• [deleted]

Chris,

The relationship of motion and time goes back to the ancient Greeks. Galileo observed we are only comparing one regular action to another. Relativity is a mathematically accurate patchjob that proposes some rather bizarre physical assumptions, from the blocktime of spacetime, to the expanding universe and all the other speculative results arising from it. The question is why it became necessary.

Edward Anderson's entry gives a very good example of the point I make about how treating it primarily as a measure of change, physics ignores the dynamic of change. Edward even got a grant from FQXi to consider the issue. Yet no matter how closely they examine the issue, it is still framed in terms of progression from past to future. Consider Julian Barbour's winning essay in the nature of time contest, denies the very existence of time, then turns around and proposes "a measure worthy of the name," arising from the principle of least action between configuration states of the universe. Obviously from prior to succeeding ones. All these proposals only double down, with ever more precision, on the sequence effect.

The point I keep making turns that whole assumption around. I just don't have much luck getting other people to see the importance of this one factor. Galileo, by proposing a heliocentric universe, wasn't proposing anything more complex than the cosmology of the day, but something more simple. In fact, he basically made the motion of the earth as one more epicycle in the larger system and all the parts fit together much more effectively.

I think part of the problem, aside that it can be difficult to wrap one's mind around the idea without first switching a few foundational conceptual switches, is that those whom I suggest it to, don't think I am someone who can make a legitimate observation, or that it must be my idea and they don't want to take someone else's idea. If it's a valid observation though, it is far bigger than I, or anyone else. I'm not copyrighting it. I'm smart enough and old enough to understand that if it were ever to go viral, the public blowback would be far larger than I care to deal with. In a day and age where so many people and organizations can find every detail about your life, who, with any sense, wants to be famous? I've spent my life developing an understanding of many aspects of life and trying to put them in a larger picture. Here is an essay I wrote last winter and entered in this contest. While it seems to be largely about framing economic evolution, there are a number of radical concepts buried in there, from physics to theology, along with examining the nature of money, which would irritate many people, if they spread. So I put these ideas out there and if other people like them and pass them on, it's ok, but if they don't, that's ok too. As I see it, life is a game where the goal is to figure out the rules. Like all games, it starts out quite simple and easy, but the better you get at it, the more difficult it becomes. As the old saying goes, the more you know, the more you know you don't know.

Which is to say, that if you want to take this point about time and examine it, or run with it, that's alright by me. Personally I think it amounts to a conceptual atomic bomb and I want to be off in the distance when it explodes.

John

Well, you are touching a very important point. One matter is reality and the other is how you mathematically model reality. In physics we are aware for instance, minkowski space is just the abstraction of an empty space in which physical objects contract and clock dilates. The problem is that sometimes physicists believe that for a given mathematical structure there corresponds a real one. So they believe that if the mathematical space warps the real space has to reproduce this effect. You have to understand that physics is a quantitative science and to quantify it helps itself with mathematics. Then theoreticians solves the problems mathematically and then once they solve the problem mathematically they try to find a physical interpretation to their findings by fitting with the observations. Modeling reality is not an easy task, but sometimes this mathematical modeling led them to believe fantastical things such as multiverses, etc. From my part, I try to work the opposite way. First I try to find a coherent conceptual and philosophical framework and then adapt the mathematics to such framework.

Cheers

Israel

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Israel,

Sometimes it's the math describing reality and sometimes it's reality informing the math. There has to be some acknowledgement of basic sense as to whether an idea passes the smell test, otherwise it should be considered speculative. While this is true of all sciences, physics gets more of an allowance that is being taken advantage of. I think alot of what is being proposed amounts to foam at the top of a cresting wave. The real direction has started to turn, but not all parts recognize this. Math is a tool and like many tools, it can be very instructive. Where would we be without tools, from language to computers? The problems come from the mathematicians who think it is the voice of God and anything it speaks must be true. Even the voice of God needs careful interpretation. Especially the voice of God. Throughout history, lots of people thought God was speaking to them. God has a wife. She is called Mother Nature and even God has to pay attention to her. The people who think they are in touch with God, don't understand nature. Those feedback loops will get you every time. "In the long run, everyone's odds go to zero."

  • [deleted]

John Merryman

You can read about "time backward" idea in my discussion with Reeve Armstrong

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1395

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    Yuri,

    I wouldn't confuse past with future. A measure of time is necessarily cyclical, but the emergent effect of the arrow of time is the irregular actions external to the measure. Otherwise there would be no sense of past, or future, only of cyclical activity.

    Hello John,

    On a quick read through, I find your essay was very enjoyable, both clear and detailed - except it ended too soon. I very much like the notion that action turns possible future events into a present moment, and that this creates the flow of time. It makes more sense than a notion of time totally disconnected from process, as time is process-like by nature. I'll have to read it again for details, but I wanted you to know I enjoyed your essay.

    I played around with some of the same ideas you explore in a paper on brain hemispheres "Does Lateral Specialization in the Brain Arise from the Directionality of Processes and Time?" where I assert that the two halves function identically, except that they are backwards in time respectively. That is; while the left brain sees time in the way it is conventionally understood, the right brain sees it as you suggest we should, as an accumulative process.

    As a consequence; its perception is more holistic than fragmented, and fixates on the energetic or wave-like aspect of things. I've lots more to say on this, but I'll have to come back to say it. You may enjoy my essay Cherished Assumptions and the Progress of Physics.

    Regards,

    Jonathan

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    No sense of past, or future,

    This is Parmenides approach.Some time it have sense.

    See my essay http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1413

    I wanted to mention, John,

    You may find Jill Bolte Taylor's book "My Stroke of Insight" interesting and relevant, in regards to the perception of time question, and issues of dominance by the left brain awareness. Dr. Taylor is a brain expert who suffered a stroke, and completely lost left brain functionality for a time. She characterizes the right brain awareness as perceiving the world being fluid and connected, rather than being centered on objects and distinctions.

    It would seem a lot of aspects of our perception are caught up in our awareness of the flow of time, and its directionality. More later.

    Regards,

    Jonathan

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      Jonathan,

      Thank you for the considerate reflections. Your description of the right brain is probably more accurate, given it is a dynamic process and thermodynamic responses might be considered more reactive and emotionally static. The primary reason I started thinking in terms of the thermostat was due to E.O. Wilson's description of the insect brain as a thermostat, alongside those experiments on ants that showed they count as a navigation tool. So while your view might be more perceptual, I'm probably looking at it as a more inclusive, ie. generalized description. Having spent my life working with horses, as well as other animals, I have a very basic foundation in cognitive functions, but that might give me some degree of clarity not always apparent to a more classic education. What other life forms lack in intellectual complexity, they often make up for in situational awareness, while people tend to be distracted. Thus we view emotion and intuition as mysterious, but they are those cumulative responses which appear non-linear.

      One additional thought that has become more clear, due to one of my usual debates with Tom Ray, since writing that paper, is that cause and effect is not a function of sequence, but energy exchange. Yesterday doesn't cause today, any more than one rung on a ladder causes the next. It is the sun radiating on a rotating planet, which causes the sequence of events called 'days.' On the other hand, my typing these keys does cause letters to appear on the screen, because there is a causal chain of energy transfer.

      So while we tend to think in retrospect that time is linear, from one event to the next, emotion and intuition tend to be more focused on the energy dynamic, which is cumulative and dissipative. This goes to my original dichotomy of energy, vs. information.

      While I haven't read Jill Bolte Talyer's book, I did see her TED talk video. Unfortunately, my spare time is limited and since getting on the internet, some 15 years ago, my book reading time has been reduced to zip. I go for the condensed version of everything these days.

      I did read your essay, but will have to review it, given the number of entries I've tried to cover. As for your bringing up this point about the directions of time, present to the future, vs. events to the past, I wish it would get more attention, because it becomes ever more apparent, reading these essays and thinking through other information, the truth of my first comment, that physics primarily treats time as a measure from one event to the next and this only re-enforces the sequence effect. Julian Barbour would be the prime example. Edward Anderson would be another. It will obviously take someone with more clout and clarity than I, to make this point effectively.

      Indeed,

      Viewed from outside time and space, the path a sentient being takes through spacetime is decidedly tree-like. And pathways open to us at one point are later subject to the 'road not taken' effect, as it's hard for humans to jump from branch to branch. But time in the aggregate is more like temperature, as you suggested, and I think Alain Connes explored this angle in detail.

      In any case, I see it as more fruitful to view time as a representation of dynamic process evolution, rather than a static curve or fixed line to which we must adhere. On the other hand; moving along with a large body like the Earth, its motion through space is a relative constant - that defines a timeframe of reference within the local space.

      So perhaps both views are essential, if we really want to understand time. In some measure; the right brain is fixated on the eternal where the left brain is focused on the ephemeral. And if you believe the adage from Plato via Diogenes "Time is the image of eternity" - then the eternal is what gives meaning or substance to duration, which is an essential attribute for objects to exist in spacetime at all.

      all the best,

      Jonathan

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        Jonathan,

        One of the consequences is a different view of determinism, vs. free will. If the present is just a point on a timeline from past to future, then the past cannot be changed, or the future affected, but if time emerges from action, our input is part of that action and we affect our situation, as much as our situation affects us. Even a puppet pulls on its own strings, giving focus to the puppeteer.

        We still view and biologically respond to the sun moving across the sky, just as mobile organisms, we will always be moving toward goals and view our future as being something we reach for. It doesn't invalidate the previous perspective, just puts it in a larger context, for those who wish to consider the more objective perspective. I've been pointing out that Galileo didn't really invalidate the math, or logic of epicycles, but by making the motion of the earth one more cycle, he changed the entire interpretation. It's not that the math of spacetime is wrong, but by treating time as a measure and interchangeable with measures of distance, rather than an effect of action, it creates some pretty far fetched interpretations. Such as giving up on simultaneity because the speed of light/information is finite, would be like saying that since news of Lincoln's death reached Kansas City before it reached San Francisco, he much have died earlier to the residents of KC. All observations are in the future of any event.

        I would probably say the right brain makes the connections, while the left brain sees the distinctions. An example I interjected in a reductionism, vs. wholism discussion Julian and Ian Durham were having on Julians thread, is that as a logical shorthand, math assumes an important point, which is overlooked. When we add, say 1+1=2, we are actually adding the sets and getting a larger set, not the contents of the sets. So the parts always add up to a larger whole. It's just that in our left brain, we see the distinctions, rather than the connections.

        This goes to the logic behind monotheism. One is a set. Oneness is a connected state. When we envision the universe as a whole, it is as a connected state, but than when we try to start defining that state, it morphs into a singular set. The presence of any set implies the possibility of other sets. So not only does monotheism break into multiple sects, but we now have a theory of the universe as a singular entity, which is spawning multiple copies. What is logically lost, is that the absolute, the universal state, is neutral, ie. zero. Not one. Once we have something, it naturally contains dichotomies, inside/outside, expansion/contraction, good/bad, positive/negative, up/down, conservative/liberal, etc. The branching is fundamental, but being singular entities, we can only see one side at a time, yet find ourselves bound to and defined by the opposite.

        As for others seeing the relationship between time and temperature, I run into it alot. Carlo Rovelli did his entry in the nature of time contest on it. It's just trying to get people to see the dichotomous relationship that seems to be the problem. We are westerners. We like monism. Dualism is for those foreigners.

        Regards,

        John

        Thanks for those insights!

        I appreciate your perspective John. It adds a lot to have someone on board who sees the other side of things. A very interesting and eclectic group this time. I already read through and commented on Ian's excellent essay, but though I cited Julian Barbour's work, I have not read his entry yet.

        I suppose I'll have to amble on over, read through his essay, and see what you wrote there.

        All the Best,

        Jonathan

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        Jonathan,

        You're welcome. Life is a multitude of perspectives. It's nice to converse with people who are not focused entirely on horses.

        14 days later

        John, kind of you to leave a note on my essay. Although I can be tempted by potentiality in what someone else writes, mostly I'm not clear-sighted enough to see beyond what I might do with something more immediately. Sometimes there's too much detail for me to see what to do with an idea, sometimes too much detail even to see what the idea is, sometimes there's too little detail. My own essay is surely too detailed, as I see now, but, from my perspective on Physics, I can't see a way forward for me in yours.

        FWIW, I see represented in the mathematics of quantum theory more a description of correlations and other statistics than of the undirected or wrongly directed causality that I take you to question. Or perhaps it would be better for me to misrepresent you as questioning temporality, whatever that might be. A common though not universal assumption underlying QT is that we work within a 3+1-dimensional model of our experience. It's just a model, but it's what we work with. We might say that Time is a coordinate in a mathematical model, then how would you say that or a related assumption should be modified? The literature is quite full of ideas for how to change the basic mathematical structure, in more ways than anyone could keep up with, which are then developed at varying degrees of sophistication for decades. Amongst FQXi essayists, Tim Boyer has been developing the consequences and variations of an initial idea (that I think has nothing to say about time, however) in exhaustive detail since the 60s, for example, and Julian Barbour has spent close to as long.

        I do find it curious/interesting that the detail of our experience of time is often not represented in Physical models as they currently exist, but I don't see how to do something else, in detail (thermodynamics does at least have a direction, but attempts at reconciliation of that with unitary evolution, say, is very long-standing, and thermodynamics is far from a panacea). I sometimes am tempted to ask why I should think that existence of the past and the future are not as equally real as my experience of the present, but I stopped using the word "real" in my serious thinking perhaps as much as 10 years ago. Models, like maps, even 3+1-dimensional models, are to me only place-holders.

        I apologize that this is more a response to your paper, which perhaps you will not find very helpful, than an engagement with it. Best wishes nonetheless, Peter.

          • [deleted]

          Peter,

          Thank you for the reply. I would first have to agree we are on opposite sides of a significant fence and I can understand why you might see my side as lacking necessary detail to be informative. My position is that while your side of the fence might be finely structured, it is still emergent from the underlaying dynamic. Which is to say I don't see the need for a platonic realm of fundamental laws governing nature. I see laws as patterns which emerge with the actions and relationships they define. Bottom up and top down are complementary functions that emerge as one. Yes, nature is exponentially complex, but the principles describing it are interactive and complementary. Knowledge and information must be static in order to maintain the very details of which they consist, but that doesn't mean reality is so fundamentally frozen. If reality were frozen, it would be a complete lack of thermodynamic activity and nothing would happen, or exist. A non-fluctuating vacuum. No factors, or functions.

          So for me, it's a matter of how to get from nothing to something. I would start with space as the aphysical infinite equilibrium. In this void, there is a cycle of expanding energy and contracting structure. Now if were to relate that dichotomy to sentience and knowledge, the energy is the element of awareness and knowledge is the structure it conceives. Much as in my essay I point out that while our awareness is constantly moving onto new thoughts, these thoughts coalesce out of received information and then are replaced. So as awareness goes from past to future thoughts, the thoughts go from future to past. Just as energy is constantly inhabiting structure, then breaking it down and moving onto other forms.

          Now consider in your essay, the conceptual process which is going on. Much like a puzzle, modern physics consists of many static components that seem like they should fit together, but however it is done, there seem to be gaps and the solutions often create new problems, as they solve current ones. They are all obviously parts of some larger whole, but not a singular whole. So you find a connection that is "worthwhile," but not "ultimately correct." Possibly it is because there is no "ultimately correct model?" As I point out in the last line of my essay, "Neither academic or religious authority can turn an ideal into an absolute." There is no more a universal model than there is a universal god. Both models and perspective are inherently subjective. Oneness and one/unity and unit are not the same thing.

          I know this sounds philosophical, but if your ivory tower is built on sand, would you want to know, or would you prefer not to know?

          John

          I did read it again as promised, and agree it's as sensible a view on time as I've read anywhere, though ants counting their footsteps is just as shocking! I can't recall if you looked at my recycling model, which suggests 'time' is just a word some creatures living with the ants made up, and they and the ants have equal clue what it means. It goes on forever so perhaps is meaningless.

          Except of course to understanding curved space-time, which the ants may have a better handle on that us! I don't know if you did re-read my essay, and got your head round it, but it's all about how things can move while things happen to them, which affects the results.

          This goes for your beer on the bar. Light goes through it at c/n- say 140,000miles/sec whatever its state of motion wrt ANYTHING else. So watch a photon pass through the beer, then slide the beer past you down the bar, and the photon appears to go faster (or slower). That's what the laws of optics say. Right? Intuitive yes? A physicist using old assumptions will however have blown a fuse already!

          Now consider TWO photons, one after the other. The distance between them changes on entry as they slow down, BUT! Because the beer is MOVING between arrival times, the distance between them (or wavelength) will have changed by a SECOND factor related to glass velocity v. Simple? yes, Intuitive? Yes, to you, I, your horse and the ants; yes.

          Not to physicists apparently. They assume that what you are seeing in the glass is the photon moving, so disallow c"v.!! But of course they are only seeing a sequence of scattered lights from each beer particle doing c, that LOOKS like something doing c"v. But NOTHING IS!

          Now just consider that all lenses are equivalent to glasses of beer, and the penny should drop why we always find local CSL inside all our lenses. Yes?

          Now please tell me you understand that, because the fact that it keeps slipping from peoples grasp is driving me nuts (if I'm not already). Anyway, a good score for you because you explain time as well as anyone, and I hope you can find an excuse to give me one too (you can drink the beer now).

          Best wishes

          Peter

            • [deleted]

            Peter,

            I have read your essay, though admit I haven't commented. I must say I haven't engaged many of the regulars. Part of it is a time issue and part of it is similar to your situation, in that I'm focused on my particular observation and everyone who has been around here for any length of time has probably heard me make the point.

            First off I have to admit I'm not an expert in optics, so while your point seems quite reasonable, I'm really not qualified to engage it, because I find I look stupid when I venture into arguments I don't have a firm enough grasp of. I think there are enough entries here poking logical holes in relativity that possibly some larger movement can grow out of it. I obviously am clueless as to how to promote it though, given my distance from any form of academia or media. I'm certainly giving you and the various others trying to unravel the Gordian knot of relativity high scores and hope similar acts point toward some change.

            There is another reason I may not be fully engaged with your observation, that I sort of go into in the above conversation with Peter Morgan. My focus doesn't seem to be with sorting out and organizing complexity, but with understanding the relationship of being and nothing. Not what is between 1 and infinity, but what is between 1 and zero. Admittedly real complexity quickly leaves me confused. In many ways I am a very simple person.

            As for C, I see it as the rate at which all structure turns to velocity, so nothing can go faster. So I don't have any problem with two passing light beams seeming to pass each other at 2C, but the perception, if light could perceive, would be affected by transmission of information. Arguing against simultaneity because different observers could perceive events in a different order is like saying Lincoln died earlier to the people of St. Louis, than he did to the people in San Francisco. As for the argument that time stops for someone falling into a black hole, or someone traveling at the speed of light, would be like saying time stopped for that log I threw in the fire, since it turned to light, but I only see it as burning.

            I think though that it does argue for space as being an underlaying inertial frame. Consider that centrifugal force is due to spin relative to inertia, not some outside reference. So I do see alot of muddled thinking in the various explanations, as Chris Kennedy develops.

            As for Black holes, I see them as mathematical representations of infalling mass/structure, which overlooks the balancing effect of radiating energy. I think once all the loose ends are tied up, this relationship will be viewed as the two sides of the same cycle. I think gravity is simply a vacuum effect of energy turning into mass and becoming ever more dense. Much as releasing energy from mass creates pressure.

            As for the ants, it was an experiment they did with these giant desert ants. After they had located a food source, the scientists would nip the legs of some a little shorter and some they would glue on tiny extensions. The ones with shorter legs would stop before reaching the food source and the ones with extensions would go past it. Wish I'd saved a link to it, but I only started thinking about its importance to my idea awhile after I read it. Basically it just says ants have two hemispheres of their brains as well. The serial processor(counter/clock) and the parallel processor(a thermostat, as E.O. Wilson described the insect brain.)

            Dear John,

            I am writing in response to the comment you made to Lawrence Crowell on my thread. I also wrote a response there, but I thought you might see it more readily if I also posted on your thread.

            I will have to read your essay to better understand what you are proposing. You seem to reject the existence of an independent time dimension, which is also one of the assumptions I reject in my essay. In particular, you seem to reject the idea of block time. Jonathan Kerr has written an interesting essay on this that you may enjoy reading.

            The general idea of time being a way of describing actual change sounds like Mach's view; I don't know if you encountered this idea by reading about Mach, or if you thought of it independently. I would like to think of time as a way of talking about cause and effect, which is similar but not identical. In any case, I will hopefully have more to say after I have read your essay. Take care,

            Ben

            John

            Well I think you've cracked gravity, but pulling legs off ants! Astonishing what things we research when a bit of applied brainpower could save us billions!

            Did you ever see my scientific 'proof' of re-incarnation? It emerges straight from the unification of SR and QM in my essay. We're broken down in accretion to an AGN (SMBH) re-ionized and blasted back out to mix with new stuff. So the oscillations our brain cells just keep on going, reincarnated forever. of course we may be 1,00 billion suns and rocks before we come back as another sentient being, but eternity is quite a long time! All good fun, but dead serious physics and cosmolgy. The paper's here; http://vixra.org/abs/1102.0016

            Best wishes.

            Peter

            • [deleted]

            Peter,

            I have to say I get similar inclinations as to re-incarnation, or rather how consciousness takes different forms as though they were separate thoughts of the same mind. Essentially we are all brain cells in a hive mind anyway and the fact we have distinct points of view and narrative histories is more an issue of the filters, not what shines through them. The problem with monotheism is that absolute is basis, not apex, so a spiritual absolute would be the essence from which we rise, not an ideal form from which we fell. I find with the horses and people I work with, it's often like different fingers on the same hand. I just wish the reset button didn't get pushed so often.