The Problem: We See Time Backward by John Brodix Merryman

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.

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

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

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.

Dear John,

I just finished reading your essay, and I think we agree on some important conceptual issues, although perhaps we have different views on what conclusions should be drawn as a consequence. Let me venture a few questions and remarks.

1. In one of your comments on my thread, you say, "The difference between cause and effect and time is that sequence isn't cause and effect, but energy transfer is." Now, I agree that sequence alone isn't cause and effect (sequence by itself is a purely mathematical concept), and I also agree that what we call "energy transfer" is an example of cause and effect. However, in saying that this is "the difference between cause and effect and time," you seem to be identifying "time" with "sequence," which is not what I think you actually intend. For example, in the previous sentence, you say, "I found, when considering it at length, that it gives a very different, inherently dynamic, view of reality, than the block time, static modeling that arose from assuming time is sequence and treating it as a measure of interval." So I am still a little unclear on exactly how you relate time, sequence, and cause and effect.

2. On the basis of your whole essay, it seems that you think time is "a way of talking about what actually happens," which I agree with.

3. I would argue that even though sequence is a purely mathematical concept, while cause and effect is a physical concept, it is still useful to associate a sequence (i.e. direction) to cause and effect. At an everyday level, we always observe that "cause precedes effect;" i.e., we imagine something called "time" with respect to which cause and effect are always ordered in the same way. Now I believe, and I think you agree, that this idea of a separate time dimension in which causes and effects arrange themselves is imaginary. I think that time is really a way of talking about cause and effect. The arrow of time, then, is drawn from cause to effect.

4. Your analogy between time and temperature is interesting. We know that time is intimately related to temperature through the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Of course, time has a direction and temperature does not, but it produces directions in a number of ways: thermal energy flows from hot to cold bodies, and temperature is related to entropy, which is related to time by the second law.

5. I have a bit of trouble with defining things in terms of "energy." The reason why is because energy itself is a rather indirect concept: the way we know a system has energy is because it "does work" on other systems. I would argue that "energy" is just another way of talking about what actually happens, and I would rather use physical concepts with clearer and more direct definitions or descriptions as basic building blocks. Cause and effect is the best such building block I can think of.

6. Regarding the origin of the universe from a singularity, I personally would not take this concept too seriously. It is a result of carrying existing theories to extremes where their validity is very doubtful. Similar statements apply to the internal physics of black holes.

7. You make a good point that our perception of time may have more to do with how our brains work than how the universe works.

I enjoyed your essay! Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Take care,

Ben

Dear John,

This is group message to you and the writers of some 80 contest essays that I have already read, rated and probably commented on.

This year I feel proud that the following old and new online friends have accepted my suggestion that they submit their ideas to this contest. Please feel free to read, comment on and rate these essays (including mine) if you have not already done so, thanks:

Why We Still Don't Have Quantum Nucleodynamics by Norman D. Cook a summary of his Springer book on the subject.

A Challenge to Quantized Absorption by Experiment and Theory by Eric Stanley Reiter Very important experiments based on Planck's loading theory, proving that Einstein's idea that the photon is a particle is wrong.

An Artist's Modest Proposal by Kenneth Snelson The world-famous inventor of Tensegrity applies his ideas of structure to de Broglie's atom.

Notes on Relativity by Edward Hoerdt Questioning how the Michelson-Morely experiment is analyzed in the context of Special Relativity

Vladimir Tamari's essay Fix Physics! Is Physics like a badly-designed building? A humorous illustrate take. Plus: Seven foundational questions suggest a new beginning.

Thank you and good luck.

Vladimir

Ben,

I wouldn't describe time and sequence as purely mathematical, but as features of action. If I may use an analogy, it would be that time is frequency and temperature is amplitude. While one wave/cycle/step doesn't cause the next in the series, it does lead to it from the perspective of the dynamic manifesting the series. Cause is wholistic and the sum total cause of any event cannot be known prior to the event, because the lightcone(to use a spacetime concept) of input isn't complete until the event occurs. A bolt of lightening or bus might hit you before you make that next step and the energy manifesting you would be disrupted from its progression. It is just that we exist as a particular point of reference/one molecule of water in that tea kettle and so encounter a series of events within the larger dynamic.

As for entropy, it seems everyone always ignores that it only applies to a closed system. In an open or infinite system, energy lost by one system is gained by others. We are absorbing light that was radiated by other galaxies billions of lightyears away. It is only because the universe is presumed to be finite that it gains such prominence. Yet even in that model, this energy is simply being dispersed over an expanding area, not eliminated. I think the larger reality is a form of universal convection cycle of expanding energy and contracting mass. These galaxies drawing in mass and radiating energy, until that energy condenses back into mass and falls back into the closest galaxy.

You are quite right that "energy" defies clear definition, but think about that; Definition is structure and order and energy is constantly manifesting and dissolving structure and order. It's hard to put something in a box, when even the box is an aspect of what you want to put in it. Think of energy as what is physically real, whether radiant, potential, spin, attraction, repulsion, inertial. Even the absence of energy is a form of energy, in the vacuum. Energy manifests, information defines. Information arises from the interaction of different forms and degrees of energy. Such as that mass is a balance of positive and negative energies. We try to measure reality by banging energies into each other. Whether it is light from distant stars onto our telescopes, or ions in a particle collider. Or even cavemen banging one rock into another to see how it breaks/flakes.

John,

Thanks for the followup! I agree that "time" isn't purely mathematical; as for "sequence," mathematicians are used to thinking of it in this way, but the most important thing is probably just to be clear about one's definition and stick with it.

There is always a lot of confusion about entropy. Besides the "closed system" aspect you point out, there are many different definitions in thermodynamics, information theory, and quantum information theory. It's so confused that some people define entropy as "disorder" and others as "order." Probably it's again a situation in which the most important thing is to say exactly what one means by entropy to avoid purely semantic disputes.

Regarding energy, I suppose something at the bottom of the logical system has to be undefined, and if so, it should be an entity of universal importance, which energy certainly is. Take care,

Ben

Ben,

That distilling out a particular definition and sticking to it is where one steps over the line from reason to dogma, no matter how effective the description. I like to think I would alter my view of time, if someone were to show its fallacies, but once they see it is not easy to dismiss, the discussion is dropped. It's been observed that rationality, as a survival mechanism, evolved to win arguments, not discover truths.

As for entropy being order or disorder, depending on the model, goes to the heart of the subjectivity of knowledge.

Energy and space are both down at the bottom of that stack of turtles.

Good luck in the contest. Looks like you will make the cut.

John,

I did not mean refusing to entertain other people's choices of definition, of course. Quite the opposite; what I meant was that many disagreements or misunderstandings are really about the definitions of words, not about meaning. There is nothing special about the symbols or sounds that make up the english word "entropy," for instance, so rather than having disagreements like "entropy is A, no, entropy is B," it makes much more sense for both people to simply say what they mean by it and then sort out the meaning. By "stick with it," I only mean that one must be precise and consistent in one's definitions. However, I'm perfectly willing to adopt another person's terminology "for the sake of the argument," if it will help to understand what is really at the heart of the discussion.

As for "making the cut," I suspect contests like these are very much like horse races or auctions on ebay... the leader going into the home stretch often finishes well back, and the price often doubles in the last few minutes. This is my first time in such a contest, so I don't know what to expect. I do expect that lot of people who are members of FQXi or hold very prestigious academic positions will probably get a lot of high ratings at the very end by virtue of commanding an automatic audience that is disposed to be favorable, but I assumed that all along. I feel the best one can do in such a situation is to try to present one's ideas in a favorable light and hopefully learn a thing or two in the process. Take care,

Ben

Ben,

I guess that response was more toward those who do make a religion out of the model. It is a bit like the dichotomy of specialization vs, generalization. The more precise your model, the more it is focused on particular details, while those who take a more generalized approach accept some degree of fuzziness in the details. Craftsmen tend to be specialists and visionaries have to have a fairly broad view and so need to be generalists. I suppose if physics is ever to get out of its current rut, it better consider the views of a few generalists and not keep fighting over minute details.

You are right there is an insider bias to the judging, but there is an underlaying movement to expand the circle. This contest and its subject are a good example. There are quite a few entries which take serious issue with some foundational assumptions and it will be hard to completely ignore them. I've mentioned to some of the more vocal ones that after the contest, some form of association could continue to push the boundaries further.

At some point in the future, alot of the ideas floating around, from multiworlds to blocktime are going to end up in the same file with angels on the head of a pin and epicycles.

Hi John,

Glad to see you in the contest.

A very good essay, I am giving it a high mark.

Don L.

Hi John,

I put this post on Ben's page, below a post of yours, but wanted to put it here as well in case you didn't find it. JK

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Hello John,

I didn't think or say that you're out to lunch, and I'm sorry you felt that way. If I wasn't in England, I'd like to take you out to lunch to make up for it. I'm sure we'd talk about time, and there might be less misunderstanding that way. I just tried to focus on an idea of yours, and felt I'd shown it to be wrong, and it seemed you kept changing the subject. But if it seemed different to you, then I'm sorry.

Best wishes, Jonathan

Thanks Don.

I have to get around to reading yours as well. Maybe one of the reasons I think about time is because I don't have much free time.

Jonathan,

Presumably, if I'm wrong, then I'm out to lunch, given that I don't see it.

John,

I'll bring this to your page, and try to explain, for the nth and last time, what - to be fair - you genuinely don't seem to understand. No-one else will tell you that your ideas simply don't fit the evidence or the physics, they'll all go on letting you think the ideas could be right. Only I am boring enough to try explain it to you.

Time dilation is a single effect, described by a set of equations, and if only the observed time rate is needed, then it's just one equation. That equation works for many situations, it's very general. To explain the effect, you have to come up with a conceptual picture that works for all those situations. You can't have it fading evenly and steadily into a different explanation in some situations, and then fading back again into your original explanation on the other side. The equation shifts by degrees you see, from one situation into another. So any explanation needs to cover all situations. That's why I made the point about the two observers passing each other in the street, going in opposite directions. Each sees the other in slightly slow motion, and your explanation fails there.

Each is in fact observed with a slower metabolism than the other, because every process is observed slowed down - this may be an illusion, or each may somehow actually be slowed down from the other point of view. But citing changes to metabolism as the CAUSE of time dilation simply doesn't work.

If that was the cause, we wouldn't have pondered this for a century, it would have been very much simpler to deal with. The reason is that the mathematics would be different! And it would allow a whole range of possible explanations of that kind, but no-one even considers them, because they don't fit. Being a good mystery, it rules out a lot of intuitive explanations.

Your last post was full of errors, no-one will point them out, not even me.

Please leave this now, thanks, and good luck.

Best wishes, Jonathan