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Old June 4th 11, 03:08 PM posted to sci.astro,sci.math
Pentcho Valev
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Default FQXi AGAINST EINSTEIN'S SPECIAL RELATIVITY

http://www.humanamente.eu/PDF/Issue13_Paper_Norton.pdf
John Norton: "There are occasions in which our best science requires
us to dismiss some fact of experience as an illusion. All our ordinary
experience of water and air is that they are perfectly continuous
fluids. Yet our best science tells us that is an illusion. On a
sufficiently fine scale both have the granularity of molecules. The
appearance of continuity is an illusion. But it is one that is readily
explicable by the extremely small size of atoms. Again, light appears
to us to propagate instantaneously in ordinary experience. Yet it is
essential for relativity theory that it have a finite speed of
propagation. So we dismiss the appearance of instantaneous propagation
as an illusion. Once again, it is readily explicable by the extremely
short propagation times needed, which are well below those we can
discern in ordinary processes. Now consider the passage of time. Is
there a comparable reason in the known physics of space and time to
dismiss it as an illusion? I know of none. The only stimulus is a
negative one. We don't find passage in our present theories and we
would like to preserve the vanity that our physical theories of time
have captured all the important facts of time. So we protect our
vanity by the stratagem of dismissing passage as an illusion."

Norton's euphemism "We don't find passage in our present theories" is
deciphered by Thibault Damour:

http://www.psycho-energie.fr/double/...hibault-damour
Thibault Damour: "Le formalisme de la relativité einsteinienne dit que
le temps est une illusion..."

In a world different from Einsteiniana's schizophrenic world John
Norton would be regarded as a fierce antirelativist. In Einsteiniana's
schizophrenic world he is just "the subtlest practitioner of
doublethink":

http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com...html#seventeen
George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two
contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both
of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories
must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with
reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself
that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it
would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to
be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and
hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since
the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while
retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To
tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any
fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary
again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed,
to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take
account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably
necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to
exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is
tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this
knowledge ; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead
of the truth. (...) It need hardly be said that the subtlest
practitioners of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and
know that it is a vast system of mental cheating. In our society,
those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those
who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general, the
greater the understanding, the greater the delusion ; the more
intelligent, the less sane."

Pentcho Valev