Why we know a lot of the past but little from the future by Luca Valeri Zimmermann

Very nice essay, Luca.

Have you had the chance to read Lee Smolin's book Time Reborn? He makes similar points to yours but doesn't tie it as clearly to information flows, which you did and I thought was brilliant.

Reviewed it here:

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/searle20130715

Would be interested in your thoughts on my entry: "The Cartography of the Future" if you get the chance.

Best of luck!

Rick Searle

Thanks for your comment, Rick.

And thanks for the link. I didn't know this book from Smolin. It seems that Smolin has also a concept of time that precedes physics. This makes him possible to think, that the laws of nature can change. There he takes a view that I call realistic in the sense that he thinks, there is something out there that follows this laws. That this laws have a certain contingency is part of that realistic view. That they can change is really new in physical thinking.

I take a completely different view. The laws of physics are as they are because they express the most general condition that make scientific knowledge possible. This means that we recognize nature only insofar as they follows the laws of physics. (That is actually similar to Einsteins answer to Heisennberg who said: But it was you that taught us that only things we can observe should enter the theory. Einstein replied that it is the other round: it is the physical theory that tells us, what can be observed.

Anyhow what I like in von Weizsäckers thinking is his philosophy of going in a circle ("Kreisgang"). We start with some vague notion of the structure of time. Use it to understand/derive physics and give to the notion of time a clearer meaning that we had before we started the circle. This is a bit like Bohr pointed out: "With the washing dishes it's just like with the language [of physics]. We have dirty dishwater and dirty towels, and yet it succeed in getting the plates and glasses finally clean up"

I read your nice essay and will try to comment on it.

Regards

Luca

Luca,

"The laws of physics are as they are because they express the most general condition that make scientific knowledge possible."

Is this like a version of the anthrophic principle only in regards to scientific knowledge? Why do you think the universe is comprehensible in this way? Or are the laws merely an expression of the degree to which the universe is comprehensible?

I am curious as to what you think of this thought per your ideas about information and the future: It has struck me lately that life itself and human institutions act in large part as bridges across time aiming to get information from the existent present into the non-existent future. Time is the essential feature for biological life, but how does this square with the notion of time in physics?

Oh, I hadn't realized your essay had not been voted on yet. I've done that now, so you'll get closer to the top and get more feedback on your wonderful essay from persons better at physics than I am. :)

Please vote on my essay if you haven't done so already.

All the best,

Rick

Your essay is one of the better ones. It raises an interesting issue on how quantum physics can be unitary while at the same time more information is available to observers and entropy increases.

Cheers LC

Luca, thanks for your interesting reflections on physics from the standpoint of a Kantian a priori. I'm guessing that you gave us only a small part of your thinking on this, since there are so many different aspects of physics that need to be explained. Do you have an essay in one of the earlier contests?

My current essay is on a different topic (the evolution of communications media), but in the essays I wrote for the FQXi contests in 2012 and 2013 I was thinking about how we might be able to understand physics in terms of a different kind of a priori, namely the preconditions of meaningful communication between physical systems, or in other words, measurement.

Quantum theory seems to tell us that all the determinate information in the world is actually determined ("observed") by something. That implies at least that there exist contexts of physical interaction that make each specific item of information meaningful to what happens in the future, in some other context. I suggested that this kind of system might be the result of an evolutionary process, rather than an a priori in the Kantian sense. But the goal is similar to yours, i.e. to base physics on the preconditions of our experience.

Thanks again -- Conrad

Luca,

I think the problem we have with understanding time is that since we are individual beings, we experience change as a particular sequence of events and so think of it as this point of the present moving from past events to future ones. Physics then distills this to measures of duration between these sequences.

The actual reality is the changing configuration of what exists turns future into past. For example, tomorrow becomes yesterday because the world turns, not that we travel some dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. Since this means time is an effect of action, its irreversibility is due to the physical inertia of the actual actions. The world isn't going to stop and go the other direction.

Duration is just what is happening between the occurrence of the events, like the rest of the wave happening between the peaks.

It makes time similar to temperature, rather than space. Time is to temperature what frequency is to amplitude. We think of temperature as a cumulative effect, but it's based on lots of specific amplitudes/velocities. With time we measure the specific actions, but cannot find a universal rate of change. That is because it also is a cumulative effect of lots of little actions. The present is simply that which physically exists. We are just one molecule, bouncing from one encounter to the next, in this thermodynamic medium.

We cannot measure precise locations of objects in motion, whether it is a subatomic quantum of light, or a car driving down the road. To do so, we would have to freeze all the motion which makes them what they are. Like a temperature of absolute zero, there would be no normal reality to measure and no way to measure it, since our devices and their atomic structure would also be motionless.

Faster clocks don't move into the future more rapidly, as they age/burn quicker, they recede into the past more rapidly. The hare is long dead, but the tortoise is still plodding along. Keep that in mind, the next time you are rushing about.

If we go along that narrative vector from past to future, we either think the future must be determined, because we know only one outcome will happen and the laws governing it are firm. Or we think the past must remain probable and branch off into multiworlds, because some element of probability remains. Now if we view it as the process by which future becomes past, then probability precedes actuality. The laws determining the outcome might be set, but the input into the equation of the event only arrives with its occurrence.

Now I find most physicists simply ignore this observation, because it does raise questions which are not permitted, but you might consider it when trying to figure out time.

Regards,

John Merryman

Luca,

I first submitted this concept to the first FQXI contest, in 2008, The Nature of Time. Much of my subsequent thinking on the topic has been formed by arguing with people, mostly on FQXI forums, usually Tom Ray, who disagreed with the premise. So while I don't think I'm wrong, I am certainly willing to consider where I could be mistaken.

What I don't like is having the idea ignored, because it would seriously alter much in current physics and more importantly, give us a better understanding of the world in which we live.

I would add that Julian Barbour won that contest with an essay which essentially argued the only universal measure is a composite of all actions. As he put it, the path of least action between different configuration states of the universe.

Regards,

John

Hi Luca,

I'm a little tired so I'm going to have to re-read your essay later.

One of the problems with present day physics is that space/time is not separable in mathematics representation. Space/time is inherent to the variables used.

Consider the differences in Energy and Momentum, not physically, but in terms of representation. Notice the recurring nature? What other processes have a recurring nature, virtually everything. A good example is crystal growth in the presence of an impurity.

My attempt at relating the recurring nature of physics to mathematics is found at:

http://vixra.org/pdf/1402.0041v1.pdf

Probability lumps together and hides causality. This is where space/time is thought to be separable, both in representation and manipulation.

Luca,

Regarding the space between objects.

In an environment of relativity, empty space does not exist. Nowhere in our universe will you find empty space. Our observations are based in causal connectedness, we cannot directly observe anything outside of our system of relativity. The manifestation of empty space seems to be related to weak causal connectedness to space, time, or both. Still connected, but weakly.

Consider the space between subatomic particles, there is none. Subatomic particles overlap.

How is this possible? Observable artifacts are systems of space/time. But every observable artifact is connected to every other observable artifact in the universe; by what?

That is the purpose of "Axiom of Choice extended to include Relativity". This potentially provides a state space in which set theory can be used to develop experiments that can treat space and time as independent variables instead of mutually dependent variables.

Dear Mr. Zimmermann,

I thought that your essay was very well written and I do hope that it does well in the competition.

You were exceptionally sagacious in wondering if there was another explanation of the workings of the real Universe other than physics.

INERT LIGHT THEORY

Based on my observation, I have concluded that all of the stars, all of the planets, all of the asteroids, all of the comets, all of the meteors, all of the specks of astral dust and all real things have one and only one thing in common. Each real thing has a material surface and an attached material sub-surface. A surface can be interior or exterior. All material surfaces must travel at a constant speed. All material sub-surfaces must travel at an inconsistent speed that has to be less than the constant speed the surface travels at. While a surface can travel in any direction, a sub-surface can only travel either inwardly or outwardly. A sub-surface can expand or contract. Surfaces and sub-surfaces can be exchanged by the application of natural or fabricated force. The surfaces of the sub-sub-microscopic can never be altered. This is why matter cannot be destroyed. This is why anti-matter can never be created. It would be physically impossible for light to move as it does not have a surface or a sub-surface. Although scientists insist that light can be absorbed, or reflected, or refracted, this is additional proof that light cannot have a surface. It would be physically impossible for a surface to absorb another surface, or reflect another surface, or refract another surface.

Abstract theory cannot ever have unification because it is perfect.. Only reality is unified because there is only one unique reality.

Light is the only stationary substance in the real Universe. The proof of this is easy to establish. When one looks at an active electrical light, one must notice that all of the light remains inside of the bulb. What does move from the bulb is some form of radiant. The radiant must move at a rate of speed that is less than the "speed" of light, however, when the radiant strikes a surface it achieves the "speed" of light because all surfaces can only travel at the constant "speed" of light. When a light radiant strikes a surface, the radiant resumes being a light, albeit of a lesser magnitude. While it is true that searchlights, spotlights and car headlights seem to cast a beam of light, this might be because the beams strike naturally formed mingled sub-sub and sub-atomic particles prevalent in the atmosphere that collectively, actually form a surface.

In the Thomas Young Double Slit Experiment, it was not direct sunlight that passed through the slits. Light from the sun is stationary and it cannot move because light does not have a surface. Radiants emitted from the sun went through the slits and behaved like wave radiants.

Einstein was completely wrong. His abstract theory about how abstract observers "see" abstract events differently is wrong. This is what every real observer sees when they look at a real light. They see that all of the light remains near the source. The reason for that is because light does not have a surface, therefore it cannot move. This happens to real observers whether they are looking at real fabricated lights such as neon, incandescent or LED. This also happens when real observers observe real natural light such as from the real sun or reflected from the real moon, or from a real lightning bolt, or from a real fire, a real candle, or light from out of a real lightning bug's bottom.

Regards,

Joe Fisher

Luca,

Thank you for the essay. You are a good writer (there are many poor writers out there). I think there was an "m" that I could not figure out where it belonged.

I do need to re-read your essay. Please tell me how far off I am in my understanding. You have an interaction at a fundamental level in Physics which you say must exist and you indicate God might exist from that interaction. There are many interactions in Physics, I don't see how an interaction in spin states is more fundamental than gravity, as an example. I am trying to understand how this interaction relates to anything else. I will re-read your essay tomorrow with fresh eyes.

Hope you do well,

Jeff