By ontological declaration of definition, all existence is formed of affectance for the rationale expressed here: Metaphysics. So the immediate question arises as to how we can know more about this affectance and thus the existence surrounding us. How can we measure affectance in all of its potential forms?
The first thing to know about affectance beyond the fact that it is existence, is that nothing can be affected by anything that isn’t in direct contact with it. We never see or sense anything directly. It is our consciousness that allows for us to project an image of what is probably still out there shining that light at us, “remote recognition”.
Thus our minds have to calculate and guess at what it WAS that threw an affect our way. And in fact, whatever it WAS, it might not still be there by the time we are affected by whatever it had broadcast. We are never affected by the remote thing itself, merely by the chain of affects stemming from it.
The news/information media is used expressly to serve such a purpose. We are never affected by the actual events that take place across the world, but rather by what is broadcast to us by a media service. And then of course such is used to manipulate what and who we are to love and hate.
Time and Distance
In fact what we call “distance” is merely our perception of the number of points being affected between A and B. That is first an issue of declared definition, but also happens to be how our instinctive mind works. We perceive and map one thing being close or far from another by how much “space” there is between the two. That “space” is no more than a number of points to potentially be affected in series.
Time ≡ the measure of relative change or affect
Distance ≡ a measure of directness of affect
Density
The concept of density is about how much of something is within a given space. Affectance density is how much affecting or changing is happening within a given space. And that is why both time and distance are directly related to affectance density.
Time is a measure of how much relative affecting there is going on between two things (not necessarily that either is affecting the other) and distance is a measure of how many points can get affected in a direct line series between two things. If you increase the amount of affecting in a given space (increasing the affectance density/mass density), from an outside observation all objects within that space will be shorter and moving slower. Both time and distance are issues of affectance density. What is known as General Relativity is merely the mathematical way of expressing that issue.
And as was such an interesting find long ago, our measuring effort is itself affected by our own ambient affectance density. As we enter a stronger gravity (a more dense affectance field) we too become smaller and slower. Thus our measuring devises and senses automatically compensate such as to measure other objects that have entered with us to not have changed at all. Someone staying out of the increased field, would observe both us and the objects shrinking and slowing.
Thus the measures using time and distance are affected by the relative affectance density between the measuring devises or senses and the objects or events being measured. And it is actually by declared ontological definitions that the General Relativity “theory” is necessarily true, not merely a speculation.
That is why general relativity mathematically works.
General Relativity in concept and as it pertains to measuring time and distance related events and objects is an ontological fact, not an empirical speculation. Although the exact equations with their speculated constants is another issue.