hutchphd said:
I (Einstein) synchronize them before acceleration. After the acceleration stops I (Einstein) resynchronize them, having them record their asynchrony.
In other words, you don't "watch them go asynchronous" during acceleration. But you could, at least indirectly. You could have them exchange round-trip light signals during the acceleration process, and the clocks towards the front would show more elapsed time during a round trip than the clocks towards the rear.
hutchphd said:
As the observer I am comparing before the acceleration to after the acceleration. At each observation I am at rest relative to my test clocks and in an inertial frame.
But your frame is not inertial during acceleration, so you are not in the
same inertial frame before and after. In the inertial frame in which your clocks are at rest after the acceleration, the clocks are out of sync
before the acceleration, so the fact that they are also out of sync in this frame
after the acceleration (before you resynchronize them) does not tell you anything useful.
If you try to construct a single frame in which your clocks are always at rest, that frame must be non-inertial during the acceleration.
hutchphd said:
Your statement was "And acceleration doesn't cause clocks to do anything"
It was originally a statement by
@Ibix, not me. I explained in more detail what that statement meant in post #2 of this thread.
hutchphd said:
I don't understand why you are now worrying about whether the accelerations were the same (?).
I'm not worrying about it, I'm pointing it out because you said the clocks respond differently to "the same change in velocity", but the clocks have different proper accelerations so they do
not have "the same change in velocity".
hutchphd said:
If every time I do X (acceleration)
"I do X" is an inaccurate description of your scenario. Let's limit it to two clocks for simplicity. Then clock A accelerates, and clock B accelerates. So there is not one single "I" doing "X". There are
two clocks, each doing X, for different numerical values of X.
hutchphd said:
I note later that Y (synchrony) has changed
Y is not a property of either clock on its own. It is a property of both clocks together,
plus a choice of simultaneity convention. When you changed inertial frames, you changed simultaneity conventions. That will change the synchrony of the clocks even if the clocks themselves don't accelerate at all. Your analysis does not take this into account at all.
Note, btw, that "Einstein clock synchronization" is in fact a definition of one particular family of simultaneity conventions, the one that is used to define inertial frames in SR.
hutchphd said:
I believe you are arguing that an unseen common mechanism actually causes both X and Y.
No.
X, the proper acceleration of the clocks, is obviously caused by whatever is making them accelerate--let's say rocket engines.
Y involves a simultaneity convention, and as I remarked above, if you change conventions in the middle of a scenario, you should expect that to change Y all on its own. Also, since the clocks have different proper accelerations, they do not have "the same change in velocity", so you do have a difference in X that could contribute to a difference in Y.