A Demistification of Special Relativity

[Ninja_pig]

I watched the video Leo posted on his blog and found it very hand-wavey and confusing, and said many things which were vague and just confused the listener in my opinion. Here are two videos which will clear up the whole concept for you. I should warn you, the videos do not shy away from the math, but that is somewhat necessary if you wish to truly comprehend the theory.

 

I think we should always remember that it's not reality itself that is mystical, but rather our lack of understanding that makes it appear that way. We can never directly observe reality, only our mind's construction of reality. Reality is a co-creative process. All physical theories are merely extra things which we can overlay onto our 'direct experience', which is only a construct of our mind. This includes our notions of time and space, which do not somehow exist separate from us, but instead are created by our minds in order to make a more cohesive reality which we can experience. There never was any objective time or space, that was always something we had built out of the information coming in from our senses. It is impossible to know anything more about objective reality than that raw information. Everything else is simply interpretation.

If you find any physics mystical, or for some reason believe the scientific community has not fully considered the implications of their theory, it is more likely that you have not fully understood the physics rather than the physicists. May I remind you that physicists are extremely intelligent, passionate, open minded, curious, and have been studying physics very intensely for often decades. Next time you come across a 'paradox' like the pole in a barn, instead of immediately jumping to reality itself being somehow warping to accommodate this paradox, instead consider how the paradox may be a consequence of your own perspective and your mind attempting to build a coherent picture of reality (which again is illusory).