Why Time Might Not Be an Illusion

Marcel,

Your first 2 paragraphs are a good summary of the materialist position with which I disagree.

To me the heart of the matter is that you can assign no attributes whatsoever to the "stuff" of which the universe is "made" - it's not even a concept, just a word. Similarly, the word "exist" has no articulable meaning other than "is experienced".

More to the point of the original article: if I say the block universe "has to leap into being at some point" I've already assumed a meta-time outside of spacetime, and I'm talking about the need for time to have a beginning at a point within that meta-time. But let experiential time be an attribute of consciousness, and the perceived need goes away.

Jim,

"Similarly, the word "exist" has no articulable meaning other than "is experienced"."

Semantic, vocabulary?

What do you call the "state" the universe was in during the past 13.8 billion years before we showed up to "experience" it?

I call it "existence". What do you call it?

Thanks,

Marcel,

Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns. Any "flow," in this existential present, is future to past. Probable to actual to residual. Every action is its own clock, its own frequency. All in the same state of presence.

Including each and every mind. Flashes of consciousness.

Marcel,

What "state" is a photo in before it's detected? QM says it has no definite state - no specific position or velocity. So did it 'exist'? We feel like something was there - a wave function, a matrix of possibilities. But I don't think we're justified in saying the photon "existed" before it was observed.

I like the quote from Renato Renner in this article: "You have to give up something you took for granted, something that's almost hard-coded in

our brains." And I think what we have to give up is physicalism. And not because it's "wrong" but because it's ultimately meaningless.

I think this is an informative post and it is very useful and knowledgeable. I really enjoyed reading this post. big fan, thank you!

- roll the ball

Physicists, mathematicians and philosophers do like their Platonic realms, abstract mathematical constructs and non-physical "mind"s, don't they! :-) While these things are possible, they're very hard or impossible to prove and seem to be the same as religious faith is to others.

Jim,

"QM says it has no definite state..."

The meaning of "state" in QM is different, and refers both to the state of our knowledge as well as to the quantum state due to our interaction required to acquire this knowledge. A measurement applies a constraint on the wave functions that forces its temporary quantization. (A constraint introduces a boundary on the normal distribution of the parameter being measured, clipping the infinity tails on each sides, creating a box within which the wave function appears with specific modes i.e. quantized)

But here, we have atoms, stars and galaxies...

What do you call the "state" the universe was in during the past 13.8 billion years before we showed up to "experience" it?

Thanks,

Marcel,

Jim,

One way to think of physicalism is a dichotomy of energy and information. Energy manifests information, or it would collapse into a black hole, while information defines energy. How would a wave, for instance, be understood, other than as frequency and amplitude? So particles/quanta are energy with various parameters of information.

Consider that as biological organisms, we evolved the central nervous system to process information and the digestive, respiratory and circulation systems to process energy, to propel that information gathering.

Then consider that as energy is "conserved," it is always and only present. So the natural change of this energy means the information is constantly changing. This creates time. As energy goes from one configuration to the next, it goes past to future, while these forms, the information, goes future to past.

Consider, as an example, that conscious goes past to future, as particular thoughts go future to past.

When asked what was around before the Big Bang, Stephen Hawking confidently replied that nothing preceded the Big Bang.

The earth had a real visible surface for millions of years before any physicists ever appeared on that real visible surface, arrogantly offering their preposterous complex finite guesswork about invisible influences.

The real Universe consists only of one real single unified VISIBLE infinite surface eternally occurring in one single infinite dimension that am always mostly illuminated by finite non-surface light.

Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated

Marcel, John, continuing this exchange would lead to the familiar debate of idealism vs realism (or physicalism) and while I enjoy that debate, I'm just an amateur - many people, from Berkeley through Wheeler, have made that case better than I ever could. My take is that relativity and QM weighed in heavily on the side of idealism, removing - respectively - the obvective 'now' and the flow of time, and 'solid matter', from whatever reality exists apart from our experiences.

So rather than continue to hijack this thread, I refer you to those people - John Wheeler, especially.

Sherman,

Thanks for the encouragement! I noticed some others mentioned similar ideas about time. Hopefully, some academic physicists actually read some of the comments and essays by amateurs like us, but I'm guessing they don't. As you said, they belong to a community and don't want to sound like crackpots, and they're also busy, but it does get frustrating sometimes Sometimes, I cynically think that they set up fora like this just to give the amateurs an outlet so that we then don't bother them! :-) But, the only thing we can do is keep on thinking and maybe try to get some evidence someday for our ideas. Good luck to us all on that!

Roger

Dear Jim Hughes,

Reality am not debatable.

When asked what was around before the Big Bang, Stephen Hawking confidently replied that nothing preceded the Big Bang.

The earth had a real visible surface for millions of years before any physicists ever appeared on that real visible surface, arrogantly offering their preposterous complex finite guesswork about invisible influences.

The real Universe consists only of one real single unified VISIBLE infinite surface eternally occurring in one single infinite dimension that am always mostly illuminated by finite non-surface light.

Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated

There are also comparatively recent, apparently overlooked maths for investigating time.

"Non-well founded sets" give us a way to introduce "streams" into a discussion if time:

properTime = (moment, properTime)

Substituting on the RHS of the equation:

properTime = (moment, (moment, (moment..., properTime)...)

And properTime becomes a "stream" of moments, solving the problem of time's arrow.

Including "nonstandard analysis" yields a "nonstandard past" and a "nonstandard future," each infinitely close to the "standard present."

moment = (nonstandardPast, standardPresent, nonstandardFuture)

Then using the math of "situation theory," the nonstandardFuture "models" where possibilities exist and the nonstandardPast "models" where information (in the form of "infons") exists.

That enables looking at the Born rule as an "infomorphism," as in the math of Barwise's "channel theory".

Which is an example of "the inverse relationship principle"-- that when possibilities decrease, information decreases abd vice versa-- as in Barwise's math of "Informationalism."

All of these are maths which are currently overlooked.

(More elsewhere on the site.)

Dear Lee Bloomquist,

Concrete evidence exists that proves conclusively that the earth had a real visible surface for millions of years before any mathematician ever appeared on that surface.

It logically follows that Nature must have devised the only real physical structure obtainable and mathematicians had nothing to do with it.

The real Universe consists only of one real single unified VISIBLE infinite surface eternally occurring in one single infinite dimension that am always mostly illuminated by finite non-surface light.

Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated

Correction:

"The Inverse Relationship Principle: Whenever there is an increase in available information there is a corresponding decrease in possibilities, and vice versa."

Here is the link.

Marcel-Marie, re-reading your posts made me want to add a comment.

"When we remove the observer (appearance/experience), all that is left is existence. The universe exists and happens."

Realize that this isn't a conclusion, it's an act of pure faith. In my opinion, a universe without an observer isn't a conceivable entity, in other words our minds can form no concept to put behind the words. Try to imagine a universe that doesn't contain an observer. Did you succeed? I'm guessing what you did is bring to mind a beautiful NASA photo of a galaxy, and tell yourself it contains no life. But what you really did was mentally place yourself in that universe as an observer and "see" what your eyes would have seen in that situation. So your imagined universe wasn't lifeless: it contained you. Try to re-imagine that lifeless universe without you as a contained observer, and the best you can do is - what? Some sort of mathematical representation?

Philosophers refer to this issue as the "zombie universe problem". I believe it applies to the issue of the big bang, and time's "beginning", as well.

Dear Jim Hughes,

Irrefutable evidence exists that conclusively proves that the earth had a real visible surface for MILLIONS of years before any "observers" ever appeared on that surface.

It logically follows that Nature must have devised the only real physical structure obtainable.

The real Universe consists only of one real single unified VISIBLE infinite surface eternally occurring in one single infinite dimension that am always mostly illuminated by finite non-surface light.

Only your imaginary universe needs to have an imaginary "observer."

Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated

Jim,

Not to belabor the issue, but consider what the observer adds; Those flashes of sequential cognition, of particular events, objects, perceptions, frames etc., which we then try to organize into some meaning or area of focus. Aka, narrative, rationalization, logical cause and effect, etc. Then consider how much trouble this linear modeling has with fully understanding a non-linear reality.

So might it be useful to demote time from the foundational level to the emergent level, like temperature?

John,

Yes I think it's inevitable that we identify 'time' as an attribute of an observer. Didn't special relativity do that over 100 years ago? I dislike the word 'emergent', it's hand-waving. Better I think to say time, hot, red, are all qualia: elements of experience.

I like to think of time as the geometry of consciousness.