i wish he could have elaborated on the following points 1) provide a counterexample as to how his new 'topology' does not generate a topology in the classical sense. merely stating the definitions are different is not enough to say they are not compatible. which of the open set axioms fail? 2) How his notion of linear structures are also not formalizable as topological group actions on the manifold by some linearly ordered topological group. 3) how his linear structures are different from the path-space formalism in homotopy / Floer theory.
A related idea to Tim's is that each and every observer (an entity capable of making measurements and record the results) has its own 'measure' of time. Time itself is an inexorable flow onto which events are associated and compiled into personal narratives.
Except that Bertrand Russell pointed out the paradox of the empty set and mathematicians say how this is not solved - Borzacchini - incommensurability.
I seen an interview with this guy on the RU-vid channel " closer to the truth " . And I noticed a lot of contradiction here, between what's said here by maudlin, and what he said , rudely, on closer to the truth.
Only one thing is fundamental and that is everything and everything cannot be described mathematically or linguistically and in fact cannot be conceived by spatial-temporal sensory beings.
@sbergman27: You clearly have no idea what Maudlin was proposing. He's suggesting a shift in which mathematical concepts are taken as primitive in the axiomatisation of the geometry relevant to relativity, there isn't meant to be any difference in the theory's predictions. *If* it's right to say that he's in doing science, he's doing precisely the kind of science that can be done from the armchair. There's no observation that would settle whether we should agree or disagree with him.
1:47 _Motion_ See Dewey Larson's Reciprocal Systems Theory Of Space And Time. It's the unified theory everyone is looking for. No question marks needed. This problem was solved by 1959. You do not understand space and time.
Around the early part ofthe 20th century an influential coterie of philosophers would have agreed with you. Their program is widely regarded as dead. If you want to have your mind blown some day, look up the verificationist criterion of meaning and the logical positivists.
"What is it that has no further explanation? What is taken as a given structure and that structure has no further analysis?": Answer: Ever changing waters flow in the same river.
I would recommend to Tim Maudlin and his audience to look up the Buddhist teachings on emptiness. Particularly Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Riponche's teachings on the phenomena. I think Tim is on to something here. Something that Buddhist Scholars/Masters have resolved through a practice of training the mind to obtain (for lack of a better word) a direct realization of all phenomena.
He is a philosopher, thus he does his best work in his comfortable armchair. He, hopefully, does not pretend to know that the objects of his concepts are real; such is for the experimenters to falsify.
