Smolin: Extending dualities to trialities (deepens dynamics)

[yoron]

I know, pretty hard to understand me when I'm not sure myself how to express it. A dynamical SpaceTime is something updating at 'c' to me. Dimensions is what we define it from (3+1). Now, if a phase space is a expression of a 'system', what creates the 'system'? Our definitions of a SpaceTime? Using SR local definitions rule this SpaceTime, from repeatable experiments to any measurement of 'c'. Although assuming any part of a volume of it to represent the same laws it shouldn't matter how you restrict your system, as all volumes/portions of a SpaceTime must be equivalent relative the laws, rules, constants, etc, existing. To me there are two ways of thinking of it, from what I call a 'container definition', which is the one in where we are 'joined' into one common SpaceTime. The other being a strict local definition, which to me also points to a discreteness to exist, as in 'quanta'. That's part of why I'm wondering about Smolins et al 'trinity' and the phase space it builds on.
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Both assumptions work, but with the one using 'quanta', scaling it up into our SpaceTime, you will need something that connects them to each other. and the way it connects is what interests me. Without a background 'locality' (as in scaling) becomes a natural choice to me, assuming a background I get a headache. I don't really use the classical definition of a local cause and effect, instead exchanging it for scales where 'locality' becomes whatever defines a quanta or locality, as well as the way Einsteins used your 'frame of reference) . The difference is one of something 'measurably defined to some position scaling' relative ones macroscopic definition of a clock and ruler. Two ways of looking at it there too.

 

[Jimster41]

I really like the "updating at c" phrase. I understand you better now I think. Your container sounds like "Bulk/Brane" or like the "holographic" models I have heard descriptions of. Frankly, I wonder if essentially the canonical physics more or less describes this "container" but just has so much hate for calling it that - because that would be to resign at some level to it's mystery. I can understand that resistance. But I heard some things on anti-particles the other day, saying how normal they ware and something about that sounded... Like a medieval treatise on the Bodily Humors, ridiculous. Described as "going backward in time", among other things, they seem to me more like the hypothetical "reactivity" of the extra-dimensional bulk. But I don't understand them at all, and I want to.

I haven't read a single additional page of Smolin and Unger's "Sigular Universe" since this thread started. Primarily because I'm tryng to make my way through some self teaching textbooks on SR, GR and QM. I get the sense you are somewhat like me. You see a lot of the puzzle but to a significant degree it's through a set of your own metaphors and images. I find it frustrating when I want to talk with people here. Seems a lot of them have training and know the standard ways of looking at things, which of course are rich and rewarding, powerful, partly because they are shared and "canonized" and lots of smart people work on them and think in those terms. Hence the self study. But then as I'm reading these textbooks sometimes I get stuck because I'm like why in the world would you look at it that way... When the reason is probably just, History. That was the way that was invented when there wasn't another way, and now it's a strange looking stone in the foundation. Pretty tough to remove, or do without.

Cheers man.

 

[yoron]

You're quite right in that it always will be giving to go through the history of how something get defined. One reason will be that what was more or less inexplainable at that time, except mathematically, with age will have been treated by so many minds searching for ways to translate it that it actually becomes meaningful, although not necessarily simpler. And yes, that's how I expect the container to exist naively. The premise is that it should build locally, 'c' being what we find connecting it, but to me 'c' isn't just a speed, as I define it through Planck scale as also being your local clock. Doing so, accepting the premise, 'c' split to Planck scale becomes a 'quanta of time' :) and a (local) constant. So you have both the clock, the ruler, and that 'speed', all of them becomes constants, although a 'speed', treating it this way is a macroscopic definition. And this 'container concept' we intuitively presume has puzzled me for some time, once I realized how much we take it for granted, as when we argue about what infinity should mean for example. But building a universe intrinsically, as if it constantly gets 'seeded locally', then infinity becomes a very weird idea. No way to to measure it as with this kind of universe you can't 'leave it', and to get a definition of size that is what you need to do. If it builds intrinsically, without a outside, how could it be any other way than 'infinite' from such a definition? The tree dimensions we call the room goes two ways in any defined system, but the arrow has only one way. We're in the never measurable 'now', constantly so, in much the same way as to how we define our macroscopic clock and ruler, all of them theoretical and philosophical concepts, and it builds on SR, but thinking the way I do GR too must accept 'c' as a constant, to keep it the way I prefer, as simple as possible :) that is.

And there's one more thing to it. It makes scaling important to me, because thinking this way it is scales that builds this universe, not probable 'sizes' etc . Also it allows me to think of what you meet at Planck scale, or further 'down' depending on where you set the limits, (But I use Plank scale for those three constants) as 'coexisting', meaning that where there is no arrow defined everything 'coexist'. Looked at that way scaling makes a lot of sense to me, defining a size to this universe very little.

( btw :) If you're like me I'm sure you try to look up the original definitions as good as you can, because sometimes those is the clearest. Which then makes my first proposition of it becoming clearer with time questionable, or if you do as me, they too 'coexist' :)

forgot to add that looking at relativity from a local perspective there are no time dilations, neither any length contractions. Those are results of me comparing my frame of reference to some other, and that is not what locality means (to me). If you use action and reaction you also introduce a container concept.

So there are a lot of common points to me, where Smolin and his friends thoughts becomes interesting, even though they look at it from another perspective.