Since GR implies that the curvature of spacetime is affected directly by the matter/energy content and its distribution, it is inherently immune to simplification in any coordinate system - approximation for the purpose of showing off some math with it is what you are referring to - let's assume you are a spherical particle. GR is the principle, claiming the math we use around it is what defines it is false.

GR is approximated by coordinate systems.

Apologies... I meant GR.

See GM, Euclidean space is just an approximation - because at least we can use some of math then.

> Where philosophy intersects with physics, it is called "physics".

And yet, so many physicists have no idea how important self-consistency is in their physics.

> We've never managed to go without need for experiments.

Well, I never made such claim.

Also, Chicken or the egg, physics and philosophy, only a physicist ignoring self-consistency would bother trying to collapse this.

> We can observe the dimension of time with a clock.

Please, I think you are both too small and too slow to see it for what it really is when you look at a clock. You assume it is a dimension as we all do, since for our scale of things, this works pretty well.

> No, it's not. Something is static if it doesn't change with respect to time. Any parameter changes with respect to itself at rate 1.

Again, please I refer to time "itself" to try and catch you before you trip. When I say in this circumstance, time "itself" is static, I mean to say that if it can be reversed along with physical actions and you get back what you started with, then it is independent and unchanging, predetermined and all that that implies - essentially, static.

> This isn't at all a problem. After all, we can already observe in every unit of space, time moving forward or backwards as we see it.

No. I'll stop here. This is just wrong, so I won't go any further with it.

I think you raise a good point that physicists tend to follow only math or lab results, this leaves out the other important aspect of physics, philosophy. So many people think they sit in opposition, physicists should treat philosophy as some kind of irrational mysticism. Truth is, its very easy to miss logical fallacies in experiment proposals because you might think that since anything is possible, any experiment is a valid one. If you include philosophy into the design of a physics experiment, you get to analyse the self-consistency of the proposal before putting it to the test. You might say, well, what if the physics defies the philosophy, well they do go hand in hand and a very expensive experiment should be made to pass both tests, starting with the relatively inexpensive, deep self-consistent logical analysis. What if time could run backwards ? Relative to what ? to where you are now ? so time can run both ways in space and be observed in time ? whose time - the reverse or the forward time we observe in ? so the fundamental operations could go either way - that's still not time in a different direction, since if they did go both ways in the same universe, causality would be floored and relativity would fail, leading to an inconsistent reality. Conclusion without any need for experiments: If you believe reality is consistent, time does not travel in 2 directions in 1 universe.

I don't think the reversing the syllogisms holds in this example. It is not sufficient to say that because T is violation that T would not be in violation if the universe were flipped and all CPT were now opposites. Just managing to show that things do not reverse equally in this universe, does not mean that by inverting everything, you also invert false to true.

I think you have misunderstood the implications of this finding. Just like gravity waves and their observation (or lack of), I think it only takes a small philosophical thought experiment to realise that there are problems with the questions being asked here and so the results alone will only serve to confuse.

For a start, let's assume that time is a dimension - this is an assumption that most physicists hold dear, some do not.
In this circumstance, the arrow of time appears arbitrary since positions in a spatial dimension appear arbitrary - it could this far along and a sequence of actions moved it in this direction, reversing all the actions perfectly moves everything the other way.
Of course, even if this were definitely true, you would still be faced with the dual direction problem - i.e. it looks like if time is a dimension, then it runs the same way forward as backward - as long as actions are reversible. This is just another way to say that time itself is static, the chosen direction itself is arbitrary and one could say that in a inverted universe my reverse is your forward. What I'm really saying here is that if time is a dimension, then the real problem is having a universe where time runs both forwards and backwards in different regions of space and that it would be possible to observe one from the other. This violates relativity.

So, if time were not a dimension, merely a product of components of the universe being able to interact consistently with other components of the universe (i.e. for this to happen, you need causality and change), then it would appear to have a direction to observers too small or slow, but this would be an illusion because the observer can not exist outside of the realm being observed. It's like a physicist is doing a thought experiment without realising he doesn't actually exist outside of the realm he is imagining to be our universe.

Time is a process - Time has no direction at all because it is the process of change that allows observers to do anything at all, imagining it running another direction is actually happening in this universe. Time is the result of a universe struggling with a paradox of it being one solid indivisible thing, or a multitude of things that appear to interact. If it contains components, they require time to observe each other with consistency, being the result of the causality required to keep things consistent. If there were no relativity, the universe would have no discernible objects and its only consistency would be to remain a single, solid unchangeable, unobservable thing.

so CPT invariance implies that the universe is the same thing, just being viewed differently - you still can't run it forwards and backwards in different regions of space and this whole thing of it being viewed differently is just a thought in someone's very real head that also cannot run time differently - it cannot be "viewed" from outside at all. I nearly said you can't run time forwards and backwards in the same universe, at the same time! But of course, the absurdity of that just illustrates that some questions are just improperly formed and do not have meaningful answers because the questions themselves are self-inconsistent and meaningless.

> The company can be uber-evil when everyone in it is as nice as can be. This. In a kind of paradoxical way, many people know this to be true, but cannot proclaim it and some will argue against it for fear of losing their job. They all appear as nice as can be. It's endemic.

I think you are missing an 'else'. Old programmer here being a smart-arse, nobody likes a smart-arse.

So when speaking out becomes illegal...

Well done... be afraid!

Facebook uses losers.

STOP THE PRESS!!! Someone agreed with someone else on Slashdot. It's almost as if common sense prevailed.

This is the real question, they were discussing this stuff years ago, like it should achieve ignition any moment now. I am hoping they are just keeping it quiet since this one is more of a research facility for future fusion devices. Even if they do get more out than they put in, this thing is not viable as an power plant in any way - containment of that output energy is going to be very tricky, plus it gets so darned hot they have to wait half a day before they can fire it again and I think some of the parts like the huge lenses may be too easily damaged. It will be something like, yes we achieved ignition, but we only proved it, most of the energy went into heating up the facility and melting parts