A Site’s Clock Is Its Own Record

Proper time, in the picture: how many grains have landed here.

Claim. A site’s time is its own record count. The length of its record history in ticks: its own ticks, one per site per tick (AP48 §1), not the arrivals it happens to receive. Two sites carry two counts. There is no third count against which either is right. There is no site outside the record to keep it. Time dilation, when §7 runs, is the difference between two counts between two couplings.

Intuition. Your clock is your pile. It counts the grains that have landed on you. Mine counts mine. When we meet and compare, the counts differ. They differ by what each of us has been through. There is no third pile keeping the true count. Every pile is inside the sand.

Givens. AP50 §3 (time is the record of the hold; a unit of relative measurement, record relative to other records). AP51 §4 (a site’s position is its record history). AP20 (R’s one direction). The author’s describing.

Ruling (the author). “Each operator experiences time relative to its perception of the record history — there are many operators sharing a relative perception of the record history over time. The record history is the record history — it simply is — one record exists — it is an absolute fact. The reading and interpretation of the record history will always be relative, from a perspective relative to the record history — and that perspective is always expressed now, in the AS.”

Theorem — no third count. Time is the record’s measure of itself. Record relative to other records (AP50 §3). A site’s time is therefore the measure of its own record. Its count. The record is one. Its readings are many (§1). A count is a reading. A site counting what has landed on it. A third count that adjudicates two sites’ counts would be a reading from no site. §1 forbids that. So two sites, two counts. No fact of the matter about which is right. Only what each has held between the two events at which they compare. That difference is what §7 will call dilation. Say it plainly, because it is the sentence a reader gets stuck on. There is no third clock. Not a hidden one. Not a better one. Not one we have failed to find. A third clock would have to read a now, and no site reads any now — its own included (§6). It is the pupil again, said about clocks. Each of two sites reads the other’s count as the slower one. Both readings stand. Neither is wrong. Asking which of them actually aged less has no answer while both settle uniformly. It gets one only when one of them changes its settling, and a change of settling is accelerated. That is the gravity paper, not this one.

Grade. Ruled. The absence of a third count derived from §1. Premise for §7’s consequences.

Kill switches

KS-REL.3 — No third count. Fires if a count is shown that adjudicates two sites’ counts from no site. An absolute time. LIVE — STRUCTURAL.

Your clock is your pile.