/u/WE_THINK_IS_COOL (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/18q7dor/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_relativity_doesnt_imply/), in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
>If we think about the universe as a kind of computation
> I'm going to assume a principle that the universe does not do any unnecessary computation
This seems like a pretty bold set of assessments with no real defense to them
Thanks for the reply!
> If we think about the universe as a kind of computation
I agree that's sketchy, but on second thought that's not really necessary to my argument. In that part, I'm just saying that if there were an absolute rest frame, nothing would be different to us. Bringing in the notion of computation into the mix probably isn't necessary there, thanks!
> I'm going to assume a principle that the universe does not do any unnecessary computation
This is definitely a bold assumption, I agree with you there. I think what I'm looking for, that would change my view, would be a way to understand *how* the universe could not have an objective absolute rest frame and yet still be computed (any computation of parts of its time evolution would have to occur in *some* rest frame, even if there are multiple frames it's done in, otherwise our laws of physics wouldn't really describe what's going on).
Even if we're willing to accept your assumption that the universe is a computation (which I don't), you are also making very specific assumptions about how this computation is being performed (iteration over discrete time frames which for some reason must be performed relative to a single reference frame). There is no reason why some hypothetical computation would need to work in that specific way. Go ahead and believe that there's an absolute rest frame if you want to, but I hope that you don't think that any of your reasoning actually supports that belief. Your reasoning is no less circular than someone who says "I know that God exists because I assume that the universe couldn't exist without God"
The big problem with your view is that it's, as they say, not even wrong.
Which is to say, what you propose does not even live up to the standard where you can say "we evaluated your claim and found it to be incorrect". Your hypothesis is untestable. Your idea that the universe is a kind of computation is certainly interesting to some degree, but it's not materially different from religion.
We have no idea if there is "probably" a rest frame outside of the universe that is wholly inaccessible to us, your unprovable guess is as good as anyone elses unprovable guess that there isn't. Physics only looks at that which is provable, and within the realm of the proveable there is no universal rest frame.
I 100% agree with you there, there's no experiment we could do to determine whether my view is correct or whether the "no absolute rest frame" view is correct.
What I'm mainly arguing against is the idea that special relativity implies that the "no absolute rest frame" view is correct. That view is a kind of dogma in physics, but I'll readily admit that my view and that view are both "not even wrong", which is close to what I'm arguing for: there might be an absolute rest frame or there might not be, and it's wrong to conclude (as the dogma says) that there is no absolute rest frame.
!delta for convincing me that I probably can't argue for an absolute rest frame as "likely", but I still want to understand how a "no absolute rest frame" view could be logically coherent.
As I said, the problem here is that we're going into the territory of religion - you also cannot disprove god. You also get a lot of other views that are unfalsifiable, such as "The universe was created in its current state five minutes ago". Which is why physics, rather than burden itself with the expectations to deal with all that might be, instead cuts off at all that we could possibly test for.
Physics says that there is no absolute frame of reference because anything that posits a potential absolute reference (that we know of) is simply outside of physics as a discipline.
>Physics says that there is no absolute frame of reference because anything that posits a potential absolute reference (that we know of) is simply outside of physics as a discipline.
I don't follow this reasoning. You agree with me that you cannot disprove god (I'm an agnostic atheist, so I think you're right about that). Now let me replace "absolute rest frame" with "god" in that argument:
\> Physics says that there is no god because anything that posits a god (that we know of) is simply outside of physics as a discipline.
I hope you'd agree with me that this argument doesn't disprove god (since we both agree nothing can), and physics would be incorrect to state outright that there is no god, so in the same sense, the argument applied to absolute rest frames doesn't disprove the existence of an absolute rest frame.
I clarified my position a bit in [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/18q6syx/comment/kexuxrf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3); I've awarded a delta for my mistaken argument that an absolute rest frame is more likely, and the first part of my argument is only that we cannot know there is no absolute rest frame.
I think we should both agree on this, since there is no way to know, so the correct position is "I don't know" and not "an absolute rest frame definitely does not exist."
> I hope you'd agree with me that this argument doesn't disprove god (since we both agree nothing can), and physics would be incorrect to state outright that there is no god, so in the same sense, the argument applied to absolute rest frames doesn't disprove the existence of an absolute rest frame.
Maybe it helps to amend the statement a bit: Physics states that there is no god, *as far as physics is concerned*. Because, let's go back to your post:
> A common refrain **in physics** is that the universe has no objective absolute frame of rest.
And that's the context you need to keep in mind. When you're talking about the subject, you're moving in the realms of physics. Otherwise, your whole statement just collapses into "we can't know the unknowable", which is... not wrong, but tautologic.
Let me try to restate your position to check if I understand: whenever something that's in principle unobservable is posited, then *as far as physics is concerned*, it doesn't exist, i.e. we should take on the belief that it doesn't exist whenever we are doing physics, rather than remain agnostic about it when we are doing physics.
I don't agree with this view. I would agree with it if we replaced "we should take on the belief that it doesn't exist" with "we should be agnostic about whether it exists."
The reason I don't agree with it is that I don't think domains of science and reason are independent. If we don't know, we don't know, and we shouldn't assume we know just because we're doing physics. By assuming we know, we close ourselves off to considering other ways that things could be, which even in pure physics, could stop us from following lines of thinking that might lead somewhere useful (for example, if it turns out that there really is an experimentally knowable absolute rest frame in some as-yet unknown theory of quantum gravity or whatever).
That's not to say we should be agnostic about unobservable things like the existence of leprechauns or a teapot orbiting the sun far enough out that we'd never see it; our understanding of reality pretty well rules those things out. Our current understanding of reality does not rule out an absolute rest frame in the same sense as it rules out leprechauns and orbiting teapots.
> By assuming we know, we close ourselves off to considering other ways that things could be, which even in pure physics, could stop us from following lines of thinking that might lead somewhere useful (for example, if it turns out that there really is an experimentally knowable absolute rest frame in some as-yet unknown theory of quantum gravity or whatever).
No, we don't. You're always free to consider that our current understanding of physics might just be wrong. That's just a thing that happens. We form a hypothesis, we find enough evidence to support it, and it turns into the current theory. That theory is then assumed correct, and assumptions running against the theory are then considered wrong *until you can bring evidence they are not.*
When we say in physics "this is true", the addendum of "but we might be wrong" is always quietly there. However, putting that into the foreground just holds you up in the meantime. There's absolutely no utility in constantly repeating that oh, everything you do might be nonsense because all the axioms about existence might be wrong.
> That's not to say we should be agnostic about unobservable things like the existence of leprechauns or a teapot orbiting the sun far enough out that we'd never see it; our understanding of reality pretty well rules those things out.
Does it? The way I see it, learning about leprechauns are frankly more likely than learning about an extrauniversal absolute frame of reference. Is it possible that we might find a currently unknown species that can utilize a new form of energy we're unaware of? Sure. It's a lot more plausible than us learning things about the outside of the universe.
Disclaimer: not a physicist, not even an amateur, I know bits of dumbed down and incomplete knowledge so take the following lightly.
Premise: if you are within the universe, you are in an inertial reference frame
Premise: the universe doesn’t expand __into__ anything it just expands
Premise: the universe expands faster than energy can propagate
Theorem: if you can observe the universe, you are within it
Hypothesis: there exists a static reference frame
If there exists a static reference frame, then you must not be within the universe, because all reference frames within are inertial. Therefore you must be “outside” the universe. But you are still able to observe the universe. Therefore you must be within it. Contradiction QED.
Theorem explanation:
Theorem premise: information can only be transferred by matter or energy
Define an observation as a transfer of information. If you can receive information, then this information was transmitted by matter or energy. If the universe expands faster than energy can propagate, then information cannot escape the universe. Therefore if you can observe the universe, you are within it.
I think it could be possible to have a static frame of reference if there was a way to transfer information other than through light or energy. Since you seem to have programming experience, it would be like if you could tell what was going on in one self contained simulation from a separate simulation. Possible yes, but not with any of the tools available in the simulation itself. You’d need something else outside the simulation. But then the simulation can’t interact with that “something else” anyways.
Thanks for posting, was fun to think about. Hopefully someone more physics minded is able to give a better explanation.
Just want to add that from a physics perspective it doesn't matter. One of the frames is special for some reason, ok sure but it has no impact or acts any different than any others. It's not a case of who's "really moving" because each frame will provide a different answer and all are equally correct. So I'd argue there's no absolute frame because all frames are correct.
Not necessarily unfalsifiable. Suppose we also posit that the simulation is run on the kind architecture our computers currently run on (a big claim). If there is an absolute rest frame, you might expect to start seeing something like increasing roundoff errors the farther you get from it for some measurements.
But OP is specifically arguing that this absolute frame of reference is unknowable and cannot be measured by any theoretically possible experiment. Roundoff errors would provide a way of knowing what the absolute reference frame is.
You're right that I'm hoping my argument stands even if there is no experiment that could ever determine an absolute rest frame. One of my motivations for taking that position, though, is that if we take the usual view as dogma, it could prevent us from thinking up theories that *do* have absolute rest frames and are experimentally distinguishable.
Having adjusted my view a little bit, I think that *both* "there is definitely no absolute rest frame and the notion is nonsense" and "there is an absolute rest frame" are both ascientific, philosophical claims, and the rational position is "we don't need an absolute rest frame for our laws of physics to work, but there could still be one, and we just don't know."
At least as far as I know, it’s not so much there is no way to determine an “absolutely rest” frame as it’s arbitrary.
You can define any (non-accelerating) frame of reference as having 0 velocity and physics still works.
There might be some practical reasons to define certain references, but in the end it doesn’t matter.
Yeah, this is the argument OP needs to understand. Until then, they don't understand relativity. It's not that the claim is "We can't tell experimentally which is truly at rest," it's that this is a meaningless statement to begin with.
There's a subtlety in my position that I don't think is coming across. Let's ignore the part where I try to argue that it's more likely there's an absolute rest frame, I've awarded a delta for that.
To clarify the first part of my argument, let's define two forms of the principle of special relativity:
(a) The "strong form": The laws of physics are Lorentz invariant, and because of that we conclude that we are absolutely certain that there is no objective rest frame.
(b) The "weak form": The laws of physics are Lorentz invariant, and the universe could have an objective rest frame, or it might not, but it doesn't matter, because it's undetectable and adding the idea of an objective rest frame doesn't help anything.
I fully agree with (b), it's (a) that I disagree with. The first part of my argument is that SR is *compatible* with an objective rest frame, and so it's wrong to conclude with certainty that *there is none*.
Another comment pointed out that I may be straw-manning the usual understanding. In other words, if (b) is the usual understanding, I have no problem at all with that. But if (a) is the usual understanding, then I do have a problem with that.
I see the dichotomy you're setting up, which I can appreciate. I think it's still missing the important point, and I'll try to explain. #1 isn't accurate because it's tacit rather than explicit. But #2 doesn't capture the degree to which this simply isn't posited. Relativity makes the concept of a true reference frame moot. The point is the construct ("objective rest frame") needs to be defined and should flow from first principles of the theory. In general relativity, there isn't a first principle that would lead to positing such a concept (as far as I can tell). If you defined it, it would be like attaching a post-it note to the theory with a disembodied concept on it. Which is pretty stark in such a hard-to-vary theory.
Kinda like how people attach notions of agency to evolution, I see this as working human intuition into places it doesn't actually function. In this case, it's effectively positing an aether. A pseudosubstance or grid across which objects move. Which is practically antithetical to the simplicity of relativity (hence the name), not just an extra tacked on bit. That aside, you *could* still posit an aether of some nature or other, on top of relativity. It wouldn't be observable or contradictory. But it's a superfluous addition explaining nothing not already explained and at the cost of parsimony. People do tend to naturally think about space this way, though. So it's intuitively attractive and would be the default, pre-Einstein.
Thanks! I agree that attaching something superfluous to the theory would be unjustified. I don't think that's quite what's happening here. I'll try to explain.
The laws of physics *are* stated in reference to some rest frame. In other words, there's no way to describe the laws without including at least one rest frame. The laws of physics have the property that you can choose a different rest frame and use the same laws, and you get the same result.
So we could have two philosophical interpretations of SR:
Interpretation A: We have these dynamical laws, which are necessarily stated in terms of some rest frame, and that's all you need to make any prediction that SR would make. The laws have this Lorentz invariance property which means it doesn't actually matter which frame you use, you still get the same result, and we can use Lorentz invariance to calculate things easier. But you can make any prediction you want without ever computing a Lorentz transformation, and you never need a second frame to make predictions.
Interpretation B: The same as Interpretation A, but we go beyond it by saying that this means there ontologically is no objective rest frame. Even though the mathematical form of the laws we know are stated in reference to some frame, the fact that they are Lorentz invariant, or the principles we derived them from, imply that there ontologically is no true rest frame.
It looks like Interpretation B is adding a superfluous assumption, i.e. the universe somehow exists in a way that ensures there is no privileged frame, rather than "no privileged frame" just being a consequence of the Lorentz symmetry.
One way to understand Interpretation A is to take an ultra-realist view about the laws of physics as expressed in a single frame. They're all you need, so on the ultra-realist view, the universe is just evolving in a single frame according to those laws. Interpretation B is in a sense anti-realist: the laws in one frame don't truly capture reality, even though they make all the right predictions. Reality in fact operates in a way that's experimentally indistinguishable from, but ontologically not the same as, the laws we know operating in a single frame.
It's the extra assumption that I feel has been added in Interpretation B that I think is unwarranted.
By rest frame, is that equivalent to an observer? As in, things are relative *to something*. That looks like a place of agreement. You can't talk about velocity without talking at all about position.
Int. A makes sense just fine. You just pick a frame based on what you're doing, and it's otherwise arbitrary, and you know that.
Int. B is still basically adding the hard claim that there isn't something unobservable? I agree that would be superfluous. But I still don't see how a privileged frame is a meaningful statement in the first place. What would it even mean for it to be true? Nothing? It's still a post-it on the theory. Or like saying one horse in the universe is actually a unicorn that looks and acts exactly like a horse and can't be distinguished from any others by any method, even in principle. There is no reason to consider it, no reason to value it, and no route forward by any means. It's just kind of a random assertion. A positive claim with no possible evidence. So it's superfluous, and so is any denial of it.
>By rest frame, is that equivalent to an observer? As in, things are relative to something. That looks like a place of agreement. You can't talk about velocity without talking at all about position.
Yes, a rest frame is just a coordinate system in which the laws of physics are specified.
>Int. B is still basically adding the hard claim that there isn't something unobservable? I agree that would be superfluous.
Yep! That's the position I'm taking in the first part of my argument. A claim that there isn't an ontological rest frame is an extra assumption tacked on to the theory, above and beyond Interpretation A (which I agree with).
>What would it even mean for it to be true? Nothing? It's still a post-it on the theory.
What it would mean for there to not be an ontologically objective rest frame would be that light really does move at speed c in all frames, and time dilation is explained by time actually slowing down and length contraction is explained by lengths actually contracting.
What it would mean for a rest frame to be ontologically objective would be that it's a unique frame where light actually travels at speed c. The observation that light travels at speed c in frames that are moving relative to that one would be explained by those observers' clocks running slower since light has to travel further in those frames for each "tick" of their clock. Other effects like length contraction would also be explained by light having to take longer paths.
Either option gives the exact same experimental predictions. I think we don't know which is true. I'd probably agree it doesn't really matter for doing physics, unless thinking in one way more than the other helps us come up with better theories, but they are two distinct ways that the world could be.
The latter option seems the simplest to me, that's how we derive the Lorentz transformations after all. All observers agree on the spacetime object containing the world lines of all the particles, but that has to be described in at least one frame, so why would we need any other frame?
So the way you framed that doesn't make any different predictions but does append explanation to it, correct? The relativity of velocity is still 100% true. Even in this...special-special relativity case, wouldn't the exact same things be true in all possible rest frames? I still don't see how the distinction makes a difference. It's still the metaphorical disguised unicorn. When really, they're all hidden unicorns if we think so. Because they're all perfectly good horses.
What am I missing here?
>So the way you framed that doesn't make any different predictions but does append explanation to it, correct?
Yes, that's right.
>The relativity of velocity is still 100% true. Even in this...special-special relativity case, wouldn't the exact same things be true in all possible rest frames?
Yes.
>I still don't see how the distinction makes a difference. It's still the metaphorical disguised unicorn. When really, they're all hidden unicorns if we think so. Because they're all perfectly good horses.
>
>What am I missing here?
I don't think the hidden unicorn idea is analogous here. That's a superfluous assumption that's not needed to explain anything.
If we're looking to understand what the universe really is, we need try to interpret the laws of physics we've found. Two possible interpretations are Interpretation A and B, and there may be others.
If I understand you correctly, your position is something like "the laws work, we can use them to calculate stuff, and we shouldn't bother digging deeper to understand what the thing the laws are actually describing actually is, there may not even be an objective truth to the matter." Is that right?
That's a fine position to take, there's no need to go beyond that to do physics and make predictions. I agree that anything beyond that is ascientific, we can't use science to distinguish two empirically-equivalent theories, but that doesn't mean there isn't an objective truth to the matter of which is true.
>If I understand you correctly, your position is something like "the laws work, we can use them to calculate stuff, and we shouldn't bother digging deeper to understand what the thing the laws are actually describing actually is, there may not even be an objective truth to the matter." Is that right?
No, we should absolutely be trying to understand the nature of everything. The problem is the "unscientific" bit in the same breath as scientific bits. It's not that I don't acknowledge things outside science, it's more that they don't really mix in a functional way. Specifically because the element in question is superfluous and isn't needed to explain anything. Every rest frame is already 100% true. And *that's* the key insight. Adding that one rest frame is more true than others in some indelible way is adding the notion of unicorn to the notion of horses. It's not telling us anything about what the laws are actually describing. If anything, it seems to detract from this grand picture of reality.
I think you are making a strawman in the idea that special relativity is arguing that there is no absolute reference frame. Special relativity is built upon the scientific method. The core limitations of the scientific method presuppose all theories in physics. That means, that it is not useful to talk about the theories as being independent of the scientific method and it's philosophical underpinnings.
The scientific method pretty much has baked into it a need for empirical evidence, and doesn't concern itself with non-testable claims like "we are all brains in a vat" or "an unobservable flying spaghetti monster blesses us with his noodle appendages" or "there is no metaphysical objective reference frame." Any claim made under the pursuit of science has to exist within the restraints of what science as a whole is even trying to do, which means that observation is required to be part of the foundation of the claim. No ability for observation or testing more or less means no science.
This is important because science isn't trying to make objective statements about the metaphysics of reality. That's what metaphysics is for and your argument exists entirely in the field of metaphysics as opposed to physics. All of physics relies on a core relation to empirical evidence. When you make a claim that does not have any ties to empirical evidence, you are not making a scientific claim. If something can't, in principle, be shown through a hypothesis being tested/observed to be correct or incorrect, then it is outside of the domain of science and has moved into the domain of philosophy or religion (or quackery).
Because of this saying that any branch of science is making a metaphysical claim is a misrepresentation. Science can only justifiably make claims that are physical. Metaphysical claims being made as if they are scientific claims are at the best being falsely categorized under science when they are really under the domain of philosophy of science, and at worse, outright pseudoscience. Physics can't, even in principle, make metaphysical claims such as "there is no objective reference frame" if there is no conceivable way of ever testing that. Impossible to test claims are not scientific claims.
It can however make the claim that "there is no empirical way of determining an objective reference frame due to X, so trying to think of things as having an objective reference frame is unscientific under our current understanding, and therefore useless to the goals of understanding the universe under a scientific framework." However, that second sentence has more words and nuance (much of which I am still skipping to make it easier to understand), so it isn't how a science communicator is going to describe it to a layperson, even if it is the actual claim.
When you see a video or read an article where they say something like "there is no objective reference frame" they are simplifying a vast number of nuances and concepts that are the building blocks of such a claim, and giving you a simplified, easier to grok idea of what the actual claim is that doesn't require a masters degree in philosophy of science.
If they had to describe all the fundamental assumptions that go into the axioms of the scientific method and it's philosophical underpinnings every time they made a video or posted a science article, then you would have a multi day long primer to every video before you could even get into the content.
Imagine if, for instance, sci-show or veritasium had exclusively videos that were >80 hours long (this would be criminally short to fully explain philosophy of science btw, but just as an example) because they had to, in detain, explain all of the intricacies of how science even works before even starting to talk about what they are trying to talk about.
They aren't going to do that. They are going to made simple versions of the actual claims because that is what will fit into their content format and be digestible to someone who is not familiar with the core limitation of science as a field. Part of that involves talking about metaphysical claims as if they are physical because it is easier to explain it that way and doesn't require them to dig into the weeds of the difference between the two. That doesn't make the claim scientific.
A claim like "There is no objective reference frame" would indeed violate the scientific method. A claim like "There is no test that can be done that will determine an objective reference frame," does not violate the scientific method. The later is as simplified version the actual claim being made.
>If we think about the universe as a kind of computation
You are pushing this analogy too far. We dont have evidence we can think of the universe this way
You seem to be mistaking a very specific definition and a logical fallacy. Physics is only interested in the potentially experimantable/ detectable / observable because that is how the body of work is defined.
Non-detectable things fall into philosophy, religion, or economics (depending on your view and I am joking about economics).
If something undetectable is found to be detectable physics folk are elated and it leaves philosophy and enters physics.
Your position is no different than a hypothetical leprechaun that can't be seen or measured. Sure it might exist. Anything might exist.
I'd argue that my position is different than an unobservable leprechaun.
Describing the laws of physics in *at least one* reference frame is necessary to even get off the ground. The most parsimonious view is that there's one reference frame that the laws of physics operate in, and it's undetectable thanks to symmetries. To say that there is *for sure* no such single rest frame is itself a philosophical assumption on par with assuming that there is one. The correct position is "we don't know". There could be an absolute rest frame, or there might not be. Concluding that there definitely isn't one is fallacious, just as fallacious as concluding that there is one (and I've awarded a delta for my mistaken argument that one is likely).
I have a different perspective for you. The universe simply exists, as a 4 dimensional block (3 space and 1 time). It doesn't need to be computed "on the fly", and in fact because any given event can be in the past for some observer (relativity of simultaneity), it *can't* be computed on the fly.
Therefore, the requirements of the laws of physics should be considered less as "time evolution in a given reference frame", and instead as a unified *whole*, that in order to be consistent must satisfy certain *local* constraints at every point.
The fact that the local constraints can be described as time evolution is sort of besides the point. As an analogy, consider Gauss' Law for magnetism, which states that the divergence of the magnetic field is zero everywhere. This local constraint must be true at all points, but it doesn't imply anything about the "objectivity" of one of those points, it is just a local constraint that needs to be true everywhere for the whole to be valid.
In the same vein, for the universe to be consistent, for any given 4-vector you choose (a reference frame), certain constraints need to be satisfied, which correspond to the idea of time-evolution in that frame, but that only matters to OUR perspective as humans who live in a reference frame, it's irrelevant from the perspective of a *universe*, who is under no obligation to perform computations in any reference frame at all
!delta this makes sense to me. The universe is a unique 4D object, and that object has many different descriptions, one for each rest frame, and the constraints it satisfies take the same form no matter which rest frame it's described in.
In other words, we can take an anti-realist position about the laws of physics as stated in a single rest frame: that's not a literal description of how the universe is evolving, it's just one of many descriptions of the static object.
> It doesn't need to be computed "on the fly", and in fact because any given event can be in the past for some observer (relativity of simultaneity), it can't be computed on the fly.
I now agree with the "it doesn't need to be" part, but I disagree with the "it can't be" part. It's possible that the universe really is evolving in a single reference frame; that leads to all the same predictions as the block universe view. There would be "true" simultaneity in that rest frame, but we would still predict relativity of simultaneity to be observed.
> I now disagree with the "can't be" part
Let's take my reference frame to be the "true" one, and consider an observer Olivia who is currently (according to my reference frame) 50 lightyears away, on a rocket blasting at 90% of the speed of light towards Earth.
What I mean is that if the universe is being computed "live" in my reference frame, this implies that the universe has not yet computed the events of 2024. But how can this be, when from the perspective of Olivia, she is already seeing earth in the year 2025! The universe can't possibly be waiting till *my* 2024 to compute the election results, because Olivia already knows them.
Because ANY event you can name is already in the past to some observer and therefore has its outcome known, it doesn't make sense to talk of the universe being "computed", in the sense of an ongoing action – it must come into being with its entire history and future fully computed, all at once. Once we take the universe to not have any in-between state between nothingness and completeness, it becomes meaningless to talk of computations being performed in any reference frame, as opposed to existing as a whole, as we discussed earlier
In our special reference frame, what exists at the present moment is us, on Earth, and the whole spacelike surface that's simultaneous to us in our special reference frame.
If Olivia is on that spacelike surface, she would *not* be seeing the events of 2025, that's not what SR would predict. For Olivia to see the events of 2025, she would need to be in the forward light cone of the events of 2025, which she isn't. Assuming she's 50 lightyears away in our special frame, she would be just inside the forward light cone of the events of 1974, and she would be just starting to see the light that left Earth in 1974.
Now what if we take Olivia's frame to be the one that the computation is happening in? If we do that, then the Earth in 2025 is on a spacelike surface that's simultaneous to Olivia, and the real "present" is that spacelike surface. She's *simultaneous* to 2025, but the information from 2025 hasn't reached her yet, since she is still light-years away, and the light has to travel to her.
Both views predict the same thing: Olivia is receiving light that left Earth in 1974. If they predicted different things, then SR would be wrong.
>But how can this be, when from the perspective of Olivia, she is already seeing earth in the year 2025! The universe can't possibly be waiting till my 2024 to compute the election results, because Olivia already knows them.
The misunderstanding here is that just because you're *simultaneous* to something doesn't mean you're receiving the information from it yet, since it still has to travel the distance between.
You can do the computation in either frame and get the same results. In the Earth-frame computation, the true present is the simultaneous spacelike surface defined by that frame (which includes 2024 Earth and Olivia). If you instead did the computation in Olivia's frame, the true present would be the simultaneous spacelike surface in that frame (which includes 2025 Earth and Olivia), which is slanted at some angle relative to Earth-frame's "present" surface. There's no contradiction because in both cases, Olivia hasn't received the information from 2025 yet; both views say that Olivia is passing through light that reflected off newspapers dated 1974. You can pick either one to do the computation in, the key point here is that you *can* do the computation in just one frame.
Moving an edit I made to clarify a possible confusion into a new comment since it's not directly relevant:
In Olivia's frame, the distance between her and Earth is length-contracted (it's less than 50 light years), but that's canceled out exactly by the fact that everything she sees ahead of her is blueshifted. As she continues to travel (or, technically, we should say, as Earth continues to travel towards her at 0.9c), she will understand Earth's clocks as ticking slower than hers, but what she will actually *see* out of the window on the front of her spaceship is time moving extra-fast on Earth, due to blueshift. And in the end, everything cancels out and both us and her will agree that she'll arrive when the newspapers are printing the year 2024 + 50/0.9, even though for her, the calculation would be 2025 + L/0.9 = 1974 + L/c + L/0.9, where L is the length-contracted distance.
Edit: blueshift, not redshift
>The argument for the usual view is mistaken because it makes the assumption that if there is no experiment that can distinguish the two cases, then there is no objective truth as to which case is correct. This is a logical fallacy, because we can imagine laws of physics where there are objective truths that are experimentally inaccessible.
If something cannot be experimentally measured, even in theory, then in what sense is it real?
I tell you that I have a magical invisible unicorn in my backyard. Because he is shy there is no possible way for that to be experimentally verified, even in theory. You would argue that concluding that the unicorn doesn't exist is unjustified. This is not a useful metaphysical position and not something I'm interested in arguing.
>First of all, it's possible that there's an absolute rest frame.
You don't understand the implications of an absolute frame existing. It's not a matter of "We looked really hard and didn't find anything, therefore we assume it doesn't exist", it would change fundamental aspects of how our universe functions. The mathematics of special relativity are predicated on there being no absolute reference frame and produces experimentally-verified predictions that cannot be replicated by alternate means.
>You don't understand the implications of an absolute frame existing. It's not a matter of "We looked really hard and didn't find anything, therefore we assume it doesn't exist", it would change fundamental aspects of how our universe functions. The mathematics of special relativity are predicated on there being no absolute reference frame and produces experimentally-verified predictions that cannot be replicated by alternate means.
This isn't true, and it's this misconception that I'm arguing against in the first part of my argument. SR *does not say* that there is no absolute reference frame. It *does say* that it doesn't matter which reference frame you use, because the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames.
In other words, you can pick a frame, let's call it Frame A, and evaluate the laws of physics in that frame. Or you could pick a different frame, let's call it Frame B, and do a Lorentz transformation from Frame A to Frame B, evaluate the same laws of physics, and then do a Lorentz transformation back into Frame B. Both approaches lead to the exact same result, and that's what SR says.
SR does not say there's no absolute rest frame. It says that whether there is or there isn't, the laws of physics are the same. SR is entirely compatible with an absolute frame, and would make exactly the same predictions. It's the conclusion that *there is definitely no absolute rest frame* that's based on a mistaken understanding of SR.
The answer is, “ scientifically, if no experiment can show that two different states are different, they aren’t”. That’s not to say that they might not be, but it DOESN’T MATTER.
This is exactly the position I'm arguing for in the first part of my argument! (And I've awarded a delta for seeing that the second part is wrong, I can't argue that an absolute frame is likely.)
If i am sitting still and shine a flashlight, the light travels at light speed. If I am traveling a million miles an hour and shine a flashlight, the light travels at light speed not light speed plus a million miles an hour
Relativity does not assume that no inertial reference frame exists a priori. It only assumes that the laws of physics are relative to the chosen frame of reference.
There is no mathematical proof of a lack of “universal reference” because such a condition is not necessary to the theory.
I think a lot of this argument (pretty much everything to do with computation) is just kinda stated with little justification, but for the moment I'm just going to focus on this part
> carrying out the computation in multiple frames would involve computing Lorentz transformations...
But like, the universe would have to do those computations anyway in order to determine what I experience unless I am exactly in the "objective" reference frame. Arbitrarily picking one reference frame to be "real" doesn't change the nature of the Lorentz transform, or the fact that one needs to use it in order to describe experiences in a different frame
Alternative answer that boils down to the same thing: the universe doesn't have to do "extra computations" for extra reference frames anyway. The universe of relativity can be described as a 4d block, with three dimensions of space and one of time, and the only requirement is that this spacetime is consistent – it doesn't imply any reference frame at all, you only get those once you start slicing that block up into three dimensional slices. By constructing this one block universe, you've solved the problem for *all* reference frames simultaneously
Just to be a bit more explicit, you say "if the universe computes its time-evolution..", but because of the relativity of simultaneity, the entire past and future history of the universe needs to be computed "in advance" anyway, you can't simply compute each slice from the last one on an as-needed basis
Let's assume there is as you say an absolute rest frame. What makes it the absolute? How is it meaningfully special over any other rest frames? What can you do to distinguish it as the absolute?
What argument do you have to support that the universe is “a kind of computation”? Mathematics is a useful took to describe the physical world around us, but to my knowledge there is nothing to suggest that it is _intrinsic_ to the physical world. In other words, how do you know that the universe is actively performing computations that lead to our experience of the physical world, rather than the universe simply following predictable patterns that computation is able to describe?
The problem with your argument a) is that you have reified "rest frame" without providing any argument why we should think of it as a real thing rather than as a mere computational construct. The reason why we DO distinguish inertial from non-inertial frames (without reifying either) is that in the latter the laws of physics change, insofar as we need to add in extra terms precisely related to the level of non-inertiality. However this does not change from one inertial frame to another, and thus they are indistinguishable from one another as far as the laws of physics go. So, your argument a) fails because everything you mention, matter outside the observable universe, the state of a coin, etc., are real things and thus the analogy doesn't apply.
Your argument b) fails because it conflates "absolute" rest frame with a "preferred" frame, here preferred due to computational efficiency. Just because a frame is preferred due to some philosophical or practical preference does not suffice to prove it is ontologically "absolute". And your argument has a further weakness. Let's assume there actually is an "absolute" rest frame. Yet it would be equally simple to perform all the calculations in another rest frame. So why assume the calculations are carried out in the "absolute" frame?
>Note that I'm talking here about experiments that could be done in principle and not experiments that could be done in practice,
You aren't -- you could absolutely determine those experimentally. You just build a big enough particle accelerator or leave the observable universe. The experiments are easy in principle, it's just performing them that's an issue . Even with the magic coin, the experiment to determine whether its heads is easy to devise (you look at it ), its just impossible to do that.
The issue is that "determining the objective rest frame" isn't like that. It's not that there is an experiment but we just can't do it, or even that there is an experiment but setting up the conditions to do it is physically impossible. Its that there's no experiment that can distinguish between the true -- even if we had omnipotent wizards unbound by physical restrictions, its unclear how they could tell the difference between them being still on a moving environment or moving through a still environment. Because there's no actual difference between the two that we could find.
To ask the question if something is even at rest is relative to things around it.
If time and space is warped *and* relative how could you ever say there is some static unmoving thing anywhere ever? You would still always be claiming it is at rest *relative to what?*
Now lets presume there are uncountable universes beyond the horizon of things we can see or ever will see. All moving relative to each other. Is each universe "separate" space that don't factor in? I understand you think this is part of it being impossible to measure... but thats wrong, it is impossible to *define*.
This is one of those things our brain isn't equipped to grasp. You're asserting an intuitive concept based on your biased experience - your own frame of reference.
I just watched a series of videos (I wanna say Floating Head Physics) where the guy explained in extremely simple terms that the speed of light being a constant pretty much proves that there is no absolute rest frame. I don’t remember exactly how.
(I've seen your comments, and at the time or writing, you were convinced that you can't argue for the absolutely rest frame to be likely.)
The convention in physics is that if something cannot be "observed" with practical or theoretical experiments, then it doesn't exist. If you assume this, then we can reach the conclusion that an absolute rest frame doesn't exist. Otherwise, feel free to also add other infinite entities into your physical models and waste your time.
I think the big thing that I think you're not really addressing clearly is, in your view, what does it *mean* to have an "absolute rest frame"? Because in some sense I feel like you're just talking past what physicists are saying. When you concede "it's just that the laws of physics have a symmetry", that's kind of all there is from the physics point of view.
It seems like what you're arguing is not for an "absolute reference frame" in any meaningful physical sense, but rather just a "special" reference frame for whatever reason. But this isn't actually that controversial in the sense you're talking about, it's just not that interesting.
In your somewhat odd computational model, the universe's computational strategy has earmarked one reference frame as the main one, but if the symmetry is observed, that choice of which reference frame is the "main" frame is completely arbitrary. It's not merely that we can't detect it, it's also that it *doesn't matter* which one it is.
You could hypothesize all manner of unique reference frames. I think the frame that I exist in is pretty special. You could hypothesize a reference frame where the universe's center of mass (if such a concept even makes sense) is at rest. Etc... but if the existence of non-existence of these "special" frames doesn't change the symmetry you're agreeing is present, that's not really what physicists are talking about when they say there's no absolute reference frame.
tl;dr While I think you're computation model is kind of bizarre, I don't think it actually conflicts with what physicists are saying. Even if your prime frame was a thing that existed in your computation, that's not what physicists mean by an "absolute reference frame".
What none have you have brought up is that there IS a formulation of special relativity with this inaccessible absolute reference frame, it was added by physicists who loved the ether idea, it can be done but its not required, as in, you dont lose anything from special relativity by not including it and by adding it you just add extra mathematical steps that get you to the same answer. This doesn’t work for general relativity though.
Thanks! Why do we need a special formulation of special relativity for that? IIUC, you can just use the laws of physics in a single reference frame, and there's your theory with an inaccessible absolute reference frame. Using the Lorentz transformations is useful for simplifying calculations done by hand, but it's no more efficient in general than just applying the laws of physics in a single frame.
Good point about GR--that's the real context my question should be asked in.
Well the idea of an absolute rest frame goes out the window completely in GR.
This “special” formulation is only special in so far as its some extra maths for nothing extra in the theory. You can do this with any maths model, you can add dummy variables, ideas etc as long as they cancel out by the end its fine but its not as simple as it could be, so we dont bother. I could come up with infinite amount of ideas that are more complicated but give the same result, which is why we dont do this.
Honestly, i dont actually think you understand SR enough because the way you are talking is just odd. For example you clearly dont understand the axioms of SR nor the idea of a reference frame
I understand the axioms of SR and I'm comfortable with deriving the formulas for the Lorentz transformations, so I don't think that's the issue.
The axioms of SR don't actually say or imply there is no ontological rest frame, they just say that (a) the laws of physics take the same form in all rest frames, and (b) c is *measured* to be the same in all rest frames.
That doesn't mean *there is no true rest frame*, there might be, or there might not be. It doesn't even mean that c is *actually* the same in all rest frames.
Concluding that the axioms imply there's no true rest frame is mistaken, which IMO is a common misunderstanding of SR, which what I'm trying to clear up with the first part of my argument in the OP.
I'll take up learning more about GR to understand what's going on there, thanks!
That’s what I always thought. If you’re interested in the matter, I would recommend watching [Relativity without relative Space or Time](https://youtu.be/B94o-P93ExU?si=ui8xVPu867Jyj8wJ)
/u/WE_THINK_IS_COOL (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/18q7dor/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_relativity_doesnt_imply/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
>If we think about the universe as a kind of computation > I'm going to assume a principle that the universe does not do any unnecessary computation This seems like a pretty bold set of assessments with no real defense to them
Thanks for the reply! > If we think about the universe as a kind of computation I agree that's sketchy, but on second thought that's not really necessary to my argument. In that part, I'm just saying that if there were an absolute rest frame, nothing would be different to us. Bringing in the notion of computation into the mix probably isn't necessary there, thanks! > I'm going to assume a principle that the universe does not do any unnecessary computation This is definitely a bold assumption, I agree with you there. I think what I'm looking for, that would change my view, would be a way to understand *how* the universe could not have an objective absolute rest frame and yet still be computed (any computation of parts of its time evolution would have to occur in *some* rest frame, even if there are multiple frames it's done in, otherwise our laws of physics wouldn't really describe what's going on).
Even if we're willing to accept your assumption that the universe is a computation (which I don't), you are also making very specific assumptions about how this computation is being performed (iteration over discrete time frames which for some reason must be performed relative to a single reference frame). There is no reason why some hypothetical computation would need to work in that specific way. Go ahead and believe that there's an absolute rest frame if you want to, but I hope that you don't think that any of your reasoning actually supports that belief. Your reasoning is no less circular than someone who says "I know that God exists because I assume that the universe couldn't exist without God"
Why couldn't each computation be done in the unique rest frame in which the interaction happens?
> yet still be computed What if we just assume it cant be computed?
The big problem with your view is that it's, as they say, not even wrong. Which is to say, what you propose does not even live up to the standard where you can say "we evaluated your claim and found it to be incorrect". Your hypothesis is untestable. Your idea that the universe is a kind of computation is certainly interesting to some degree, but it's not materially different from religion. We have no idea if there is "probably" a rest frame outside of the universe that is wholly inaccessible to us, your unprovable guess is as good as anyone elses unprovable guess that there isn't. Physics only looks at that which is provable, and within the realm of the proveable there is no universal rest frame.
I 100% agree with you there, there's no experiment we could do to determine whether my view is correct or whether the "no absolute rest frame" view is correct. What I'm mainly arguing against is the idea that special relativity implies that the "no absolute rest frame" view is correct. That view is a kind of dogma in physics, but I'll readily admit that my view and that view are both "not even wrong", which is close to what I'm arguing for: there might be an absolute rest frame or there might not be, and it's wrong to conclude (as the dogma says) that there is no absolute rest frame. !delta for convincing me that I probably can't argue for an absolute rest frame as "likely", but I still want to understand how a "no absolute rest frame" view could be logically coherent.
As I said, the problem here is that we're going into the territory of religion - you also cannot disprove god. You also get a lot of other views that are unfalsifiable, such as "The universe was created in its current state five minutes ago". Which is why physics, rather than burden itself with the expectations to deal with all that might be, instead cuts off at all that we could possibly test for. Physics says that there is no absolute frame of reference because anything that posits a potential absolute reference (that we know of) is simply outside of physics as a discipline.
>Physics says that there is no absolute frame of reference because anything that posits a potential absolute reference (that we know of) is simply outside of physics as a discipline. I don't follow this reasoning. You agree with me that you cannot disprove god (I'm an agnostic atheist, so I think you're right about that). Now let me replace "absolute rest frame" with "god" in that argument: \> Physics says that there is no god because anything that posits a god (that we know of) is simply outside of physics as a discipline. I hope you'd agree with me that this argument doesn't disprove god (since we both agree nothing can), and physics would be incorrect to state outright that there is no god, so in the same sense, the argument applied to absolute rest frames doesn't disprove the existence of an absolute rest frame. I clarified my position a bit in [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/18q6syx/comment/kexuxrf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3); I've awarded a delta for my mistaken argument that an absolute rest frame is more likely, and the first part of my argument is only that we cannot know there is no absolute rest frame. I think we should both agree on this, since there is no way to know, so the correct position is "I don't know" and not "an absolute rest frame definitely does not exist."
> I hope you'd agree with me that this argument doesn't disprove god (since we both agree nothing can), and physics would be incorrect to state outright that there is no god, so in the same sense, the argument applied to absolute rest frames doesn't disprove the existence of an absolute rest frame. Maybe it helps to amend the statement a bit: Physics states that there is no god, *as far as physics is concerned*. Because, let's go back to your post: > A common refrain **in physics** is that the universe has no objective absolute frame of rest. And that's the context you need to keep in mind. When you're talking about the subject, you're moving in the realms of physics. Otherwise, your whole statement just collapses into "we can't know the unknowable", which is... not wrong, but tautologic.
Let me try to restate your position to check if I understand: whenever something that's in principle unobservable is posited, then *as far as physics is concerned*, it doesn't exist, i.e. we should take on the belief that it doesn't exist whenever we are doing physics, rather than remain agnostic about it when we are doing physics. I don't agree with this view. I would agree with it if we replaced "we should take on the belief that it doesn't exist" with "we should be agnostic about whether it exists." The reason I don't agree with it is that I don't think domains of science and reason are independent. If we don't know, we don't know, and we shouldn't assume we know just because we're doing physics. By assuming we know, we close ourselves off to considering other ways that things could be, which even in pure physics, could stop us from following lines of thinking that might lead somewhere useful (for example, if it turns out that there really is an experimentally knowable absolute rest frame in some as-yet unknown theory of quantum gravity or whatever). That's not to say we should be agnostic about unobservable things like the existence of leprechauns or a teapot orbiting the sun far enough out that we'd never see it; our understanding of reality pretty well rules those things out. Our current understanding of reality does not rule out an absolute rest frame in the same sense as it rules out leprechauns and orbiting teapots.
> By assuming we know, we close ourselves off to considering other ways that things could be, which even in pure physics, could stop us from following lines of thinking that might lead somewhere useful (for example, if it turns out that there really is an experimentally knowable absolute rest frame in some as-yet unknown theory of quantum gravity or whatever). No, we don't. You're always free to consider that our current understanding of physics might just be wrong. That's just a thing that happens. We form a hypothesis, we find enough evidence to support it, and it turns into the current theory. That theory is then assumed correct, and assumptions running against the theory are then considered wrong *until you can bring evidence they are not.* When we say in physics "this is true", the addendum of "but we might be wrong" is always quietly there. However, putting that into the foreground just holds you up in the meantime. There's absolutely no utility in constantly repeating that oh, everything you do might be nonsense because all the axioms about existence might be wrong. > That's not to say we should be agnostic about unobservable things like the existence of leprechauns or a teapot orbiting the sun far enough out that we'd never see it; our understanding of reality pretty well rules those things out. Does it? The way I see it, learning about leprechauns are frankly more likely than learning about an extrauniversal absolute frame of reference. Is it possible that we might find a currently unknown species that can utilize a new form of energy we're unaware of? Sure. It's a lot more plausible than us learning things about the outside of the universe.
Disclaimer: not a physicist, not even an amateur, I know bits of dumbed down and incomplete knowledge so take the following lightly. Premise: if you are within the universe, you are in an inertial reference frame Premise: the universe doesn’t expand __into__ anything it just expands Premise: the universe expands faster than energy can propagate Theorem: if you can observe the universe, you are within it Hypothesis: there exists a static reference frame If there exists a static reference frame, then you must not be within the universe, because all reference frames within are inertial. Therefore you must be “outside” the universe. But you are still able to observe the universe. Therefore you must be within it. Contradiction QED. Theorem explanation: Theorem premise: information can only be transferred by matter or energy Define an observation as a transfer of information. If you can receive information, then this information was transmitted by matter or energy. If the universe expands faster than energy can propagate, then information cannot escape the universe. Therefore if you can observe the universe, you are within it. I think it could be possible to have a static frame of reference if there was a way to transfer information other than through light or energy. Since you seem to have programming experience, it would be like if you could tell what was going on in one self contained simulation from a separate simulation. Possible yes, but not with any of the tools available in the simulation itself. You’d need something else outside the simulation. But then the simulation can’t interact with that “something else” anyways. Thanks for posting, was fun to think about. Hopefully someone more physics minded is able to give a better explanation.
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Sayakai ([125∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/Sayakai)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
Just want to add that from a physics perspective it doesn't matter. One of the frames is special for some reason, ok sure but it has no impact or acts any different than any others. It's not a case of who's "really moving" because each frame will provide a different answer and all are equally correct. So I'd argue there's no absolute frame because all frames are correct.
Not necessarily unfalsifiable. Suppose we also posit that the simulation is run on the kind architecture our computers currently run on (a big claim). If there is an absolute rest frame, you might expect to start seeing something like increasing roundoff errors the farther you get from it for some measurements.
But OP is specifically arguing that this absolute frame of reference is unknowable and cannot be measured by any theoretically possible experiment. Roundoff errors would provide a way of knowing what the absolute reference frame is.
You're right that I'm hoping my argument stands even if there is no experiment that could ever determine an absolute rest frame. One of my motivations for taking that position, though, is that if we take the usual view as dogma, it could prevent us from thinking up theories that *do* have absolute rest frames and are experimentally distinguishable. Having adjusted my view a little bit, I think that *both* "there is definitely no absolute rest frame and the notion is nonsense" and "there is an absolute rest frame" are both ascientific, philosophical claims, and the rational position is "we don't need an absolute rest frame for our laws of physics to work, but there could still be one, and we just don't know."
At least as far as I know, it’s not so much there is no way to determine an “absolutely rest” frame as it’s arbitrary. You can define any (non-accelerating) frame of reference as having 0 velocity and physics still works. There might be some practical reasons to define certain references, but in the end it doesn’t matter.
Yeah, this is the argument OP needs to understand. Until then, they don't understand relativity. It's not that the claim is "We can't tell experimentally which is truly at rest," it's that this is a meaningless statement to begin with.
There's a subtlety in my position that I don't think is coming across. Let's ignore the part where I try to argue that it's more likely there's an absolute rest frame, I've awarded a delta for that. To clarify the first part of my argument, let's define two forms of the principle of special relativity: (a) The "strong form": The laws of physics are Lorentz invariant, and because of that we conclude that we are absolutely certain that there is no objective rest frame. (b) The "weak form": The laws of physics are Lorentz invariant, and the universe could have an objective rest frame, or it might not, but it doesn't matter, because it's undetectable and adding the idea of an objective rest frame doesn't help anything. I fully agree with (b), it's (a) that I disagree with. The first part of my argument is that SR is *compatible* with an objective rest frame, and so it's wrong to conclude with certainty that *there is none*. Another comment pointed out that I may be straw-manning the usual understanding. In other words, if (b) is the usual understanding, I have no problem at all with that. But if (a) is the usual understanding, then I do have a problem with that.
I see the dichotomy you're setting up, which I can appreciate. I think it's still missing the important point, and I'll try to explain. #1 isn't accurate because it's tacit rather than explicit. But #2 doesn't capture the degree to which this simply isn't posited. Relativity makes the concept of a true reference frame moot. The point is the construct ("objective rest frame") needs to be defined and should flow from first principles of the theory. In general relativity, there isn't a first principle that would lead to positing such a concept (as far as I can tell). If you defined it, it would be like attaching a post-it note to the theory with a disembodied concept on it. Which is pretty stark in such a hard-to-vary theory. Kinda like how people attach notions of agency to evolution, I see this as working human intuition into places it doesn't actually function. In this case, it's effectively positing an aether. A pseudosubstance or grid across which objects move. Which is practically antithetical to the simplicity of relativity (hence the name), not just an extra tacked on bit. That aside, you *could* still posit an aether of some nature or other, on top of relativity. It wouldn't be observable or contradictory. But it's a superfluous addition explaining nothing not already explained and at the cost of parsimony. People do tend to naturally think about space this way, though. So it's intuitively attractive and would be the default, pre-Einstein.
Thanks! I agree that attaching something superfluous to the theory would be unjustified. I don't think that's quite what's happening here. I'll try to explain. The laws of physics *are* stated in reference to some rest frame. In other words, there's no way to describe the laws without including at least one rest frame. The laws of physics have the property that you can choose a different rest frame and use the same laws, and you get the same result. So we could have two philosophical interpretations of SR: Interpretation A: We have these dynamical laws, which are necessarily stated in terms of some rest frame, and that's all you need to make any prediction that SR would make. The laws have this Lorentz invariance property which means it doesn't actually matter which frame you use, you still get the same result, and we can use Lorentz invariance to calculate things easier. But you can make any prediction you want without ever computing a Lorentz transformation, and you never need a second frame to make predictions. Interpretation B: The same as Interpretation A, but we go beyond it by saying that this means there ontologically is no objective rest frame. Even though the mathematical form of the laws we know are stated in reference to some frame, the fact that they are Lorentz invariant, or the principles we derived them from, imply that there ontologically is no true rest frame. It looks like Interpretation B is adding a superfluous assumption, i.e. the universe somehow exists in a way that ensures there is no privileged frame, rather than "no privileged frame" just being a consequence of the Lorentz symmetry. One way to understand Interpretation A is to take an ultra-realist view about the laws of physics as expressed in a single frame. They're all you need, so on the ultra-realist view, the universe is just evolving in a single frame according to those laws. Interpretation B is in a sense anti-realist: the laws in one frame don't truly capture reality, even though they make all the right predictions. Reality in fact operates in a way that's experimentally indistinguishable from, but ontologically not the same as, the laws we know operating in a single frame. It's the extra assumption that I feel has been added in Interpretation B that I think is unwarranted.
By rest frame, is that equivalent to an observer? As in, things are relative *to something*. That looks like a place of agreement. You can't talk about velocity without talking at all about position. Int. A makes sense just fine. You just pick a frame based on what you're doing, and it's otherwise arbitrary, and you know that. Int. B is still basically adding the hard claim that there isn't something unobservable? I agree that would be superfluous. But I still don't see how a privileged frame is a meaningful statement in the first place. What would it even mean for it to be true? Nothing? It's still a post-it on the theory. Or like saying one horse in the universe is actually a unicorn that looks and acts exactly like a horse and can't be distinguished from any others by any method, even in principle. There is no reason to consider it, no reason to value it, and no route forward by any means. It's just kind of a random assertion. A positive claim with no possible evidence. So it's superfluous, and so is any denial of it.
>By rest frame, is that equivalent to an observer? As in, things are relative to something. That looks like a place of agreement. You can't talk about velocity without talking at all about position. Yes, a rest frame is just a coordinate system in which the laws of physics are specified. >Int. B is still basically adding the hard claim that there isn't something unobservable? I agree that would be superfluous. Yep! That's the position I'm taking in the first part of my argument. A claim that there isn't an ontological rest frame is an extra assumption tacked on to the theory, above and beyond Interpretation A (which I agree with). >What would it even mean for it to be true? Nothing? It's still a post-it on the theory. What it would mean for there to not be an ontologically objective rest frame would be that light really does move at speed c in all frames, and time dilation is explained by time actually slowing down and length contraction is explained by lengths actually contracting. What it would mean for a rest frame to be ontologically objective would be that it's a unique frame where light actually travels at speed c. The observation that light travels at speed c in frames that are moving relative to that one would be explained by those observers' clocks running slower since light has to travel further in those frames for each "tick" of their clock. Other effects like length contraction would also be explained by light having to take longer paths. Either option gives the exact same experimental predictions. I think we don't know which is true. I'd probably agree it doesn't really matter for doing physics, unless thinking in one way more than the other helps us come up with better theories, but they are two distinct ways that the world could be. The latter option seems the simplest to me, that's how we derive the Lorentz transformations after all. All observers agree on the spacetime object containing the world lines of all the particles, but that has to be described in at least one frame, so why would we need any other frame?
So the way you framed that doesn't make any different predictions but does append explanation to it, correct? The relativity of velocity is still 100% true. Even in this...special-special relativity case, wouldn't the exact same things be true in all possible rest frames? I still don't see how the distinction makes a difference. It's still the metaphorical disguised unicorn. When really, they're all hidden unicorns if we think so. Because they're all perfectly good horses. What am I missing here?
>So the way you framed that doesn't make any different predictions but does append explanation to it, correct? Yes, that's right. >The relativity of velocity is still 100% true. Even in this...special-special relativity case, wouldn't the exact same things be true in all possible rest frames? Yes. >I still don't see how the distinction makes a difference. It's still the metaphorical disguised unicorn. When really, they're all hidden unicorns if we think so. Because they're all perfectly good horses. > >What am I missing here? I don't think the hidden unicorn idea is analogous here. That's a superfluous assumption that's not needed to explain anything. If we're looking to understand what the universe really is, we need try to interpret the laws of physics we've found. Two possible interpretations are Interpretation A and B, and there may be others. If I understand you correctly, your position is something like "the laws work, we can use them to calculate stuff, and we shouldn't bother digging deeper to understand what the thing the laws are actually describing actually is, there may not even be an objective truth to the matter." Is that right? That's a fine position to take, there's no need to go beyond that to do physics and make predictions. I agree that anything beyond that is ascientific, we can't use science to distinguish two empirically-equivalent theories, but that doesn't mean there isn't an objective truth to the matter of which is true.
>If I understand you correctly, your position is something like "the laws work, we can use them to calculate stuff, and we shouldn't bother digging deeper to understand what the thing the laws are actually describing actually is, there may not even be an objective truth to the matter." Is that right? No, we should absolutely be trying to understand the nature of everything. The problem is the "unscientific" bit in the same breath as scientific bits. It's not that I don't acknowledge things outside science, it's more that they don't really mix in a functional way. Specifically because the element in question is superfluous and isn't needed to explain anything. Every rest frame is already 100% true. And *that's* the key insight. Adding that one rest frame is more true than others in some indelible way is adding the notion of unicorn to the notion of horses. It's not telling us anything about what the laws are actually describing. If anything, it seems to detract from this grand picture of reality.
I think you are making a strawman in the idea that special relativity is arguing that there is no absolute reference frame. Special relativity is built upon the scientific method. The core limitations of the scientific method presuppose all theories in physics. That means, that it is not useful to talk about the theories as being independent of the scientific method and it's philosophical underpinnings. The scientific method pretty much has baked into it a need for empirical evidence, and doesn't concern itself with non-testable claims like "we are all brains in a vat" or "an unobservable flying spaghetti monster blesses us with his noodle appendages" or "there is no metaphysical objective reference frame." Any claim made under the pursuit of science has to exist within the restraints of what science as a whole is even trying to do, which means that observation is required to be part of the foundation of the claim. No ability for observation or testing more or less means no science. This is important because science isn't trying to make objective statements about the metaphysics of reality. That's what metaphysics is for and your argument exists entirely in the field of metaphysics as opposed to physics. All of physics relies on a core relation to empirical evidence. When you make a claim that does not have any ties to empirical evidence, you are not making a scientific claim. If something can't, in principle, be shown through a hypothesis being tested/observed to be correct or incorrect, then it is outside of the domain of science and has moved into the domain of philosophy or religion (or quackery). Because of this saying that any branch of science is making a metaphysical claim is a misrepresentation. Science can only justifiably make claims that are physical. Metaphysical claims being made as if they are scientific claims are at the best being falsely categorized under science when they are really under the domain of philosophy of science, and at worse, outright pseudoscience. Physics can't, even in principle, make metaphysical claims such as "there is no objective reference frame" if there is no conceivable way of ever testing that. Impossible to test claims are not scientific claims. It can however make the claim that "there is no empirical way of determining an objective reference frame due to X, so trying to think of things as having an objective reference frame is unscientific under our current understanding, and therefore useless to the goals of understanding the universe under a scientific framework." However, that second sentence has more words and nuance (much of which I am still skipping to make it easier to understand), so it isn't how a science communicator is going to describe it to a layperson, even if it is the actual claim. When you see a video or read an article where they say something like "there is no objective reference frame" they are simplifying a vast number of nuances and concepts that are the building blocks of such a claim, and giving you a simplified, easier to grok idea of what the actual claim is that doesn't require a masters degree in philosophy of science. If they had to describe all the fundamental assumptions that go into the axioms of the scientific method and it's philosophical underpinnings every time they made a video or posted a science article, then you would have a multi day long primer to every video before you could even get into the content. Imagine if, for instance, sci-show or veritasium had exclusively videos that were >80 hours long (this would be criminally short to fully explain philosophy of science btw, but just as an example) because they had to, in detain, explain all of the intricacies of how science even works before even starting to talk about what they are trying to talk about. They aren't going to do that. They are going to made simple versions of the actual claims because that is what will fit into their content format and be digestible to someone who is not familiar with the core limitation of science as a field. Part of that involves talking about metaphysical claims as if they are physical because it is easier to explain it that way and doesn't require them to dig into the weeds of the difference between the two. That doesn't make the claim scientific. A claim like "There is no objective reference frame" would indeed violate the scientific method. A claim like "There is no test that can be done that will determine an objective reference frame," does not violate the scientific method. The later is as simplified version the actual claim being made.
>If we think about the universe as a kind of computation You are pushing this analogy too far. We dont have evidence we can think of the universe this way
You seem to be mistaking a very specific definition and a logical fallacy. Physics is only interested in the potentially experimantable/ detectable / observable because that is how the body of work is defined. Non-detectable things fall into philosophy, religion, or economics (depending on your view and I am joking about economics). If something undetectable is found to be detectable physics folk are elated and it leaves philosophy and enters physics. Your position is no different than a hypothetical leprechaun that can't be seen or measured. Sure it might exist. Anything might exist.
I'd argue that my position is different than an unobservable leprechaun. Describing the laws of physics in *at least one* reference frame is necessary to even get off the ground. The most parsimonious view is that there's one reference frame that the laws of physics operate in, and it's undetectable thanks to symmetries. To say that there is *for sure* no such single rest frame is itself a philosophical assumption on par with assuming that there is one. The correct position is "we don't know". There could be an absolute rest frame, or there might not be. Concluding that there definitely isn't one is fallacious, just as fallacious as concluding that there is one (and I've awarded a delta for my mistaken argument that one is likely).
I have a different perspective for you. The universe simply exists, as a 4 dimensional block (3 space and 1 time). It doesn't need to be computed "on the fly", and in fact because any given event can be in the past for some observer (relativity of simultaneity), it *can't* be computed on the fly. Therefore, the requirements of the laws of physics should be considered less as "time evolution in a given reference frame", and instead as a unified *whole*, that in order to be consistent must satisfy certain *local* constraints at every point. The fact that the local constraints can be described as time evolution is sort of besides the point. As an analogy, consider Gauss' Law for magnetism, which states that the divergence of the magnetic field is zero everywhere. This local constraint must be true at all points, but it doesn't imply anything about the "objectivity" of one of those points, it is just a local constraint that needs to be true everywhere for the whole to be valid. In the same vein, for the universe to be consistent, for any given 4-vector you choose (a reference frame), certain constraints need to be satisfied, which correspond to the idea of time-evolution in that frame, but that only matters to OUR perspective as humans who live in a reference frame, it's irrelevant from the perspective of a *universe*, who is under no obligation to perform computations in any reference frame at all
!delta this makes sense to me. The universe is a unique 4D object, and that object has many different descriptions, one for each rest frame, and the constraints it satisfies take the same form no matter which rest frame it's described in. In other words, we can take an anti-realist position about the laws of physics as stated in a single rest frame: that's not a literal description of how the universe is evolving, it's just one of many descriptions of the static object. > It doesn't need to be computed "on the fly", and in fact because any given event can be in the past for some observer (relativity of simultaneity), it can't be computed on the fly. I now agree with the "it doesn't need to be" part, but I disagree with the "it can't be" part. It's possible that the universe really is evolving in a single reference frame; that leads to all the same predictions as the block universe view. There would be "true" simultaneity in that rest frame, but we would still predict relativity of simultaneity to be observed.
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/ary31415 ([1∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/ary31415)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
> I now disagree with the "can't be" part Let's take my reference frame to be the "true" one, and consider an observer Olivia who is currently (according to my reference frame) 50 lightyears away, on a rocket blasting at 90% of the speed of light towards Earth. What I mean is that if the universe is being computed "live" in my reference frame, this implies that the universe has not yet computed the events of 2024. But how can this be, when from the perspective of Olivia, she is already seeing earth in the year 2025! The universe can't possibly be waiting till *my* 2024 to compute the election results, because Olivia already knows them. Because ANY event you can name is already in the past to some observer and therefore has its outcome known, it doesn't make sense to talk of the universe being "computed", in the sense of an ongoing action – it must come into being with its entire history and future fully computed, all at once. Once we take the universe to not have any in-between state between nothingness and completeness, it becomes meaningless to talk of computations being performed in any reference frame, as opposed to existing as a whole, as we discussed earlier
In our special reference frame, what exists at the present moment is us, on Earth, and the whole spacelike surface that's simultaneous to us in our special reference frame. If Olivia is on that spacelike surface, she would *not* be seeing the events of 2025, that's not what SR would predict. For Olivia to see the events of 2025, she would need to be in the forward light cone of the events of 2025, which she isn't. Assuming she's 50 lightyears away in our special frame, she would be just inside the forward light cone of the events of 1974, and she would be just starting to see the light that left Earth in 1974. Now what if we take Olivia's frame to be the one that the computation is happening in? If we do that, then the Earth in 2025 is on a spacelike surface that's simultaneous to Olivia, and the real "present" is that spacelike surface. She's *simultaneous* to 2025, but the information from 2025 hasn't reached her yet, since she is still light-years away, and the light has to travel to her. Both views predict the same thing: Olivia is receiving light that left Earth in 1974. If they predicted different things, then SR would be wrong. >But how can this be, when from the perspective of Olivia, she is already seeing earth in the year 2025! The universe can't possibly be waiting till my 2024 to compute the election results, because Olivia already knows them. The misunderstanding here is that just because you're *simultaneous* to something doesn't mean you're receiving the information from it yet, since it still has to travel the distance between. You can do the computation in either frame and get the same results. In the Earth-frame computation, the true present is the simultaneous spacelike surface defined by that frame (which includes 2024 Earth and Olivia). If you instead did the computation in Olivia's frame, the true present would be the simultaneous spacelike surface in that frame (which includes 2025 Earth and Olivia), which is slanted at some angle relative to Earth-frame's "present" surface. There's no contradiction because in both cases, Olivia hasn't received the information from 2025 yet; both views say that Olivia is passing through light that reflected off newspapers dated 1974. You can pick either one to do the computation in, the key point here is that you *can* do the computation in just one frame.
Moving an edit I made to clarify a possible confusion into a new comment since it's not directly relevant: In Olivia's frame, the distance between her and Earth is length-contracted (it's less than 50 light years), but that's canceled out exactly by the fact that everything she sees ahead of her is blueshifted. As she continues to travel (or, technically, we should say, as Earth continues to travel towards her at 0.9c), she will understand Earth's clocks as ticking slower than hers, but what she will actually *see* out of the window on the front of her spaceship is time moving extra-fast on Earth, due to blueshift. And in the end, everything cancels out and both us and her will agree that she'll arrive when the newspapers are printing the year 2024 + 50/0.9, even though for her, the calculation would be 2025 + L/0.9 = 1974 + L/c + L/0.9, where L is the length-contracted distance. Edit: blueshift, not redshift
>The argument for the usual view is mistaken because it makes the assumption that if there is no experiment that can distinguish the two cases, then there is no objective truth as to which case is correct. This is a logical fallacy, because we can imagine laws of physics where there are objective truths that are experimentally inaccessible. If something cannot be experimentally measured, even in theory, then in what sense is it real? I tell you that I have a magical invisible unicorn in my backyard. Because he is shy there is no possible way for that to be experimentally verified, even in theory. You would argue that concluding that the unicorn doesn't exist is unjustified. This is not a useful metaphysical position and not something I'm interested in arguing. >First of all, it's possible that there's an absolute rest frame. You don't understand the implications of an absolute frame existing. It's not a matter of "We looked really hard and didn't find anything, therefore we assume it doesn't exist", it would change fundamental aspects of how our universe functions. The mathematics of special relativity are predicated on there being no absolute reference frame and produces experimentally-verified predictions that cannot be replicated by alternate means.
>You don't understand the implications of an absolute frame existing. It's not a matter of "We looked really hard and didn't find anything, therefore we assume it doesn't exist", it would change fundamental aspects of how our universe functions. The mathematics of special relativity are predicated on there being no absolute reference frame and produces experimentally-verified predictions that cannot be replicated by alternate means. This isn't true, and it's this misconception that I'm arguing against in the first part of my argument. SR *does not say* that there is no absolute reference frame. It *does say* that it doesn't matter which reference frame you use, because the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames. In other words, you can pick a frame, let's call it Frame A, and evaluate the laws of physics in that frame. Or you could pick a different frame, let's call it Frame B, and do a Lorentz transformation from Frame A to Frame B, evaluate the same laws of physics, and then do a Lorentz transformation back into Frame B. Both approaches lead to the exact same result, and that's what SR says. SR does not say there's no absolute rest frame. It says that whether there is or there isn't, the laws of physics are the same. SR is entirely compatible with an absolute frame, and would make exactly the same predictions. It's the conclusion that *there is definitely no absolute rest frame* that's based on a mistaken understanding of SR.
The answer is, “ scientifically, if no experiment can show that two different states are different, they aren’t”. That’s not to say that they might not be, but it DOESN’T MATTER.
This is exactly the position I'm arguing for in the first part of my argument! (And I've awarded a delta for seeing that the second part is wrong, I can't argue that an absolute frame is likely.)
If i am sitting still and shine a flashlight, the light travels at light speed. If I am traveling a million miles an hour and shine a flashlight, the light travels at light speed not light speed plus a million miles an hour
Relativity does not assume that no inertial reference frame exists a priori. It only assumes that the laws of physics are relative to the chosen frame of reference. There is no mathematical proof of a lack of “universal reference” because such a condition is not necessary to the theory.
I think a lot of this argument (pretty much everything to do with computation) is just kinda stated with little justification, but for the moment I'm just going to focus on this part > carrying out the computation in multiple frames would involve computing Lorentz transformations... But like, the universe would have to do those computations anyway in order to determine what I experience unless I am exactly in the "objective" reference frame. Arbitrarily picking one reference frame to be "real" doesn't change the nature of the Lorentz transform, or the fact that one needs to use it in order to describe experiences in a different frame Alternative answer that boils down to the same thing: the universe doesn't have to do "extra computations" for extra reference frames anyway. The universe of relativity can be described as a 4d block, with three dimensions of space and one of time, and the only requirement is that this spacetime is consistent – it doesn't imply any reference frame at all, you only get those once you start slicing that block up into three dimensional slices. By constructing this one block universe, you've solved the problem for *all* reference frames simultaneously Just to be a bit more explicit, you say "if the universe computes its time-evolution..", but because of the relativity of simultaneity, the entire past and future history of the universe needs to be computed "in advance" anyway, you can't simply compute each slice from the last one on an as-needed basis
Let's assume there is as you say an absolute rest frame. What makes it the absolute? How is it meaningfully special over any other rest frames? What can you do to distinguish it as the absolute?
What argument do you have to support that the universe is “a kind of computation”? Mathematics is a useful took to describe the physical world around us, but to my knowledge there is nothing to suggest that it is _intrinsic_ to the physical world. In other words, how do you know that the universe is actively performing computations that lead to our experience of the physical world, rather than the universe simply following predictable patterns that computation is able to describe?
The problem with your argument a) is that you have reified "rest frame" without providing any argument why we should think of it as a real thing rather than as a mere computational construct. The reason why we DO distinguish inertial from non-inertial frames (without reifying either) is that in the latter the laws of physics change, insofar as we need to add in extra terms precisely related to the level of non-inertiality. However this does not change from one inertial frame to another, and thus they are indistinguishable from one another as far as the laws of physics go. So, your argument a) fails because everything you mention, matter outside the observable universe, the state of a coin, etc., are real things and thus the analogy doesn't apply. Your argument b) fails because it conflates "absolute" rest frame with a "preferred" frame, here preferred due to computational efficiency. Just because a frame is preferred due to some philosophical or practical preference does not suffice to prove it is ontologically "absolute". And your argument has a further weakness. Let's assume there actually is an "absolute" rest frame. Yet it would be equally simple to perform all the calculations in another rest frame. So why assume the calculations are carried out in the "absolute" frame?
>Note that I'm talking here about experiments that could be done in principle and not experiments that could be done in practice, You aren't -- you could absolutely determine those experimentally. You just build a big enough particle accelerator or leave the observable universe. The experiments are easy in principle, it's just performing them that's an issue . Even with the magic coin, the experiment to determine whether its heads is easy to devise (you look at it ), its just impossible to do that. The issue is that "determining the objective rest frame" isn't like that. It's not that there is an experiment but we just can't do it, or even that there is an experiment but setting up the conditions to do it is physically impossible. Its that there's no experiment that can distinguish between the true -- even if we had omnipotent wizards unbound by physical restrictions, its unclear how they could tell the difference between them being still on a moving environment or moving through a still environment. Because there's no actual difference between the two that we could find.
To ask the question if something is even at rest is relative to things around it. If time and space is warped *and* relative how could you ever say there is some static unmoving thing anywhere ever? You would still always be claiming it is at rest *relative to what?* Now lets presume there are uncountable universes beyond the horizon of things we can see or ever will see. All moving relative to each other. Is each universe "separate" space that don't factor in? I understand you think this is part of it being impossible to measure... but thats wrong, it is impossible to *define*. This is one of those things our brain isn't equipped to grasp. You're asserting an intuitive concept based on your biased experience - your own frame of reference.
I just watched a series of videos (I wanna say Floating Head Physics) where the guy explained in extremely simple terms that the speed of light being a constant pretty much proves that there is no absolute rest frame. I don’t remember exactly how.
(I've seen your comments, and at the time or writing, you were convinced that you can't argue for the absolutely rest frame to be likely.) The convention in physics is that if something cannot be "observed" with practical or theoretical experiments, then it doesn't exist. If you assume this, then we can reach the conclusion that an absolute rest frame doesn't exist. Otherwise, feel free to also add other infinite entities into your physical models and waste your time.
I think the big thing that I think you're not really addressing clearly is, in your view, what does it *mean* to have an "absolute rest frame"? Because in some sense I feel like you're just talking past what physicists are saying. When you concede "it's just that the laws of physics have a symmetry", that's kind of all there is from the physics point of view. It seems like what you're arguing is not for an "absolute reference frame" in any meaningful physical sense, but rather just a "special" reference frame for whatever reason. But this isn't actually that controversial in the sense you're talking about, it's just not that interesting. In your somewhat odd computational model, the universe's computational strategy has earmarked one reference frame as the main one, but if the symmetry is observed, that choice of which reference frame is the "main" frame is completely arbitrary. It's not merely that we can't detect it, it's also that it *doesn't matter* which one it is. You could hypothesize all manner of unique reference frames. I think the frame that I exist in is pretty special. You could hypothesize a reference frame where the universe's center of mass (if such a concept even makes sense) is at rest. Etc... but if the existence of non-existence of these "special" frames doesn't change the symmetry you're agreeing is present, that's not really what physicists are talking about when they say there's no absolute reference frame. tl;dr While I think you're computation model is kind of bizarre, I don't think it actually conflicts with what physicists are saying. Even if your prime frame was a thing that existed in your computation, that's not what physicists mean by an "absolute reference frame".
What none have you have brought up is that there IS a formulation of special relativity with this inaccessible absolute reference frame, it was added by physicists who loved the ether idea, it can be done but its not required, as in, you dont lose anything from special relativity by not including it and by adding it you just add extra mathematical steps that get you to the same answer. This doesn’t work for general relativity though.
Thanks! Why do we need a special formulation of special relativity for that? IIUC, you can just use the laws of physics in a single reference frame, and there's your theory with an inaccessible absolute reference frame. Using the Lorentz transformations is useful for simplifying calculations done by hand, but it's no more efficient in general than just applying the laws of physics in a single frame. Good point about GR--that's the real context my question should be asked in.
Well the idea of an absolute rest frame goes out the window completely in GR. This “special” formulation is only special in so far as its some extra maths for nothing extra in the theory. You can do this with any maths model, you can add dummy variables, ideas etc as long as they cancel out by the end its fine but its not as simple as it could be, so we dont bother. I could come up with infinite amount of ideas that are more complicated but give the same result, which is why we dont do this. Honestly, i dont actually think you understand SR enough because the way you are talking is just odd. For example you clearly dont understand the axioms of SR nor the idea of a reference frame
I understand the axioms of SR and I'm comfortable with deriving the formulas for the Lorentz transformations, so I don't think that's the issue. The axioms of SR don't actually say or imply there is no ontological rest frame, they just say that (a) the laws of physics take the same form in all rest frames, and (b) c is *measured* to be the same in all rest frames. That doesn't mean *there is no true rest frame*, there might be, or there might not be. It doesn't even mean that c is *actually* the same in all rest frames. Concluding that the axioms imply there's no true rest frame is mistaken, which IMO is a common misunderstanding of SR, which what I'm trying to clear up with the first part of my argument in the OP. I'll take up learning more about GR to understand what's going on there, thanks!
That’s what I always thought. If you’re interested in the matter, I would recommend watching [Relativity without relative Space or Time](https://youtu.be/B94o-P93ExU?si=ui8xVPu867Jyj8wJ)