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From: obnoxio@BRAHMS.BERKELEY.EDU (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: FTL rumbling
Message-ID: <8706051454.AA19504@brahms.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Fri, 5-Jun-87 10:54:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: brahms.8706051454.AA19504
Posted: Fri Jun  5 10:54:27 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Jun-87 06:58:48 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: obnoxio@brahms.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student)
Organization: Brahms Gang Posting Central
Lines: 29

Anyone interested in arguing about causality vs relativity and who would
like to know what he is talking about should read the recent paper (earl-
ier this year) of Recami in _Foundations of Physics_.  I looked at it
briefly, and would like to hear from someone who understands it.

All I know for sure is that thinking about FTL for too long gives me a
headache.

I futhermore do not believe that philosophical principles, or even our
everyday experiences, count for squat when it comes to physics.

Thus, before Einstein, time was rather simple.  You looked at a clock,
and that was the end of it.  But Einstein realized that there were really
two notions running in parallel, that of simultaneity, and that of local-
ity, and he declared that physics would best make sense by having it stick
to local time henceforth.  So now, modern physicists look at clocks, and
now *know* (for now, anyway) that that is the end of it, whereas a cen-
tury ago one unconsciously attached all sorts of baggage.

Similary, it is quite plausible--to me, anyway--that our current notions
of causality are just as mixed up as the nineteenth century's were about
simultaneity.

ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
   "WOW!  That theory goes STRAIGHT UP into the CLOUDS!  AMAZING!!"

[PS-aside to all sci.philosophy.tech thought police: let's *please*
 stick to e-mail.  Cc to me if you want, but really, most of us can
 figure out the abstract arguments ourselves, if we even bother.]