[ExI] syllogistic units and other stuff

Will Steinberg asyluman at gmail.com
Sat Oct 31 23:31:38 UTC 2009


I don't know if there is a teen physics phase or something with this kind of
questioning or if the modern physics worldview really is too complicated (it
is, right?), but I have been thinking:

Some physical units seem to exist only as a bridge between concepts.  Mass
affects the curvature of spacetime.  Right now people are trying to find a
cause for mass and are doing the Higgs stuff, where they create concepts in
a logistically wrong order--affirming the consequent and all--that leading
to new concepts that a) work experimentally and b) work mathematically.

But think about whether mass is really anything other than a metaphor for
spatial curvature; imagine a paradigm where, instead of the syllogistic
"matter>mass>curvature" concept, we instead break the causation into as
little representation and as much truth as possible.  Then you can start
thinking about quantities like time as literally a fourth spatial dimension
(given pure causality) and kinematics of an object as related to its
d(spatial curvature/)d(causal distance).

Then I started to think about fundamentality and what's derived and what
isn't.  Work is force applied over distance.  Doesn't this mean that it is
another syllogism?  That the application of vectors leads to hypothetical
scalars (all scalars)?  Is the fact that vectors have indices and scalars
none some measure of the "reality" of a quality, or is this simple a
different way to look at physics in the same tautological snafu that is the
observer effect or relativity or the inexistence of "correct" units of
measurement?

I feel intuition leading me here and I know all the a priori hate out there
(i.e. for the past many centuries) because it's totally contra to the
empricisist's physical world but a real physicalist can see that the
existence of the brain as physical leads to actual refinement of universal
ideas because of that anchor in reality.

So far I have a bit of sketchy math worked out.  I saw an ant crawling
around and wondered why, since the ant has a mass related to curvature in
space that fits in some ratio k  to mine, and since the ant occupies a space
in some ratio j to mine, and thereforce since there is a ratio w
proportional to k and to j that relates the ant and I, why is it that the
human seems greater, more progressed?  Am I wrong in giving significance to
that progress?  What about introducing a measure of causal power or
universal significance where U of a system in a space is equal to the sum of
total distances (spatial and what we see as temporal) from other distances
in that space; in other words, a measure of the instantaneous causal
significance of the system?  Perhaps this allows for fine ratios.

Maybe I'm too disorganized and naive to do this.  Maybe I use too many
rhetorical questions and em-dashes.

Seriously though, what do you all think?
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