Cristi,

I will go back and read your previous entries, because the argument for block time does interest me.

I am saying the arrow of time arises from the first law of thermodynamics, the conservation of energy.

As I am a presentist, that only the present is real, energy is "conserved" because it is only present and it is the changing forms of this energy that create the effect of time.

Say a batter hits a ball. The energy of the event of the swinging bat is transferred to the event of the ball flying away. So it is the energy flowing through this process that creates the effect of BOTH time and its direction. The event of the swinging bat can no longer physically exist, because the energy has flowed to succeeding events. It wouldn't be conserved otherwise, but would be left in the past.

As I understand it, physics assumes that duration, this temporal dimension, underlays the entire sequence of events and like a length of space, say a foot, is a foot if you measure from A to B, or B to A, it would seem that time is assumed to be symmetric because a unit of time is assumed to be similar to a unit of distance. So measuring from event A to B is the same duration as B to A. Which seems to ignore the conservation of energy. How do past events continue to exist, if no energy remains in the past? I suppose mathematical forms don't need energy to be manifest?

As for free will, I see that as more of a political slogan. What are we to be free of? Input? In which case, wouldn't we be equally free of output, i.e., consequence? I like it that I'm part of a larger process and my will is a factor in that process.

As for the issue of determinism, While the laws governing processes might be deterministic, the outcome has to be calculated and that cannot occur prior to the arrival of the input, which is traveling at finite speeds, from multiple directions. So it is the occurrence of the event which is the computation of its outcome. To assume all events are pre-determined from the dawn of time is to assume these calculations were already made, but that would require information to be separate from the energy transmitting it and presumably exist in some platonic realm, where those calculations can also be made.

It is the occurrence of events that determine their outcome. The past is an effect of the present. Time flows from potential, to actual, to residual. Future to past.

As Alan Watts put it, the wake(past) doesn't steer the boat(present), the boat creates the wake.

I'm not saying math and general language are the same. Math is much more precise, concentrated and defined, while general language naturally has much broader and fuzzy uses. The difference is the distinction between specialized and general. Consider taking pictures of a landscape. You can take a wide angle and get a much broader picture, or you can use a telescopic lens and focus on a particular detail, but you can't do both, at the same time. So the specialist doesn't have a good perspective on the broader picture, while the general view misses many of the details.

Regards,

John

Cristinel,

May I ask, what is your thinking on inertia? What is it?

An advertisement for something a while ago, started with the old saw, "Its simple physics. A body at rest tends to stay at rest. A body in motion tends to stay in motion." It might have been for a vitamin or nutrient suppliment, but there is nothing simple about inertia. And the generalization is really only an operational definition. It says nothing of what it is about inertia, that is the same thing for any mass independent of its state of motion.

How do you see Relativity and QM treating inertia? If you would, please.

Thank-you, respectfully, jrc

    Dear Gary,

    I appreciate your comments. I agree with

    > "Most conspicuously absent from any unified theory to date is how ephemeral topics like consciousness, dreams, ideas, indeed the 'mind', can possibly be embraced within a unified theory of physics."

    Indeed, a unified theory is not a theory of everything, and reductionism has serious limitations which I analyzed last year in The Tablet of the Metalaw.

    I look forward to read your essay, I hope soon.

    Best wishes,

    Cristi

    Dear John,

    Yes, at the simpler, classical or mundane level, I think "A body at rest tends to stay at rest. A body in motion tends to stay in motion" is a good definition. I can't help noticing how Newton carefully distinguishes between "rest" and "motion", which reveal his conception of an absolute space.

    In GR and QM, I see inertia in a different way. One attribute is momentum, but momentum is so different in GR and QM from the classical one. What's essential is that momentum is, by Noether's theorem, a feature of invariance to translations. In SR it has a fourth component, energy, which corresponds to the invariance translations in time. They emerge simply out of Noether's theorem, but there is much more to be said. The energy-momentum tensor includes the momentum and energy densities, and by Einstein's equation is related to spacetime curvature. In QM, momentum is related to the plane wavefunctions, but the quantum momentum is a global operator, in the sense that it doesn't give the momentum density at each point. But the quantum fields have energy-momentum, and this is how I see it plugged in GR. I think it is plausible that the spacetime remains classical and in Einstein's equation the energy-momentum tensor "expectation value" is taken, but it is also possible that we need to quantize spacetime. Conserved quantities like momentum and angular momentum have on GR spacetime an interpretation in terms of elasticity, and the energy-momentum tensor represents indeed an elastic tension in 4D. By this, momentum can be seen as a tension in spacetime, and angular momentum as a twist. I think internal conserved quantities like spin (which is actually a mixed intrinsic and extrinsic property wrt spacetime, because the spinor bundle does not seem to be completely determined by spacetime geometry), charge and color can also be seen as elastic properties in bundles over spacetime. All these elastic properties in a 4D block world, of course, and with bundles, which I hope will be minimal as extra structures of spacetime. But I prefer the geometric picture.

    Best regards,

    Cristi

    Cristinel,

    Thank-you, that is a highly condensed quantity of information and I'll want to read up on parts. And I have to head out in a half hour for an appointment. But the element of elasticity seems required by experiment when we consider relativistic effects at high energy; a footnote in Einstein's "Mechanics and the Attempts to Base All Physics Upon It" states, 'As a consequence of (sic) SR the energy of a closed system is equal to its inertia.' So density and elasticity must operate to close the system such that inertia translates throughout the whole energy quantity as a function of velocity.

    Best wishes, jrc

    Dear Cristi,

    I enjoyed reading your essay-article. You beautifully discuss the fundamentalness in the context of holism. The conclusion as you put says it all about our limitations in grasping the depth of fundamentalness/absoluteness: "Holomorphic fundamentalness may be a mathematically consistent basis for holism and the holographic principle, but until we will have the unified theory of physics, it remains an exercise of imagination." You also allude to the free-will and germ theory. Thus, the comprehension of fundamentalness will entail a deeper journey into the worlds of biological and physical evolutions that I believe co-exist and are co-dependent.

    Berst regards,

    Anil

      Cristi,

      "If our spacetime history is like a pickup disc, there is no pickup needle playing it, and marking the present. Each state of Leibcartes' mind perceives itself as being the real Leibcartes experiencing the time flow. Yet, all these states are nothing but slices in the spacetime block. We are a succession of frozen mind states, each of them naming its time "now", exactly like each human name its

      space position "here".

      The time is flowing, and it is frozen."

      We are on opposite sides of that issue. I see block time as similar to the celestial spheres of epicycles. A physical explanation for the narrative effect, similar to a physical explanation for the geocentric perception of the cosmos. I'm sure you are tired of my making these arguments, but given you have been extremely considerate, I am giving you a high score in this contest. Not that you need it, but my show of respect for your thoughtfulness.

      Regards,

      John

      Dear Anil,

      Thank you very much for your insightful comments. Yes, all these are very complicated problems and it would be unrealistic to expect a solution coming easily from the usual reductionist framework. I enjoyed your essay too, and I wish you success!

      Best regards,

      Cristi

      Dear Edwin,

      Thank you for the explanations and the links. There are interesting things in your comment and your links. There is some confusion in the Dirac equation indeed, and I understand if you think that solving this can help to this problem. I didn't get time to look at this closely, and these days I'll be very busy with my second job and an event, but if I can comment something useful about the paper you linked after that I'll let you know. Good luck with the contest and congratulations, your essay is doing pretty well too!

      Best regards,

      Cristi

      Dear John,

      Thank you for the comments and for rereading my old essay. You say "I am saying the arrow of time arises from the first law of thermodynamics, the conservation of energy." I think it is hard to show this, because energy is conserved in both time directions. In fact all fundamental equations behave the same in both directions. Some properties of particles invert at time symmetry, but the behavior remains identical after you apply C and P symmetries. The arrow of time is pretty well understood using the second law of thermodynamics, you can see Ken Wharton's essay for a discussion of some misconceptions among physicists about this, and in my previous essay. You may be not satisfied, and if you are right, you can try to identify the problems and propose your solutions in an article. But I strongly recommend to try and understand the current understanding of this problem before. I'll move the thing I think it is central for you here.

      You say that you are presentist and disagree with the pickup line you quote from my old essay. You may find it odd, but I disagree less with you than you with me. The reason I gave that essay the title Flowing with a Frozen River is because I think both are true, simultaneously. The fundamental equations give no preference to the "now", to simultaneity, and to the direction of time (the only difference is in the second law, which is explained by a special low entropy state pretty well in my opinion). You can forget for the moment that you are presentist (keeping in mind that you can return back later to this position and you will never lose it) and try to see this detached, and you may see its value and the fact that physics doesn't have evidence of the opposite, no matter how strongly you feel that only now exists. You mention Alan Watts, it happens that I was listening a book of him before your message. When people like him and others say things like "live in the present moment, in the now, because past no longer exists and future doesn't exist yet", it feels very true according to our experience, and very opposite to the timeless picture of physics. To me they are not in conflict. Please allow me to make the case not that you should change your mind and give up the present, but the opposite, and at the same time to make my case. Yes, I'm rational and don't believe in contradictory ideas, but there is no contradiction here to me. There is the frog view, of us prisoners of time, and the God's eye view, I claim they are both true, and actually at some level they are the same. Yes, I said there is no pickup needle outside of the disk, maybe it is better to say the pickup needle is part of the disk, there is one instance of it at each moment in time and time is in the disk. How can this be? I think our experience of time flowing is unclear, I think it is the hard problem of consciousness. Adding a pickup needle playing the record will not solve it. I claimed in previous essays that this hard problem can't be proven objectively, only by subjective experience. And this is being in the now. Being in the now is the only way we can affect the world, otherwise we are just affected by the world. The frog doesn't usually live in the now, it jumps from its past towards its future, but not in the now. The past and future of the frog don't exist, not because they don't really exist, but because what the frog calls past is its distorted memory, and what it calls future is its imagination. So yes, in this sense past and future don't exist, and also in the sense that the frog can't jump back and forward in time. Whatever the frog can do is in its present only, and its experience is in its present, the past and future are illusions. Would it be possible for the frog to gain the God's eye view? The same people say that it can, and that the gate is through the now. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. I claim that both Heraclitus and Parmenides are right. One is talking about the flow, the other about the frozen. In 3D it is flowing, in 4D it is frozen.

      Best regards,

      Cristi

      Hello JB,

      How are things in the shire? At the risk of starting an interminable discourse on somebody else's essay page, have you heard of George Fitzgerald's remark about the speed of light? During the fuss (green whiskers) that erupted with the Michelson and Morely results, and his famous contraction made theorem by Lorentz, Fitz observed that light velocity was "astonishingly slow". And it really is if you realize it takes about eight full minutes for light to reach earth from our sun. That is incomparably slow compared to instantaneously.

      So I don't approach the whole subject of time from the bottom up. Perhaps its due to our human experience of, 'there's no such thing as a free lunch, not only that but you don't get what you paid for, and if you think that is a raw deal - you can't quit the game'. But why think of pushing the boulder up hill to light velocity? That inevitably leads to a level of mental exhaustion and its plateau of absolute simultaneity of Now.

      Consider what absolute simultaneity would mean. Anywhere would need to be instantaneously connected physically to everywhere. Now if we look at that possibility, there could be no arrow of time. If everywhere were instantaneous with anywhere else, the direction of time would be in every direction. Which would mean it would also be in every opposite direction, at any point everywhere. Precisely your objection to the symmetry of SR. But that is when you think of the passage of time as occurring at a rate that can only be assumed as being anywhere between nil, UP to light velocity.

      I don't trot this out very often and you'll see why. Suppose that light would translate instantaneously if it could. So light velocity is its physical functional expedient. It is made an absolute value by necessity, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is the fastest rate it will seek. Now you have a feel for exponential growth and decay, and there are two known ways, either by the harmonic series of a penny today, doubled each day. Or the natural log way of 1/10th today added next day, and so on. All variables taken equal, the two series graph closely and have near similar rates of change of slopes. Lets leave the harmonic series at low slow speeds where ballistic events occur.

      So now we have the passage of time seeking some rate between instantaneous, DOWN to nil, and light will naturally go the fastest rate that time can come to. If time couldn't go as fast as light, you could switch on a lamp and still be in the dark. Time doesn't stop at light velocity, it just measures that way for any hypothetical body because that is the fastest time can go. If time went faster then light, you'd still be left in the dark. So given that as something is slowed, it will start 'stacking up' on itself, and exponentially slow it even further down. So light velocity is where that exponential decay becomes physical, and the translation rate of that decay could be an exponential product of light velocity.

      In conventions of professional mathematics, it has only fairly recently been finally adjudged that in any linear algebra, the exponential rate unit 'e' can only be used as the base, not the index. But in nonlinear algebras, an 'e' root is permissible. Think of a sphere, and energy stacking up on itself exponentially until it reaches core constant density of a c^2 proportion of the total quantity being gravitationally slowed. You can see that it is non-linear due to the compaction of the change in size of a sphere's volume (8pi r), as the radial increment approaches zero point center. Where; if we were approximating a parallel sided column that compounding of density would follow the inverse square law, 1/r^2. So let's call our spherical compound interest, the inverse exponential law: n^1/e.

      So now we have a quantity energy of spacetime gravitating across a smooth continuum of density variation, at the rate that time is stacking up on its self, because it can't be instantaneous with out becoming backwards too. So the energy that gets compounded in a light second length radius would actually be at a minimum constant density in flat space, that would be equal to a radial length that would be an exponential root value of 'c', compounding 'c', That would be c (c)^1/e = 2.143^14 cm/sec of flat constant energy density squeezed down onto a ~3^10 cm/sec radius such that the exponential increments of change along a radius are compacted on that radius. You can see in your mind how that would account for volume density quantity distribution, between the classical spread of the multitude of possible radii in a sphere.

      So that function of decay of the rate time can go (2.143^14 cm/sec) is the potential greatest translation rate of time's effect on physical events that equalize to a universal constant at light velocity. Picture the Mandelbrot poster, and instantaneous coming from opposing directions and colliding on the tangent of the largest circle and exponentially canceling each others directional rate downwards towards light velocity.

      We have an arrow of time because we can only have a light velocity acceleration of energy at density to a lower density magnitude, but we can have multiple c magnitude decelerations of energy into greater density ranges. And time will seek what its rate of passage is anywhere between nil and light velocity and

      back again, and again, and again, and.....

      Cheers!!! and beg pardon, Cristinel, jrc

      Dear Dr. Cristi Stoica,

      I have enjoyed your interesting approach to the construction of unification of fundamental forces. Just to note that the problem of SU(5) unification was also related with magnetic monopole overproduction in cosmology and a theoretical problem of hierachy of GUT and electroweak scales.

      Thank you very much for your burst of interesting ideas.

      With the best regards

      Maxim Khlopov

        Cristi,

        "I think it is hard to show this, because energy is conserved in both time directions."

        Necessarily there would be the same amount of energy at any moment in time, but doesn't the concept of "conserved" mean that all the energy of one moment transitions to the next? In fact, isn't it that dynamic of energy which creates the events in the first place? I realize I may not be addressing your issue, as you see it, but I'm the idiot in this conversation and it seems much simpler to have the flow of energy creating the events, than having all of history existing in some platonic dimension.

        Consider a batter hitting a ball and running around the bases; If we were to apply Ockham's razor, from my limited point of view, the energy based explanation seems much less complex and it explains why one event flows into the next.

        I am not saying to live in the present. Plants and animals do it just fine, but it is our ability to remember and record history which rises us above them.

        Would you agree that as our perception goes from prior to succeeding events, i.e., past to future, the events in question effectively go the opposite direction, from being in the future to being in the past?

        To me, this seems much more relational, than all events permanently existing on some narrative dimension of time. That seems rather absolute.

        Do these events exist on this dimension prior to the Big Bang? If not, then it would suggest some foundational flow, of creation and dissolution. Before the bang, they are in the future, after the universe dissipates, they are in the past.

        If they do exist beyond the Big Bang, then the cup of tea I am drinking is more permanent than the entire universe.

        As for the "bird's eye view," the same problem I have with the logic of monotheism applies as well.

        A spiritual absolute would presumably be the essence of sentience, if not cognition, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgment from which we fell. The raw awareness of the new born, not the collected wisdom of the old man. (Just that religion is more about social control, than spiritual enlightenment, so best make it about wisdom, than awareness.)

        This would apply to a bird's eye view of the entire universe, in that there is no universal point of view, no top down vision.

        Knowledge is a function of both transmitting and receiving information, as well as its processing into more clarified forms. So there can be no universal knowledge, because knowledge is a construct, i.e. emergent. Reality is bottom up. Like the expanding energy/fluctuating vacuum. The forms are top down, but then their very definition and structure also limits them. As I pointed out about galaxies, they are energy radiating out, as mass coalesces in, so while the energy might be seeking infinity, the form is seeking equilibrium. Form is not infinite, but emergent.

        Hi John,

        It is another contest! Though I admit my entry was a dash-off, just to participate in the discussions, under the assumption I wouldn't do any good. So the motivation was more spontaneous, than deliberate. To those who read it, this is evident in the lack of serious editing. (I would say, my brief foray to 7 was a rush, but now even more of a downer, to be back where I figured I'd be.)

        The problem I see with your view is you view it from the assumption of time as this narrative effect, where now is just a dimensionless point between a fading past and uncooperatively invisible future. So the concept of simultaneity means the entire universe existing on the dimensionless point.

        As I see it, it is just space and energy. Vacuum and fluctuation. The reason the now seems so minuscule is that this energy flashes around much faster than our ability to comprehend it. Our thought process can only absorb and reflect on very minor amounts of what goes on and this does revolve around our mental ability to focus. Consequently the sequence of perceptions amounts to a very narrow stream.

        (Being someone with a fairly physically active life, I have had to let that stream expand, by relaxing my sense of focus and often going with instinct, which does draw up the more subconscious and thermodynamically variegated parts of my self.)

        So, as I said to Cristi above, there is no universal frame of information, because information is about definition. There is no bird that can see the entire universe simultaneously, because it is fundamentally the energy carrying the information and information is emergent from its interactions. So the information can only travel at the finite speeds of the energy carrying it.

        Which is why, as I pointed out, the future remains probabilistic, because it is the occurrence of events which computes the input and determines the outcome. To assume the entire universe is pre-determined, existing on that block time dimension, is to assume that information can travel instantaneously. Which is specifically not an assumption that I am making, though other ideas seem to need it. I don't see that platonic realm of information, no matter how many dimensions it takes to explain it.

        Best,

        John

        Glad you are doing well, John.

        I need to get back to a calloused way of life myself. I'd feel a lot better and be healthier. best wishes as always - jrc

        Dear Dr. Maxim Khlopov,

        Thank you very much for reading the essay and for the comments. I also enjoyed reading yours.

        Best regards,

        Cristi

        John,

        It has its advantages. Though the neck of the woods I inhabit, north of Baltimore, there is considerable trickle down, so it's not like a lot of the parts of the world, where disaster capitalism is sucking everything dry.

        My 2014 contest entry is still where my heart is at:

        https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1981

        Hello Cristi,

        I have thought a lot about how we must really consider what is a particle.And it is important.Is a wave giving all shapes due to tensors and fields with the geometrical algebras or is it a finite system giving the properties to fields and waves.It is totally different.

        Because the main causes are totally different and the primordial field also.The facts to consider that a particle is a wave able to have all shapes seem having a problem.

        In fact it is not a wave which give a particle but a particle which gives a wave, it is different about the main causes even for our inertial mass and also for our quantum weakest force.That said this can converge.

        Regards

          Hello Steve,

          Well, there is no consensus and no definitive data, we don't know exactly what a particle is. So we should be open to all possibilities which are not definitively eliminated. For me the wave or excitation in the field seems to work better, but I think it is not the full story, the wave has to satisfy certain equation and quantization too, which I think is not understood. I have some working hypotheses which are based on geometry and topology, but no definitive answer yet. So we should feel free to explore what other possibilities may be.

          Best regards,

          Cristi

          Steve,

          I very much agree with that. A rationale that adequately describes both the observed limits of EMR and the terminus of a.m.u. with the same set of parameters and corresponding equations in real terms, is a prerequisite for unambiguous interpretations of conflicts such as EPR. You seem pretty well, Steve, its good to see. best - jrc

          Cristi,

          Glad to see scholarly statement of that! Where the distinction lies between a latent wave action and an absolute free rest mass of energy, is both a theoretical as well as hypothetical question given the 2.76*K ambient background of thermalized radiation. Its also nice to see recognition that a long sought and essential 'unified field theory' would not in itself constitute a TOE.

          The treatment of time is always such a contentious matter, but I personally think we can accept a Platonic absolute time registered to the Earth Second, only in analysis where we can already state parameter values across distances. It was Einstein himself whom objected to interpretations of SR which bestow *real* physical dimensional change in dilated results at velocity. But that leaves the question open as to how relativistic energies kinetically accumulate and transfer. Progress needs a leap of faith, and more degrees of freedom, to make a physical consequence of Lorentz practical and genuinely realistic.

          Best of luck in the contest, I have been a little surprised that Relativistic papers haven't been immediately one-bombed this time around. I would like to think that indicates some growing awareness that modern classicism does not reject probability out of hand. Regards - jrc

          Greetings,

          I have not seen a comment from you yet Cristi. If you have not read or rated my essay, now would be a good time. Time runs short and I just got bombed!

          All the Best, JJD