johnlawrenceaspden comments on Outside the Laboratory - Less Wrong

63 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 January 2007 03:46AM

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Comment author: wedrifid 28 May 2011 08:54:51PM 1 point [-]

I believe special relativity because it's implied by Maxwell's equations, which I have experienced. Normal human speeds are enough to detect contraction, if you do it by comparing E&M.

Does anyone know how to do this?

That seems rather bizarre. Was he making some kind of joke? Humans aren't fast, heavy, small or sensitive enough to notice anything that that advanced happening to ourselves.

Comment author: johnlawrenceaspden 02 November 2012 06:20:12PM 1 point [-]

It takes very low speeds to see macroscopic magnetic effects from electric charges. I'm not sure that that 'implies special relativity', because it's also consistent with the previous theory. But from a relativistic point of view, that's a relativistic effect of much the same kind as time dilation/length contraction.