Umm… that’s not my claim. The “invariance principle”, as Albert called it, is the axiom. Our definitions of time and distance are dependent on the invariance principle.
Well, indirectly, I suppose. What the Michaelson-Morley interferometer experiment showed was that there was no “luminiferous ether” in a vaccum which acted as a medium for the transmission of light waves. Therefore, the speed of light was uniform (at least in our perceptable piece of the universe). Knowing this, then we can use the speed of light as a yardstick to measure time and distance. Which is, no doubt, what you meant.
Chronos:
We are essentially talking about the “twins paradox”. We already agree that the twins’ time keeping devices will not agree on the elapsed time, what we don’t know is if their conscious minds will agree on the time elapsed. Let’s say that twin A stays put and twin B takes off across the universe at an incredible rate of speed and returns. When he returns, his watch says he’s only been gone a single day, while twin A’s watch says it’s been a year. But what about conscious perception? Is it possible that the one day would have felt more like a year to twin B? Could he have had a year’s worth of thoughts crammed into that single physical day? If consciousness occurs at a chemical/atomic level, then I think the answer is that both twins will perceive the passage of time consistent with their respective watches. If consciousness occurs at a quantum level, then it’s not so obvious.
No, as was well stated before it is only GR that has problems with quantum mechanics. There is NO CONTRADICTION between qm and special relativity (in fact, they work very well together!)
If the twin FELT that it was longer than that twin would be able to tell they were in motion wrt the other and not vice versa. This violates the equivalence principal plain and simple. EVERYTHING must go by the new definition of time (t’ on the space-time diagram) including the neurons firing, the microbes moving, and ALL BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES (consciousness included)!
By the by, you are right in saying that entanglement is off-topic, but I’ll indulge nonetheless. In fact, there is no violation of special relativity going on at all. There’s no propagation of energy!
To confine the limits of SR to the propagation of energy is a gross misrepresentation. As to the relevance of quantum entanglement to SR, Einstein, himself, dis’ed quantum nonlocality as “spooky actions at a distance” where some quantum relationship is being enforced faster-than-light across space and time.
No. Ignoring your misapplication of the Principle of Equivalence, what General Relativity tells us is that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial systems and no preferred inertial system exists. This says nothing about the conscious perception of time, unless you enforce some physical metrics or events that are to be used as reference markers, but that is explicitly contrary to my point.
If you had taken the time to study, even briefly, the theory to which you are criticizing, you would not have made the egregious mistake of mentioning the firing of neurons or simple chemistry in the context of quantum theory of consciousness.
Now I’m not trying to maintain that EPR effects absolutely violate the theory of Special Relativity, nor am I endorsing the quantum theory of consciousness. I only maintain that these are valid, mainstream theories that are endorsed by a legitimate scientific community and that they highlight (in some cases) unanswered mysteries and (in other cases) interesting possible solutions to unanswered mysteries.
To ask whether a length is constant, you must compare it to the standard of length. But the meter is the standard. So yes, the meter is constant. We don’t have God’s meter stick to compare against, only our definition. The question is whether supposed ideal rigid rods change their length as compared to the meter. If that is found to be the case, then we might be motivated to change the definition back to the distance between two marks on a rod in Paris.
**ACoverOfNoise **
If I’m not mistaken, one of the verifications of Relativity was the observation that some particles of cosmic radiation’s lifetime was longer than the same particles “at rest” in a lab by the amount predicted by Relativity. So, I’m pretty sure that QM and Relativity share the same measure of time. Somebody help me out here – I’m going from memory.
The standard interpretation of QM avoids the “spooky action at a distance” that Einstein objected to. Objective reality is sacrificed, but local causality is assumed.
In the twins’ paradox, you seem to be assuming that the stay-at-home twin’s measure is more real than his travelling brother. The travelling twin’s measure of time is just as valid as his brother’s.
I’m sure you’re right. My claim isn’t that the whole of QM is in opposition to SR (actually my claim isn’t even that one piece is), only that some very respectable experts are still not sure. The one point of opposition that they claim is that when one of two quantum entangled particles is affected, the second one is affected simultaneously (i.e. faster than the speed of light and in violation of Lorentz invariance). The effects of quantum entanglement have been verified many, many times, to ever greater degrees of accuracy in laboratories all over the world.
Of course, there is and always will be room for other interpretations… but currently the evidence supports the Bell inequalities.
Not at all. Both twin’s measure of time are equally valid. I’m merely conjecturing that it is possible that the travelling twin’s conscious perception of time may not agree with his own watch. Since we do not know the fundamental mechanisms of consciousness, we can only speculate that it will track the dialated time on his watch…
I have to say that a lot of this analysis doesn’t hold any water. Einstein’s critique of quantum mechanics is nothing new. “God does not play dice…” etc. His hatred of the Copenhaugen Interp. notwithstanding (perhaps he did have a point, though) I have NEVER seen Special Relativity applied anywhere but in the propagation of energy (one example would be nice). GR uses a completely different set of tools to deal with problems, but they BOTH are axiomatic on a basic equivalence principle that is reliant on Maxwell’s Equations.
I do agree that one has to look at an enforced physical metric or events that are used as reference markers. Otherwise, there is no point to comparing two different reference frames! That is the crux of the twins paradox after all, which is basically what we are talking about.
So, say that our Twin has a quantum consciousness (presumably inhabitting some morphological (or not) Bose-Einstein condensate or some sort of quantum measuring device – which revolves around a dector margin that is dependent upon the uncertainty principle E(t) >/= h_bar/2) Then, there still is no problem. The only way you would have a problem is if you considered that consciousness was somehow entagled with its intial reference frame. The mechanism for this would be fairly Jungian, I suppose. The problem is that the energy scales necessary for this are not good for life at all. The system would have to be behaving pretty bizarrely thermally. If you have a better explanation for how ST violation could occur within the framework, by all means tell us! Otherwise, there is a problem with saying you could have violation when there is a perfect equivalence of the t in the uncertainty principle with the t in special relativity.
It’s certainly true that Einstein was uncomfortable with the EPR effect, but “what Einstein is comfortable with” is not the same thing as “Special Relativity”. He was human, too, just like the rest of us, and there were some thing that he didn’t like just because “That don’t seem right”. I still don’t see, by the way, what’s so special about consciousness as far as measuring time. I can measure time consciously to an accuracy easily great enough to see whether it’s consistent with SR, and in fact, it is. I can’t get the same accuracy as with, say, a hydrogen maser clock, but I don’t need that much accuracy.
I get the distinct impression that you guys are just trying to jack me up…
A detailed study of most of the subtopics I’ve mentioned in this thread (i.e. the relationship of quantum nonlocality and Special Relativity, and quantum theories of consciousness) will reveal that I have not mischaracterized anything. In fact, Einstein is not the only respectable expert in both fields that feel that we have yet to reconcile QM with SR, but since you’re dismissing Al’s concerns, I suspect that you can’t be bothered by anyone else’s. What you believe is not my concern…
I had hoped to explain how a consciousness that operated at a quantum level might perceive things differently than one that operated at the electrochemical level, but since we can’t get past some of the initial basic framework, this seems moot.
I AM very interested in what you have to say about the theory of quantum consciousness, but the fact of the matter is, we have addressed your concerns and are waiting patiently for your response… and you seem to be ignoring our points. SR is not GR, Einstein’s critique of QM is at least in part wrong because he thought that there could be no indeterminism (which clearly there is… Schrodinger’s Cat notwithstanding), and the mechanisms by which a quantum brain would interact with reality would not be affected by the rules of SR. Sure there are problems with certian nonlocality and QM, but at the levels we’re talking about here… there would be some seriously bizarre things going on in order for this to cause a problem with a human being’s perception of reality. In effect, his wavefunction would have be of such low energy so as to be indeterminate in location (where’s my brain?) or so high in energy as to be indeterminate in momentum (where’s my brain going?)…
In either case you are going to have problems with your theory working, unless you propose that consciousness resides in part, outside of the brain!
Which of these statements do you find objectionable? And, more importantly, why?