Comment on The speed of light

• Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I kind of despise the time cone answer because it doesn’t actually answer the question. It transforms the question into a picture and uses the picture as the answer which is circular logic.

  “Why to thrown objects fall in a parabola?”

  “See here’s a graph of a equation. If the object is outside the graph it’s not on the parabola and that’s why thrown objects fall in a parabola shape.”

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  • hirihit640@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I don’t think in this case the logic is circular, it just explains how the light cone shows that FTL breaks causality, and assumes that you’ll learn the math behind the light cone somewhere else. Maybe the author assumes the light cone can be better learned from other sources

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    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      But it doesn’t explain it. It is a graph of the equation. But that doesn’t explain the equation. That’s why I gave the parabola example.

      Showing a graphical form of the equation is still only the question but in another format. That’s what makes it circular. If you ask why something is Y = X^2 and I only show you a graph of Y = X^2, that’s not answer. It’s the question in a graphical format.

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      • hirihit640@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        it explains it using other formulas. It’s like if the teacher taught you trigonometry using algebra. They expect you to either already know algebra, or to learn it from somewhere else. You could say that the teacher is just restating trigonometric questions in algebraic format, and that might be a fair way to interpret it, but that also might be enough for people who already know algebra

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