The Problem: We See Time Backward by John Brodix Merryman

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.

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.

John

You: 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.

I reached the murky point and I did not find anything useful hahaha!! So, I left it aside.

I also read your entry about the aether and the centrifugal force. But I do not understand why you say the aether does not explain centrifugal force. I told you that vacuum, ZPF and aether are synonyms for me. So if it works in vacuum why not in aether (perhaps you may have another notion of the aether). Indeed we can say that the aether has a minute effect on the matter that it cannot be detected. In the Newtoninan case in which space is totally empty, the inertia of the object spinning will keep it rotating forever and if a particle flies out from this object it will keep in motion in a straight line indefinitely. But if we assume a non-empty space (no matter how fine and subtle this vacuum is) in a finite amount of time the object will have to stop spinning (as you say) and the particle flying out will stop moving. It seems to me that this is quite natural due to frictional forces between the vacuum and the object.

It has been shown that the vacuum causes an increase of temperature to accelerated objects, so, it is clear that physical objects interacts with the vacuum. See the Casimir effect and the Unruh effect.

Israel

Israel,

I don't doubt that space is full of energy, from quantum fluctuations on up. What I have a problem with is when space is demoted to nothing more than the relationships and measures of its contents. While it may simply be just inertial and infinite, those are the conceptual parameters of zero to infinity. When we distill away that foundation, then all sorts of questionable characters start slipping through the door, from inflation to multiworlds and now onto multiverses.

John,

I think your 2008 essay referred to time as a consequence of motion - which you now have replaced with "energy." In Nov 2007 I wrote a very long article (that didn't post until March 2008) referring to the underlying mechanism of time as possibly nothing more than fundamental behaviors in the universe. With fundamental behaviors being energy driven - it looks like we are on the same page. In fact, note my analogy to temperature and energy of boiling water. Great minds think alike. Anyway, here is a segment from that article:

--- A particle behavior already known to many relativity enthusiasts is the decay of the muon, which is a member of the lepton family. A typical muon will exist for about two microseconds until it decays into an electron and two other particles called neutrinos. This is actually accomplished via the weak force, in which a particle known as a W particle is generated to facilitate the decay. Now, if we were able to examine those precious two microseconds closely, what would we find? Is there a fundamental behavior, taking place once or repeating itself many times over during the two microseconds that causes the actual decay? And how does this fundamental behavior in the muon speed up or slow down if the muon experiences a velocity change and/or position change in a gravitational field?

Could a moun, moving at extremely high velocity, take longer to produce a W particle, or have a longer-lived W particle, or some other behavior, simply because it has a higher velocity relative to some background field or is placing a strain on a field of its own that is being dragged along?

We should view the muon's two-microsecond life as we would view a pot of water's five minutes on the burner before it begins to boil away. Something is happening during those five minutes. A gradual change is taking place that brings the liquid water to an eventual state of gaseous, non-liquid existence. Similarly, something is happening during the muon's two microseconds. Is it something gradual, due to an energy change, as we see with the boiling water? Or is it one, single, very quick rate-determining event that just has a high probability of occurring at around two microseconds? In either case,

something is definitely happening during high velocity and/or exposure to gravity that is prolonging this event. During high velocity, a disturbance could be created between the muon and one of its own fields, or a field it is moving through. Gravity could be creating the same net effect by having an influence on a background field, or one of the muon's own fields, as the muon remains stationary. In either event, this disturbance could be the equivalent of moving the pot of water off of the burner by a centimeter, which

would prolong the boiling time. --------------------

The interesting thing is that if the: energy/motion/behavior theory of time is correct - then relativity can't possibly be correct. Anyway - I think this is the sort of thing that needs to be discussed more!

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

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."

John Merryman

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

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

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