Re: relativistic ordering lemmas

[Stephen Speicher <stephen@SPEICHER.COM>]

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003, John S. Denker wrote:

> On 11/14/2003 11:10 PM, Stephen Speicher wrote:
> > In special relativity _all_ inertial observers will agree on the
> > temporal ordering of events A and B _if_ those two events are
> > causally related in _any_ inertial frame.
>
> Yes.
>
> > This can be proved with mathematical rigor
>
> Yes.
>
> > using a partial order relation and the Collinear Set theorem. See
> > "Independent axioms for Minkowski space-time," John W. Schutz, Pitman
> > Research Notes in Mathematics Series, _Longman_, 1997.
>
> That makes it seem 100 times harder than it really is.

I said, and you acknowledged above, that this can be proved with
_mathematical rigor_, and I gave one of the very few references
ever to accomplish just that. I am sure that Schutz will be
delighted to know that _mathematical rigor_ can be accomplished
with one-hundredth the effort his classic work provided.

> You can derive the key results in your head in less time
> than it takes to tell about it.

[Snip elementary presentation ...]

I'm afraid that your notion of "mathematical rigor" is at odds
with the standards employed by most mathematicians and logicians.

--
Stephen
stephen@speicher.com

Ignorance is just a placeholder for knowledge.

Printed using 100% recycled electrons.
-----------------------------------------------------------