Why Time Might Not Be an Illusion

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.

As an non professional, that is, an amateur, you have some advantage when it comes to seeing and speaking the truth. Nine out of ten physics pros can not voice serious question about sacred dogma. But you can. They, those 9 in 10, are not stupid they are human and want to belong, to get paid, to fit in and not be the butt of jokes. You, however, can question the nature of time in a serious manner. You could even dispute the Big Bang where a pro would need to parse his or her words with care to prepare for a possible revolution at some future date while protecting their present position.

Your thoughts on time are closer to reality than most of the pros. Time is not fundamental in a primary sense but it is a direct result of what is fundamental.

Sherman

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

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.

Dear John Brodix Merryman,

You are the only one who is "adding" misinformation to this discussion. All real creatures great and small have real eyes. While you might believe that: "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." No real eye has ever seen one single abstract flash of sequential cognition. Each real eye will only ever see a plethora of seamlessly enmeshed, flat, varied hued surface.

Let us try it one more time.

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.

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

Dear Jim Hughes,

Please try to stop thinking about preposterous finite scientific guesswork.

Let us try it one more time.

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.

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

Jim 'n' John,

Fair enough to say that what we experience of time is bound up in our peculiar humanity, and thus we relate it as if it were sequential in physical realism. Things change position in relationship to one another, and we can count time in that change by reference to yet something else. Like our own jealously guarded heartbeats, that's the most important thing about time to we poor mortals. So we can wax poetic and ruminate on our own reflection to no end.

I personally don't behold physical time in that manner, perhaps due to a prolonged period in extremis of duress accompanied by severe hypervigilance with the physiological consequence of suppression of serotonin production. It was like there was no sense of passage of time. I don't go there often, but to take it off the shelf and examine it quizzically. So as a matter of physical realism I count time as a volumetric 'amount', just as you would weigh out bulk goods. A pound of sugar is more dense than a pound of rolled oats. The relationship between space and time is more a matter of density, and if is fruitless to conject on which came first. Energy seems to behave according to the compaction of (for want of a better word) spacetime, and there again it is unitarily superfluous to argue parametric precedence. There exists some sort of dynamic balance that is continually in flux, but I would not deign say that there is anywhere, anything that we could say is unalterably discrete. Timelines are worldly laminates of equilibrium where the densities in aggregates are all on par for what we identify as particular force effects, and all fields in an aggregate domain meld into a larger gravitational field and go global.

So that's my take on it, and it makes for some interesting mathematic modeling. Each will of course have their own, c'est la vie. :-D jrc

Hi Dr Short,

I liked and strongly concur with your assertion that "One reason I don't like [block universe] spacetime is that the whole thing has to leap into being at some point ... And it seems to me that's a quite complex thing. It seems unnatural."

A computer scientist might say that even more emphatically: You cannot assume the existence of a space-and-time spanning data structure (the block universe) without first validating its internal structure for causal self-consistency according to the universal rules of physics for which we have very convincing experimental evidence. The only way to validate for that kind of self-consistency is by first running a physics-rule-abiding, causality-determining state machine that begins with the initial state of the universe, and then is allowed to evolve all the way to the end state. Without such a validation process, it becomes difficult indeed to conceive how any block universe can be sufficiently congruent with known physics to avoid generating grotesquely incorrect experimental results on a regular basis.

This in turn creates a fascinating paradox.

If one is persuaded that any workable block universe must first be validated using a start-to-finish state machine, then the resulting scenario is so deeply similar to the traditional non-block concept of time - that is, of time with a predetermined past and an indeterminate future -- that it contradicts the very reason assuming a block universe in the first place.

Rather than making a longer comment here, sometime in the next week or so I'll add as second brief link to a mini-essay I'm preparing on this issue, focusing on how such a state machine can be reconciled with the gorgeous symmetries of special relativity and its time-spanning foliations. Oddly, it is not as hard as it sounds if you pay careful attention to how past light cones interrelate across multiple frames. The mini-essay will appear here on the FQXi under the comments thread for my entry in the 2017 FQXi Essay contest.

Cheers, Terry Bollinger

Fundamental as Fewer Bits by Terry Bollinger (Essay 3099)

Essayist's Rating Pledge by Terry Bollinger

"Quantum mechanics is simpler than most people realize. It is no more and no less than the physics of things for which history has not yet been written."

Jim,

The "now" as an extended moment is an illusion we experience i.e there is no common now between you and your computer, and the Moon, Mars etc. But time is real. A radio-active element will decay with a specific half-life. The probability of any spontaneous event happening is time sensitive.

Previous post ...." "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...."

To us, the "universe" is an experience. As an experience, we make it all ourselves with sense and mind. But, and experience requires both the observer and a substance. When there is no observer, the substance remains, but in a form different from what the experience would give us.

As I mentioned earlier, our natural satellite is an aggregate of matter across time i.e. every particle making this aggregate is at a different moment from any other.particle. We have no way of conceiving this. But we integrate it all as an object "Moon" apparently all there at once, in a moment of perception or conception. See where I am going? Only when I see it or think about it, this aggregate of matter across time becomes for me, my experience of an object we call the Moon. There is no Moon object (my experience) when I am not watching it or thinking about it. Same thing with the rest of the universe.

So, this is not faith. It`s what we know from experience.

read my essay!

Marcel,