Re: Energy

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 03:43 PM 9/18/01 -0700, John Mallinckrodt wrote:
> It wasn't the "adjacency" that I was concerned with so much as the
> existence or nonexistence of a plausible "causal connection"
> between the increase in one region and the decrease in the other.

I think we are 99.9999% in agreement.

The only reason I hesitate to fully adopt the "causal connection" language
is that I wanted to write the energy-flow document to be understood by
people who, unlike JM, did not heretofore understand the meaning of (and
the importance of) energy flow.

Adding an explicit causality requirement would raise additional questions:
How do I recognize a causal connection?  Can I test for it quantitatively?

I assume such questions COULD be satisfactorily answered, but it would
burden the discussion with much additional complexity.

Fortunately, I think we can duck such questions.  The ordering of words is
important:  I said that in a flow, every positive change in one region is
balanced by a simultaneous negative change in some adjacent [i.e.
contiguous] region.  I didn't say that IF two regions were contiguous there
would be flow.  I didn't say that ALL contiguous regions would participate
in the flow.

In the case of nearby elevators, it is obvious that the energy is flowing
up one cable and back down the other, rather than leaping directly from
elevator to elevator.  The proximity of the elevators is coincidental and
obviously irrelevant.

As I said before, if the *local* conservation of energy is to be
meaningful, we must be able to detect energy flows, reduce them to some low
level, and/or establish reasonably tight upper bounds on the magnitude of
what remains.  Fortunately, it is easy to screen one elevator from another,
so that energy flows (except via the cable) are negligible.