend gets on a rocket ship and blasts off towards Mars at nearly the speed of light during this journey his clocks tick slower his lengths contract and when he arrives to his destination he has aged less than everyone back on Earth but that's not the only side to this story because from your friend's perspective events transpired somewhat differently his clocks actually ticked at a normal rate and it was in fact the distance between Earth and Mars that in Contracting allowed him to reach his destination in a shorter time meanwhile before he reaches Mars he perceives that less time has actually elapsed on your clock since you were traveling at near the speed of light relative to him only once he decelerates to land on Mars will his and your perception of time and space once more be reconciled this is the theory of relativity in a nutshell a theory often described by the average person as totally trippy W though mathematically consistent the theory offers no vision of a shared reality for its observers and upon its conception it ushered in a reign of conscious Centric solipsism an unphysical ratio signation that has endured uncontested for nearly a century and a quarter well today get ready to unplug because it turns out there is a completely physical explanation one devoid of any notion of relative space or time that we can give to this this picture this is dialect and welcome to Matrix [Music] Theory there exists before you a pencil that one day inexplicably shrinks now you'd like to use physics to explain why this pencil shrunk but coming up with an explanation is well difficult you see you'd have to posit some sort of physical mechanism or maybe chemical process to account for this contraction which would involve a lot of speculation and theorizing and gosh that sounds like hard work but then you have a brilliant idea why do physics when you can just do math that is you realize you can assert that nothing physical actually happened to the pencil at all and instead of the pencil shrinking it was in fact the background that grew see the pencil started out at 5 units of length relative to the background but once the background grows it now only spans four units of length so it was the coordinates that actually shrank not your pencil indeed you claim that the length of your pencil is absolute or invariant then you fix a local background to it such that your background never grows your pencil never shrinks and you never have to do any physics woo job well done but now along comes another Observer with a pencil that also inexplicably sh rinks from 5 to 4 units you demand they give a physical explanation for this but they aren't having it if you don't have to do physics why should they indeed they claim their pencil is the invariant one and yours is the one that actually shrank you see they assert that because your pencil shrink you grew your background to compensate for this shrinking and that you are using this inflated background to see their own pencil which of course now appears to span less coordinates now this catches you off guard at first but being clever you realize you can turn this argument around on them and say no your pencil never shrank rather as you first asserted their pencil did and they are the one wielding an inflated background to thus see your own pencil as shortened now in the absence of any Global background there will be no way to know which of you is telling the truth worse if you manage to bring the pencils side by side for comparison they are found to be the same length meaning each of you can now claim that the other's pencil physically grew upon leaving its frame causing its observer's respective inflated background to deflate and thus for them to see a corresponding growth in the opposite pencil indeed in this construct where all observers are equally entitled to not doing physics one beholds in lie of any actual explanations just symmetry perfect beautiful mathematical [Music] symmetry what is how do you [Music] special relativity is undoubtedly a mathematically beautiful symmetric Theory but there has always been another explanation that is the lorenzian one the one which posits the existence of an all-pervading ether through which light travels as a wave at a constant velocity according to this interpretation clocks in motion with respect to the ether physically tick more slowly while objects in motion physically contract formalistic this yields a theory that is equivalent to Einstein's capable of making all the same mathematical predictions as well as explaining all the same experimental findings despite this equivalence for much of History these theories have been viewed as dichotomous opposites distinct and competing interpretations such such that one can only be championed at the expense of the other but this bad blood has led almost everyone to overlook something extraordinary and critical Einstein and Loren's theories are not merely just formalistic equivalent rather they are in fact two indispensable halves of a greater hole taken apart neither achieves true logical coherency but together they can produce a theory with unrivaled explanatory power to understand this Union let us start by observing that what makes Loren's Theory unique is its fundamentally ontological nature that is it offers us a hypothesis about what constitutes the real world meaning the world whose existence is not relative to our perception of it indeed prior to Einstein every advancement in physics generally required making such a hypothesis to explain the workings of the universe a physicist or natural philosopher was expected to propose some sort of physical content which existing outside of the mind would serve as the causal mechanism for observable phenomena mathematics was then employed to help make these models precise and better describe such phenomena since Einstein however the the offering up of physical content is no longer in Vogue and math instead of aiding in the description of observable phenomena now serves as the cause of those phenomena relativity initiated this trend for as Einstein himself admitted special relativity was never a theory about reality rather it was only ever a theory about measurement a convenient mathematical framework but by fail faing to offer any physical content the theories mathematics was soon latched onto as being its content fast forward 120 years and you have a shocking number of physicists who sincerely believe that it is hyperbolic manowski and geometry which causes rather than merely describes time dilation and length contraction but the representation is not the reality and we can see that Einstein's theory was as a opposed to being ontological in nature rather merely epistemological to unify it with lorenzian ontology then requires advancing what is termed The Matrix hypothesis the hypothesis is simple it posits that there is a real world a world of physical causal content existing independent of our minds but that our perception of that reality does not and may not ever align with the actual thing indeed math measurement language abstraction the things which modern physics asserts causes observable phenomena these things in truth belong to the world of perception and Consciousness encasing our minds there like a womb one to which we may be forever irrevocably plugged in [Music] in the real world there exists the medium of The Ether and some singular frame in which it is physically at rest clocks that are set in motion with respect to this medium will tick more slowly and objects set in motion will physically contract this is the first half of the picture the lorenzian half the second half of the picture is what happens when the Observer is put in motion with respect to the medium here is where the Observer enters the Matrix or as a consequence of Einstein's Axiom begins to construct a false projection of their reality that does not correspond to the actual one to understand this let's imagine an observer traveling at near the speed of light relative to the medium when they fire a beam of light in the direction of travel this beam moves at a constant speed C through the medium relative to The Observer the beam thus travels very slowly but thanks to the one-way speed of light problem an observer has no way of knowing this they can only make a judgment about what this speed of light was relative to them once the beam has bounced off of something and returned to them what Einstein's Axiom stipulates then is that the simplest assumption mathematically The Observer can make is that the light beam traveled at the same speed there and back relative to them but this assumption is only mathematical not physical and of course back in the real world the light beam did not travel at the same velocity relative to The Observer there and back the Observer therefore has to adjust their Notions of time and space in order to maintain this assumed isotropy this is where the relativity of space and time comes from it's not a metaphysically deep discernment of what reality is or is not rather it's a mathematical contrivance intended to sidestep our inherent uncertainty in the knowledge of the one-way speed of light to understand how this works let's divide the world of two given observers into four essential partitions in the first two partitions each Observer has their own local frame which encompasses anything co-moving with them and which can be constructed using physical objects such as rulers and clocks but these frames can't be used to make physical measurements for things in motion relative to them for this an observer needs a second frame a background frame this background frame is not physical but rather mathematical and it is constructed via interpreting information from incoming light signals indeed for this background frame to represent something physically real the assumptions about the behavior of Light which go into constructing it must correspond to the actual behavior of light so say our two observers start out at rest with respect to each other and to The Ether if they construct their backgrounds assuming that the speed of light is everywhere constant and isotropic as it truly physically is in The Ether frame then their local frames and their background frames will all perfectly align and everyone sees each other exactly as they are but now if we put one of the observer's frames into motion two things will happen in accordance with Loren's Axiom the lengths of the moving frame will physically contract and the lengths of its temporal durations will dilate let's consider first just the spatial aspect of the problem since the background of the unmoving Observer remains unchanged they see the moving Observer as they truly are physically contracted but now the moving Observer has a choice if they accept that they are in a moving frame meaning they accept that light behavior in their frame is anisotropic then consequently they can maintain the validity of the original background and they will agree that the unmoving Observer is longer than themselves but if they want to maintain the idea that light behavior in their frame is still isotropic that is if they want to reject the notion that anything physical happened in their frame then they will have to remap their shortened lengths back to the proper lengths they had in the original ether frame but remapping or growing their lengths means growing their background as well and since the moving obser has to use this background to see the non-moving frame The non-moving Observer will now appear to be contracted relative to them even though of course it's their own lengths which are truly physically contracted less abstractly we can reframe this by saying that as a moving observer's lengths physically contract in order to offset this shrinking and continue maintaining the invariance of their proper length the observer's notion of what constitutes length must consequently grow traveling at high velocities relative to the medium thus causes an observer to perceive lengths about them Contracting all the while in reality it's their own lengths which are physically Contracting similarly for time as a moving obser temporal durations physically dilate their notion of what constitutes time must consequently contract in order for them to maintain an invariant proper time and thus relative to them other clocks will run slow one may clearly recognize in this the mathematical principle of contravariance that is since any measurement involves both an amount and a unit unit one can always compensate for a decrease in amount by increasing their notion of what constitutes the unit alas this contravariant interplay between an observer's local and velocity dependent background means an observer can always claim that their shorten lengths or dilated times aren't actually physical but rather the consequence of other observers in motion wielding inflated backgrounds between two observers then if both refuse to acknowledge any physical difference between their local frames what you will arrive at is a theory with perfect symmetry but zero physicality you are thus trapped in The Matrix but if you already know how can I make a choice because you didn't come here to make the choice you've already made it you're here to try to understand why you made at last we're ready to go back to our initial scenario and ask what really happens when your friend gets on a rocket ship and travels to Mars well essentially there's two main cases we can consider in the first case we start by assuming the ether is at rest with respect to the Earth and Mars in this case when your friend travels at near the speed of light his clocks really do physically slow down and so he arrives on Mars having aged less than you he meanwhile only perceives the distance between Earth and Mars to be contracted in contravariant consequence to his own lengths actually physically having contracted likewise he also only perceives your clocks ticking slowly in cont exra variant consequence to his own temporal durations being physically lengthened now in the second case we instead assume that the Earth and Mars are in motion with respect to the ether and moreover traveling through it at a velocity such that your friend is actually at rest with respect to the ether during his trip now in this case the distance between Earth and Mars is really physically contracted but since you on Earth are in motion you map that shorter distance as being longer than it is once your friend is at rest relative to The Ether his lengths physically grow and consequently he no longer Maps the distance between Earth and Mars as being longer than it is and thus the real contracted distance between Earth and Mars is revealed to him his clocks then tick in accordance with true time during his trip while yours tick slow slowly until he decelerates to land on Mars during which he will be required to start remapping both lengths and times once more between these two cases we can note that the end results are exactly the same making it impossible to distinguish between them that is it's impossible to know whose time dilation and whose length contraction were physically real and whose were merely a result of coordinative constructions this isn't some conspiracy however but rather the consequence of reaching an epistemological ceiling a possible limit to our knowledge to be an observer fundamentally means to live in a matrix of our consciousness's own making and relativity was the first Theory to fundamentally strike up against this fact this platonic barrier indeed Einstein's most striking Insight was in recognizing that before we as observers can even make any empirical measurements at all we have to make a choice of background which in the context of special relativity means making an assumption about the behavior of light now as we discussed in our prior video the particular conclusion Einstein Drew from this Insight was unfortunately wrong as contrary to what he wrote it is possible to Define time without assuming invariant isotropic light Behavior moreover as we further demonstrated by adopting the right set of synchronicity values observers can always agree on Notions of space and time however even if we impose a master frame upon all observers we could never be certain whether such a frame were truly The Ether frame meaning we can never be certain if the time dilation and length contraction we observe relative to that frame are physically real or merely corative but a lack of certainty doesn't imply we should consequently reject the notion of physical objective reality indeed to believe a light beam magically Alters Its Behavior based on who is observing it as Einstein's postulate has always undeniably implied is the height of pseudoscience if we want to escape such solipsistic thinking if we want to escape the matrix then we need only acknowledge that there is indeed a real physical difference between any two in inertial frames in motion and that it is in fact the phenomena of time dilation and length contraction which precisely reveals this difference to us with all this in mind we can now summarize the essential tenant of Matrix Theory as follows first there exists two types of time dilation and length contraction the real world physical time dilation and length contraction and the Matrix world coordinative time dilation and length contraction Einstein's theory treats only of the corative type and consequently offers no explanation for the physical type Loren's Theory alone treats only of the physical type and consequently offers no explanation for the corative type in combination however the theories demonstrate that it is precisely the physical time dilation and physical length contraction of observers in motion relative to the medium which in leading them to wield inflated backgrounds causes coordinative time dilation and coordinative length contraction secondly the mathematical principle of contravariance requires a symmetric interplay between the corative Matrix world and the physical real world the highly prized symmetry of Relativity is thus not a feature of reality rather merely a feature of mathematics that that is of our own Consciousness similarly the inability to detect The Ether or equivalently the one-way speed of light problem is a consequence of the fact that all measurement is relative to The Ether thus The Ether itself cannot be measured without invoking circularity and this is in fact the source of Relativity but of course the mystery remains what is it about motion relative to The Ether that causes physical time dilation and physical length contraction to begin with here is where the power of Matrix Theory really begins to shine because more so than offering us an escape from mathematical solipsism more so than revealing to us the interdependency of the lorenzian and einsteinian World Views we'll find that with a little hard work Matrix theory of unfurls the causal mechanisms for physical time dilation and physical length contraction right before our very feet indeed we are about to discover where all a truly physical theory of wave mechanics can lead us this has been dialect stay [Music] tuned

Channel: Dialect

Views: 67,595

Keywords: #relativity, spacetime, einstein, general relativity, space and time, philosophy, physics, education, learning, lorentz transformations, ether, the matrix

Id: B94o-P93ExU

Length: 25min 46sec (1546 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 03 2024