The claim
A164: for two events, Δt′ = γ(Δt − vΔx/c²), and “This reversal is due specifically to relativity of simultaneity, not merely time dilation.” The reversal needs c²Δt² − Δx² < 0, that is, spacelike separation. “If one event could causally influence the other, their time order cannot reverse under a proper, orthochronous Lorentz transformation.” All of this is correct. Its conclusion: “The relativistic example is therefore not evidence that global gluing fails.”
So, for the cases CASE-039 separates:
- coincident events have no order to disagree about;
- events on one worldline, such as two passings of one marker, are timelike-separated and have an invariant order;
- only spacelike-separated events change order between frames.
Two repairs to A164
The owner’s own scenario. A164 moved to “two different markers” without saying that the scenario U47 described, read either as one meeting or as two passings of one marker, has an answer every frame agrees on. Only the substitute scenario has a frame-dependent order.
No gluing picture. A164 set its lesson inside a cover of patches, with a cocycle g_ik = g_jk ∘ g_ij and equivariance O_j(Ts) = ρ_ij O_i(s). But each inertial frame coordinatizes all of Minkowski space. The transition maps form a group action, and the cocycle holds trivially. The structure is invariance or equivariance (TERM-004), not a sheaf over a cover. The order of two spacelike events is not an observable that any frame-independent description contains, so nothing fails to glue. There is no cover whose sections could fail to glue.
Granted, because it is textbook physics, and because it is what the argument needs in order to refuse the owner’s inference (ARG-010).
What it does not say
- It does not reject A164’s lesson for transport, that a correspondence must be fixed before a disagreement is read as incompatibility. That lesson is CLAIM-143, and this claim is its positive control.
- It does not say physics never has gluing obstructions. Holonomy and anomalies are real ones, and none of them arose in the exchange.
- It does not say that translation correspondences behave as Lorentz maps do. They are not invertible and form no group (CLAIM-035).
- It says nothing for or against CLAIM-038’s allowance that local interpretations may lack a global one. It removes one argument offered for it.
Note of 2026-10-27: an owner’s conjecture restated through this claim
At U20 of the exchange “Field Existence Question” the owner conjectured that “interactions generate constraints that manifest as gluing conditions between intertial frames”, and flagged the physics as uncertain. A20 §1 cited this claim to restate it. Inertial frames are related by a transformation that spacetime geometry fixes, and no interaction generates it. The frames that interactions glue are local observational contexts. The conjecture is filed in that form as CLAIM-471, which names this claim in its defeater as the case it excludes. A20: “literal inertial frames are probably too restrictive for your general thesis.” This claim is unchanged.