The Problem: We See Time Backward by John Brodix Merryman

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.

Thomas,

I will read and comment on your thread, though there are many aspects of current physics which I consider to be patches to a flawed model.

To the extent time is a function of mass, it is form coalescing out of energy and eventually dispersing back into energy and other forms. The unit of time of the object, going from future potential to past circumstance. Much as any unit of time goes from future to past, tomorrow to yesterday.

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.

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.

Hi John

Just to let you know that I have read your essay which I enjoyed a lot and found it clear and well written. In my previous essay I discuss my notion of time (points 6 to 9) which I think agrees with you. The notion of time is nothing but change/motion, the problem is that nobody understand what change/motion is. Something that is certain is that change appears to be continuous and in this sense resembles a flow in the Newtonian sense. In operational terms this flow is measured with a clock and is mathematically represented in physics as an "independent" variable. Certainly, it has to be independent because, as most people believe, change is an intrinsic quality of the universe. According to the theoretical framework this variable is considered as a parameter (i.e. classical mechanics) or as a coordinate (special relativity). Since I do not understand what change is, I prefer not to try to modify the concept of time.

Right now, I am having a discussion in my entry about this topic with Daniel Wagner since he also discusses the notion of space and time in his essay. I recommend you to read his essay as well. I am also putting some comments in his entry, perhaps you may be interested in seeing.

Good luck in the contest

Israel

John,

Great work! I didn't read the above thread so if someone else said this already sorry but could this be summed up by saying that: we can be viewed as moving forward through time so it would be equally valid to isolate time as moving backward past us? If so - even our view of time could be "relative" to the frame it is viewed from! It makes sense that you reference quantum physics. Anyone interested in the many universes theory would probably appreciate this work.

Your camera analogy is right on. Kind of reminds me of some of Julian Barbour's work even though you two have differences to your theories too.

In short - I feel sorry for any participant that doesn't take the time to read your work. They are truly missing something.

Chris,

As it first occurred to me, I did see it as two directions, ie. the present moving past to future, as the events move future to past.

The reason I modified the original impression is that upon examination it is that the changing configuration of what physically exists, is foundational cause to the effect of the series.

I clarified this further in my own mind recently, in one of my periodic debates with Tom Ray, that cause and effect is not sequence, but energy exchange. Consider that one day doesn't cause the next, any more than one rung on a ladder causes the next. Yet my tapping on these keys causes letters to appear on the screen. That's because there is an energy transfer. Just as it is the sun shining(radiant energy) on a rotating planet(inertial energy), which causes these sequences of events called days. I think this is part of why physics occasionally argues that reality is acausal, as Phil Gibbs does in his entry.

Remember that we still very much see the sun as moving across the sky, since from our position, that is exactly what is happening, since we are the center of our own perspective. Epicycles is a very good mathematical modeling of this, but it was the physical mechanics of it that had people stumped. Just as the mechanics of how we move from past to future has people stumped. We are moving. We go from past to future. Time is an effect of motion. What are we missing?

Israel,

I'll have a look over there. I haven't read his entry, so it might be a little while.

As I see, it, in simple terms, is that change is an effect of action. Much as hot and cold are relative effects/degrees of thermal action. Now if we keep peeling away the layers and start asking what is/what is the cause of action, then it might start getting murky.

As I see it though, time is no more or less comprehensible than temperature. It's just that rationality is a serial function, ie. arising from perceptions of change, cause and effect, as well as narrative, so separating it from our perception of it is tricky. What we don't quite appreciate is that emotion and intuition arise from thermodynamic activity, in the interaction of environment and hormones.