The Problem: We See Time Backward by John Brodix Merryman

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

Jonathan,

First off, my point is not about relativistic measures of duration. It is about whether time emerges from action, ie, the changing configuration of what exists/the present, such that it is events going future to past, or whether it is simply a measure of duration from one event to the next, past to future, resulting in such concepts as blocktime.

If you can figure that out, then maybe we can consider what causes duration to vary in different situations and from different points of observation. Is it because of the geometry of spacetime, or because duration is subject to context, whether actual, such as with gps satellites, or perceptual, as with those observers you are fixated on.

That you don't seem able to understand it is a different issue might go towards explaining why those schooled in the established paradigm haven't considered this. I think [link:fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1480]Edward Anderson[:link] provides a very vivid example of this disconnect, as he first explains time as manifestly Machian, then delves into how it is best measured. The issue is not measurement, the issue is cause!!!!!!

If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is [math]R_1 [/math] and [math]N_1 [/math] was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have [math]S_1=R_1 N_1 [/math] of points. After it anyone give you [math]dS [/math] of points so you have [math]S_2=S_1+ dS [/math] of points and [math]N_2=N_1+1 [/math] is the common quantity of the people which gave you ratings. At the same time you will have [math]S_2=R_2 N_2 [/math] of points. From here, if you want to be R2 > R1 there must be: [math]S_2/ N_2>S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] (S_1+ dS) / (N_1+1) >S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] dS >S_1/ N_1 =R_1[/math] In other words if you want to increase rating of anyone you must give him more points [math]dS [/math] then the participant`s rating [math]R_1 [/math] was at the moment you rated him. From here it is seen that in the contest are special rules for ratings. And from here there are misunderstanding of some participants what is happened with their ratings. Moreover since community ratings are hided some participants do not sure how increase ratings of others and gives them maximum 10 points. But in the case the scale from 1 to 10 of points do not work, and some essays are overestimated and some essays are drop down. In my opinion it is a bad problem with this Contest rating process. I hope the FQXI community will change the rating process.

Sergey Fedosin

Your work is mentioned here

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1383#post_68802

Not in a particularly positive light of course. Lawrence doesn't appreciate my input, but I've been needling him on occasion for several years, in the FQXi blogs.

While I'm hesitant to use the word singularity, I obviously agree with your essay.

I hope that you will be applying for the Physics of Information grant, because you're one of a very small number of people who see academia for what it could be -- that is, if they could get over themselves and truly cooperate for once.

I put forth the Shannon / holographic principle paper with no serious expectations, and the first reactions from the blogosphere are non-fatal critiques about data types. Point proven: we are practically dealing with cavemen, and it doesn't take a whole lot to make them stomp about and beat their clubs on the ground. It's like we're direct witnesses to ancient history! It's a little sad, although I do ultimately feel privileged for being able to see such a rare, once in a species series of events. I wonder if this is at all similar to how Neanderthal went down?

Of course, my babbling about Shannon doesn't actually need to be right for the main point to stick. I just wanted them to see their banality for themselves. Let's not hold our breath though. ;)

I second the motion of getting John some grant money. It would be well spent. Give him about $300,000 - he could hire a team of researchers and mathematicians and publish a report nine months from now that would turn the physics world upside down.

John - Since you and I have both relied on the temperature analogy when discussing the emergent phenomenon of time, I figured you might get a kick out of this: I was listening to an archived NPR radio debate between Lee Smolin and Brian Greene yesterday that was recorded in 2006 and Greene, when discussing time said that it could be an emergent property with an underlying cause similar to how our perception of temperature can be traced to the actual velocity (Kinetic energy) of the atoms/molecules.

I almost fell out of my chair! We have something in common with a string theorist! There may be hope for him yet.

Chris,

There is another interesting reference in the fqxi video article: Embracing Complexity.

"D'Souza's background in statistical physics introduced her to the prototypical phase transition. It considers a collection of atoms, each with a magnetic moment, that could either line-up with each other--so that the overall system becomes magnetized--or remain in a disordered mess. There is a tension in this case: on the one hand, the atoms want to line-up, lowering the system's energy; on the other hand, the laws of thermodynamics tell us that systems prefer to move to a state of increasing disorder, mathematically expressed as having a higher entropy. It was first discovered experimentally that the outcome depends on temperature. At high temperatures entropy rules, the atoms remain disordered and the system does not become magnetized. But below some critical temperature, the system undergoes a phase transition and the atoms align."

One analogy I've been using lately is to relate time to frequency and temperature to amplitude. It has been irritating to some. I won't name names, but did explore the concept in Lawrence Crowell's thread.

I don't think I'll hold my breath for Brian Greene to explore that thought too deeply, as it would detract from time/energy spent studying multiverses.

Shawn,

I missed your note, as I'm not around my home computer very much these days. It's not just science, but all of humanity that could do with a bit more of the holographic principle and not just this digital atomization we are subjected to. Here is an essay I wrote last year.

More on temperature as amplitude:

Thermodynamics of quantum entanglement

In recent years, physicists have amused themselves by calculating the properties of quantum machines, such as engines and refrigerators.

The essential question is how well these devices work when they exploit the rules of quantum mechanics rather than classical mechanics. The answers have given physicists important new insights into the link between quantum mechanics and thermodynamics.

The dream is that they may one day build such devices or exploit those already used by nature.

Today, Robert Alicki, at the University of Gdansk in Poland, and Mark Fannes, at the University of Leuven in Belgium, turn their attention to quantum batteries. They ask how much work can be extracted from a quantum system where energy is stored temporarily.

Such a system might be an atom or a molecule, for example. And the answer has an interesting twist.

Physicists have long known that it is possible to extract work from some quantum states but not others. These others are known as passive states.

So the quantity physicists are interested in is the difference between the energy of the quantum system and its passive states. All that energy is potentially extractable to do work elsewhere.

Alicki and Fannes show that the extractable work is generally less than the thermodynamic limit. In other words, they show that this kind of system isn't perfect.

However, the twist is that Alicki and Fannes say things change if you have several identical quantum batteries that are entangled.

Entanglement is a strange quantum link that occurs when separate particles have the same wavefunction. In essence, these particles share the same existence.

Entanglement leads to all kinds of bizarre phenomena such as the "spooky action at a distance" that so puzzled Einstein.

Alicki and Fannes show that when quantum batteries are entangled they become much better. That's essentially because all the energy from all the batteries can be extracted at once. "Using entanglement one can in general extract more work per battery," they say.

In fact, as the number of entangled batteries increases, the performance becomes arbitrarily close to the thermodynamic limit. In other words, a battery consisting of large numbers of entangled quantum batteries could be almost perfect.

That's a fascinating result. Quantum batteries in the form of atoms or molecules may be ubiquitous in nature, in processes such as photosynthesis. Biologists know for example that during photosynthesis, energy is transferred with 100 per cent efficiency from one molecular machine to another.

How this happens, nobody knows. Perhaps Alicki and Fannes' work can throw some light on this process.

However, it's worth pointing out some of the limitations of this work. It is highly theoretical and does not take into account various practical limitations that are likely to crop up.

Indeed they acknowledge this and say an interesting goal for the future will be to work out how practical limitations might change their result.

In the meantime, nanotechnologists can dream about the possibility of exploiting near perfect batteries in micromachines of the future and learning more about the way nature may have already perfected this trick.

Ref: http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.1209: Extractable Work From Ensembles of Quantum Batteries. Entanglement Helps."

In other words, the entangled quanta amount to larger amplitudes/more energy. So, yes, thermal properties do apply to quantum behavior.