The Problem: We See Time Backward by John Brodix Merryman

I'm carrying this debate with T.H. Ray over from Julian Barbour's blog entry:

"John, I regret that you cannot see your contradiction. To say that "Prior and subsequent configurations do not physically exist, but the present one is constantly changing" is equivalent to saying that time does not exist. Which is what in fact Julian claims (i.e., time exists only as an abstraction). But then you claim that "... it is not that the present moves from prior to subsequent configurations, but that the configurations come into being ..." which requires time to have a physical effect independent of its abstract meaning. I know you will probably come back with another self contradictory statement to explain your position, but I am out of ways to make it obvious."

Tom, There is a fundamental difference between an abstraction and an effect. A dimensionless point is an abstraction. Time and temperature are effects.

T H Ray replied on Aug. 15, 2012 @ 12:04 GMT

Since degrees of time and temperature are described by dimensionless points on a line of length 1, I can't make a distinction between your statement and just plain hot sir.

Tom, That is necessarily due to the extreme conceptual limits which you operate within. Time and temperature are not just their measurement. If I put my hand on a hot stove, I don't need a laboratory grade thermometer to tell me I burned myself. In fact the very notion of temperature as being described as a dimensionless point is nonsense, since temperature is an average level of activity.

As for time, if it were only a regular measure of duration, there would be no entropic arrow, it would be just a constant repetition, measuring nothing other than its own process.

As I've pointed out many times, a dimensionless point is a mathematical contradiction, since anything multiplied by zero is zero. A truly dimensionless point would be as real as a dimensionless apple. It is just a convenient abstraction from reality, because giving it volume would cause more confusion than treating it as dimensionless.

Time and temperature are effects, not just the abstract measure of these effects. "

John,

"If I put my hand on a hot stove, I don't need a laboratory grade thermometer to tell me I burned myself."

You do, however, need the information that your nerve cells relay to your brain cells to inform you of that fact. And you need to know that the degree of burning is dependent on a measure that counts dimensionless points on a 1 dimension line from the nerve endings in your hand to the sensors in your brain.

"In fact the very notion of temperature as being described as a dimensionless point is nonsense, since temperature is an average level of activity."

This fixation that you has you believing that temperature is some independent "thing" is rationally incomprehensible. Temperature is a *measurement.* A ruler is a physical thing, but "one inch" isn't a physical thing. The measurement is not independent of the instrument. Water boils at 212 degrees on one scale and at 100 degrees on another. We made this things up -- they weren't forced on us by a lightning bolt from the brow of Zeus.

Yes, temperature describes the average motion of particles, the energy content of the system. It's the energy content that's a physical thing. If that's what you really mean to say -- then please just say it.

Tom, When I say action, I'm referring to the energy. By using time and temperature, I'm referring to different effects/perspectives of this action. Obviously I don't see temperature as independent, or I wouldn't keep referring to it as an effect. My point is that time is a similar effect/measure of the effect of action, the change of configuration it creates. It is only when the focus is on the measure from one configuration to another and not the process of creation and change, that it gets confused with notions of linearity and space."

John, in what specific way does a measure of change from one configuration to another (which is what Julian's abstract time means) differ from the measure of a degree of creation and change?

" ... that it gets confused with notions of linearity and space."

How does your claim that 'tomorrow becomes yesterday because the Earth rotates,' obviate linearity and space?

Tom, I know you like to be skeptical about everything I say and I have no problem with that, but do you in fact ever even listen to what I say?

When we measure change from one configuration to the next, we are moving from one event to the next, ie. assuming the traditional past to future vector, but when we view it as a process of change, it isn't that what is physically extant, ie. what is present, moves anywhere. It is the configurations forming and dissolving, ie. the future becoming the past. So rather than there being this fourth dimension, along which either the present moves, or the present is an illusion and it's just a function of which configuration you perceive, it is that the passage of time is the future becoming the past, because of the action of what is present.

Not the earth traveling the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, but tomorrow becoming yesterday because the earth rotates.

Now you are going to push the reset button and claim it doesn't make sense, but even if you don't agree, you can at least make some effort to just try to follow the logic.

John, I think the fact that I take the trouble to point out the contradictions in your purported logic is sufficient evidence that I do follow it. Get rid of the contradictions if you want it to make sense.

Tom, Would you kindly repeat where you found a contradiction?

14 August, 2205. Two days ago.

15 August, 1204. One day ago.

16 August, 1036. Six hours ago.

Tom, I'm going to post this and see if it comes out clearly, then try to formulate a response, which might be late tomorrow.

John,

Tom is being pedantic, you will have to say heat and not temperature for him to accept that you are not talking about the measurement but the physical activity of molecules. By your many descriptions you have made it very clear that you are talking about heat energy (kinetic energy of atoms or molecules) and not points on a thermometer line (temperature).

John,

My other post was just a reply to your question about why the images I had tried to describe would not have gaps between. Now that I think I've got it figured out I'm going to make a/or some 3D model(s) which I hope will clearly demonstrate what is going on. Which will be fun. They will then be an interactive 'concrete' tool box. As I'm imagining it, it will be able to demonstrate the answers to some other questions too. Which will be easier than many long verbal descriptions that might still end up being puzzling.Will take some time to put together though.I might be able to post some photos or videos of how it works eventually. It was too off topic for the other thread,

Georgina,

Tom will never agree, no matter how I state it. The reason I keep using temperature is to compare it to time. If I only referred to heat energy, then the comparable term would be rate of change and that takes the focus off the issue of treating time as only a measure. Temperature and thermostatic responses have a far deeper conceptual foundation than Tom gives credence, which you, being trained in biology, are sure to appreciate. They are actually more fundamental to biology and physics than the sequencing of time. Time really does emerge from the gradients of temperature, because that is the basis of change and comparison of change.

Models are tough to construct, especially when the intended audience has a vested interest in ignoring.

Hi John,

thanks for explaining you reason for sticking with temperature.Its a good one. Also temperature and heat are often used interchangeably in everyday language. Turn up the temperature or turn up the heat, not a lot of difference because they go hand in hand. You are right temperature is very significant for biological organisms. As you know, the enzymes that control metabolism are heat sensitive. They can be ineffective at very low temperatures and become damaged and less efficient at high temperatures, giving a range between where there is optimal performance. Even rates of chemical reaction that are not influenced by enzymes or catalysts are affected by heat.

However if rate of change was giving passage of time then hot things would be disappearing into the future as time is passing quicker for them and cold things would be being left in the past. Subjectively it might seem for the hot entity that time is passing quicker- as it is more active, getting more done and ageing faster compared to a cold thing. That is slow and sluggish, doing little. As its metabolism is slower, growth rate and the damage occurring due to metabolic processes and accidental damage, wear and tear would also be slower. (If they are higher organisms they could have an internal biological clock that is set by fluctuating light levels and that will give the organism some perception of passage of time that might differ from external reality, especially of it has been kept under unnatural conditions.) Despite their different individual experiences they still exist at the same time and externally time is passing the same for both.

It seems to me heat /temperature/kinetic energy is correlated with -how much- spatial change is occurring -simultaneously- (especially at the atomic scale), it could be a little or a lot, but universal minimisation of potential energy which is the default change that will always occur, at all scales, that also occurs simultaneously (each little change being the kinetic energy minus potential energy) is correlated with passage of time. Comparing rates confuses matters because a faster rate is not faster passage of time but it is faster alteration of arrangement within the same passage of time. So its not to my mind kinetic energy that is driving passage of time.

Going back to the box of balls analogy from long ago. There could be two boxes one representing the hot entity and the other the cold entity. Both are stationary. In the hot box the balls are moving around a lot and in the cold one the balls only move a little. Simultaneously both boxes could be moved to a new spatial position representing the motion of the Earth (as the entities are from their perspective stationary). That movement if done gently will not affect the rates of the processes within and the hypothetical entities represented would not be aware that it has occurred. That seems a bit like passage of time to me.

Not sure you'll be convinced. I think I have said something similar previously.

Georgina,

"However if rate of change was giving passage of time then hot things would be disappearing into the future as time is passing quicker for them and cold things would be being left in the past."

This is what you are missing. Hot things disappear into the past much quicker. They age/burn faster and thus cease to exist quicker. The twin that ages quicker simply has a faster metabolic rate because atomic activity is faster in her frame. Mountains are really just waves in land, but because the molecular structure of soil and rock is much less dynamic than that of water, they tend to hang around longer than waves in water.

This is my whole point about it's what exists changing, causing future potential to become past circumstance and different conditions act at different rates. What is present moves into the past, while the present changes to the next configuration.

Got to run.

Georgina,

When you consider the reason for time dilation in relativity it is about faster or slower rates of atomic activity within the frame affected by gravity or velocity. Those gps satellites are notmoving into the future faster. Their clocks simply function in frame without as much gravitational drag, so the level of atomic activity is higher.

Writing on phone slowly...

John,

Thanks then if that is what you mean then I'm with you; the things can age at different rates but 'clock' time is the same for both. IE the different amounts of change are occurring fully simultaneously. That fits with my thinking that there is only that simultaneous existence and no other 'When' to be at.

Is ageing passage of time? I can rememberer someone saying to me that we age because of passage of time and I said of course we don't and then something about it being accumulation of the deleterious changes to our biology. However from your point of view its the changes to the individual causing the passage of time for him. If we do take -all- change to be passage of time in that way each system we look at will have its own time based upon changes -to it- and not changes to the environment that it is within. We sort of have that intuitive impression already, that time passes slowly for a mountain, rather slowly for a tree, fast for a mouse and very fast for a fly. I don't disagree that that is happening but I think something else is going on simultaneously which affects everything.

The spin and orbit and movement of the Earth as it moves with our star system affects everything on the Earth even if they feel they are not moving.(My boxes should have been on a try so they could be moved 'without moving them') That will happen regardless of the changes happening to each individual system on the Earth. Which is why it seems more like tradition notion of passage of time. That planetary motion could be described as continual minimisation of potential energy. The default motion when no additional (counteracting) force is applied.

I think your idea is more radical. That we should scrap any notion of time passing uniformly for everything and just think about kinetic energy and individual lifespans. That's duration or persistence of an identifiable individual arrangement. Paul would argue that as those individual systems will change, they are not the same individual thing. He has a point, even the notion of duration is a bit dodgy. Where is the cut off between regarding something as the same object or a different object? How much change can it undergo? Caterpillar to butterfly? Is that duration of an individual arrangement as it is still one organism or massive alteration of an individual arrangement? How do you compare duration when different arrangements undergo different kinds of change? How should duration be measured? Should we just compare anything to anything else regardless of the kind of changes occurring rather than have a set measurement scale?

I'd like to compare whole arrangements of Object universe universe to itself.IE How it was to how it is. Not possible -so I'd like to compare the whole Earth how it is to how it was. The interval between comparisons is arbitrary. To get an interval I need some kind of change that affects everything together. Which could be rotation the Earth, or spin of the Earth. Giving years or days. Now I can have two iterations of the arrangement to compare, a before and after and now a temporal comparison can be made.

In the past it was like that but now it isn't its like this. Time comes from that imagined historical sequence because that gives a before and an after and the changes can be ordered, even though there is only the youngest arrangement in existence. To get my interval there has to be a change applicable to all matter under consideration. Even the substance at absolute zero (for which subjectively time has stopped, by your criterion) will be moving with the complete motion of the Earth. It will therefore not have absolutely no energy and will undergo the same global passage of time as everything else.

Dear Mr. Merryman,

I find your statements about time quite interesting and I like the support you provide for the relevant points you make in your paper, which has much that I agree with. For example, I agree that "physics treats time as a measurement from one event to the next," and that our measurements are limited as reality [only to the extent they are confirmed by others as they re-measure from the same frames of reference.] There are, though, other issues with which I disagree or which I am unsure of your meaning.

Your posit that "time is the changing configuration of...[that which (presently) exists]...." seems to include space, fields, and other transparent or invisible quantum particles which, IMHO, are not subject to the force of time, aka aging. Please read my article, On the Nature of Time, posted Aug. 10th for this contest, so that you may see that to which I refer. I will appreciate your comments.

Your position that time is the effect of action and not necessarily the cause of it, would IMO require that action, e.g., motion, cause things to age. I read long ago (in so many words) that when or where no event occurs in space-time, those times and places are not relevant to relativity. It is not difficult to think then there is no time if there is no action. Yet, I do not disagree.

For something to be the cause of time would require action to occur and be or contain the force that causes time to flow. In fact, I agree time cannot pass unless an object is in motion, and since all observable objects are in motion, you are correct in wondering, as I have, "What came first, etc.?"

In my article, you will see I chose the motion of observable objects (that have mass) as that which causes time to become a property of such objects. Time, then, is a property of massive objects and passes inversely proportional to an object's speed. Time as a force can be proposed, just like gravitation is proposed as a field and as a local force only, accruing under specific situations where a mass is in motion. I propose, in fact, that time is a fifth fundamental force.

In another essay I propose to post here soon, I show the correlation between Dark Matter and objects such as antiparticles which modern physics claims appear randomly and apparently just so they can conveniently cause annihilations. That essay will further support my contest entry.

Georgina,

Without motion, nothing exists. With motion, nothing exists forever.

Sometimes when the answer won't come like we want it, we examine the question. In a sense, your question is; How do we know what we know and what can we know. So I would ask; What is this knowledge everyone speaks of? As animals and up through primordial humans, it's largely a function of cause and effect. We know eating something will satisfy our hunger, shelter will protect us from the elements and predators, companions will give us comfort. As we began to develop culture, we began to tell each other narratives to explain these relationships of cause and effect, tribal histories, myths, etc, in order to explain and encapsulate this knowledge and pass it down through the generations. Even math is a matter of factors and functions, nouns and verbs. This is essentially the sequencing of action, ie. time. So we are constantly making distinctions and judgements, as to what our actions are, navigating through the complexities of nature. Thus our part and participation in this narrative process and the accumulation of knowledge.

Now we ask ourselves as to what the final goal of this is; What is the answer to everything? God? Theory of everything, etc. The problem, as I keep pointing out, is that knowledge is subjective. We can take a generalized view of things and miss many details, or focus on a few particular details and miss the rest, as well as context. When we combine knowledge, it tends to cancel out many of the details, if not blur the entire frame. I'm not saying this from some irrefutable knowledge, but from experience and observation, so if someone wants to argue that knowledge isn't fundamentally subjective, I'm willing to listen, but reductionism is still a form of subjectivity.

The point then, is where does it lead? Marshall McLuhan said; The medium is the message. I would amend that to say; The medium is the message of the previous medium. Much as children are the message of their parents and are medium to their children. So to really make sense of where you are, it's not so much a matter of grand goals, but understanding what is the next step from where you are at? What is trying to emerge from the current state? Basically it's like banging your head on the wall, until you step back and just look at the wall. What is it? Should you walk along it, looking for a door? Walk away, until it disappears behind you? Rest against it and appreciate that it exists? Etc.

For me, when I consider time, not as the narrative sequence, but the changing configuration of what is, I go from walking down an endless path to a goal that seems not to exist, or be on the other side of death, to the view that I'm one with my situation. The same sense of being shines through those around me and I just blend into this larger reality. Sometimes leading, often following and basically appreciating being part of it, even if it's not always pleasant. Think of life as a sentence; Yes it has a beginning and an end, but the real function is how well it serves to tie the larger story together. Our lives are not just a singular path to our fate, but threads holding the larger tapestry together. Some longer, some shorter, some straight, some convoluted, some bigger, some smaller, but each in their space and place, both giving and receiving. We can't destroy what we have, hoping there is some little nugget of eternal truth, or just a hunk of gold hiding in there somewhere. If we do, we will only destroy ourselves and life will find a way to go on, leaving us clinging to nothing.

Thank you, John,for your quick response.

And again, we agree modern physics needs help. Your comment about time being a function of mass is so, but the rest can also be said of any thing else as well, because te secret to the holy grail is energy, I think. How do you reconcile time units going from the future to the past, when a race, e.g., is measured from start, i.e., zero, to its end, which must be a 0 result.

I understand you are saying time units wuld move from the potential of the future to the past. Do you mean to say, from the future to the present and then to the past? What about the claims that time moves in one direction to the future, as in the concept of entropy?

John,

Thanks for trying to restore some balance. It was a lot of questions I asked. Thinking aloud rather than needing an answer.

I'm sure science isn't about having all of the answers, that would put all of the research and theoretical scientists out of work. Rather its to keep questioning and finding better or different evidence and explanations. Other options are not to question but to accept all kinds of fictions, superstitions, pseudo-science and deeply flawed mainstream scientific 'understandings', or just not care to make any distinction between explanations and not to question anything; extinguish personal curiosity and be a good consumer instead.

I can just accept that ultimately stuff happens, regardless of what I think about it but I enjoy thinking. Which may be no more than building sandcastles and seeing if they stand, crumble or are knocked down. Where does it lead? I don't think any of us can know. The future is Open, not already existing. I think Einstein is credited with having said "If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be called research, would it?"

Georgina,

Pretty much how it is. We build these bubbles, houses, lives, ideas. Some of them are dead ends and some are incubators for other bubbles. Sometimes whole piles of them come crashing down all together. Sometimes that can be good, if you care for the results and sometimes it can be bad, if you have devoted your life to one of these bubbles. Energy expands, mass contracts.

Thomas,

Energy, being conserved, moves from one form to another. Since energy is conserved, in order for new forms to come into being, old forms have to dissolve. The past to future is energy moving on. The future to past is the forms being created and dissolved. Time is what a clock measures. We think of a clock as hands and face. Hands represent the present and the face is the events/units. To the events, the present seems to move, but to the present, it is the events which move the other way. To the hands, the face goes counterclockwise. This is much as we see the sun going east to west and finally realized it was the earth moving west to east.

Yes, it is future to present to past. That's the problem with the Schrodinger's cat paradox.It isn't movement along a time vector from past to future, but the actual events happening, deciding what the fate of the cat is. Think in terms of a race. Prior to the race, there are many potential winners, but then the race is run and there is only one actual winner.

The situation with entropy is that energy naturally expands, while mass contracts, so when released from mass, energy expands out in all directions very rapidly, but mass only consolidates out of energy very slowly, so the opposite effects do not mirror each other. The teacup doesn't reassemble itself. I think we will eventually realize mass is not so much a property of mass, but an effect of energy turning into mass and creating a vacuum. Much as when mass turns into energy, it creates pressure, like an explosion. They can't find dark energy, but galaxies are surrounded by fields of cosmic rays. If this energy is condensing into interstellar gasses, it would contract, creating a vacuum effect. Stars and large planets are constantly turning lighter forms of mass into denser forms of mass and these would explain their gravity fields.

Late for work....

Correction:

"I think we will eventually realize gravity is not so much a property of mass, but an effect of energy turning into mass and creating a vacuum."

John,

I really liked your article, it was quite refreshing. As is the case w/ most who respond, I had attempted to match (correlate) many of your implications to that which I have written and submitted. I am in agreement on much of what you state, but, when you stated:

"We cannot see both sides of the coin at once and blending them together wouldn't give a more accurate description of the coin" I have to disagree. This is where the contrast to what you stated goes opposite to what I had stated. Information is what you see, and, if this information lays itself out in time in the fashion (model) I described ... we do see both sides of the coin (nested images of the front and back spaces). You could argue that the front side information would be the most dynamic (Quantum Mechanic side w/ blue shift), but, the backside images become just as loaded w/ information (ie., the red shifted backside images provide all the information astronomers try to come to grips with)... maybe front and back act as ADS duels. We may be capable of using duel relations to "see" "information" from both sides of the coin at once since BOTH front and back side images are reflecting from the same physical, single coin, from each face.

Best Regards,

Tony

Tony,

I don't argue that both sides of the coin can't be considered in all their detail and present complimentary sides of one larger reality, but when you truly try to combine them, details are lost. It is no longer black and white, but grey. I'm not trying to argue against the expansion of knowledge and information, but trying to understand how it functions. The duality gives depth that is lost when we combine them. Much like we can see three dimensionally by combining information from two eyes, which is still not a single image, so our eyes switch back and forth. We can either consider generalities, which is what maps and laws do, or we can focus on specific details and then find the amount of detail in the detail is practically infinite. So knowledge is a function of focusing on what is important and applying the lessons to other situations.

John,

In the Semiconductor industry, when imaging through a chrome pattern plated glass mask, image details are lost when we fail to include the high order light scatter to reform the scaled image on a wafer. We can continually improve our ability to reform the image by doing many things, one is to increase the numerical aperature to collect the light orders that escape our collection optics. There is a cost to this however, with including the higher orders we reduce our process margin w.r.t the depth of focus - we become more prone to make a fuzzy image for the surface of in focus image becomes becomes thinner and thinner . Each and every optic/photo sensitivity film/phase shifting mask, Opticla Proximity Correction, etc., method that we employ to get a perfect scaled image to print wafers comes with a cost. Apparently, a cost comes in attempting to exactify and this may be a general rule, however, this does not rule out that a method exists that can be free of cost. We have to look, right?

Again, this has been a very refreshing forum.

Tony

Tony,

I certainly don't say there is not a way to expand knowledge cost free, but I'm looking at what knowledge is and how it functions. Primarily it requires context, which is time and place, so if you expand on either, multiple perspectives, or long duration shutter speed, the result is blurring. We assume there must be some God's eye view, or TOE, to describe everything, but 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 from which we fell. A TOE would be the ultimate reductionism. Knowledge, on the other hand, is a function of perspective and detail. The accumulation of knowledge is a process of building and collapsing complexity, which creates folding of information together, which is distillation, thus reducing detail to essential information/lessons.

The fact seems to be that all knowledge must be paid for.