Why Time Might Not Be an Illusion

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,

Deaar Marcel-Marie LeBe,

Concrete evidence exists that proves conclusively that the earth had a real visible surface for millions of years before any person who claimed to experience any finite faith in any invisible influence 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,

I can accept time as the geometry of consciousness, in the sense that our mind absorbs quantities of information carrying energy and extracts useful information, creating perception. Then does it again and again, creating a sequence of perceptions.

Consequently we experience reality as this flow of events, so we think of the present as moving past to future. Which physics does codify as measures of duration.

The basic reality is we are points of observation in a dynamic presence, from which we extract information. So the sequence/frequency is foundational to our consciousness, while only a particular qualia of the dynamic state in which we exist.

Duration being this state of presence/being, as these events form and dissolve, so it is only the present being measured, as events go future to past. Potential to residual.

Dear John Brodix Merryman,

Reality has absolutely nothing to do with your supposed capability for "accepting" massive amounts of misinformation about invisible abstract human consciousness and the finite duration of invisible finite "presence/being".

Reality has everything to do with the unassailable, irrefutable, concrete, boiler plated FACT, that proves conclusively that the earth had a real visible surface for millions of years before any HUMANLY CONTRIVED INFORMATION 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

So...going back to the essay...relativity makes time into a dimension like space and so particles on determinate paths set the future, not free choice. In this sense, time is an illusion. The big bang sets the arrow of time...

Quantum time is reversible and so past and future are equally probable. What sets quantum time's arrow is not clear since a quantum clock ticks equally in both directions.

However, quantum dephasing or decoherence time does set time's arrow, but this essay does not mention quantum phase or decoherence. It is very confusing for the essay to discuss the illusion of time without any mention of quantum phase or of quantum phase decoherence.

The essay seems to have an incomplete notion of time...

The earth spin is what we call a day of time and that is the most basic notion of time. However, the earth spin is not constant and fluctuates at 18 ppm/yr and decays at 0.26 ppb/yr or more. Does time fluctuate and decay just like the earth's spin? Or is time somehow a nice constant that does not fluctuate or decay?

In fact, how can time decay in time?

The stability of atomic time is in its decoherence of phase and so two atomic clocks can start together and still diverge in their phase. The divergence of atomic clock ticks is called the Allan deviation and that represents a kind of second time dimension. In other words, not only is there a tick rate for time, there is also a decay of those tick intervals and that quantum phase decay is a second time dimension.

Dear Steve Agnew,

Invisible finite relativity cannot possibly make invisible finite time turn into an invisible finite dimension that could look like invisible finite space. Please pay attention.

Irrefutable evidence exists that conclusively proves that the earth had a real VISIBLE surface for millions of regular Gregorian calendar years before Einstein's unrealistic (finite) Theory of (finite) Relativity: General and Specific was ever published.

It logically follows that Nature must have designed the only REAL VISIBLE structure of the real planet earth, and the real VISIBLE Universe the real VISIBLE earth am contained in, 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 Steve Agnew,

Invisible finite relativity cannot possibly make invisible finite time turn into an invisible finite dimension that could look like invisible finite space. Please pay attention.

Irrefutable evidence exists that conclusively proves that the earth had a real VISIBLE surface for millions of regular Gregorian calendar years before Einstein's unrealistic (finite) Theory of (finite) Relativity: General and Special was ever published.

It logically follows that Nature must have designed the only REAL VISIBLE structure of the real planet earth, and the real VISIBLE Universe the real VISIBLE earth am contained in, 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

Do we need quantum time, Big Bang, etc.?

"Quantum time is reversible and so past and future are equally probable. What sets quantum time's arrow is not clear since a quantum clock ticks equally in both directions."

I tend to distrust any belief that orients itself on pattern of human experience like "conscious", "made", designed", "created", or "purpose". Accordingly I don't expect progress from someone who is thinking in terms of a model like quantum physics.

It was Weyl who admitted that there is at the time being (1932?) no explanation for the symmetry of time (in QM). Schulman even suspected a hypothetical border between the micro world and the macroscopic one. Did really nobody admit that a model is fundamentally different from reality? Who dealt with even more obvious mistakes of the fathers of QM?

To me, reality is the conjecture of something that is not just subjective but entirely independent from any observer. Being aware of coherence length, I like Steve Agnew's argument:

"how can time decay in time?"

The most appealing to me notion of time is something that doesn't decay in time.

Any spin is at best an approximate measure of the reality called time.

Eckard Blumschein

Time is not reversible; never was. Events in the universe happen spontaneously. Spontaneous events happen from a cause and a cause has only one direction.

Springs, pendulum etc. all appear to go back on their tracks. But they are not doing so, because the whole universe changes constantly. In other words, no motion of the pendulum or of any quantum oscillation is ever the same as the previous one.

The oscillation back and forth of a particle "in a box" may be unfolded in a straight line....and it goes only one way..

The universe, time and spontaneous causality all go one way....

Marcel,

Marcel,

In a sense then it is the first law of thermodynamics which sets the direction of time. Energy is conserved, thus always and only present, so its inertia is the direction of time. The earth turns one direction, not both.

John.

Yes, the cause is unique and the same for thermodynamics and gravity. Both are about spontaneous dispersion into "larger space"

Marcel,

Marcel,

Yet gravity contracts. Consider the most basic features of galaxies are radiation expanding out, as mass and form coalesce in.

Consider that overall space is measured to be flat, that the seeming expansion of the universe is balanced by the overall effect of gravity. Consider the redshift of distant galaxies is the basis of our knowledge of this expansion. What if it is an optical effect?

The most significant flaw I see in Big Bang cosmology is when they realized all those distant galaxies are redshifted proportional to distance, in all directions, it made us appear to be the center of the universe, so the "spacetime" of GR was invoked to say space itself is expanding and every point would appear as the center. Which totally overlooks the central premise of GR, that light is always measured as a Constant. If the light is redshifted because it takes longer to cross between galaxies, it is not Constant to the intergalactic metric. More lightyears between galaxies, not expanded lightyears. So two metrics of space are being derived from the same intergalactic light. One based on its spectrum and one based on its speed. Of course, we are the center of our view of the universe, so an optical effect would make sense.

To get back to the point, say redshift is an optical effect of light having to disperse with distance, to the point it does fall down the spectrum, into radio waves, resulting in the background radiation. Eventually falling so far down the spectrum it starts to coalesce into elemental particles.

The overall result would be a cosmic convection cycle of expanding radiation and coalescing mass.

Thermodynamics.

Galactic black holes being the eye of the storm and all inflating mass radiated and jetted back out.

It has been said that tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth spins. This is equivalent to the notion that the next atomic clock pulse becomes the last atomic clock pulse because of the decay of phase. In other words, it is a statement of the reversibility of quantum time.

While quantum time is reversible, gravity time's direction is set by the determinate paths of particles and so gravity time is not reversible. Gravity time is then completely predictable and determinate while the reversibility of quantum time means that quantum time is not determinate.

The way to explain time is with the parents and progeny of a causal set. Parents have children and from the family history of a causal set emerges what we call time. It takes more time for some progeny to emerge and that extra time is what we call distance in space. Quantum phase decay is then what sets time's arrow, both for quantum charge and quantum gravity and so entropy and temperature seem to have lost their way...

The notions of time and space are extremely useful for predictions of most action, but some predictions of action need the more fundamental notions of a causal set. A causal set orders actions by parentage and progeny and seems to be a more fundamental description of the universe.

However, quantum amplitude and phase superposition seem be an acausal superset whose norm becomes the causal set that we call reality. So it is wrong to say that the universe decays in time. Instead, the progeny of the universe result in fewer not more matter, but with greater force. From that family history emerges time and space...

John,

The rate of time slows down as we move toward the ground. This means longer seconds. In order for c (m/s) to remain constant, longer seconds means longer meters. In other words, an object is falling into larger space.

So, space is not contracting in a gravitational field; it is in fact

expanding. The apparent contraction is an illusion. Falling into larger space is dispersion, the hallmark of thermodynamics....

Marcel,