The future is the past by Roger Schlafly

That's a good point, Roger. Now, in order for something to be recognized as feasible, it must first be recognized as logically possible. As you know, what I have done is to analyze the logic of the very concept of a future-viewing machine, to isolate the kind of future-viewing machine that is logically possible. So, whether it is physically possible is a separate consideration which the next thirty years of science will likely discover, either way. In any case, this consideration has intrinsic value for humanity, because it would be such a home run if it does turn out that we can build them!

For further insights, I would recommend that you read my conversations with Michael Allan, Tommy Anderberg, and Robert de Neufville on my page. A great deal of clarification is available in those stimulating conversations.

I see that you have written about the ontology of time, et cetera. I will surely read your essay when my technical program is completed on Friday, it looks great.

Take care,

Aaron

Dear Roger,

I read your essay with great interest. It once again confirms the fact that Mathematics and Physics - two fundamental sign systems but ontologically is not justified. However, like all Knowledge. Fundamental science is experiencing a "crisis of representation and interpretation", "crisis of understanding", methodological and philosophical crisis of foundations. About it well said Carlo Rovelli in article SCIENCE IS NOT ABOUT CERTAINTY: A PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICS :

«This is a standard idea of how science works, which implies that science is about empirical content, the true interesting relevant content of science is its empirical content. Since theories change, the empirical content is the solid part of what science is. Now, there's something disturbing, for me as a theoretical scientist, in all this. I feel that something is missing. Something of the story is missing. I've been asking to myself what is this thing missing? I'm not sure I have the answer, but I want to present some ideas on something else which science is.

This is particularly relevant today in science, and particularly in physics, because if I'm allowed to be polemical, in my field, in fundamental theoretical physics, it is 30 years that we fail. There hasn't been a major success in theoretical physics in the last few decades, after the standard model, somehow. Of course there are ideas. These ideas might turn out to be right. Loop quantum gravity might turn out to be right, or not. String theory might turn out to be right, or not. But we don't know, and for the moment, nature has not said yes in any sense.

I suspect that this might be in part because of the wrong ideas we have about science, and because methodologically we are doing something wrong, at least in theoretical physics, and perhaps also in other sciences. »

As a result of the crisis - the concept of "multiverse" and misunderstanding of "time". Problem of the foundation of mathematics over a hundred years. But this problem is "swept under the carpet", it is not even included in "The Millennium Problems" Clay Mathematics Institute. How can mathematics be able to "close the physics" (mathematician Ludwig Faddeev an interview «The equation of the evil spirit»)?

At the time Henri Bergson wrote a good book "Matter and Memory". But unfortunately, he not found a deep connection between these two fundamental categories. Physics was on the way phenomenological unification, but now need deep ontological unification of matter to "grab" the structure of SPACE and then "grab" «TIME» as multivalent phenomenon Ontological (structural, cosmic) Memory. In the physical picture of the world no deepest meanings of the "LifeWorld " (E.Husserl). Physicists and lyricists must have the unified picture of the world rich in meanings of the "LifeWorld".

You give a good key concept of "structure". Fundamental science needs "general framework structure" (David Gross, an interview "What is in the space-time"). We have a good idea of N.Bourbaki - "mother structures". Going to the "absolute generative structure " ("general framework structure") should start from "Architecture Mathematics" Bourbaki and Cartesian «Cogito ergo sum». As is well said in his article A.Zenkin in his article SCIENTIFIC COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN MATHEMATICS ::

«The truth should be drawn with the help of the cognitive computer visualization technology and should be presented to" an unlimited circle "of spectators in the form of color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence.» But in order to "draw" the truth, it is necessary to understand more deeply the Cartesian "Cogito ergo sum".

"Science formulas" is not an assistant, need "Science forms" and " The General Theory of structures."

I hope that the category of "Memory" will be the central category of the scientific picture of the world and then to manage the future of Humanity will be easier. The New Era and a New Generation demanded action. We need a new "Big Common Cause" to save Peace, Nature and Humanity. Time has come and we start the path.

I agree: «The future is the past». High score. I look at your blog and remember the wonderful words Henry David Thoreau:

"It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise,

as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye;

but that is sufficient guidance for all our life.

We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period,

but we would preserve the true course."

I invite you to comment on and appreciate my ideas.

High regard,

Vladimir

Dear Roger,

Wonderfully well argued. And I agree with your conclusion.

But one thought began to bother me: Physics is just a heading humans have given to a body of knowledge on how nature woks. If the body of knowledge says something that the human mind differs on, which is right? Our body of knowledge or Our mind?

Comments, please.

Would also appreciate your comments on my essay (here)

(a) with your physicist hat on, and

(b) with your physicist hat off.

-- Ajay

Roger,

Thank you for a fascinating and entertaining essay! You are the Stephen Colbert of FQXi: even though you are really a logical positivist, you pretend to believe all the most counter-intuitive abstract ideas of modern physics, and by quoting the believers, you highlight the delicious weirdness of their ideas. Of course, in an infinite multiverse, EVERYTHING happens, so it makes no sense to steer THE future, and the very existence of this essay contest makes no sense. OR DOES IT? :)

You are being a little unfair to multiverse believers when you propose, at the end of your essay, that we reduce suffering in OTHER universes by making the WORST decisions possible in THIS one... but it is part of the fun of your essay!

Your really deserve to make it to the finals, and I have rated your essay accordingly. Good luck!

Marc

Roger,

I thought I make a final effort to get your thoughts on my initial comment on your thread; That the reason we misinterpret time is due to our singular experience of a sequence of events being interpreted as the point of the present moving from past to future, which physics further distills to measures of particular duration, when the logical physical mechanism is the changing configuration of what exists, thus creating and dissolving these events, effectively turning future into past.

Which makes time much more like temperature, than space. Essentially time is to temperature, what frequency is to amplitude, which I covered in the prior post.

To clarify, determinism is based on the assumption that since one causal outcome occurs for every event, this must mean all subsequent events must be effectively pre-determined. While multiworlds argues that since all quantum events are in fact effectively probabilistic, then the past must remain so, resulting in multiworlds occurring with every possibility.

Now if we look at it as future becoming past, then probability precedes actuality. The input into any event only happens with its occurrence.

In my own entry I observe the dichotomy of energy and information and how energy manifests information, while information defines energy. With the quantum, we keep trying to extract ever more precise information from the energy, yet still can't erase its essential fuzziness. The fact is that even a moving car doesn't have a precise location, or it wouldn't be moving. As for those subatomic particles; If they weren't moving, there would be no car. Energy is inherently dynamic, while information is inherently static. We extract information by stopping the energy, usually with an opposing force, such as a mass object consisting of balanced forces, which then absorbs this energy according to its own structure, effectively contracting it to a point, creating the effect of this quantum of energy being thought of as a particle.

I could keep jabbering on, but you may have wished to avoid my previous post and not just missed it, so...

Regards,

John Merryman

This is an excellent, fascinating survey of the arguments that we live in a deterministic universe, Roger. I think you right that we do live a deterministic universe. I would add that there is a sense in which Tegmark's clones are not identical: they have made different decisions. They are distinguished by the exercise of precisely that agency that they're not supposed to have.

But I don't think that a deterministic universe precludes meaningful free will. Human beings may not have free will in the radical sense that we somehow make our decisions from outside the physical world. But even if it had to happen that John would decide to eat French fries, it is still John who decides to have them. Saying "John decided to have French fries" is a perfectly valid description of what happened, even if his decision can be reduced to the workings of the physical laws that govern the components of his body. The future and the past may be unchanging, but our choices are the path that connects past and future states.

So while our sense of moving through time may be a cognitive illusion, I would argue there's a good reason why we believe our choices matter. We have to make decisions every second we're awake. Even not making a decision is a kind of a decision. The universe in which we think our choices don't matter is the universe in which we make terrible choices. Consider the character in Lermontov's story "The Fatalist" who believes it doesn't matter whether or not he puts a loaded gun to his head and pulls the trigger because whether or not he is going to die is already predetermined. But of course it does matter. As Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote, "We must believe in free will--we have no choice."

In any case, I really enjoyed your essay. Good luck in the contest!

Best,

Robert de Neufville

My view--I am a reformed philosopher--is that many of these controversies are arguments about ways of talking rather than about things themselves. As Wittgenstein put it,

Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up "What's that?"--It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said: "this is a man," "this is a house," etc. And then the child makes some marks and asks: what's this then?

The hard-core concept of determinism seems to me like the child's marks. I can't make sense of it. But I also don't think it has much to do with the folk language we use for agency.

Thanks again for the stimulating discussion!

Roger Schlafly,

A great essay!!! Ten points easily!!! It is a highly competent damage report! The needle went off the scale! However you intended it to be, I read it as the prelude to greater essay explaining how to return sensibility to science, to theoretical physics in particular. For me to go further, would be me just repeating what I have written in six essay contests and elsewhere. However, your essay is what exists here and now and I loved it for my own reasons.

James Putnam

Dear Roger,

Yes this is a delicious essay, I am chewing it now and it tastes deliciously crunchy. However, my clones in other universes taste your essay softy and smelly. Wonderful! It is fun.

In KQID, I incorporate both Einstein's block Multiverse as also previously articulated by Parmenides and his student and his lover Zeno who gave us a wonderful Zeno's paradoxes and at the same time flow of time from moving one way from past yo the future. Please give me your comments.

I rated yours a full ten (10) as it deserves.

Best wishes,

Leo KoGuan

Thanks. I especially enjoyed your discussion of consciousness and free will. You obviously disagree with some of the experts I quote. And yes, we need a greater essay on returning sensibility to science. It takes several essays just to explain how far from common sense we have gotten.

Roger Schlafly,

Thank you for reading my essay and for your kind words. The price seems to have been a 5 rating for you and a 1 rating for me. I am glad that you remain high. I will continue to take what comes as I move on evaluating essays. Good luck.

James

Roger,

I responded in my own forum.

James

Roger Schlafly,

"One trouble with the rating system is that you can get a low rating, but have no idea whether someone thinks that you are technically incorrect, or if someone just disagrees with some of your opinions. Ideally the critics wpould explain themselves in the comments."

Your essay did not overtly challenge physics theories. It did not offer alternatives. It did not resist theoretical physics. It accepted physics theory. I loved you essay. I say it is a literary masterpiece. One can choose to accept its heralding of theoretical physics as a responsible position. I chose to understand it as a satire. My opinion does not affect the value of your essay. Your essay stands on its own. Your essay lives in the mind of the reader for what they believe. I state again that among all of the essays, it is a literary masterpiece. Whatever the contest outcome is, it cannot add to or detract from your literary accomplishment.

James Putnam