[Halc]

1) There is a difference between the explicit assumptions that Einstein starts with and the tacit assumptions required for the interpretation to be considered valid.

Show me such a tacit assumption then. There are plenty, like thermodynamic laws and such, but to illustrate your objection, you need to show an example that doesn't make the tacit assumption.  The one you gave wasn't such an example since it violated one of the explicit premises.  If you can't do that, then your claim here is empty.

2) If something cannot be verifiied empirically but it forms part of your conclusion, then it is assumed to be true.

A premise is not an assumption of truth.  It is merely a foundation for the subsequent conclusions.  The conclusions are only as strong as the premises, and thus the conclusions are not true.  Even mathematical proofs need at some point rest on some fundamental axioms which are not provably true, and thus are only true given those axioms.

Creationists employ this sort of reasoning to support their claims about God.

As do those that claim no God.  Both claims are only as strong as their premises, which in both cases are usually pretty weak.  The SR premises on the other hand (Laws of physics not empirically behaving in a frame dependent manner, and that empirical frame independence being extended to electromagnetism) are both empirical claims.  They seem to be quite sound premises, unlike the ones typically chosen to prove or disprove God.
The relative interpretation of SR (as opposed to the empirical theory of SR) adds a metaphysical assertion (not even really a premise) that light speed really is constant in any frame.  The theory just says it no empirical measurement of light speed performed in any frame will yield a different value than c.  The interpretation goes a bit further, making it a metaphysical assertion.

It is Alice's assumption that her clocks, in her own frame, are in sync - add all the qualifications in the world you like - which is rendered unjustified by the totaity of empirical observations.

This is what I mean.  This statement is totally wrong.  Alice has demonstrated the fact, not assumed it.  Nobody's observation anywhere has contradicted that.  If you feel otherwise, name the observation that contradicts what Alice has demonstrated.  Everybody has assumed the premises of SR and nothing else.  Sure, somebody else making different assumptions might assume that her clocks are not in sync, but even that person could not not deny her demonstration that they're in sync in her frame, which is what Alice is actually demonstrating.

The evidence presented by Bob contradicts this assumption because the evidence presented by Bob shows that the clocks didn't sync.

the empirical observations that he has made show him that the clocks are not in sync.

Those observations show no such thing.  This statement is in complete contradiction with your statement that you find the relative interpretation to be self consistent.  You don't understand the theory at all if you make this statement.

Does Bob agree that Alice's clocks are in sync "in her own co-ordinate system"? Well, if he quotes the Book of Revelation Relativity and the Gospel according to Einstein: "Blessed are those who believe without seeing", then yes, he agrees with Alice's claims. But he doesn't do so on the basis of any empirical observations that he has made.

Oh he saw.  He's got a bodycam and verified everything. He's taking nobody's word for it.  He's using his own observations, not Alice's.  The nice thing about the verification definition is that it doesn't require the observer to be at a location, or remain at one.  The procedure can be done by a moving observer.

Concerning the condescending reference to religious text, you seem to imply that I am a fanatic, insisting that my interpretation is the only correct one.  Far from it.  I never asserted the correctness of it, only the consistency.  You on the other hand, like the others among which I choose to label your peers, seem to have that very religious fervor of denial of other interpretations. It seems always focused against Einstein and not the other contributors.

You insist on your undetectable teapot floating in space, like the belief in the presence of something that makes no empirical difference is somehow fundamental to the soul.  You're the one with the holy text.  I say the universe works fine with or without the teapot, so why bother with the needless additional premise?

Alice devises a method of verification for her claim that the LNM is in the lake. Her verification method says:
IF the LNM is in the lake then, IF it breathes, we will see bubbles on the lake. Alice sees Bubbles on the lake and concludes that the LNM is there, even if she hasn't observed the LNM.

Alice has made no claim of evidence supporting her premises.  They remain premises.  It would be circular reasoning if she had.  Your example is not applicable.

The empirical verification that you point to only works IF we assume the clocks are already in sync and IF we assume the one-way speed of light is isotropic.

That's actually right.  I though you incapable of making a sane statement there for a while.  You seem to be losing it.  Anyway, that (constant light speed) is indeed one of the premises, an assumption as you put it.  She performs no experiment that concludes that.

This is further illustrated by presence of alternative interpretations which return the same empirical values from different starting conditions - conitions under which the clocks are not in sync and the one-way speed of light is not isotropic.

I bet a non isotropic SoL interpretation could be driven into self contradiction.  Even Lorentz-Poincare interpretation assumes isotropy.  I don't think your skillset is up to a total rewrite of everything that would be required.  What prevents something from traveling faster than light if light in a certain direction can be arbitrarily slow?  One could send messages ahead of light in one direction, and faster than c (using light) in the other.

You need to name the assumption that is the same as the conclusion.  Without that, there is no circularity, only A that leads to B without any additional assumptions. B doesn't lead back to A. Show me a circle, or your claims of this circularity are empty.

Einstein's conclusion is that simultaneity is relative. That is, that events which are simultaneous in one frame are not simultaneous in relatively moving reference frames

Agreed.

The simultaneity of spatially separated events (in any frame) cannot be determined empirically.

Blatantly wrong.  Einstein outlined a 100% empirical procedure to do it.  You argument rests on this??  It just fell apart. 

The statement above would not demonstrate circularity even it it was true, since no conclusion of either of the premises is made.

So please stop it with the circularity claims.

The alternative interpretations are based on the exact same empirical obervations but they have Alice's clocks not being synced in her own frame.

Your non-isotropic interpretation maybe (one whose validity hasn't been tested).  The mainstream ones like Lorentz-Poincare still have Alice being correct about it.  L-P still holds to light speed being isotropic, but as you point out, that is an assumption.

Assuming non-isotropy discards the premises of SR, and since RoS was derived from those premises, an example that violates them fails to demonstrate RoS being an additional assumption.

You're suggested discarding the constant light speed premise as well.

Not necessarily discarding it, rather replacing or reinterpreting it:
not that the round-trip speed of light is a constant relative to all inertial frames,but rather that the round-trip speed of light is a constant as measured within all inertial frames

That has been empirically demonstrated, and is a subset of SR theory's 2nd premise.  You'd have to deny something fundamental like the concept of proper distance if you were to suggest a different premise than that one.

Not an assumption. That is necessary given constant light speed.

The isotropic one-way speed of light is an assumption bcos it has not been - and possibly cannot ever be - measured.

I said "given constant light speed". Can you not read? How could light speed in any direction be constant and still not isotropic?

Given that we can specify different intial conditions and derive a contradictory - yet empirically equivalent - condition (tB - tA = t' A - tB = non-synced clocks), this demonstrates that the "empirical verification procedure" cannot distinguish between synced clocks (with an isoptropic one-way speed of light) and unsynced clocks (with an isotropic round-trip speed of light).

You had to violate the premises of SR to do it, rendering the example irrelevant to SR definitions.  Alice is assuming those premises, not the conclusion that she demonstrates.

That means that the evidence does not distinguish between the two. Given that they are contradictory interpretations, this demonstrates that - at least one of them - must be assuming its conclusions bcos both cannot be correct.

I actually disagree with this.  The two interpretations (the main ones, not yours) seem not to be contradictory since neither makes a claim denied by the other.  OK, one has a teapot and makes claims relative to that teapot such as its location maybe, which are meaningless in an interpretation without the teapot, but it isn't contradictory.  Alice isn't denying that one clock isn't closer to the teapot than the other.  She just says I know of no teapot.
Anyway, I find no statements that are contradictory even across interpretations.

His experiment can be reproduced today with modern measuring devices.

What are the results of these modern day measurements and can you provide peer** reviewed papers that demonstrate that these measurements represent empirical verification of STR?

What are you talking about?  SR was not on the radar when the experiment was first done.  SR did not invalidate what he did.  It isn't an SR test.  It is a method of measuring light speed.  I didn't say it was the one typically used today.  I just said it could be done.  It very likely has been done, and the absolutists would be all over the results if it produced a result that deviated from c more than the error bar of the experiment.  Roemer's least accurate device was the sundial he used as a clock.  His 2nd clock was far more accurate, but his local clock was the weakest link his chain.  Today it could be done with a couple atomic clocks that could be put in view of each other.

I'm sure you realise that such a paper would be pretty big news, so if such exists you shouldn't have much trouble finding it.

It's old news.  It was done 350 years ago.  It would be big news if doing it today yielded a value other than c, but it doesn't, so it isn't news.

I don't need to know all of the reasons why it can't be done.

It was done.  Did something happen in 350 years that it cannot be done anymore?  More funding to science back then?  It's a pretty simple test.

The onus is on you to demonstrate how it has been done.

Read the wiki page I quote.  That's how it was done.  Your mistake is thinking that your site is measuring the same thing.  They're after the metaphysical one way speed of light, rather than the physical speed of light using a one-way method.  The former cannot be done, I agree.  The latter has been done, as outlined by my initial post about it.  The test is pretty trivial.

If you wish to adopt the position that those peer** reviewed papers are incorrect, go right ahead.

The papers are not wrong.  I'm saying they don't apply.  The test has to yield a number, and if it wasn't c, that would be amazing news.  But it yields c, which is exactly what Roemer was after, but not what your peer reviewed web sites are after.  They already know the value of c.  It's been published to a lot of digits today.

But, just for your benefit, one of the reasons why it would appear that it cannot be measured accurately is because a "common time" would need to be defined at two spatially separated locations.

Why?  Roemer didn't do that.  The two clocks were never synced in any manner like Alice does.  The test had no requirement for his clocks to be synced.

  Suppose light moved at thrice the speed in one direction as the other.  Wouldn't Roemer see triple the time if he did the experiment in one direction as the other?

Unlikely given that the sensitivity of such a one-wway measurement is "2000 times" more sensitive than that of a two-way measurement, and I don't think his equipment was up to it. I'm not sure modern equipment is up to it yet.

This reply makes no sense.  There was no 2-way measurement at the time.  There was no equipment that was 2000 times more sensitive than some other piece of equipment.  He had two clocks, and the least accurate of the two was the sundial.  There was a telescope involved, with which the distant clock could be observed.  There was no more equipment than that.

The other paper I quoted - which supports your position - also makes reference to other issues that need to be accounted for like measurements taken over a longer period of time, seasonal efects, etc.

That was a lot of the source of the 25% error.  The two measurement were taken 5-6 months apart, and the sundial held its time better over those months than did any timepiece of the day.  His measurement was off by about 5 minutes.  Not bad for a sundial.

I just know that the 75%-accurate measurement of the speed of light made in the 1600s isn't an empirical verification of Einstein's interpretation of relativity.

When did I ever claim that anything was empirical evidence of some interpretation?  My claim is that light speed can be measured using a one-way method.  That is an empirical claim, not a claim about any interpretation.

I chose to address it in a different manner by referencing peer** reiewed literature from this aeon. I even referenced literature that attempts to make your case, so as not to be biased.

You're referencing literature that is discussing a different thing.  Roemer is apples.  Your literature is oranges.  I said that repeatedly but you know better apparently.

If you wish to adopt the position that Rømer's measurement is an empirical verification of Einstein's theory

Roemer was over 2 centuries before Einstein.  I never suggested his work as verification or falsification of any modern theory or interpretation.

or if you want to adopt the position that the one-way speed of light has been measured in such a way as to conclusively distinguish between the competing interpretations of the evidence

Please tell me where I suggested any such thing.

I brought up Roemer because of your sync convention comments. Doing a 1-way measurement, he needed a different synchronization convention than the one Einstein used (which requires 2-way signals).  It was asymmetrical, but it sufficed just fine for each iteration of the experiment.

His convention:  The clocks are in sync if the same time appears on them as viewed from the location of the local clock.  The convention is thus relative to an observation point rather than to a frame.  Clocks synced thus are not assumed to be synced relative to other locations.

[the_roosh (OP)]

Here's the problem. You're stuck arguing against the same strawman.

She lives in the SR world, be it valid description of our universe or not.

Everybody has assumed the premises of SR and nothing else.  Sure, somebody else making different assumptions might assume that her clocks are not in sync

I bet a non isotropic SoL interpretation could be driven into self contradiction.

You had to violate the premises of SR to do it, rendering the example irrelevant to SR definitions.  Alice is assuming those premises, not the conclusion that she demonstrates.

You keep harping back to the idea that Alice is an SR girl, in an SR wo-orld....wrapped in plastic, life's fantastic (you're better off if you don't get the reference!). You keep saying that she and "everybody" has assumed the premises of SR. The problem with that is, NO THEY HAVEN'T!

If the purpose was to demonstrate an inconsistency within SR, then it would be necessary to assume the premises of SR and then demonstrate the inconsistency from those premises.

You're making this assumption in an attempt to demonstrate the self-consistency of SR, in the mistaken assumption that I am questioning the self-consistency of SR.

I will repeat again:
I AM NOT ATTEMPTING TO DEMONSTRATE AN INCONSISTENCY WITHIN SR!!*

I understand that this is a cognitive issue. The argument I'm presenting sounds almost identical to the usual arguments against SRs self-consistency - I know, bcos I used to argue against it's self-consistency and my own cognitive biases still (from time-to-time) make me believe that it might still be possible to find an inconsistency (take some of the other threads I've started elsewere on here). The thing is, in the context of this discussion I am assuming the self-consistency of SR. Given the similarities to the "usual" arguments (of "my peers") and given that SR has now become pretty much intuitive for you, your intuitive response is to deploy the same arguments in the assumption that they address the issue. In this case, however, they don't.


The fact is, neither Alice nor Bob know if they live in an SR world, an LET world, a Lorentz-Poincare world, a neo-Lorentzian world, a Jason Lisle world, a Michael Tooley world, or a Lorentz-Poincare-style-Michael-Tooley world without an Ether or absolute reference frame. Why don't they know? Bcos they are all empirically equivalent and their experimental tests, thus far, haven't distinguished between them - and neither does Romer's which is why it is irrelevant in the context of this discussion.

What I am doing is playing the competing theories off against each other. We can hold them up against each other and make deductions on that basis.

Now, given that the totality of empirical evidence to date** does not distinguish between the various interpretations and given that there are key elements between the interpretations which are in direct contradiction with each other, we can deduce that:

a) the interpretations cannot both be true
b) therefore, the empirical evidence cannot verify both interpretations
c) therefore, the same empirical evidence cannot verify the mutually contradictory conclusions
d) therefore, one (or both) of the interpretations must be assuming the validity of their conclusions.
e) One of the mutually exclusive elements pertains to the synchrony of Alice's clocks.
f) therefore, one (or both) of the interpretations must be assuming the conclusion as it pertains to clock synchronisation.

Do you accept that?

**both the actual experimental evidence and the plausible/logically necessary evidence as represented by the various thought experiments (Alice and Bob, "twin paradox", "laddder paradox", etc.)

*forgive the all caps sentence. I read in Daniel Kahneman's Thinking fast and slow that statements tend to be remembered better when they are in clear font

[Halc]

Here's the problem. You're stuck arguing against the same strawman.

Strong words from the guy that regularly has Alice and Bob making claims that they don't.

She lives in the SR world, be it valid description of our universe or not.
...
Everybody has assumed the premises of SR and nothing else. Sure, somebody else making different assumptions might assume that her clocks are not in sync
...
You had to violate the premises of SR to do it, rendering the example irrelevant to SR definitions.  Alice is assuming those premises, not the conclusion that she demonstrates.

You keep harping back to the idea that Alice is an SR girl, in an SR wo-orld....wrapped in plastic, life's fantastic (you're better off if you don't get the reference!).

I own a copy of that song. I get it the reference.

You keep saying that she and "everybody" has assumed the premises of SR. The problem with that is, NO THEY HAVEN'T!

My quotes you selected just above contradict your assertion.  I said somebody else is quite capable of making different assumptions, thus drawing different conclusions.  All my conclusions are contingent on the premises of SR.  I am not asserting that those premises must be true.

Your accusation of strawman fallacy fall flat.  At no point do I make a claim about some interpretation or fact that is inconsistent with that interpretation or fact.  You on the other hand do this regularly when you have Alice making claims that do not follow from the SR premises.
I am rubber and you are glue.  Get that reference?

I will repeat again:
I AM NOT ATTEMPTING TO DEMONSTRATE AN INCONSISTENCY WITHIN SR!!*

Then stop claiming that Alice and Bob make claims contradictory to each other, because you continue to do that (a strawman fallacy). They don't even make claims that contradict a (mainstream) absolute interpretation. Your own posts are stronger evidence than a statement made in caps.

Given the similarities to the "usual" arguments (of "my peers")

I mention the usual arguments because all your ideas seem to come from such sites, and none from yourself.  You've given me almost no evidence that you're capable of your own thought.  The one-way measurement of the speed of light thing is something I've harped on because it showed that fact to me clearly.  You run from it because despite it being a really simple case that doesn't threaten any alternate interpretation, you lack the ability to express the scenario in the interpretation of your choice.  You cannot find discussion about the scenario on the denial sites from which your arguments are provided.

given that SR has now become pretty much intuitive for you, your intuitive response is to deploy the same arguments in the assumption that they address the issue. In this case, however, they don't.

This statement seems to contradict the thing you did in all caps up there. If you mean the thing in caps, stop implying that SR does not address certain issues.

The fact is, neither Alice nor Bob know if they live in an SR world

I didn't say they did.  I said they assumed it.  Everybody is entitled to their interpretation, and Alice/Bob chose that one.  Charlie and Dave can be the absolutists in the same scenario if you like, and you're free to express their conclusions as well.  Best off if you are explicit about their premises.  I gave my absolutist premises, but I'm not sure if they're the official ones.

Again:  Location is a property, and light speed is (doesn't just appear to be) constant.
I think the entire thing can be built up from that.

What I am doing is playing the competing theories off against each other, holding them up against each other and seeing what we can deduce.

What sort of things do you expect to deduce if there are no empirical differences between them?  All you can deduce is that the interpretations are valid, and I'm not contesting that.

Your thread title suggests this wasn't your purpose in this thread.

Now, given that there are key elements between the interpretations which are mutually exclusive,

Not disagreeing, but I actually find very little of that.  So name a couple.

but based on the same empirical evidence, it tells us that:
a) the interpretations cannot both be true

I question this one.  If you add a 4th premise of a preferred moment, which would be ontologically incompatible with a 4th premise asserting the lack of one, but AFAIK, neither interpretation necessitates the preferred moment premise.  A lot of the 'denial' sites have members that make exactly that assertion, so it isn't uncommon.

b) therefore, the empirical evidence cannot verify both interpretations

How does that follow from (a) even if I accept (a)?   Theories don't get verified by evidence.  They get verified by not being falsified by evidence.  So you should instead say that b) Empirical evidence cannot falsify either interpretation.  This is true by definition.  If there was an empirical difference between the two, they would be alternate interpretations.  They'd be alternate theories.

c) therefore, the same empirical evidence cannot verify the mutually contradictory conclusions
d) therefore, one (or both) of the interpretations must be assuming the validity of their conclusions.

Nonsense.  Each interpretation must assume its own premises, but not the validity of them.  The validity must be put to the test.  If it fails the test, then the interpretation cannot correspond to reality.

e) One of the mutually exclusive elements pertains to the synchrony of Alice's clocks.

I have claimed otherwise.

f) therefore, one (or both) of the interpretations must be assuming the conclusion as it pertains to clock synchronisation.

Neither interpretation assumes its conclusions.  They all assume only their premises.  You continue to make this mistake over and over.

*forgive the all caps sentence. I read in Daniel Kahneman's Thinking fast and slow that statements tend to be remembered better when they are in clear font

I remember best your statement a bit later on that contradicts the all caps sentence.

[the_roosh (OP)]

Here's the problem. You're stuck arguing against the same strawman.

Strong words from the guy that regularly has Alice and Bob making claims that they don't.

My quotes you selected just above contradict your assertion.  I said somebody else is quite capable of making different assumptions, thus drawing different conclusions.  All my conclusions are contingent on the premises of SR.  I am not asserting that those premises must be true.

Your accusation of strawman fallacy fall flat.  At no point do I make a claim about some interpretation or fact that is inconsistent with that interpretation or fact.  You on the other hand do this regularly when you have Alice making claims that do not follow from the SR premises.

I didn't say they did.  I said they assumed it.  Everybody is entitled to their interpretation, and Alice/Bob chose that one.  Charlie and Dave can be the absolutists in the same scenario if you like, and you're free to express their conclusions as well.  Best off if you are explicit about their premises.  I gave my absolutist premises, but I'm not sure if they're the official ones.

This is the problem. You're saying that Alice and Bob assume the premises of SR. From that starting point you are defending the self-consistency of SR. With regard to the absolutists, we don't need to change to Charlie and Dave, we can stick with Alice and Bob and say that they start from absolutist premises, and from there demonstrate the self-consistency of such an interpretation.

There's no problem with any of that IF the question is that of the self-consistency of either interpretation. That is not the question however.

As I said, Alice and Bob do not know which type of world they live in, and so they assume neither. They simply carry out the experiments and then employ an Edward de Bono-like method of analysis of the empirical observations. They see that there are a number o different possible interpretations of the empirical results and so they carry out a cross-comparison to see if they can make any further deductions.

They see that, according to one interpretation their clocks are synced, while according to another their clocks are not synced. The same empirical evidence fits both interpretations so, the empirical evidence doesn't falsify either - but both cannot be true bcos they are mutually exclusive. If the evidence doesn't falsify mutually exclusive propositions then it equally verifies neither.

I am rubber and you are glue.  Get that reference?

I'd heard it before but had forgotten what it meant. Turns out it shares the same frame dependent symmetry of SR 

I mention the usual arguments because all your ideas seem to come from such sites, and none from yourself.  You've given me almost no evidence that you're capable of your own thought.  The one-way measurement of the speed of light thing is something I've harped on because it showed that fact to me clearly.  You run from it because despite it being a really simple case that doesn't threaten any alternate interpretation, you lack the ability to express the scenario in the interpretation of your choice.  You cannot find discussion about the scenario on the denial sites from which your arguments are provided.

I get that you think that I'm simply parrotting ideas that I've heard elsewhere, but I'm only familiar wiith one such site you mention, which is now closed down (the forum section anyway). If you like, I can link you to the sites where I have been discussing similar topics on and off for almost a decade, and you can see that I have chosen to discuss them with "your peers" because:
a) I like a good debate
b) I find the best way to test your ideas is against the strongest possiblle opposition

You might find it hard to believe that people can independently arrive at the same conclusions about relativity, but if you bear in mind that, for the vast majority of people, Special Relativity is counter-intuitive, then you would realise that everyone starts from a position where SR is not accepted.

And that is the problem. You are deploying the usual arguments because you are arguing against a strawman, as you have repeatedly demonstrated by presupposing that I am attempting to demonstrate an inconsistency within SR.

All your arguments have been geared towards demonstrating the internal consistency of SR when that simply hasn't been the point of contention - hence, you'e been arguing against a strawman. Granted, to the intuitive mind it would appear to be the same argument, but that is just a cognitive bias that keeps you arguing against that strawman.

With regard to the Romer point. I genuinely don't know what your intention is with that point. Not bcos it isn't in the manual for how to respond to the arguments of Einsteinian Relativists that "my peers" have clearly given me - the manual is part of the starter pack when you join the mailing list (the t-shirt and hat have to be paid for). No, not bcos "my peers" haven't shown me how to respond, but bcos "your peers" have never raised it as serious point of contention bcos they know it, absolutely, in no way supports the Special Relativity. I know it doesn't either, which is why I've ignored it and posted material relative to the discussion. If you want to try and spell out the point you are trying to make again, and clearly state its relevancy to the issue of the one-way speed of light as it pertains to Special Relativity, then I will try to disect it. I suspect that you know it has no bearing on the discussion you're just hoping that my inability to address an irrelevant point will stump the debate.

I've got an idea. Why don't we jump on over to Physics Forums and you can start a thread there with the point you are trying to make and we can see what "your peers" have to say about it. Maybe "your peers" can show me how to reply to the point you think you are making, or maybe they will put it in such a way that its relevancy to this discussion becomes clear.

Or, post your point about Romer here, clearly, along with it's relevance to the discussion, then I'll jump on another forum passing the point off as my own and allow "your peers" to argue against it. That will serve two purposes:
1) It'll give me arguments from "your peers" that I can parrot
2) Help to be better articulate the sheer irrelevancy of the point.

This statement seems to contradict the thing you did in all caps up there. If you mean the thing in caps, stop implying that SR does not address certain issues.

You're argument that SR is self-consistent doesn't address the issue being raised because the issue being raised isn't SRs self-consistency.

You seem to be struggling with this idea that someone arguing against SR isn't arguing against its self-consistency. Have your peers not got any arguments that you can parrot on that front?

Not disagreeing, but I actually find very little of that.  So name a couple.

Oh, I don't know, the idea that simultaneity is reltive maybe. The interpretations of length contraction and time dilation are also mutually exclusive.

I question this one.  If you add a 4th premise of a preferred moment, which would be ontologically incompatible with a 4th premise asserting the lack of one, but AFAIK, neither interpretation necessitates the preferred moment premise.  A lot of the 'denial' sites have members that make exactly that assertion, so it isn't uncommon.

Simultaneity cannot be both relative and absolute.

b) therefore, the empirical evidence cannot verify both interpretations

How does that follow from (a) even if I accept (a)?   Theories don't get verified by evidence.  They get verified by not being falsified by evidence.  So you should instead say that b) Empirical evidence cannot falsify either interpretation.  This is true by definition.  If there was an empirical difference between the two, they would be alternate interpretations.  They'd be alternate theories.

To parrotphrase Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, fast and slow a statement that can explain two contradictory outcomes explains nothing at all; evidence that verifies (by way of not falsifying) two contradictory propositions verfies neither.

c) therefore, the same empirical evidence cannot verify the mutually contradictory conclusions
d) therefore, one (or both) of the interpretations must be assuming the validity of their conclusions.

Nonsense.  Each interpretation must assume its own premises, but not the validity of them.  The validity must be put to the test.  If it fails the test, then the interpretation cannot correspond to reality.

When two contradictory propositions pass the same test, then the test has verified neither bcos it has not falsified one over the other.

Neither interpretation assumes its conclusions.  They all assume only their premises.  You continue to make this mistake over and over.

Maybe I haven't been totally clear on this point, although I have repeatedly tried to be explicit about it.

The assumptions being made are empirical assumptions. They are assumptions about the configuration of the physical system for which there is no empirical evidence. Indeed, it is highly questionable as to whether there even can be such evidence, according to the principles of SR.

A theory which includes an assumption about the one-way speed of light carries with it an implicit (or tacit) statement about the configuration of a physical system i.e. a prediction; it is a prediction which cannot be verified experimentallly and so it represents an empirical assumption i.e. an assumption about the configuration of the physical system.

Contrast this with an interpretation which doesn't include that assumption but is based rather on the empirically determined round-trip speed of light. This interpretation doesn't imply, tacitly or otherwise, the same statement about the configuration of the physical system i.e. it doesn't make the same untestable prediction. It therefore makes fewer assummptions about the physical system and doesn't assume that part of its conclusion.

Seeing as how you've rumbled me, that I am clearly incapable of my own thinking in this matter, allow me to quote from Michael Tooley's Time, Tense, and Causation. I would dearly love to be able to claim him amongst my peers but I would be doing him a disservice. You might notice a similarity in the point being raised and if you look back over the thread, you willl see precisely when I discovered the book - so I'll allow you to draw your own conclusions.

Einstein,as I noted earlier, was happy to treat that proposition as true by definition. But the principle of the constancy of the one-way speed of light is not a very plausible candidate for an analytic truth,and it is not surprising that many later physicists and philosophers have sought for ways to put that principle to the test of experiment. As noted earlier, however, no one as yet appears to have described an experiment which could be used to determine the one-way speed of light,and which is such that different results would be compatible with the part of the Special Theory of Relativity that is independent of the one-way velocity principle. So one can say,at the very least, that standard formulations of the Special Theory of Relativity involve an assumption for which,more than ninety years after Einstein's formulation of the theory,there is absolutely no experimental support. The fact that the modified theory* does not entail the One-Way Light Principle would seem to be a reason,therefore, for preferring it to standard formulations of the Special Theory of Relativity—though not,of course, to formulations of the ∈-Lorentz variety.

Bold is mine. Now, I know that you're just itching to isolate the emboldened part and tell me how you don't disagree with this and that it is the premise upon which the theory is based and the conclusions are derived from this, but we can extrapolate from there to show the further tacit, empirical assumptions that the interpretation entails.

The clock synchronisation convention establishing by definition that the time for a light signal from A to B is equal to that of B to A can be restated as, the simultaneity of clock synchronisation events is established by definition. I know, I know, Einstein doesn't say it like this, but that's the beauty of logic, we can deduce it. In assuming that the time from A to B is the same from B to A so the simultaneity of the clock synchronisation events are assumed along with it.

And I know you will be dying to point out that this is the verification procedure, not the actual process of synchronising the clocks, but you may not realise - I believe you actually do realise - that the method of synchronising the clocks relies on the exact same assumption.

So, given that there is "absolutely no experimental support" for the assumption that the time from A to B equals the time from B to A, there is, by definition, "absolutely no experimental support" that the clocks are synchronised. If there is absolutely no experimental support then it can only be an empirical assumption.

Given that it can only be an empirical assumption and given that the conclusion of Relativity of Simultaneity is contingent upon that asssumption, it follows that the conclusion - that simultaneity is relative - is assumed.

[jeffreyH]

If we were able to stop time then all the photons in the universe could be mapped to specific points in spacetime. If we then allowed time to run to t = t + Δt and stop time again then all the photons will have moved a set distance that can be calculated by examining the forces applied to each one. We can define a background only on this basis. This demonstrates the impossibility of measuring our own inertial motion. That is the problem of time in a nutshell.

[jeffreyH]

BTW Mix this in with indeterminacy then go away and become a plumber.

[Halc]

This is the problem. You're saying that Alice and Bob assume the premises of SR. From that starting point you are defending the self-consistency of SR.

My defense of SR rests on its lack of being falsified.  What Alice and Bob are doing is irrelevant to that unless what they actually conclude (not your strawman conclusions) is found to be in contradiction with the premises of SR.

With regard to the absolutists, we don't need to change to Charlie and Dave, we can stick with Alice and Bob and say that they start from absolutist premises

Shall we do that?  It might be instructive.  Alice is in the stationary system, but it hasn't been specified if she knows that.  If she doesn't know, then her clocks are synced but she has no no way to determine that.  Bob once again agrees with everything and makes no contradictory conclusions.

and from there demonstrate the self-consistency of such an interpretation.

What's the point?  I never said it wasn't.  Einstein's sync convention still works even.  It doesn't with your non-isotropic interpretation, but that's a third (unverified) interpretation.

As I said, Alice and Bob do not know which type of world they live in, and so they assume neither.

Fine.  Alice still shows that her clocks are synced in her frame, even if that statement is not one of being actually synced in an absolute interpretation.  She never claimed the clocks were actually synced.  OK, she did assume isotropy to make her claim.  If she can't assume that, there's really nothing that can meaningfully be known about the relative state of a pair of clocks, so there's no point in doing a procedure involving them.

They simply carry out the experiments and then employ an Edward de Bono-like method of analysis of the empirical observations. They see that there are a number o different possible interpretations of the empirical results and so they carry out a cross-comparison to see if they can make any further deductions.

And they can't get further, can they?

They see that, according to one interpretation their clocks are synced

In no known interpretation do they see that.  Not even in your funny one.

while according to another [interpretation] their clocks are not synced.

That also has not been determined.  In any interpretation, they don't know if the pair of clocks is synced.  If the results were different, then not-in-sync could be known in some interpretations, but not the results you describe in the experiments they ran.

The same empirical evidence fits both interpretations so, the empirical evidence doesn't falsify either - but both cannot be true bcos they are mutually exclusive.

I don't know is mutually exclusive with I don't know?  I don't think so.  I maintain that the isotropic interpretations might both be true.

b) I find the best way to test your ideas is against the strongest possiblle opposition

You don't seem to have expressed any ideas.  The whole thread has been what I take to be false statements being made about the relative interpretation, such as it assuming its conclusions.  All such statements have been refuted.
My examples have not been refuted.  Not saying I'm right about them.  They can be refuted.  You just don't seem up to the task on your own.

You might find it hard to believe that people can independently arrive at the same conclusions about relativity, but if you bear in mind that, for the vast majority of people, Special Relativity is counter-intuitive, then you would realise that everyone starts from a position where SR is not accepted.

Most people also don't start out from a stance that a view that they don't understand is wrong.  They just don't worry about it.  This site is for people that want to go a little further than that.  Laypeople don't come here.  Let em believe in Santa and all that.

And that is the problem. You are deploying the usual arguments because you are arguing against a strawman, as you have repeatedly demonstrated by presupposing that I am attempting to demonstrate an inconsistency within SR.

I am pointing out the statements that I feel are doing just that.  You making those statements makes my claims actual, not strawman.  Similarly, the circularity claim you repeat, when SR is not circular.  It does not assume its conclusions nor does it conclude any of its premises.  Either of those would be an example of circularity, yes, but it doesn't do either of them.  Your argument commits the strawman fallacy when you assert that RoS is assumed for instance.  It isn't.  Read the paper.  It is derived.  It follows from the premises.

With regard to the Romer point. I genuinely don't know what your intention is with that point.

It's a really simple case that came up due to the usage of a different sync convention than the one Einstein uses.  But your reaction to it made it into a little test to see if you can think through a simple scenario on your own. So far I've not seen you do it.

Not bcos it isn't in the manual for how to respond to the arguments of Einsteinian Relativists that "my peers" have clearly given me - the manual is part of the starter pack when you join the mailing list (the t-shirt and hat have to be paid for).

You joke, but its real. There's quite an industry set up to separate this crowd from their money, same as it done for any fanatic group. The religions don't have a monopoly on doing that. OK, they do if you consider it a religion, which it probably is since the sites are often religion based.  Apparently Einstein and God have become mutually exclusive, despite my school teaching the exact opposite.

I've got an idea. Why don't we jump on over to Physics Forums and you can start a thread there with the point you are trying to make and we can see what "your peers" have to say about it.

What would I say?  They did this thing, and I agree that they did it. How is that possible?
Pretty lame thread.

Maybe they will put it in such a way that its relevancy to this discussion becomes clear.

What is relevant to this thread?  You're certainly not going about pushing your new interpretation. Haven't heard a word of it.  Just pages of asserting that the one interpretation is not the only valid one, and nobody has disagreed with that.  Why the continued discussion if nobody has disagreed with this 2nd point you're supposedly trying to make?
I'm in it because you're having Alice making strawman conclusions like "the relative interpretation says my clocks are in sync".

Not disagreeing [that there are key elements between the interpretations which are mutually exclusive], but I actually find very little of that.  So name a couple.

Oh, I don't know, the idea that simultaneity is reltive maybe.

Just a different definition, an abstract, not physical difference.  They're not mutually exclusive.  Points A being closer to one arbitrarily chosen line than point B, but B being the same distance as A to another such line, does contradict a statement that point B is in fact the closer to some actual real line.  That's what I mean by saying the two statements are not mutually exclusive.

The interpretations of length contraction and time dilation are also mutually exclusive.

That's an empirical claim.  So the Hafele–Keating experiment is predicted to have different results in a different interpretation.  Sure you want to go with that?

Simultaneity cannot be both relative and absolute.

Of course they can. I gave a nice example just above with A,B and the lines. You're asserting that if there is a physical line that is closer to B, then there cannot be a 2nd abstract line parallel to one connecting both points. That is pretty obviously incorrect. If you think the example is inappropriate, then you don't understand relativity, because that's the exactly what Alice is doing: Selecting a line so A and B are equidistant from it.  The points have an absolute relationship with the real line (which cannot be oriented a different way), and a relative relationship with the chosen one.

To parrotphrase Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, fast and slow a statement that can explain two contradictory outcomes explains nothing at all; evidence that verifies (by way of not falsifying) two contradictory propositions verfies neither.

This is a rule for theories, yes.  No so for interpretations.  This is a lot of the reason why physics courses in college don't dwell on interpretations. Take a QM class if you don't believe this. They might touch on the interpretations, but debating them explains nothing at all. The class focuses on empirical facts.

Yes, the relative interpretation of Einstein's theory is probably taught in such courses, not because it is asserted to be the one correct one, but because it makes the fewest premises.  It is the simplest interpretation, but they don't teach that the other interpretations are wrong.

When two contradictory propositions pass the same test, then the test has verified neither bcos it has not falsified one over the other.

Again, verification consists of inability to falsify.  Passing all tests is part of that.  If two both pass the test, then neither is falsified by that test, but might be falsified by some other test.  Falsification isn't something that is done one over the other.  Both interpretations might get falsified by a single test.
No interpretatoin/theory is ever fully verified since there always might be a new test someday that falsifies it.  The standard relative and absolute interpretations have both yet to be falsified, but SR does have an asterisk that it is only for a special case that only occurs locally in the universe.  I found that it also works at the largest scales (where space once again becomes flat), but not on the scales in between.

The assumptions being made are empirical assumptions.

Not the assumptions of the interpretations.  Only the theory proper makes only empirical assumptions, which are thus not really assumptions at all since they are empirically tested.

They are assumptions about the configuration of the physical system for which there is no empirical evidence.

You seem to be talking about the interpretations now.  Yes, the interpretations make some physical assumptions like actual constant light speed for instance, not just empirically constant measurements.  If you consider that to be a configuration, then you can call it that.  If you say that any interpretation makes any mention of a specific physical system, I deny that.  No such premise is made.

A theory which includes an assumption about the one-way speed of light

I can't think of an interpretation that doesn't, but I agree that it is an assumption.  I am unconvinced that an interpretation with light moving at not-c would be valid. I don't know of one that has been validated.
That said, the theory (not any interpretation) does not make this assumption.  The theory defines the empirical tests, and those don't rely on any assumption of one-way SoL.  If they did, there wouldn't be all these sites saying it cannot be measured, would there?

carries with it an implicit (or tacit) statement about the configuration of a physical system i.e. a prediction; it is a prediction which cannot be verified experimentallly and so it represents an empirical assumption i.e. an assumption about the configuration of the physical system.

Nonsense.  An empirical assumption is about what can be tested, and that assumption cannot be tested.  Any assumed configuration of the physical system is a metaphysical assumption, not an empirical one.  Learn the meaning of the terms.

Contrast this with an interpretation which doesn't include that assumption but is based rather on the empirically determined round-trip speed of light. This interpretation doesn't imply, tacitly or otherwise, the same statement about the configuration of the physical system i.e. it doesn't make the same untestable prediction. It therefore makes fewer assummptions about the physical system and doesn't assume that part of its conclusion.

No metaphysical assumption is testable, so none of them are predictions at all.  Just assertions.  An interpretation that doesn't posit constant light speed indeed doesn't make the same metaphysical statements.  It makes damn few as a matter of fact.  The theory proper is like that.  It makes damn few such assumptions about the physical system.

In case you don't see it, I'm agreeing with you.  An interpretation that goes light on the assumptions is open to anything, but it also concludes little more than does the theory proper.

allow me to quote from Michael Tooley's Time, Tense, and Causation.
...
I'll allow you to draw your own conclusions.

The fact that the modified theory* does not entail the One-Way Light Principle would seem to be a reason,therefore, for preferring it to standard formulations of the Special Theory of Relativity—though not,of course, to formulations of the ∈-Lorentz variety."

My conclusion is bias (see my bold).  If both formulations of the SToR posit this One-Way Light Principle, why does the inability to measure it have any weight in the choice of one formulation (interpretation) over the other?

Bold is mine. Now, I know that you're just itching to isolate the emboldened part and tell me how you don't disagree with this and that it is the premise upon which the theory is based and the conclusions are derived from this, but we can extrapolate from there to show the further tacit, empirical assumptions that the interpretation entails.

I agreed with (and didn't bother to keep) the part you bolded.  I agreed with it all.  The part I bolded was to illustrate naked bias. I've said what I thought were the premises of the typical absolute interpretation, and it wasn't that.  If you don't assume fixed light speed, that's fine.  Very few of the usual definitions apply then, so you'll have to come up with your own new ones.

The clock synchronisation convention establishing by definition that the time for a light signal from A to B is equal to that of B to A can be restated as, the simultaneity of clock synchronisation events is established by definition. I know, I know, Einstein doesn't say it like this, but that's the beauty of logic, we can deduce it. In assuming that the time from A to B is the same from B to A so the simultaneity of the clock synchronisation events are assumed along with it.

I cannot really comment on something not actually said except to repeat that the absolute interpretation uses the exact same convention/definition as does Einstein.  This is one of those points that don't differ between interpretations.  The variable-speed interpretation does not use this convention.

So, given that there is "absolutely no experimental support" for the assumption that the time from A to B equals the time from B to A, there is, by definition, "absolutely no experimental support" that the clocks are synchronised.

By Einstein's definition, there is, but that definition makes that assumption.  So again, I agree that the convention doesn't work if that assumption is not made.

If there is absolutely no experimental support then it can only be an empirical assumption.

There is no such thing as an empirical assumption. There are empirical facts. If it can't be measured, then it isn't empirical.

[the_roosh (OP)]

Post has exceeded the 2k character limit, so have to break it up. I've tried grouping the difffernent points together to make it more coherent.

Please forgive the numerous typos, I'm using a bluetooth keyboard for my tablet and sometimmes it can be a bit finicky (llike there it registeers double letters sometimmes)

======================
The Question of Circuarity
======================

Similarly, the circularity claim you repeat, when SR is not circular.  It does not assume its conclusions nor does it conclude any of its premises.  Either of those would be an example of circularity, yes, but it doesn't do either of them.  Your argument commits the strawman fallacy when you assert that RoS is assumed for instance.  It isn't.  Read the paper.  It is derived.  It follows from the premises.

It is a simple matter of fact - call it a brute fact - that if you make a conclusion about something which you have not empirically observed, then you are assuming that conclusion. Put any adjective you like in front of it, to qualify it in any way - "...a rose by any other name..." - it doesn't change the fact that, if you conclude it but you haven't observed it, then you are assuming it.

Take Alice on her trip to Loch Ness. Standing by the lake, she sees bubbles rising to the surface and she concludes that the Loch Ness Monster is in the lake. Alice is assuming her conclusion.

Now, Alice might start with the premise that the LNM's mother laid the egg [from whence the LNM came] in Loch Ness before moving on. From this, Alice derives that the LNM hatched from the egg and now lives in the lake. She sees the bubbles and concludes they are from the LNM. You might say, Alice doesn't assume the conclusion that the LNM is in the lake, she derives it from her starting premise about the mother laying the egg. This doesn't make her conclusion, that the LNM produced the bubbles, any less of an assumption, bcos she hasnt observed the LNM making the bubbles.

What cements the fact that she is assuming her conclusion is the faact that there is a mutually exclusive interpretation which says that the bubbles are made by a big fish. Indeed, as Bob drives by the lake he surveys it and lo-and-behold his observations demonstrate, empirically, that the bubbles are made by big fish. Alice concludes that the LNM is frame dependent, that the LNM is only in the lake if you are standing by the lake, even if you can only see bubbles and can't the LNM itself.

If Bob concurs with Alice's claim, that the LNM is in the lake in her frame of reference, he doesn't agree with her on the basis of empirical evidence bcos his survey, remember, showed the bubbles coming from a big fish.

Now, if we swap Alice and Bob (Bob by the lake, Alice in the car) we can draw the exact same conclusions. Neither of them observes the LNM, they only see the bubbles. If they conclude that the LNM made the bubbles, in their frame, then they are assuming the conclusion (bcos they don't observe it). And, indeed, the empirical evidence shows that the bubbles were made by a big fish.

In the analogy above, the mother laying the egg represents the isotropic one-way speed of light, the LNM represents the clock synchronisation events in the "stationary system", the big fish represents the observation of unsynced clocks, and the bubbles represent the empirical observation of the light signals returning to the mid-point simultaneously.

Not long after Alice and Bob are commited to a psychiatric hospital.

Derived - not assumed?

Derived from the 1905 paper
Firstly, in the 1905 paper Einstein sets out what we have taken to be his synchronisation verification convention. He doesn't mention anything about Alice and Bob and their synchronisation thought experiment, nor does he mention anything about atomic clocks and commercial airliners, twins being separated and reuinited, or ladders and barns. It would appear that some clever people - much cleverer than I (so I can't consider myself their peer) - have extrapolated from Einstein's paper and derived a number of thought experiments and empirical tests of the theory - that weren't expressly stated in the paper itself. Thanks to these very clever people we have a number of more intuitive and intelligible thought experiments which can help us draw conclusions about the competing and mutually exclusive interpretations.

Starting with the synchronisation convention (as opposed to the verification procedure), we can see how those very clever people have extrapolated Einstein's idea and applied it to Alice and Bob. Instead of having a signal go from A to B and back to A to verify the synchronisation, these clever people - who are not my peers - have extrapolated that to a scenario where Alice has 3 spatially separted clocks - one at the midpoint A and two either side at B1 and B2. These clever people have extrapolated that where Einstein establishes by definition that the time from A to B is equal to the time from B to A (as a means of verifying the synchrony of the clocks) the process of synchronising 2 clocks, in the given frame, in this particular set-up, is done by establishing by definition that the time from A to B1 equals the time from A to B2 (together with the time for the return trips being the same).
 - Really, whoever came up with the Alice and Bob thought experiment, you've got to give them credit; smart people; very clever indeed.

Now, the  only issue with doing this is that by establishing that the time from A to B1 is equal to the time from A to B2 you are also establishing by definition that the clock synchronisation events in the given frame are simultaneous. That is, in assuming one, the other is implicitly assumed.

It would be like assuming that a French monarch has his head chopped off by the guillotine. You don't derive from that that the monarch is dead, it is implicit in the cutting off off the head. Or if you say that Alice is moving relative to Bob, it is implicit in that, that Bob is moving relative to Alice. They are two sides of the same coin, so if you assume one side of the coin, the opposite side is implicitly assumed.

Derived from the Isotropic, one-way speed of light
If we take the contention that the simultaneity of clock synchronisation events is derived and not assumed; obviously, from the above, I disagree, but for arguments sake, we can examine that propostition:

If we establish by definition that the time from A to B1 equals the time from A to B2 (and likewise for the return jounrey) then there are 2 things that we can "derive" from that:
1) the clock synchronisation events are simultaneous, in the given frame i.e. they co-incide with the reading d/2 on the
    clock at the mid-point.
2) the light pulses will return to the mid-point simultaneously.

Here, we have derived two statements about the configuration of the physical system. While the two statements have been derived from the same information, there is a key difference between them. That difference pertains to their empirical verifiability. As we know, statement #2 above can easily be tested and indeed it is. It represents a testable prediction of all of the various interpretations.

As we both know, as you have stated on numerous occasions, #1 above simply cannot be tested. While the fact that it can't be tested puts it into a different class than statement #2, this different classification doesn't explain away the fact that it represents an untestable prediction.

It might not be such an issue if one of the most counter-intuitive conclusions, in the SR interpretation, didn't depend entirelly upon it. The fact that the conclusion, that simultaneity is relative, rests entirely on this untestable prediction makes it a bug, not a feature, of the interpretation.

It cannot be tested, therefore it is assumed. In assuming this, so is the conclusion of RoS assumed - because without that assumption, RoS simply disappears.

Fine.  Alice still shows that her clocks are synced in her frame, even if that statement is not one of being actually synced in an absolute interpretation.  She never claimed the clocks were actually synced.  OK, she did assume isotropy to make her claim.  If she can't assume that, there's really nothing that can meaningfully be known about the relative state of a pair of clocks, so there's no point in doing a procedure involving them.

She can assume isotropy all she wants but assuming isotropy doesn't show her that her clocks are synced in her frame, it only means that she assumes they are synced in her frame. If she doesn't assume isotropy then she won't make claim that the clocks are synced, in her frame. That's because assuming that the time from A to B1 equals that from A too B2 implicitly assumes the simultaneity of clock synchronisation events, in the given frame.

Whether or not there is a point to her doing the procedure is immaterial. She does it, and we can make deductions from it.

And they can't get further, can they?

They can. Alice can see that assuming isotropy leads her to assume that her clocks are synced in her frame. This, shows her that she is assuming the first part of the conclusion that is RoS.

In no known interpretation do they see that.  Not even in your funny one.

When you clarify what you mean by "stationary system" above, we can go through the differences in the interpretations. They actualy do make slightly different predictions, but predictions which cannot be tested. We can see how both (or all) intepretations actually necessitate a privileged reference frame - but not in the sense of an absolute reference frame, which can be discarded without affecting the predictions or the mathematics.

That also has not been determined.  In any interpretation, they don't know if the pair of clocks is synced.  If the results were different, then not-in-sync could be known in some interpretations, but not the results you describe in the experiments they ran.

Again, you freudianly prove my point. If they don't know that the pair of clocks are syned in any interpretaion (inluding SR) then they must be assuming that the clocks are syned - in the given frame. But I suspect you'll be in a hurry to change that statement too.

We can examine the absolute interpretation and see what the differences between it and SR are. If you clarify the above point.

The same empirical evidence fits both interpretations so, the empirical evidence doesn't falsify either - but both cannot be true bcos they are mutually exclusive.

I don't know is mutually exclusive with I don't know?  I don't think so.  I maintain that the isotropic interpretations might both be true.

If you find a single animal hair on the sofa and the evidence apparently fits the interpretation that it was left by dog and the interpretation that it was left by a cat (imagine you can't test it for whatever reason). The fact that you don't know which is true doesn't make it likely or possible that both are true. The two interpretations are mutually exclusive. So no, it isn't a case of "I don't know is mutually exclusive with I don't know", it's that "the hair was left by a dog" and "the hair was left by a cat" are mutully exclusive.

SR and the absolute interpretation are mutully exclusive - that's why people repeatedly state that Eisntein revolutionised our idea of time and space and overturrned Newton's absolute time and space (keep going in the history book, it happens a few hundred years after Romer )

Oh, I don't know, the idea that simultaneity is reltive maybe.

Just a different definition, an abstract, not physical difference.  They're not mutually exclusive.  Points A being closer to one arbitrarily chosen line than point B, but B being the same distance as A to another such line, does contradict a statement that point B is in fact the closer to some actual real line.  That's what I mean by saying the two statements are not mutually exclusive.

Of course they can. I gave a nice example just above with A,B and the lines. You're asserting that if there is a physical line that is closer to B, then there cannot be a 2nd abstract line parallel to one connecting both points. That is pretty obviously incorrect. If you think the example is inappropriate, then you don't understand relativity, because that's the exactly what Alice is doing: Selecting a line so A and B are equidistant from it.  The points have an absolute relationship with the real line (which cannot be oriented a different way), and a relative relationship with the chosen one.
[/quote]
I'm not sure which interpretation your advocating there, where absolute simultaneity and the relativity of simultaneity re not mutually exclusive. As you progress thru your history book (trust me, it gets even more exciting than Romer) you will see that Einstein's SR overturned Newton's absolute time and space and with it, the concept of relativity of simultaneity overturned absolute simultaneity.

You seem to be basing it on the idea that the mathematics for both theories is identical and so the mathematics is compatible with both. That doesn't demonstrate that the differing interpretations are not mutually exclusive though, bcos both interpretations carry a diiffering set of assumptions.

You might be advocating the less well known Schroedingers Cat interepretation of relativity, as outlined by Fie Lyne, which says that simultaneity is both relative and absolute and the wave function is only collapsed with the measurement of the isortropic one-way speed of light, as it pertains to Einstein's theory.

That's an empirical claim.  So the Hafele–Keating experiment is predicted to have different results in a different interpretation.  Sure you want to go with that?

Nope, but a sneak preview of a later argument (if we get that far) is that the Haefele-Keating experiment, along with many other empirical tests of relativity (and deductions from the thought experiments) provide justification for a privileged reference frame interpretation - not one where the absolute rest frame is the privileged frame. I believe that is the line of argument "my peers" usually take, but it's not the one I take bcos I'm saying we can do away with the absolute reference frame.

This is a rule for theories, yes.  No so for interpretations.  This is a lot of the reason why physics courses in college don't dwell on interpretations. Take a QM class if you don't believe this. They might touch on the interpretations, but debating them explains nothing at all. The class focuses on empirical facts.

I can appreciate the "shut-up and calculate" approach, but inspite of this, interpretations of physical theories abound. As humans I think it's innate within us to seek such interpretations. I also think that such interpretations can often inform theoretical physics. As such, these interpretations represent our attempts to build intuitive models based on the data and evidence which can help us to look at problems in different ways, and possibly make intuitive connections that the mathematics might not enable us to do. I would see the math as the 99% perspiration and (occasionally) the intuitive interpretation might be able to provide 1% inspiration.

Ultimately, I do believe that such interpretations are futile bcos reality at the quantum (or even more fundamental) level is probably so far beyond our ability to imagine that any interpretation will, by necessity, be inaccurate. There are certain things that interpretations can help us with along the way tho, I believe.

Again, verification consists of inability to falsify.  Passing all tests is part of that.  If two both pass the test, then neither is falsified by that test, but might be falsified by some other test.  Falsification isn't something that is done one over the other.  Both interpretations might get falsified by a single test.

No interpretatoin/theory is ever fully verified since there always might be a new test someday that falsifies it.  The standard relative and absolute interpretations have both yet to be falsified, but SR does have an asterisk that it is only for a special case that only occurs locally in the universe.  I found that it also works at the largest scales (where space once again becomes flat), but not on the scales in between.

I just meant that if one theory passed while the other failed, the theory that passed woul be "verified" over the other.

You seem to be talking about the interpretations now.  Yes, the interpretations make some physical assumptions like actual constant light speed for instance, not just empirically constant measurements.  If you consider that to be a configuration, then you can call it that.  If you say that any interpretation makes any mention of a specific physical system, I deny that.  No such premise is made.

As we discussed, we can derive a statement about the configuration of the physical system that Alice is in, which says that the reading d/c (on the clock at the midpoint) co-incides with the clock synchronisation events at B1 and B2.
This cannot be verified by empirical tests, yet it remains an essential prediction of the Einsteinian interpretation because without it, there is no Relativity of Simultaneity.

An interpretation based on a two-way speed of light principle doesn't make the  same prediction but is still empirically equivalent.

Nonsense.  An empirical assumption is about what can be tested, and that assumption cannot be tested.  Any assumed configuration of the physical system is a metaphysical assumption, not an empirical one.  Learn the meaning of the terms.

Apply any adjective that you like to it, "...a rose by any other name...". The conclusion of Relativity of Simultnaeity rests entirely on this empirical/metaphysical/tacit/unjustified assumption.

Without this assumption about the configuration of the "stationary system" there is no conclusion that simultaneity is relative. This is because there is no first part of the conclusion - "events which are simultaneous in one frame". Therefore, the conclusion of RoS is assumed - emprically/metaphysically/tacitly/implicitly/how-ever-you-want-to-frame-itly. The conclusion is assumed, simple as!

[the_roosh (OP)]

==========================
Strawman & Romer Red Herring
==========================

You don't seem to have expressed any ideas.  The whole thread has been what I take to be false statements being made about the relative interpretation, such as it assuming its conclusions.  All such statements have been refuted.
My examples have not been refuted.  Not saying I'm right about them.  They can be refuted.  You just don't seem up to the task on your own.

It's a really simple case that came up due to the usage of a different sync convention than the one Einstein uses.  But your reaction to it made it into a little test to see if you can think through a simple scenario on your own. So far I've not seen you do it.

I'm not surprised you think I haven't expressed, nor am I able to express, any ideas of my own, because for the past 4 pages you've been shadowboxing against the strawman that you've mistakenly assumed is my position. It's hard for you to see the ideas being put forward when you've got such a big cognitive blind spot. Indeed, we haven't had a chance to progress precisely bcos you've been arguing against a strawman and we still need to get you up to speed with the first basic point.

With regard to the point about Romer, I understand that you think you have landed some kind of knock-out blow and you probably even got excited when you saw the head come off and the insides spill out. But look a little closer, the insides are made of straw and you can stick that head right back on and continue to shadow box it, if you like. In the meantime, I'll be over addressing points that are actually relevant to the discussion.

You see, you've mistaken my recognition of the fact, that your point about Romer is a meaningless irrelevancy in the context of this discussion, for an inability to address your spurious, incoherent, and irrelevant point. When the fact of the matter is, I have addressed it, in the context of the discussion pertaining to the isoptropic one-way speeed of light as it pertains to Einsteinian relativity. I have addressed it by presenting peer reviewed references that pertain to the isoptropic one-way speed of light as is relevant to Einsteinian relativity, which demonstrate that it hasn't yet been measured to a satsisfactory degree - despite the authors' optimism - and literature which cast serious doubt on the idea that it will ever be possible to measure it.

I have even referenced a peer reviewed paper that makes your point better than you make it yourself and which is relevant to the discussion, unlike your Romer red herring.

If however, you find it difficult to give up continual references to your [seeming] hero, feel free to state the point you are trying to make, clearly and coherently, and be explicit in how you believe it is relevant to the discussion of Einsteinian relativity, bcos I am saying that it isn't relevant.

What would I say?  They did this thing, and I agree that they did it. How is that possible?Pretty lame thread.

You could state how you believe it is pertinent to modern day attempts to measure the isotropic one-way speed of light, as it pertains to SR and how the peer reviewed literature that addresses the question of that issue does not apply to Romer.

What is relevant to this thread?  You're certainly not going about pushing your new interpretation. Haven't heard a word of it.  Just pages of asserting that the one interpretation is not the only valid one, and nobody has disagreed with that.  Why the continued discussion if nobody has disagreed with this 2nd point you're supposedly trying to make?
I'm in it because you're having Alice making strawman conclusions like "the relative interpretation says my clocks are in sync".

I posted the paper in the OP, this thread has been spent addressing the objections that you have raised. We haven't gotten past the first hurdle yet. The focus of the paper was the problem of time, reinterpreting the theory of relativity was just one part. In the discussions I've had, understandably, the main contention has been the points I've made about Einsteinian relativity. Discussions like this have actually lead me to further develop my own thinking on that and flesh out ideas that I didn't flesh out in the paper (I still don't feel comfortable using the word "paper" bcos I know it's not up to any sort of rigorous standard).

My discussions on another site have progressed a bit quicker, but that is probably due to the fact that I have been debating against the people there for a few years, so there is more of a tacit understanding that has been built up.

We've started a line of discussion here about an absolute interpretation which will probably help us progress a bit and in the process I can outline the interpretation I have in mind.

My defense of SR rests on its lack of being falsified.  What Alice and Bob are doing is irrelevant to that unless what they actually conclude (not your strawman conclusions) is found to be in contradiction with the premises of SR.

Unfortuntely, there was nothing in Kahneman's book on how, after repeatedly pointing out the error that someone is making, how to make them recognise that error and to stop making it.

I am not trying to demonstrate a contradiction in SR!!

This is the strawman that you are arguing against, and have been from the beginning. I understnd it is an intuitive response, a form of cognitive blindness, but at some point it will hopefully sink in! Until it does, I will be happy to keep reiterating the point and increasing the size of the font.

Can you acknowledge the fact that you understand that I am not trying to demonstrate a contradiction in the SR interpretion.

I am pointing out the statements that I feel are doing just that.  You making those statements makes my claims actual, not strawman.

You have repeatedly demonstrated that you are arguing against a strawman by repeated references to the issue of contradiction of the premises of SR. So, it is not surprising that you genuinely believe that your statements are addressing that issue, and indeed they do. The problem is, however, that isn't the actual issue; that isn't the point of contention.

You joke, but its real. There's quite an industry set up to separate this crowd from their money, same as it done for any fanatic group. The religions don't have a monopoly on doing that. OK, they do if you consider it a religion, which it probably is since the sites are often religion based.  Apparently Einstein and God have become mutually exclusive, despite my school teaching the exact opposite.

I've been peripheraly aware of such sites, but I've never really frequented them (despite how it might seem) - luckily, it would seem. I have gotten a vague notion of what seemed like a somewhat cultish mentality among some of "my peers", but I find my time and effort is better served in discussions like this where my theses are rigorously challenged.

[the_roosh (OP)]

===================
Absolute Interpretation
===================

Shall we do that?  It might be instructive.  Alice is in the stationary system, but it hasn't been specified if she knows that.  If she doesn't know, then her clocks are synced but she has no no way to determine that.  Bob once again agrees with everything and makes no contradictory conclusions.

By "stationary system" here do you mean the absolute rest frame? As in, are we starting with Alice in the absolute rest frame with Bob moving relatively - even though Alice cannot determine that she is in the absolute rest frame?

It's an important distinction.

What's the point?  I never said it wasn't.  Einstein's sync convention still works even.  It doesn't with your non-isotropic interpretation, but that's a third (unverified) interpretation.

Just to be clear, the interpretation Im advocating is one that employs a round-trip speed of light principle, so it will be empirically equivalent to the other interpretations.

I can't think of an interpretation that doesn't, but I agree that it is an assumption.  I am unconvinced that an interpretation with light moving at not-c would be valid. I don't know of one that has been validated.
That said, the theory (not any interpretation) does not make this assumption.  The theory defines the empirical tests, and those don't rely on any assumption of one-way SoL.  If they did, there wouldn't be all these sites saying it cannot be measured, would there?

That's fair enough. The mathematics for all the various interpretations appears to be the same. It is the Einsteinian interpretation that I am challenging - and the absolutist one for that matter, as I am saying the absolute reference frame can be discarded.

No metaphysical assumption is testable, so none of them are predictions at all.  Just assertions.  An interpretation that doesn't posit constant light speed indeed doesn't make the same metaphysical statements.  It makes damn few as a matter of fact.  The theory proper is like that.  It makes damn few such assumptions about the physical system.
In case you don't see it, I'm agreeing with you.  An interpretation that goes light on the assumptions is open to anything, but it also concludes little more than does the theory proper.

You can have round-trip light speed principle which is empirically justified and leaves you with an empirically equivalent interpretation. It doesn't lead to conclusions like RoS though and real physical reciprocal length contractions or reciprocal time dilation.

If we get that far I will try to outline  how both SR and the absolute interpretations, in actuality, reduce to a speciffic kind of privileged reference frame interpretation. The privileged frame isn't the absolute rest frame however, it's the frame in which instruments are reunited for comparison. So, it's not that nature privileges a particular reference frame, its that we must privilege one particular reference frame as a matter of operational necessity - for us, by default, that is the reference frame of the Earth (for obvious reasons). We also privilege the Earth reference frame by designating it our chosen reference frame for the definition of the units of measurement that we use in our experiments.

The fact that the modified theory* does not entail the One-Way Light Principle would seem to be a reason,therefore, for preferring it to standard formulations of the Special Theory of Relativity—though not,of course, to formulations of the ∈-Lorentz variety."

My conclusion is bias (see my bold).  If both formulations of the SToR posit this One-Way Light Principle, why does the inability to measure it have any weight in the choice of one formulation (interpretation) over the other?

You may have misread the part I quoted, it says that the modified theory does not entail the One-Way Light Principle. The theory that pooley proposes, and which I would borrow the phrasing from, employs a round-trip light principle.

the Round-Trip Light Principle—where this is the principle, not that the round-trip speed of light is a constant relative to all inertial frames,but rather that the round-trip speed of light is a constant as measured within all inertial frames.

I agreed with (and didn't bother to keep) the part you bolded.  I agreed with it all.  The part I bolded was to illustrate naked bias. I've said what I thought were the premises of the typical absolute interpretation, and it wasn't that.  If you don't assume fixed light speed, that's fine.  Very few of the usual definitions apply then, so you'll have to come up with your own new ones.

As you have quite righly intimated, I don't have the requisite background to develop such a theory on my own, which is why I am stuck with debating the philosophical interpretations. In the course of our discussion I came across the work of Michael Tooley (literally a few day ago). In it, he lays out an absolute interpretation of relativity (seemingly based solely on an absoolute reference frame) that sounds - to the untrained mind - pretty convincing. Unfortunately, I can't fully evaluate it myself, just to say that if his claims hold up, it is a solid interpretation. He also addresses the issue of the undetectability of the absolute reference frame thusly:

This is,I believe, the most forceful objection that can be mounted against any theory that entails the existence of absolute rest. But there is a perfectly satisfactory answer,the gist of which is that, if it is true that the modified theory entails that there is,in nature, a conspiracy of silence with respect to the existence of absolute rest, this is so only because,and precisely because, the Special Theory of Relativity itself entails that there is,in nature, a conspiracy of silence with respect to a certain matter—namely,the one-way speed of light.

Suppose that an experiment is possible that would enable one to measure the one-way speed of light. If the outcome of that experiment were that the one-way speed of light was the same in all directions in all inertial frames,then the modified theory would be conclusively refuted,since,
as we have just seen, it entails that this will not be the case. If,on the other hand,it turned out that the oneway speed of light not only was not the same,but varied in accordance with the above relation, then it would be possible to determine the velocity of any inertial frame relative to absolute space. So,unless there is a conspiracy in nature that prevents any measurement of the one-way speed of light,the choice between the modified theory and standard formulations of the Special Theory of Relativity is experimentally decidable.

Suppose,however, that there is no experimental way of measuring the one-way speed of light. Then there will be no way of determining the velocity of any inertial frame relative to absolute space,and there will be the conspiracy of silence that Zahar contends is an objection to theories that postulate absolute space. But we have just seen that a conspiracy of silence with respect to absolute rest and motion can obtain only if,and precisely because, there is a conspiracy within nature with respect to the measurement of the one-way speed of light. So any conspiracy of silence within nature that one must countenance,on the modified theory,is either identical with, or derives from, a conspiracy of silence that one must countenance according to any version of the Special Theory of Relativity

I would propose that an absolute reference frame need not be posited at all. We can construct a theory on the basis of the round-trip light principle. There are two routes to imagining this, the absolute route as outlined by Tooley, or the SR route. Going the absolute route, we can imagine the formulation of the theory in the manner that Poincare derived the Lorentz transformation. We can think of the absolute reference frame as sort of scaffolding, which can then be removed.

Poincare started with the absolute reference frame and had two inertial frames moving relative to that absolute frame, S and S'. Galilean transformations were used between the absolute reference frame and each of S and S', but the Lorentz transformation was used between S and S' themselves. In these reference frames Alice's clocks would not be synced, in her frame. The same would be true for Bob's clocks in his frame. With this scenario constructed and given that, like the undetectable ether, the absolute reference frame plays no predictive or empirical role, we can simply removeit, we can remove the scaffolding.

There might be an obvious objection to this, that we can't simply remove the absolute reference frame after it played an integral role in our construction of the theory. To address that we can simply go down the SR route and, instead of relying on the isotropic one-way speed of light, we can employ our round-trip principle of the SoL. Again, employing this, neither Alice nor Bob's clocks are synced, in their own frames. We've achieved this without reference to an absolute reference frame.

This interpretation will be empirically equivalent to the other theories.

[Halc]

It is a simple matter of fact - call it a brute fact - that if you make a conclusion about something which you have not empirically observed, then you are assuming that conclusion.

If that were true, all mathematical proofs would be rendered circular since none of them are based on any empirical observation.
Alice has not made a claim of proof of anything.  She has made a simple abstract statement that if she draws a line here, the rock is below it, and maybe above this other line drawn.  The fact that nobody can empirically see her line doesn't alter her statement.

Take Alice on her trip to Loch Ness. Standing by the lake, she sees bubbles rising to the surface and she concludes that the Loch Ness Monster is in the lake. Alice is assuming her conclusion.

That she would be.
The claim in the example is not like that, and thus your Ness example is an inappropriate analogy.  She's made no physical claim.  Never does she conclude that any of her premises are true, or that any of the conclusions are true sans contingency on the premises.
In short, she never concludes that the clocks are in sync, which is arguably a physical claim (and arguably not).

these clever people - who are not my peers
...
Thanks to these very clever people

I've apparently struck a nerve.  Must be on to something.

we have a number of more intuitive and intelligible thought experiments which can help us draw conclusions about the competing and mutually exclusive interpretations.

I can't think of any thought experiments that demonstrate a preference for one interpretation over the other.  Perhaps they're not clever enough.

the process of synchronising 2 clocks, in the given frame

At given locations, not 'in a given frame'.

in this particular set-up, is done by establishing by definition that the time from A to B1 equals the time from A to B2 (together with the time for the return trips being the same).

What definition is now being referenced?  I agree that we set it up for the times to be the same, but I am unaware of a definition being utilized this time.
 

If we take the contention that the simultaneity of clock synchronisation events is derived and not assumed

I didn't say that.  I said RoS is derived from SR premises. The above statement is not a statement of RoS.

If we establish by definition that the time from A to B1 equals the time from A to B2 (and likewise for the return jounrey)

Again, what definition?

then there are 2 things that we can "derive" from that:
1) the clock synchronisation events are simultaneous, in the given frame i.e. they co-incide with the reading d/2 on the clock at the mid-point.
2) the light pulses will return to the mid-point simultaneously.

Here, we have derived two statements about the configuration of the physical system.

Actually, only number 2 is a physical statement.  #1 involves only a statement concerning abstract coordinate time.

While the two statements have been derived from the same information, there is a key difference between them. That difference pertains to their empirical verifiability. As we know, statement #2 above can easily be tested and indeed it is. It represents a testable prediction of all of the various interpretations.

Because that one is a physical statement, yes.  The other is not.

As we both know, as you have stated on numerous occasions, #1 above simply cannot be tested.

I can perform the in-sync test, but that test again only verifies an abstract coordinate concept.  No physical (or even metaphysical) statement is made in #1, so there is nothing to verify.

While the fact that it can't be tested puts it into a different class than statement #2, this different classification doesn't explain away the fact that it represents an untestable prediction.

It doesn't represent a prediction at all.

The fact that the conclusion, that simultaneity is relative.

That conclusion is contingent on the premises, not concluded absent them.  If premises, then RoS.  No ∴RoS period.  Your insistence on the latter is a strawman.  I'm well aware of the validity of the interpretation that posits actual simultaneity, and that it is absolute.  The relative interpretation makes no statement concerning actual simultaneity, only abstract coordinate simultaneity.  The interpretation is very light on metaphysical additions (like preferred frames, locations, moments, aether, whatever) , which is why it is the mainstream interpretation.  All those additions seem like Loch Ness monsters to me.  Not asserting no monster, but it seems just silly to posit one or several.

OK, she did assume isotropy to make her claim.

I take this back. Reading carefully, she doesn't. She utilizes a convention to make her claim.  No isotropy is assumed.  The clocks are defined to be in sync in that frame by that convention, and no assumptions need be made at all.  This is why her (completely abstract) claim does not conflict with interpretations that make different assumptions.  No assumption with which to conflict.  That's the beauty of a theory that makes no metaphysical assumptions.  None of the conclusions are metaphysical ones, and all your attempts at conflict are on the metaphysical level.

She can assume isotropy all she wants but assuming isotropy doesn't show her that her clocks are synced in her frame, it only means that she assumes they are synced in her frame.

Read the paper.  No assumption is needed at all.  She's shown it.  You're problem is that you keep assuming she's made a metaphysical claim, but she hasn't.

When you clarify what you mean by "stationary system" above, we can go through the differences in the interpretations.

You seem to have edited out the 'above'.  If I say 'the stationary system', the term only has meaning in an absolute interpretation, so I probably meant actually stationary.

They actualy do make slightly different predictions, but predictions which cannot be tested.

You and I have a different definition of 'prediction' then.  You apparently mean different metaphysical descriptions of the system.  I don't call those predictions.  The relative interpretation doesn't make many such statements, only empirical predictions and abstract relations with coordinate systems such as an abstract line being above a rock.

We can see how both (or all) intepretations actually necessitate a privileged reference frame

Ah: An assertion that the relative interpretation requires a metaphysical addition despite never using it.  I can see no such thing.  The interpretation makes no conclusions/statements concerning this privileged frame.
This is akin to asserting that a triangle cannot be discussed in a geometry class without assigning it to the actual coordinate system (as opposed to any other coordinate system, or no coordinate system).

Again, you freudianly prove my point. If they don't know that the pair of clocks are syned in any interpretaion (inluding SR) then they must be assuming that the clocks are syned - in the given frame.

This comment makes no logical sense.  If I don't know whats in my left hand, then I must assume that I have a coin in my right. The one just doesn't follow from the other.

If you find a single animal hair on the sofa and the evidence apparently fits the interpretation that it was left by dog and the interpretation that it was left by a cat (imagine you can't test it for whatever reason).

An animal hair is physical evidence.  Alice hasn't got that and has thus made no metaphysical claim.  A non-metaphysical claim does not conflict with a metaphysical claim. That claim is sort of like positing the dog, except without even finding the hair.

I'm not sure which interpretation your advocating there where absolute simultaneity and the relativity of simultaneity re not mutually exclusive.

I'm comparing (not advocating) the SR theory with no additional metaphysical assumptions (not even fixed one-way light speed), with the absolute interpretation.  Only the latter adds all these metaphysical assumptions.  Since the former interpretation doesn't deny any of them, it isn't incompatible.

As you progress thru your history book (trust me, it gets even more exciting than Romer) you will see that Einstein's SR overturned Newton's absolute time and space and with it, the concept of relativity of simultaneity overturned absolute simultaneity.

Since the absolute interpretation lives on, he did no such thing, history books notwithstanding.

You seem to be basing it on the idea that the mathematics for both theories is identical and so the mathematics is compatible with both.

I've not been discussing Newton's theories.  If you don't mean that one, then which two theories?

You might be advocating the less well known Schroedingers Cat interepretation of relativity, as outlined by Fie Lyne, which says that simultaneity is both relative and absolute and the wave function is only collapsed with the measurement of the isortropic one-way speed of light, as it pertains to Einstein's theory.

That's a thing?  Never heard of it.  Sounds pretty hokey.

Nope, but a sneak preview of a later argument (if we get that far) is that the Haefele-Keating experiment, along with many other empirical tests of relativity (and deductions from the thought experiments) provide justification for a privileged reference frame interpretation - not one where the absolute rest frame is the privileged frame.

Perhaps you can distinguish the two.  I tend to use the two terms interchangably, which I would not wish to do if they mean different things.

I can appreciate the "shut-up and calculate" approach, but inspite of this, interpretations of physical theories abound.

That they do.  Most people even have preferences. Some go too far and claim theirs must be the correct one.

I just meant that if one theory passed while the other failed, the theory that passed woul be "verified" over the other.

OK. I would have simply said that the other theory had been falsified. There's little more evidence that the 'verified' theory is any more correct other than a smaller list of alternate theories.  But even if there are not, the reamining one is not necessarily proven.  Sometimes all of them are falsified, in which case we know we need to keep looking for a better answer. Unified field theory comes to mind.

As we discussed, we can derive a statement about the configuration of the physical system that Alice is in, which says that the reading d/c (on the clock at the midpoint) co-incides with the clock synchronisation events at B1 and B2.

That's not a physical statement about the state of her system. It is a pure abstract statement about it.

[Halc]

You see, you've mistaken my recognition of the fact, that your point about Romer is a meaningless irrelevancy in the context of this discussion

Depends what you think my point was concerning it.  There were two in fact, both relevant.  Neither had anything to do with measurement of the one-way speed of light.

When the fact of the matter is, I have addressed it, in the context of the discussion pertaining to the isoptropic one-way speeed of light as it pertains to Einsteinian relativity. I have addressed it by presenting peer reviewed references that pertain to the isoptropic one-way speed of light as is relevant to Einsteinian relativity, which demonstrate that it hasn't yet been measured to a satsisfactory degree

Wow, that statement makes it sound like it was measured at all, just not very accurately.

If however, you find it difficult to give up continual references to your [seeming] hero, feel free to state the point you are trying to make, clearly and coherently, and be explicit in how you believe it is relevant to the discussion of Einsteinian relativity, bcos I am saying that it isn't relevant.

The first point was brought up when the subject first came up: An illustration of a different sync convention that the one Einstein (and Lorentz) uses.
The 2nd point was my suggestion that you consider the experiment being done in a system where light speed is 3x in one direction as it is in the opposite, and what result would be measured if the experiment was done in both directions in attempt to test this.  I'm not sure about that one myself.  Barring that funny interpretation, perhaps just describe the experiment in standard absolute terms where light speed is constant in all directions, but the test system is moving at half light speed. I want to see if you have any idea what you're talking about.

You could state how you believe it is pertinent to modern day attempts to measure the isotropic one-way speed of light

I would be lying if I said that.  It isn't pertinent at all.  You said that, not me.

What is relevant to this thread?

I posted the paper in the OP, this thread has been spent addressing the objections that you have raised.

Which nobody has discussed.  Colin2B (post 20) said something on the order of if it being your intention to discuss an idea or a paper (which I haven't seen), misrepresenting the mainstream theory might not be the best route to achieve this purpose. No attempt has been made to steer things onto that track. Your purpose appears to be the debate, and not the discussion of your idea.

My defense of SR rests on its lack of being falsified.  What Alice and Bob are doing is irrelevant to that unless what they actually conclude (not your strawman conclusions) is found to be in contradiction with the premises of SR.

Unfortuntely, there was nothing in Kahneman's book on how, after repeatedly pointing out the error that someone is making, how to make them recognise that error and to stop making it.

Are you saying I'm making an error in the statement above?  Or just an error in realization of your purposes here?
Anyway, yes, I've had trouble with exactly that.  You repeat errors that I've pointed out.

I am not trying to demonstrate a contradiction in SR!!

Fine.  I believe you.  But I'll still comment whenever I think the position is being misrepresented, for whatever purpose.  If you're trying to argue that other interpretations are valid, nobody has disagreed with that.  If you have a different interpretation than one of the usual ones, then I've yet to render an opinion of the validity of it on the surface.

[Halc]

===================
Absolute Interpretation
===================

Shall we do that?  It might be instructive.  Alice is in the stationary system, but it hasn't been specified if she knows that.  If she doesn't know, then her clocks are synced but she has no no way to determine that.  Bob once again agrees with everything and makes no contradictory conclusions.

By "stationary system" here do you mean the absolute rest frame? As in, are we starting with Alice in the absolute rest frame with Bob moving relatively - even though Alice cannot determine that she is in the absolute rest frame?

This is the absolute interpretation, so there is one meaning to 'stationary system'.  It means her position is not changing.  Bob is moving.  Not relatively.  Moving period.  That's how the absolute interpretation words things.  Motion is property, not a relation under the interpretation.

Feel free to tell me I'm misrepresenting the interpretation.  It is waters I don't usually find myself in.  Wording things in such a manner is not second nature to me.

It's an important distinction.

What distinction?  There seems to be only one way to use those words.  You had suggested before a possible difference between the absolute frame and the preferred one.  I presume those to be the same, so feel free to clarify if they're not.

Just to be clear, the interpretation Im advocating is one that employs a round-trip speed of light principle, so it will be empirically equivalent to the other interpretations.

That remains to be seen.  I've not seen it.

That's fair enough. The mathematics for all the various interpretations appears to be the same.

That's not true.  Simpler in some ways, more complicated in others.  Try to imagine implementing a speed limit sign on the side of the road using the absolute interpretation.  Can be done, but it wouldn't be very helpful to the guy reading it. Such examples is why physics is far simpler with the relative interpretation.

It is the Einsteinian interpretation that I am challenging - and the absolutist one for that matter, as I am saying the absolute reference frame can be discarded.

Could be interesting.

If we get that far I will try to outline  how both SR and the absolute interpretations, in actuality, reduce to a speciffic kind of privileged reference frame interpretation. The privileged frame isn't the absolute rest frame however, it's the frame in which instruments are reunited for comparison.[/quote]That's a redefinition of how the term is used in physics.  Perhaps you should choose another one.  Why do reunited instruments need a frame?  They can reunite on the fly, comparing results at some event as they pass.  Events don't have frames.

So, it's not that nature privileges a particular reference frame, its that we must privilege one particular reference frame as a matter of operational necessity

That's exactly what Alice has done when she selects her abstract coordinate system.  How is it going to be different than the standard interpretation then?

for us, by default, that is the reference frame of the Earth (for obvious reasons).

That frame isn't inertial.  In fact it is an accelerating/rotating reference frame, with a funny set of properties all its own.

We also privilege the Earth reference frame by designating it our chosen reference frame for the definition of the units of measurement that we use in our experiments.

Hate to be picky, but frames don't define units.  They don't even define origins.  OK, the rotating frame could define a unit of time period, even though we don't use it.  We cut up time from a standard one rotation plus nearly 236 seconds.  The meter?  Somebody pulled that out of his arse.  I don't think anything on Earth really suggests it.

You may have misread the part I quoted, it says that the modified theory does not entail the One-Way Light Principle. The theory that pooley proposes, and which I would borrow the phrasing from, employs a round-trip light principle.

It wasn't clear what was meant by '∈-Lorentz variety'.

the Round-Trip Light Principle—where this is the principle, not that the round-trip speed of light is a constant relative to all inertial frames,but rather that the round-trip speed of light is a constant as measured within all inertial frames.

Empirical measurements agree with that and much more.  Why not take the full statement that all of EM is included in principle of relativity?  That doesn't assume anything, and it includes your subset principle.  Why go for the weak premise when there's a stronger empirical one?

He also addresses the issue of the undetectability of the absolute reference frame

The quote doesn't say much.  It says you can't tell.  Nothing in it was news to me.  Sounds like "A conspiriacy to hide the invisible pink elephant is equivalent to a conspiracy to posit an invisible pink elephant, therefore there is as much reason to posit the invisible pink elephant as there is to not do so.
The reasoning seems to be a refutation to some (not included, but probably involving conspiracy to hide) argument against the absolute interpretation, but none of it seems relevant to actually finding a logical flaw in any of them.

Poincare started with the absolute reference frame and had two inertial frames moving relative to that absolute frame, S and S'. Galilean transformations were used between the absolute reference frame and each of S and S', but the Lorentz transformation was used between S and S' themselves. In these reference frames Alice's clocks would not be synced, in her frame.

In this interpretation, I don't know what it means to be synced in a frame.  Synced is an absolute thing, not a frame thing, so those words have no meaning. I can't follow this.

I don't know the base premises.  You talk about starting with an absolute frame, but then use relative, not absolute terminology.  Most absolute interpretations don't talk about frames at all.  Alice and Bob are moving, with different velocities.  That's all.  This is obviously a different interpretation, but I don't know what any of the terminology means.

[the_roosh (OP)]

If that were true, all mathematical proofs would be rendered circular since none of them are based on any empirical observation.
Alice has not made a claim of proof of anything.  She has made a simple abstract statement that if she draws a line here, the rock is below it, and maybe above this other line drawn.  The fact that nobody can empirically see her line doesn't alter her statement.

Domains
This gives us another insight into the nature of the strawman you are arguing against. Strawman might be a bit harsh as it certainly isn't intentional and is more a case of misapplication of the rules governing two independent, yet interdependent, domains.

The rules of empiricism do not apply to mathematics, bcos, as has been repeatedly stated (by both of us) mathematics is abstract - meaning that it cannot be empirical. Mathematics are an indispensible tool in the domain of science, they allow us to derive predictions from data that we might not necessarily be able to derive from simple observations. But, just as the rules of empiricism do not govern mathematics, neither do the rules of mathematics govern empiricism. That is why mathematically derived predictions are required to be verified/falsified by way of empirical observation. Empirical observation trumps mathematical derivation.

Theory and Interpretation
Forgive me if I'm using the terms imprecisely here, but I'm hoping you will understand the point that I am trying to make, as opposed to getting caught up in any imprecise usage of terms.

If I understand your usage of terms correctly, the "theory" appears to represent the mathematical formalism, sans metaphysical assumptions. Essentially, the Lorentz transformation, metric, etc. Am I correct in that?

If so, then we can conclude that the relativity of simultaneity isn't derived from the mathematics. How can we conclude this? Bcos the absolutist interpretations are mathematically equivalent but do not incorporate RoS.

We are therefore talking about the different interpretations.

We can still use the term "derive" to describe the statements that each interpretation necessitates, bcos they can be derived from the mathematics together with the mataphysical assumptions.

One of the statements that can be derived from the interpretation of SR pertains to the reading on a clock [located midway between two other clocks] which must co-incide with the clock synchronisation events (in the given co-ordinate system). We also derive the statement pertaining to the simultaneous return of the light signals to the mid-point.

That's all fine, everything there has been "derived".

But - and I'm stating the obvious bcos it appears to be part of the issue - scientists (as opposed to mathematicians) are in the domain of empiricism. This is why they didn't simply accept what Einstein had derived mathematically as a given, instead they derived predictions from Einstein's interpretation (theory??) and then sought to test those empirically.

And, while SR stood up to every single test, it appears to be less well understood that so too did all of the mathematically equivalent, absolutist interpretations. I know that you know this, but you don't seem to fully comprehend all of the consequences of this and what further deductions we can make on that basis alone.

Thought experiments
In comes the thought experiment with Alice and Bob. Usually, these thought experiments are used as a means to demonstrate the empirical consequences of Einstein's interpretation. This is partly the reason why the intuitive response to reading Alice and Bob is to make the assumption that the premises of SR are implied. But we're not doing that. We're assuming the premises of no interpretation. Instead, we are using it to see what empirical statements we can derive.

Yes, the thought experiments are abstract but they are not abstract in the sense of being purely, mathematical abstractions. They represent real-world scenarios which is why they are employed to demonstrate the empirical consequences logically necessitated by the different interpretations. They are abstract in the sense that talking about and describing the Hafele-Keating experiment (or any other such test of relativity) is abstract, but not in a mathematical sense. They are abstract descriptions of real-world experiments.

The power of a thought experiment is that it allows us to represent a real-world experimental set-up which cannot be carried out for practical reasons - we aren't able to accelerate spaceships up to the speeds involved. As they represent an idealised experimental set-up, they demonstrate to us the empirical consequences that are logically necessitated by the different interpretations. In this manner we can apply the rules of empiricism - not the rules of mathematics - and see what empirical derivations we can make.

Empirical Assumptions
See the bottom of this post for contextual examples of the term "empirical assumptions". You might use the term "metaphysical assumption", but we will see why the semantical difference is immaterial.

An empirical assumption is an assumption about how the physical world is/should/must be in order for a given interpretation of empirical evidence to be made to fit the conclusions drawn from that evidence. If the empirical assumptions aren't granted, then the conclusions, drawn by the given interpretation, don't stand-up.

As has been stated repeatedly, we can derive 2 statements about the physical configuration of Alice's system:
1) the reading d/c on clock C0 must co-incide with the clock synchronisation events at C1 and C2.
2) the light signals [must] return to the mid-point simultaneously and co-incide with the reading 2d/c on clock C0.

That is in the domain of mathematics. Now, let us jump into the domain of empiricism. The thought experiment conveniently allows us to apply the rules of empiricism to the above abstract derivations.

As has been said, statement #2 above can be verified empirically. It is a prediction, derived from Einstein's interpretation of the mathematics. It represents a testable prediction.

On the other hand, statement #1 above, which has been derived from Einstein's interpretation of the mathematics, in the exact same manner as statement #2, cannot be verified empirically. It is therefore an untestable prediction; it is unfalsifiable*.

Now, you might want to re-iterate that the statement about the clock synchronisation events is derived and I agree with you, it is derived, in the domain of mathematics. It is even derived from the thought experiment which is used to derive the empirical consequences of the interpretation. However, what we also derive from the thought experiment is that this derivation - about the configuration of the physical system - is not derived from observation. It is unobserved. Not only is it unobserved, it would appear to be unobservable. In the domain of empiricism, something which is unobserved or unobservable constitutes an "empirical assumption".

Again, you might perfer the term "metaphysical assumption" but the choice of adjective doesn't change the fact that the conclusion of RoS is assumed.

When we break the conclusion of RoS into it's 2 parts:
a) events which are simultaneous in one frame
b) are not simultaneous in relatively moving frames

We can see that part a) - while in the domain of mathematics it is derived - is, in the empirical domain, the unobserved/unobservable part; it is the "empirical" or "metaphysical" assumption; it is the rose that by any other name would smell as sweet.

The relativity of simultaneity is entirely contingent on part a), without it, there is no relativity in the concept of simultaneity. In the domain of empiricism, the conclusion of RoS is therefore, an assumed conclusion i.e. it is circular reasoning.

You might find the following more palatable:
For us, non-abstract physical beings, living in an empirically, physical world, for us to conclude that simultaneity is frame dependent, we must assume that conclusion.

Again, it comes down to a question of the map vs the territory.

That she would be.
The claim in the example is not like that, and thus your Ness example is an inappropriate analogy.  She's made no physical claim.  Never does she conclude that any of her premises are true, or that any of the conclusions are true sans contingency on the premises.
In short, she never concludes that the clocks are in sync, which is arguably a physical claim (and arguably not).

The intepretation makes a claim about the configuration of the physical system. It claims that the reading d/c, on clock C0 is co-incident with the two clock synchronisation events at C1 and C2. It also makes a claim about the reading (2d/c) on C0 that corresponds to the return of light signals.

1) Reading [d/c] on clock C0 = physical claim
2) Light signal making contact with C1 (synchronisation event at C1) = physical claim
3) Light signal making contact with C2 (synchronisation event C2) = physical claim
4) 2 & 3 coinciding with 1 = physical claim
5) Reading [2d/c] on clock C0 = physical claim
6) Light signals returning and co-inciding with 5 = physical claim.

1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 can all be verified empirically. #4 cannot be verified empirically. The fact that it cannot be verified empirically does not mean that it isn't a physical claim, it means that it is an untested/untestable one. Until such time as it is tested, it remains an assumption - be that empirical/metaphysical/tacit/implicit/[insert adjective here].

Her conclusion of RoS can be stated as:
a) #4 above
together with
b) not #4 in relatively moving frames

Given that #4 is an assumption (in the domain of empiricism) it folllows as a matter of neccessity that her conclusion is therefore assumed (empirically speaking).

I've apparently struck a nerve.  Must be on to something.

hahaha I think you may have misread the tone of that one (which wouldn't be completely out of character). I was emphasising the fact that those "very clever people" (your peers maybe?) derived a number of insights about the Einsteinian intepretation, which weren't expressly stated in the 1905 paper. I labored the point to try and avoid things like this:

What definition is now being referenced?  I agree that we set it up for the times to be the same, but I am unaware of a definition being utilized this time.
...
Again, what definition?

You seem to have difficulty extrapolating from the 1905 paper. As I mentioned, there was no mention of atomic clocks or airliners, or Alice and Bob, in the 1905 paper, but those "very clever people" (am I being too presumptuous to call them your peers?) were able to extrapolate from Einstein's paper so that we could have a clock synchronisation convention as opposed to just a verification procedure.

If you would like to learn more about what those "clever people" were able to extrapolate, you can take a read of this:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_synchronisation
(if you can overcome your aversion to well referenced sources of information)

I can't think of any thought experiments that demonstrate a preference for one interpretation over the other.  Perhaps they're not clever enough.

It's probably more a case that the the thought experiments were used, during the course of their education on the subject, to demonstrate the empirical consequences of SR; as opposed to being used to draw further deductions between interpretations that are generally considered to be historical footnotes in the development of SR.

Your difficulty with extrapolation however, would partially explain the issue in this case.

If we take the contention that the simultaneity of clock synchronisation events is derived and not assumed

I didn't say that.  I said RoS is derived from SR premises. The above statement is not a statement of RoS.

Again, we can extrapolate the statement about the simutaneity of clock synchronisation events (in the given frame).

I agree, RoS is derived from SR premises. The one-way speed of light is assumed, which leads us to derive an assumption about the simultaneity of clock synchronisation as well as an assumption about the simultaneous return of light signals. The simultaneous return of light signals is an empirically verifiable proposition across all interpretations, so it doesn't need to be assumed. The assumption of simultaneity of clock synchronisation events which is derived - and upon which RoS is contingent - cannot be tested and so it must be assumed.

It isn't a foundational assumpion, it is a conclusional assumption.

Actually, only number 2 is a physical statement.  #1 involves only a statement concerning abstract coordinate time.
...
Because that one is a physical statement, yes.  The other is not.
...

OK, then we can conclude that RoS isn't an accurate representation of the physical world. Its an abstract mathematical proposition which is compatiblle which in no way contradicts absolute simultaneity.

Is that the position you wish to take?

I can perform the in-sync test, but that test again only verifies an abstract coordinate concept.  No physical (or even metaphysical) statement is made in #1, so there is nothing to verify.

There might be one small matter to verify.

Can you empirically verify that the reading d/c, on clock C0, coincides with the synchronisation events at C1 and C2, thereby confirming that your co-ordinate system is an accurate representation of the physical system it purports to describe; can you verify that, in the real-world, the physical world, that the time co-ordinate (d/c) - as provided by the physical clock C0 - can reliably be ascribed to the events at C1 and C2; can you verify that both events coinicde with the same reading on clock C0, given that there is an alternative, mathematically equivalent co-ordinate system which implies that both events do not coinncide with the same reading on clock C0?

It doesn't represent a prediction at all.

Oh but it does! If I say to you that at the very moment you and I are standing in the same room, at that very moment there is a clock in the next room which reads d/c, that is a prediction. If the clock is then brought into our room but it no longer reads d/c - bcos of the time taken to bring it into the room - that doesn't make my first statement any less of a prediction, it just makes it an untestable one.

That conclusion is contingent on the premises, not concluded absent them.  If premises, then RoS.  No ∴RoS period.  Your insistence on the latter is a strawman.  I'm well aware of the validity of the interpretation that posits actual simultaneity, and that it is absolute.  The relative interpretation makes no statement concerning actual simultaneity, only abstract coordinate simultaneity.  The interpretation is very light on metaphysical additions (like preferred frames, locations, moments, aether, whatever) , which is why it is the mainstream interpretation.  All those additions seem like Loch Ness monsters to me.  Not asserting no monster, but it seems just silly to posit one or several.

If you want to peddle the idea that the relativity of simultaneity is perfectly compatibile with and in no way whatsover contradicts absolute simultaneity, then go right ahead. We can progress onto the next part of the atemporal argument.

I take this back. Reading carefully, she doesn't. She utilizes a convention to make her claim.  No isotropy is assumed.  The clocks are defined to be in sync in that frame by that convention, and no assumptions need be made at all.  This is why her (completely abstract) claim does not conflict with interpretations that make different assumptions.  No assumption with which to conflict.  That's the beauty of a theory that makes no metaphysical assumptions.  None of the conclusions are metaphysical ones, and all your attempts at conflict are on the metaphysical level.

I didn't predict your retraction, I derived it (from observtion).

OK, so can we settle on your position:
are you saying that SR does not confict with, or make any claims/statements/etc. which contradict the absolutist interpretations?

Btw, the premises of SR assume isotropy and as you have been so eager to point out, "she is assuming the premises of SR" ergo isotropy is assumed and with it, the conclusion of RoS.

If you're arguing that she doesn't assume isoptropy, then you are representing an interpretation that is not SR, but a new one (on all of us) that has constant light speed in some directions but not all directions. We can then just propose that we rotate Alice's frame until we find the direction in which the one-way light speed isn't constant. That might frighten you though bcos strawmen aren't supposed to be able to fightback.

Again, when your done shadow boxing, I'll be over here discussing relevant points.


Empirical Assumptions - Contextual examples

Lloyd (1988: 2), a philosopher of evolutionary biology, stated that, ―Under a general hypothetico-deductive view of theories, a theory is understood as offering hypotheses from which, in combination with empirical assumptions, deductions can be made regarding empirical results.

Why look at the deflection of a particle’s trajectory in an electromagnetic field in order to measure its charge? – and doing so will demand a large number of auxiliary empirical assumptions.

Cartwright, Nancy D. (2009) 'What is this thing called 'ecacy'?',

The model solves for the mass evolution based on what are thought to be the dominant input boundary conditions. Some empirical assumptions are made to predict the behavior of lower order physics.

//proceedings.asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=1605299

By identifying the energy that must be absorbed through deformation of the vehicle’s roof using the FMVSS 216 five inches (127 mm) of roof crush strength limit as a constraint, it was possible to calculate theoretically using some broad empirical assumptions generated from rollover crash test data, Vehicle roof strength as it relates to contained occupant injury prevention during rollover crashes

Young, D. P., Grzebieta R.H

one word of caution is that the Doppler Dimming method strongly depends on empirical assumptions of the electron density and ion temperature, thus possibly leading to different results with different assumptions (Wilhelm et al. 2011).

//iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/794/2/109/meta

[the_roosh (OP)]

You seem to have edited out the 'above'.  If I say 'the stationary system', the term only has meaning in an absolute interpretation, so I probably meant actually stationary.

Apologies, I didn't think I had missed anything. But yes, that is the point that I wanted to clarify, whether or not you were talking about absolute rest.

Btw, as we have already covered, Einstein uses the term "stationary system" in his paper.

You and I have a different definition of 'prediction' then.  You apparently mean different metaphysical descriptions of the system.  I don't call those predictions.  The relative interpretation doesn't make many such statements, only empirical predictions and abstract relations with coordinate systems such as an abstract line being above a rock.

I mean statements about the physical configuration of the system. Just as Einstein talked about the hands on a watch physical watch being simultaneous with the arrival of a physical train, so am I talking about the reading on a physical clock being simultaneous with a physical photon making physical contact with another physical clock. But you seem to be of the opinion that this isn't a physical statement.

Ah: An assertion that the relative interpretation requires a metaphysical addition despite never using it.  I can see no such thing.  The interpretation makes no conclusions/statements concerning this privileged frame.
This is akin to asserting that a triangle cannot be discussed in a geometry class without assigning it to the actual coordinate system (as opposed to any other coordinate system, or no coordinate system).
....
Perhaps you can distinguish the two.  I tend to use the two terms interchangably, which I would not wish to do if they mean different things.

I did distinguish between the two, it must just not have registered.

Again, contemplate the twin-paradox and the Hafele-Keating experiment. How do they end? They end with the twins/measuring instruments being reuinited in a single reference frame for comparison. This is done as a matter of operational necessity. Reuiniting the measuring equipment like that in a single reference frame privileges that reference frame. It doesnt mean it is an absolute reference frame, it just means that there is an automatically ascribed asymmetry where one inertial frame is "forced" to undergo acceleration while the other isn't.

Again, this is a matter of operational necessity bcos there exists a class of reference frames which we can more readily subject to acceleration. It is also a matter of operational necessity that we define our units of measurement. The frame in which we define them necessarily preferences that reference frame.

As a further matter of operational necessity, SR requires this priveleging of reference frames i.e. it requires the reuniting of clocks in a single reference frame bcos if it didnt then actual reciprocal time dilation could be actually be measured. And what would the results of that be? According to SR Clock B would show an elapsed time less than that of Clock A and Clock A would show an alapsed time less than that of Clock B - in other words, it would lay bare the paradox of actual reciprocal time dilation. No, instead, SR requires this priveleging of a single reference frame to save yet another of its untestable predictions and assumed conclusions.

This comment makes no logical sense.  If I don't know whats in my left hand, then I must assume that I have a coin in my right. The one just doesn't follow from the other.

It makes no logical sense bcos you haven't understood it, as is clear by your misrepresentation of it here.

You're taking them as two independent things bcos you believe that the simultaneity of clock syncing events is independent of defining the time from A to B to be equal to the time from B to A. They aren't. They're like two ends of the same rope or two sides of the same coin. Establishing one implicitly establishes the other.

As I said it's saying that Alice moves relative to Bob simultaneously establishes the fact that Bob moves relative to Alice - not like your example with the coin in the hands.

An animal hair is physical evidence.  Alice hasn't got that and has thus made no metaphysical claim.  A non-metaphysical claim does not conflict with a metaphysical claim. That claim is sort of like positing the dog, except without even finding the hair.

Again, inadvertently making my point. Exactly, she doesn't have any physical evidence of the synchrony of the clocks. However, her lack of evidence doesn't mean that she "thus" hasn't made a physical (or metaphysical) claim it simply means that she has no evidence for her claim about the synchrony of the clocks.

The hair represents the physical evidencce of the light signal returning simultaneously, from which she cannot conclude that the clocks in her frame are synchronised.

Hence the assumption, hence the circular reasoning.

I'm comparing (not advocating) the SR theory with no additional metaphysical assumptions (not even fixed one-way light speed), with the absolute interpretation.  Only the latter adds all these metaphysical assumptions.  Since the former interpretation doesn't deny any of them, it isn't incompatible.

You mean you are comparing the Lorentz transformation and other mathematical artefacts with the absolute interpretation? Then you are arguing a new kind of strawman.

If you were to compare like for like then you would see that SR theory with no additional metaphysical assumptions (not even fixed one-way light speed) is simply the mathematical formalism, and that the absolute interpretation also employs the same mathematical formalism. So, comparing the two would actually just be comparing the mathematics to itself.

You seem to be basing it on the idea that the mathematics for both theories is identical and so the mathematics is compatible with both.

I've not been discussing Newton's theories.  If you don't mean that one, then which two theories?

Etherless Lorentz-Poincare theory or the forumulation as outlined by Michael Tooley. You know absolute interpretations of relativity.

That's a thing?  Never heard of it.  Sounds pretty hokey.

hahaha of course it isn't......not yet 

As we discussed, we can derive a statement about the configuration of the physical system that Alice is in, which says that the reading d/c (on the clock at the midpoint) co-incides with the clock synchronisation events at B1 and B2.

That's not a physical statement about the state of her system. It is a pure abstract statement about it.
Its an abstract statement about it which purports to be an accurate representation of it i.e. it is a map that claim to mirror the territory.

[the_roosh (OP)]

============
Straw Herring
===========

You see, you've mistaken my recognition of the fact, that your point about Romer is a meaningless irrelevancy in the context of this discussion

Depends what you think my point was concerning it.  There were two in fact, both relevant.  Neither had anything to do with measurement of the one-way speed of light.

I wasn't sure what point you were trying to make. My intuitive response was to present references to information which was pertinent to the question of the one-way speed of light, as it pertains to SR - because that was topic under consideration. I knew that the information I posted was relevant to the question of one-way light speed in the context of SR partly bcos "your peers" had linked me to similar such information in the past. I knew, therefore, that your point must have been a red-herring and so I gave it little to no consideration.

That is one of the advantages of having spent the years debating against "your peers", I know that the information that they have presented me with is valid and relevant.   

You could state how you believe it is pertinent to modern day attempts to measure the isotropic one-way speed of light

I would be lying if I said that.  It isn't pertinent at all.  You said that, not me.

I said precisely the opposite. I called you on your red-herring. Yet, you tried to persist with it. It's a level of intellectual  dishonesty I haven't encountered before but at least when it came down to it, you have admitted its irrelevance to the topic of this discussion.

Wow, that statement makes it sound like it was measured at all, just not very accurately.

It's a separate philosophical discussion to determine in what sense one can say he actually measured the speed of light. He made measurements and got a value, did he actually measure the speed of light tho?

The first point was brought up when the subject first came up: An illustration of a different sync convention that the one Einstein (and Lorentz) uses.

But not free of the same issues that all sync conventions apparently fall foul of.

The 2nd point was my suggestion that you consider the experiment being done in a system where light speed is 3x in one direction as it is in the opposite, and what result would be measured if the experiment was done in both directions in attempt to test this.  I'm not sure about that one myself.  Barring that funny interpretation, perhaps just describe the experiment in standard absolute terms where light speed is constant in all directions, but the test system is moving at half light speed. I want to see if you have any idea what you're talking about.

You're basically asking what would happen if we actually measured the one-way speed of light, specifically, if we measured it to be anisotropic. Why not just ask that question without trying to obfuscate the issue with red-herrings.

If the experiment was done in both directions you would get, as you have specified, 3x in one direction and x in the opposite. You only need to picture Alice and Bob to get an intuitive image of this. Picture Bob from Alice's perspective - she sees light travel at 3x in one direction and x in the other (for Bob).  Now, don't assume the premises of SR and put yourself in Bob's position where the light is 3x in one direction and x in the other. As per the Michael Tooley quote, if you could measure this then you could detect your absolute motion relative to the abssolute frame.

Or, take the route Poincare did. Start with the absolute rest frame and have two frames moving relative to that. Imagine the sync convention in those absolutely moving frames, essentially Alice and Bob are both in  "the relatively moving frame" where the clocks don't sync - but they cannot determine that by way of experiment.

This leads to slightly different conclusions than SR, but not in terms of things that can actually be tested.

Are you saying I'm making an error in the statement above?  Or just an error in realization of your purposes here?
Anyway, yes, I've had trouble with exactly that.  You repeat errors that I've pointed out.

I'm saying you are making an error in interpreting the argument I am presenting. As you have repeatedly demonstrated, you have presumed I am questioning the internal consistency of SR, despite it being repeatedly stated that this is not the case. Indeed, you perceive me to repeat errors that you have pointed out, but you have been pointing out errors as they pertain to the claim of the contradictory nature of SR. You've been beating a strawman over the head with a red herring while I've been tapping you on the shoulder to tell you that you've been beating a strawman over the head with a red herring.

Fine.  I believe you.  But I'll still comment whenever I think the position is being misrepresented, for whatever purpose.  If you're trying to argue that other interpretations are valid, nobody has disagreed with that.  If you have a different interpretation than one of the usual ones, then I've yet to render an opinion of the validity of it on the surface.

As long as you aren't commenting to highlight how I'm misprepresenting the internal consistency of SR then there should be no problem.

[the_roosh (OP)]

===================
Absolute Interpretation
===================

This is the absolute interpretation, so there is one meaning to 'stationary system'.  It means her position is not changing.  Bob is moving.  Not relatively.  Moving period.  That's how the absolute interpretation words things.  Motion is property, not a relation under the interpretation.

Feel free to tell me I'm misrepresenting the interpretation.  It is waters I don't usually find myself in.  Wording things in such a manner is not second nature to me.

I just wanted to double check before misrepresenting you.

It is somewhat telling that you put Alice in the absolute rest frame. It is a point I allude to in the paper. Alice in the absolute reference frame with Bob moving relative is indiscernible from Einstein's treatment of co-ordinate systems. This gives us another possible interpretation of SR, which says that SR treats the "stationary system" as precisely that, stationary i.e. at absolute rest. It's empirically equivalent to, and indiscernible, from SR. If you apply Leibniz's identity of indiscernibles you might say that they are one and the same thing.

That isn't how Poincare derived the Lorentz transformation though.

The transformations involved three reference frames. Frame S0 is at rest in the ether, S is a Galilean frame moving with velocity v with respect to S0 , and  S'  is an auxiliary frame that also moves with velocity v  with respect to S0  . S0  and S  are connected by the Galilean transformations, whereas S  and  S'  are connected by the transformations                           [symbols didn't render] . Combining these two transformations we obtain the transformations connecting  S  and S'.

On the Empirical Equivalence between  Special Relativity and Lorentz’s Ether Theory by Pabo Accuna.

As you will see from the abstract below, Acuna is one of your peers and argues in favor of Einstein's interpretation.

In this paper I argue that the case of Einstein‘s special relativity vs. Hendrik Lorentz‘s ether theory can be decided in terms of empirical evidence, in spite of the predictive equivalence between the theories. In the historical and philosophical literature this case has been typically addressed focusing on non-empirical features (non-empirical virtues in special relativity and/or non-empirical flaws in the ether theory). I claim that non-empirical features are not enough to provide a fully objective and uniquely determined choice in instances of empirical equivalence. However, I argue that if we consider arguments proposed by Richard Boyd and by Larry Laudan and Jarret Leplin, a choice based on non-consequential empirical evidence favoring Einstein‘s theory can be made.

It's an important distinction.

What distinction?  There seems to be only one way to use those words.  You had suggested before a possible difference between the absolute frame and the preferred one.  I presume those to be the same, so feel free to clarify if they're not.

That is what is generally meant by the term preferred reference frame. As I outlined in the other post, a preferred reference frame need only be the frame where instruments are reuinited for comparison. Or the frame in which measurement units are defined (I see you point on this below and will answer it there).

Just to be clear, the interpretation Im advocating is one that employs a round-trip speed of light principle, so it will be empirically equivalent to the other interpretations.

That remains to be seen.  I've not seen it.

All of the theories, in effect, operate a round-trip light principle, including SR. SR just goes a step further and says that thee one-way speed of light is also a constant.

That's not true.  Simpler in some ways, more complicated in others.  Try to imagine implementing a speed limit sign on the side of the road using the absolute interpretation.  Can be done, but it wouldn't be very helpful to the guy reading it. Such examples is why physics is far simpler with the relative interpretation.

Apologies, I don't really understand the analogy. The speed limit sign can still imply relative to the road.

Could be interesting.

If its undetectable and plays no role in predictions then, just like the Ether, it can be discarded, without affecting the mathematics of the theory. Imagine, Alice in the absolute reference frame and Bob moving relative to her. Now imagine that Alice moves too. There's no observer at absolute rest and hence, no absolute reference frame.

That's a redefinition of how the term is used in physics.  Perhaps you should choose another one.  Why do reunited instruments need a frame?  They can reunite on the fly, comparing results at some event as they pass.  Events don't have frames.

It's not necessarily a redefinition of it, rather a different interpretation of it. Instead of nature doing the privileging, we do it as a matter of operational necessity.

If they could compare on the fly then we could have Alice and Bob compare recciprocal time dilation on the fly, but that would, of course give rise to a paradox bcos it would require Alice to show that Bob's clock ticks slower than hers, while Bob shows that Alice's clock ticks slower than his.

That's exactly what Alice has done when she selects her abstract coordinate system.  How is it going to be different than the standard interpretation then?

Yep, and Bob does the same, but, as we can from things like the Twin-paradox and Hafele-Keating experiments, measuring instruments must be reunited in a single frame - that could be Alice's or it could be Bob's. In practical terms, the reference frame at rest relative to the Earth is the one used in the HK experiment and others.

for us, by default, that is the reference frame of the Earth (for obvious reasons).

That frame isn't inertial.  In fact it is an accelerating/rotating reference frame, with a funny set of properties all its own.

Indeed, but it doesn't stop us from defining an Earth Centered Inertial frame. As I'm sure you will have learned from "my peers", this is the frame that is arguably used in GPS.
//en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth-centered_inertial

Hate to be picky, but frames don't define units.  They don't even define origins.  OK, the rotating frame could define a unit of time period, even though we don't use it.  We cut up time from a standard one rotation plus nearly 236 seconds.  The meter?  Somebody pulled that out of his arse.  I don't think anything on Earth really suggests it.

Nope, frames don't define units, we define them in specific frames. Take "the Second" for example, that is defined by an atomic clock at rest, relative to the Earth (in a lab in Colorado).

And yep, the meter was pulled out of someone's arse (are you from the UK btw?) but it was while his arse was stationary relative to the Earth, calculating the circumference. That is another point I make in the paper, with respect to the nature of time. I see time as a system of measurement like the metric system (not necessarily extracted from the posterior) but equally neither fundamental nor emergent, but simply defined.

If you delve into the origin of units of time and the processes of a clock, you will see that, while not necessarily pulled out of someone's arse, they are equally arbitrary and are just units of comparison.

Empirical measurements agree with that and much more.  Why not take the full statement that all of EM is included in principle of relativity?  That doesn't assume anything, and it includes your subset principle.  Why go for the weak premise when there's a stronger empirical one?

I am familiar with the idea, but only in the context of SR. If it implies the one-way speed of light, then I've stated the issues with that.

The quote doesn't say much.  It says you can't tell.  Nothing in it was news to me.  Sounds like "A conspiriacy to hide the invisible pink elephant is equivalent to a conspiracy to posit an invisible pink elephant, therefore there is as much reason to posit the invisible pink elephant as there is to not do so.
The reasoning seems to be a refutation to some (not included, but probably involving conspiracy to hide) argument against the absolute interpretation, but none of it seems relevant to actually finding a logical flaw in any of them.

Basically it says, if you can measure the one-way speed of light, as it pertains to SR, then you can distinguish between SR and absolutist theories - eseentially rendering the objection to positing undetectable quantities equal across the two interpretations.

In this interpretation, I don't know what it means to be synced in a frame.  Synced is an absolute thing, not a frame thing, so those words have no meaning. I can't follow this.

It's a statement about the simultaneity of events in an inertial frame.

I don't know the base premises.  You talk about starting with an absolute frame, but then use relative, not absolute terminology.  Most absolute interpretations don't talk about frames at all.  Alice and Bob are moving, with different velocities.  That's all.  This is obviously a different interpretation, but I don't know what any of the terminology means.

I posted an excerpt from a paper above which outlines how Poincare derived the Lorentz transform and it makes use of the term "frame". Take a read of the paper.

[Halc]

The rules of empiricism do not apply to mathematic bcos, as has been repeatedly stated (by both of us) mathematics is abstracts

Agree, but then why are you applying rules of empiricism to a mathematical statement?

But, just as the rules of empiricism do not govern mathematics, neither do the rules of mathematics govern empiricism.

You probably don't mean that mathematics cannot be used in physics, so not sure what you mean by this.  Most of SR theory is mathematical.  There are some empirical predictions of course, but we don't seem to be in disagreement about those, only the mathematical parts.

That is why mathematically derived predictions are required to be verified/falsified by way of empirical observation. Empirical observation trumps mathematical derivation.

No it doesn't.  If the model predicts one thing and empirical measurement yields another, then the model does not correspond to reality, but the mathematics in the model is not wrong because of it.  The model is the wrong one, not the mathematics.

Theory and Interpretation
Forgive me if I'm using the terms imprecisely here, but I'm hoping you will understand the point that I am trying to make, as opposed to getting caught up in any imprecise usage of terms.

If I understand your usage of terms correctly, the "theory" appears to represent the mathematical formalism, sans metaphysical assumptions. Essentially, the Lorentz transformation, metric, etc. Am I correct in that?

Not all theories have mathematical formalization, and not all mathematical formalism is part of theories. The hard sciences (like we're discussing here) tend to be quite mathematical, but something like psychological theory might not as much.  What defines a theory is empirical predictions.  Hence something like string theory (insanely heavy on the mathematics) is arguably not a theory since it has yet to make a prediction.  Quantum field theory is a theory, but pilot wave theory is not.
Interpretations get into the metaphysics. One can choose to totally skip the metaphysics and just work with the theory raw.  That's what Alice could be said to be doing if you keep metaphysical claims out of her conclusions.

If so, then we can conclude that the relativity of simultaneity isn't derived from the mathematics.

No idea how you conclude that. I challenge you to derive it without mathematics.

How can we conclude this? Bcos the absolutist interpretations are mathematically equivalent but do not incorporate RoS.

They're not equivalent at all.  Again, trying implementing a speed limit sign using the alternate interpretation, and you'll see the difference in the mathematics.  I notice you didn't respond to that.

RoS is derived from the theory which defines simultaneity in a empirical (physical) way.
An absolute interpretation.discards that definition (and several others) in favor of metaphysical ones.

We can still use the term "derive" to describe the statements that each interpretation necessitates, bcos they can be derived from the mathematics together with the mataphysical assumptions.

I'm considering the interpretation that makes no additional metaphysical assumptions (raw SR theory). Lacking a conflicting assumption, I can hope this prevents conflict with an interpretation that makes some.

But - and I'm stating the obvious bcos it appears to be part of the issue - scientists (as opposed to mathematicians) are in the domain of empiricism. This is why they didn't simply accept what Einstein had derived mathematically as a given, instead they derived predictions from Einstein's interpretation (theory??) and then sought to test those empirically

The predictions were not derived from any interpretation, which makes none.  You describe no predictions above except the simultaneous return of the signals.  The rest is just abstract mathematical statements.  They could become metaphysical statements had there been any metaphysical premises, but I'm avoiding them for the moment to make the point that the definitions don't require them.
Anyway, I more or less agree with the description until it got into a description of what the scientists may or may not have accepted or decided needed testing.  The philosophers maybe.  Their job is to sort out the sorts of things being debated in this thread.

And, while SR stood up to every single test, it appears to be less well understood that so too did all of the mathematically equivalent, absolutist interpretations.

SR is a theory.  The absolute interpretation of it is still SR.
If SR fails in a prediction, any absolute interpretation goes down with it.

Interestingly, SR claims up front not to correspond to reality except locally, so there are plenty of non-local tests to falsify it as a model of the universe at medium scales.  Simplest test is the inability to sync a pair of clocks on different floors of a building.  So there likewise needs to be an absolute interpretation of GR theory.

In comes the thought experiment with Alice and Bob. Usually, these thought experiments are used as a means to demonstrate the empirical consequences of Einstein's interpretation.
...
They represent real-world scenarios which is why they are employed to demonstrate the empirical consequences logically necessitated by the different interpretations.
...
As they represent an idealised experimental set-up, they demonstrate to us the empirical consequences that are logically necessitated by the different interpretations. In this manner we can apply the rules of empiricism - not the rules of mathematics - and see what empirical derivations we can make.

Interpretations don't have empirical consequences.

This is partly the reason why the intuitive response to reading Alice and Bob is to make the assumption that the premises of SR are implied. But we're not doing that. We're assuming the premises of no interpretation.

That's what I've been doing as well.  Still assuming the premises of the theory, which is OK since they're empirical premises.

Yes, the thought experiments are abstract but they are not abstract in the sense of being purely, mathematical abstractions.

The conclusions they draw are often pure mathematical abstract conclusions.  'Clock at A is in sync with clock at B' is a pure mathematical abstract conclusion, not a metaphysical one.  'Clock A is in sync with Clock B' on the other hand is worded as a metaphysical statement.  Hence me being picky about the difference.

They are abstract in the sense that talking about and describing the Hafele-Keating experiment (or any other such test of relativity) is abstract, but not in a mathematical sense. They are abstract descriptions of real-world experiments.

H-K was an empirical exercise, not an abstract one or a thought experiment. It is in fact the first empirical verification of the twins experiment. One may be free to interpret the results in different ways, but the point was the empirical comparison done at the end coupled with an empirical history of the journey taken by each device.

The power of a thought experiment is that it allows us to represent a real-world experimental set-up which cannot be carried out for practical reasons - we aren't able to accelerate spaceships up to the speeds involved.

Beg to differ.  There are spaceships out there whose navigation depends on GR.  There are clocks moved at very high speeds with predicted results.  One can call them space ships if it satisfies some requirement. The thought experiments might help initially work out the details of the theory, but in a thread like this, those thought experiments are just illustrations of the established theory, not means by which new discoveries are expected to be made. We both assume the theory to be sound when we discuss them. I have little personal means to verify it myself.

Empirical Assumptions

What ever might be an empirical assumption?  I assume I observe X?? I observe it or I observe something else. I don't see where assumptions come in.

See the bottom of this post for contextual examples of the term "empirical assumptions". You might use the term "metaphysical assumption", but we will see why the semantical difference is immaterial.

OK, so you mean metaphysical assumption when you say this.  Perhaps you also mean metaphysical consequences when speaking of 'empirical consequences of interpretations'.  This sort of language abuse is rapidly destroying our ability to communicate.  'Empirical' and 'metaphysical' are mutually exclusive.  As soon as some finding becomes empirical, it ceases to be interpretation. You walk out of the cave and see what causes the shadows on the wall for the first time.  The various interpretations of those shadows are now empirically validated or falsified theories and are no longer interpretations.

An empirical assumption is an assumption about how the physical world is/should/must be in order for a given interpretation of empirical evidence to be made to fit the conclusions drawn from that evidence. If the empirical assumptions aren't granted, then the conclusions, drawn by the given interpretation, don't stand-up.

Understood, but I refuse to use this wording myself.  It seems intentionally designed to mislead.

We need a word to replace 'empirical' then, something to mean what actually can be observed, because you're destroyed that meaning.  Communication not possible with no word that means that anymore.

As has been stated repeatedly, we can derive 2 statements about the physical configuration of Alice's system:
1) the reading d/c on clock at C0 must co-incide with the clock synchronisation events at C1 and C2.
2) the light signals [must] return to the mid-point simultaneously and co-incide with the reading 2d/c on clock C0.

Again, the 2nd is a physical statement, the 1st an abstract one.  Both are statements about the physical configuration, so I agree with you as you word it.

On the other hand, statement #1 above, which has been derived from Einstein's interpretation of the mathematics

It is derived from his convention.  There is no interpretational component to that.

cannot be verified empirically. It is therefore an untestable prediction; it is unfalsifiable*.

It's entirely testable. He put a way to do it in his paper. That demonstration involves purely empirical methods, so it can very much be verified empirically.
Your problem seems to be an assumption that Einstein is making a sort of metaphysical statement by #1. But it's just an abstract statement, and one that can be tested.

It is unobserved. Not only is it unobserved, it would appear to be unobservable.

A metaphysical assertion (had one been made) would not be observable.  The abstract thing is quite observable.  You're confusing the two.  No such statement of the former has been made, nor derived.

In the domain of empiricism, something which is unobserved or unobservable constitutes an "empirical assumption".

As I said, I understand what you mean by this, but will not accept the language since doing so would deprive me of a word I need for its defined purpose.

The intepretation makes a claim about the configuration of the physical system.

The theory (not any interpretation) makes this abstract claim about the configuration of the physical system.  The theory isn't based on any new assumptions, so it is hard to contest.

1) Reading [d/c] on clock C0 = physical claim

That's an empty physical claim, standing in opposition to one where the clock doesn't read that at some point, like it skips over some times or something.  It wouldn't be a clock if this claim was unrealistic.  And it's clock at C0 BTW.

2) Light signal making contact with C1 (synchronisation event at C1) = physical claim
3) Light signal making contact with C2 (synchronisation event C2) = physical claim

Again, all empty claims, in opposition to an interpretation that the light signals were diverted elsewhere.  None of these are claims.  They're descriptions of events, using wording that frames (most of) them in an abstract coordinate system.

4) 2 & 3 coinciding with 1 = physical claim

Abstract (neither physical nor metaphysical) claim.  Your insistence otherwise seems the source of our disagreement, and the source of my labeling your wording as strawman. 

5) Reading [2d/c] on clock C0 = physical claim

Just another event description, not a claim.

6) Light signals returning and co-inciding with 5 = physical claim.

Wow, I agree on one 1 of 6.

Her conclusion of RoS can be stated as:
a) #4 above
together with
b) not #4 in relatively moving frames

In relatively moving frames, 1,2,3,5 are not established.  #4 is demonstrated only in one frame and unknown (without employing further methods) in other frames.  The sync test cannot be performed in other frames, and we've not devised a means here to demonstrate whether or not they're in sync in a given one.  But I deny that at this point b) has been demonstrated.  Bob hasn't done this.

Alice has not concluded RoS.  That comes from the SR, not from new experimentation.  If you don't assume the empirical premises of SR, it doesn't follow.  Newton didn't posit RoS because he was unaware of the empirical premises in question.  It follows quite trivially from empirical evidence.  You don't need to do any arithmetic to conclude it.

I was emphasising the fact that those "very clever people" (your peers maybe?) derived a number of insights about the Einsteinian intepretation, which weren't expressly stated in the 1905 paper.

I'm mostly talking about the theory here, not somebody else's interpretation of it.  I won't go so far as to assert that there is no metaphysical language used in Einstein's works, but I'm not relying on it.

I agree, RoS is derived from SR premises. The one-way speed of light is assumed

It is not.  It is never concluded from SR.  Only certain (most/all) interpretations assume this, but not the theory itself, and RoS is derived from the theory, not any interpretation.
An interpretation that has metaphysically direction-dependent light speed is functionally equivalent to a coordinate system with non-orthogonal axes.  While it is mathematically valid to do this, one might wonder why one would wish to adopt such an interpretation.  Anyway, in such an interpretation, Einstein's convention still works and Alice's clocks are still in sync in her frame by that convention.  It works because the convention doesn't reference any metaphysical assumptions.

OK, then we can conclude that RoS isn't an accurate representation of the physical world.

Of course not.  RoS isn't such a statement at all, as I've said for countless posts.  You're just now getting that?

Its an abstract mathematical proposition which is compatiblle which in no way contradicts absolute simultaneity.

Since absolute simultaneity is a metaphysical premise, it doesn't conflict since they're in unrelated realms.  So agree.

I can perform the in-sync test, but that test again only verifies an abstract coordinate concept.  No physical (or even metaphysical) statement is made in #1, so there is nothing to verify.

There might be one small matter to verify.

Can you empirically verify that the reading d/c, on clock C0, coincides with the synchronisation events at C1 and C2, thereby confirming that your co-ordinate system is an accurate representation of the physical system it purports to describe;

Assuming clock at C0, sure, using the same method.

can you verify that, in the real-world, the physical world, that the time co-ordinate (d/c) - as provided by the physical clock C0 - can reliably be ascribed to the events at C1 and C2

No such concept has been introduced by the theory.  The absolute interpretation introduces that concept and thus gives meaning to a variant to that question, and yes, even that can be verified by Einstein's convention (if you choose to use the convention).  What cannot be verified is the clocks being at respective locations C0, C1, and C2, so the test can at best assume they are at those locations, or not assume it and declare that this physical sync cannot be determined.

can you verify that both events coinicde with the same reading on clock C0, given that there is an alternative, mathematically equivalent co-ordinate system which implies that both events do not coinncide with the same reading on clock C0?

Hard to parse that.  I presume we're using Einstein's definitions here, in which case, yes, of course.  The events are simultaneous in one coordinate system and not the other.  Both are abstract statements.

Abstract simultaneity convention is something like this:  You select an arbitrary coordinate system of 4 orthogonal axes in spacetime and draw a line from each event tangent to the temporal axis.  If the two tangent lines meet the arbitrarily selected axis at the same point, they will also have that property with any line parallel to the selected one.  It is the orientation, not location, that counts.  Anyway, if that abstract condition is met, the events are simultaneous by definition of the convention.  There is no metaphysical statement of simultaneity implied by that.  It is an abstract statement made about a physical system.  The description here speaks of events and not of synced clocks.  The latter are not events.
All such coordinate systems are mathematically equivalent, and the property will not be met with some of them using the same two events.  That is another way of answering your question above.

It doesn't represent a prediction at all.

Oh but it does! If I say to you that at the very moment you and I are standing in the same room, at that very moment there is a clock in the next room which reads d/c, that is a prediction.

I didn't say the clock in the next room reads d/c.  I said it does in the coordinate system where the rooms are at a fixed location.  The latter is not a physical statement, but an abstract one.

are you saying that SR does not confict with, or make any claims/statements/etc. which contradict the absolutist interpretations?

The theory doesn't, no.  An interpretation of it might, but I have a hard time thinking even of that one.

Btw, the premises of SR assume isotropy and as you have been so eager to point out, "she is assuming the premises of SR" ergo isotropy is assumed and with it, the conclusion of RoS.

I said I took that back.  It isn't concluded nor even assumed, and there are all these sites that show it can't be done, so it obviously isn't needed by the theory at all, which needed no modification due to the inability to show this.  It uses a convention with coordinate systems with orthogonal axes.  It is a definition of a convention, not an assumption about the underlying reality that isn't needed for statements not concerning that underlying reality.

If you're arguing that she doesn't assume isoptropy

If she's using just the theory and no interpretational baggage, then yes, I'm arguing that.

[Halc]

But yes, that is the point that I wanted to clarify, whether or not you were talking about absolute rest.

Btw, as we have already covered, Einstein uses the term "stationary system" in his paper.

He does not give it that meaning, which is why of course all the denial sites gather like flies around that passage.

You and I have a different definition of 'prediction' then.  You apparently mean different metaphysical descriptions of the system.  I don't call those predictions.

I mean statements about the physical configuration of the system.

I meant that also.  A statement is not a prediction.  A prediction is an anticipated result of a measurement.  The word implies the measurement has not yet been performed.

I talking about the reading on a physical clock being simultaneous with a physical photon making physical contact with another physical clock. But you seem to be of the opinion that this isn't a physical statement.

I said it wasn't a prediction, not that it wasn't a physical statement.  Predictions are used to verify/falsify a theory.  A theory that doesn't make a distinct prediction isn't a theory, however blue in the face it might turn describing a physical system.

Again, contemplate the twin-paradox and the Hafele-Keating experiment. How do they end? They end with the twins/measuring instruments being reuinited in a single reference frame for comparison.

A local comparison is not frame dependent.  That comparison can be (and was) done in any frame.  It isn't possible to not be in the other frames.  H-K beginning and end events were not done by equipment that was stationary in the same frame as each other.  It was an unnecessary requirement and no care was taken to do so.  Likewise with the twins at both ends of the journey.  The requirement is that they be together.  That's all.  Comparisons are objective if they're local.  I suppose mass comparisons are not.

Reuiniting the measuring equipment like that in a single reference frame privileges that reference frame.

Again, you are redefining the term from the way say Minkowski or Galileo define it, but since we have an alternate term, communication isn't as hampered.

It doesnt mean it is an absolute reference frame, it just means that there is an automatically ascribed asymmetry where one inertial frame is "forced" to undergo acceleration while the other isn't.

An intertial frame cannot be accelerated.  An accelerated frame can, but it has different properties.

The hair represents the physical evidencce of the light signal returning simultaneously, from which she cannot conclude that the clocks in her frame are synchronised.

That's fine.  She didn't conclude it from that since it is true in any frame, and the clocks are not synced in them all.

I'm comparing (not advocating) the SR theory with no additional metaphysical assumptions (not even fixed one-way light speed), with the absolute interpretation.  Only the latter adds all these metaphysical assumptions.  Since the former interpretation doesn't deny any of them, it isn't incompatible.

You mean you are comparing the Lorentz transformation and other mathematical artefacts with the absolute interpretation? Then you are arguing a new kind of strawman.

I mean what I said and not what you said.  I'm not even sure what you're trying to say here.  I'm not comitting the strawman fallacy since the statement makes no claims (false or otherwise) about what some interpretation might assert.  Not sure what you think a strawman is.  I just made a claim and invite being corrected.  I might be wrong on this one.

If you don't mean that one, then which two theories?

Etherless Lorentz-Poincare theory or the forumulation as outlined by Michael Tooley. You know absolute interpretations of relativity.

Neither a theory.  If either is a theory, what prediction does it make?  It's an interpretation until it has a falsification test.

[Halc]

You could state how you believe it is pertinent to modern day attempts to measure the isotropic one-way speed of light

I would be lying if I said that.  It isn't pertinent at all.  You said that, not me.

I said precisely the opposite. I called you on your red-herring. Yet, you tried to persist with it. It's a level of intellectual  dishonesty I haven't encountered before but at least when it came down to it, you have admitted its irrelevance to the topic of this discussion.

It was brought up due to its relevance to a sync convention being discussed.  Sync convention is relevant to this thread topic.

So to repeat, I brought it up as a relevant example of a different sync convention.  I persisted with it because you suggested that he cannot have done what he did (which was measuring light speed utilizing a one-way method, not measuring the one-way speed of light).

It's a separate philosophical discussion to determine in what sense one can say he actually measured the speed of light. He made measurements and got a value, did he actually measure the speed of light tho?

You still deny it!  This is the 2nd reason why I didn't let it drop.  SR says the method is valid and should yield exactly c.  The theory says that, not any interpretation. It follows trivially from the empirical premises of SR. If your interpretation denies this, it is wrong.

But not free of the same issues that all sync conventions apparently fall foul of.

Your claim of there being issues with a defined convention is noted.  What do you think a convention is?  Is that another word that is going to get redefined?

You're basically asking what would happen if we actually measured the one-way speed of light

I never meant that. He was measuring SoL using a one way method.

As per the Michael Tooley quote, if you could measure this then you could detect your absolute motion relative to the abssolute frame.

If you could meausre 1WSoL, yes, but that doesn't mean that SoL cannot be measured using a one way method. If it yields c every time (as PoR say it must), then no absolute motion can be detected.  Tooley is quite right about this.

This leads to slightly different conclusions than SR, but not in terms of things that can actually be tested.

Yes, they're different conclusions, but not conflicting ones.  All interpretations (if they add premises) make additional conclusions based on those added premises.  You have been calling this circular reasoning, but I have not.