First Things First: The Physics of Causality

Marcel-Marie LeBel

Jason, any idea how it all started?

Jason Wolfe

I don't think it ever did.

Jason Wolfe

I always thought that metaphysics was a much more reasonable source for the big bang, then all the intellectual craziness of the physics community with their big bangs caused by black holes and universes from nothing. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the Creator-God used a metaphysical-Astral realm to design this universe and set it up before "Letting their be light". Engineers design their products in a virtual environment. Why wouldn't God?

Jason Wolfe

Most of reality is invisible.

Jason Wolfe

The reality about how spacetime and gravity works is much more interesting than what you kind folks are working on.

Jason Wolfe

I think an event happens at a point, and the causal consequences travel outward, at the speed of light, like ripples on a pond.

Jason Wolfe

I'm really surprised that nobody in the physics community has wondered if the spacetime continuum is made of quanta of gravitons. It seems almost expected that they would expand at the speed of light into a spherical wavefront (similar to how the big bang expanded). How else would you explain the invariance of the speed of light? If expanding gravitons exist, then they are also the carriers of causality!

Jason Wolfe

The physics community went out of its way to insist that UFO's don't exist (even as Navy fighter pilots were chasing them) and fifty million witnesses. So a quantum gravity theory comes along that could explain the artificial gravity propulsion, but physicists don't even want to talk about that because the guy peddling the theory is a theist. So, we'll all have to wait around for a century or two while the physics community ignores people like me. You can peddle your bizarre theories about consciousness, when it was pretty simple to begin with. God/Creator creates the universe. Souls incarnate into this physical world, live for a while, then die and return to the Spirit World. But you guys want to make it as weird as possible with your Spinoza God, banging branes. Consciousness itself is "magic", so you want to diminish the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER as something that is not important at all. Imagine the atheist physics community trying to abuse its authority into making people believe that their consciousness is not important.

The simple fact is that Western civilization is at a stand still because of the atheist physics community. We are in danger of collapsing because of your crap ideas!!!

Jason Wolfe

One of the problems with physics is that you have made it unnecessarily complicated, but didn't actually permit any breakthroughs. Even special relativity was all done with algebra.

[deleted]

I agree with Jason. Natures processes are simple. 'Physics' is complex because we're confused, clinging on the flawed ideas. Re; entropy. Our view is a parochial 'snapshot' in time. Consider; ALL those things which can only fall apart in out belief STARTED OFF 'apart', as the most fundamental particles! Time didn't 'reverse' for them to form, that's naïve. Consider nucleosynthesis. It's the polar opposite to the entropy we see now! Cyclic universe models are proving far more consistent that the old one most still cling to; The 'Big Bounce', Penrose, Turok etc, and most consistent of all the 'Discrete Field Model' (DFM) which reproduces all CMB peculiar anisotropies and seems able to unite SR,GR and QM in a simpler model. In that model w entropy and expansion are just PARTS of a coherent cycle, free of inconsistencies.

At ALL times in history 'doctrine' has proved wrong. it's still inconsistent now, why do we think it's suddenly right now and cling onto it?

Andy Nox

there is no evidence for the existence of "ufo" or other alien civilizations, and physics has nothing to say here.

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https://snkancelaria.pl/

[deleted]

As Arieh Ben-Naim [1] says, time does not appear in entropy expressions. Not in the expression of Clausius, Boltzman, or Shannon. Entropy should not be credited with more "power" than it has.

Also, consider that time could well be just a perception.

[1] Is Entropy Associated with Time's Arrow?, Arieh Ben-Naim, arXiv:1705.01467

yusrob

It would be great if respected physicists Anthony Aguirre, Sean Carroll or Carlo Rovelli responded to my previous message!!

Alpi

[deleted]
Interest point of view.
Well, the point is that time is relative so what you are saying, in my point of view, is interest because your vision of a difference in time equation respect to real time can be seen as a relative time in the equations, that can't catch the total reality of the global time. This is a good intuition, but it is complicate to explain why there is a part of reality in your perception of things for me.
The second point, you are physically right and is a good critics anywhere I have found in my works that your is a point a point of view in the end: in my work (https://www.academia.edu/144844469/Quantum_Uncertainty_Plancks_Constant_and_Ontological_Insights_from_Complex_Spacetime_Geometry_and_Local_Metric_Deformations) when I was working about I have found that second thermodynamic principle can be write (in particular conditions) as dS/dt=dE/E in particular condition. Classic physics saw this equation and thought that "the variation fo entropy (dS) is the tendency of variate energy (dE) (in the time dt) on the total energy of a body (E)" and that is the more immediately view of this equation, but I have also see that you can see the inverse equation, that is dt=EdS/dE; this equation can be read differently as "the variation of time (dt) is the total energy (E) relate with his tendency to be dispersed around (dS) in relation to his dispersion (dE)" and this is exactly your thesis. So I have thought the same a few of time ago and I have concluded that is a valid picture of reality. It is not in anycase in contradiction with the other view of reality because time is not well defined without energy: what is time if it's not something that makes change of the things/energy in the universe? So time imply evolutions of things, but things are energy, so time is related with the evolution of energy, in the end. Say "the intrinsic evolutionary factor of things (time) makes evolution of the things" or "the intrinsic evolution of things generate what we call as time" I think are only different way to see the same things, that we haven't real elements to determine which one is the cause or the effect (so both are valid for me).

ShockwaveRider

Proprioception and pattern matching can be considered the origin of causality in a participatory universe. Instead of a simple linear arrow of time, Loop Quantum Gravity can divide time up into events, and the arrow time can be thought of as simply the default. Neither a backwards, random, nor fatalistic universe makes more then the most superficial sense, and the three dimensions we perceive are also by default. Two dimensions is not enough to support consciousness, while 4 dimensions gets too complicate fast.

Note, this also provides a simple explanation for the Three Body Problem and all of quantum mechanics, as being equally random and fated. Metals contain the same amount of information no matter how hot or mixed up, maintaining a clear division between kinetic and radiant energy. Which means Relativity must be reformulated as Information Theory.

Benz

Lorraine Ford

Re ‘First Things First: The Physics of Causality’, 16 July 2021, by Kate Becker, https://qspace.fqxi.org/articles/236/first-things-first-the-physics-of-causality :

This article is “preposterous”. Nothing to do with the writer, but everything to do with physicists Sean Carroll’s and Carlo Rovelli’s approaches to what is called “causality”.

The article never mentions “numbers”, but in fact the only relevant issue is: why would the numbers (that apply to categories like relative position) ever start to change, and why would the numbers continue to change?

Because, despite the delta symbols, the equations of physics merely represent relationships between categories; the equations can never represent any reason for the numbers to ever start to change, or continue to change.

So, what initiates number movement and re-initiates number movement, so that the delta symbols in the equations of physics can then take effect?

Occam's razor says that matter itself is jumping some of its own numbers; Occam's razor says that this is the solution to the problem of “causality”.

But this sort of thinking is anathema to physicists like Carroll and Rovelli, who would rather stick to their quasi-religious beliefs that matter can’t jump its own numbers.

For years and years, they, and many other people, have tried extremely convoluted approaches to the problem of “causality”, but they still haven’t found any solutions to the problem.

Lorraine Ford

Lorraine Ford
(continued)

Instead of trying to examine or analyse the nitty-gritty mechanics of number movement in a mathematical system, Carroll and Rovelli are looking in the wrong direction: they are looking to equations and rules to try to explain number movement in the real-world mathematical system.

But it is mathematically obvious that no equations or rules, or set of equations and rules, can ever explain number movement in a mathematical system.

So, what are the nitty-gritty mechanics of number movement in a mathematical system?

It seems to be accepted that the physics of the world needs something “outside” the equations to initialise the mathematical system by assigning numbers to the categories in the equations.

What is that something, if it is not matter, i.e. small parts of the universe, assigning some of its own numbers, whereby the equations then have some numbers to work with? Or are people looking to Gods, Platonic realms, or alien computer programs controlling the world, to explain this number initialisation?

The next issue is: why are the numbers continuing to move? Because the equations and rules can’t explain why number change in the mathematical system does not grind to a halt almost immediately after this number initialisation.

In order to move, a mathematical system needs a continual input of new numbers to be assigned to the categories. What is doing this, if it is not matter, i.e. small parts of the universe, assigning some of its own numbers?

Claudio Marchesan

There is a point in Ford’s comments that deserves attention, regardless of her more drastic conclusions: the equations of physics describe how the values of physical quantities change, but they do not explain why those values change at all. Dynamics is assumed, not derived. This is a mathematical fact, not a philosophical stance.

In cosmology this aspect becomes especially clear. The evolution of the Friedmann equations requires a global time parameter that is not deduced from anything else: it is an external input needed to “run” the solutions. In practice, cosmology relies on an operational notion of time that functions as an absolute time, even though it is rarely acknowledged as such.

For this reason, trying to explain the “movement of numbers” by adding more equations or rules — as approaches inspired by Carroll or Rovelli often attempt — risks shifting the problem rather than addressing it. Equations cannot generate their own evolution parameter, just as they cannot justify the very fact that values change.

The point is not to introduce mysterious entities or external mechanisms, but to clarify what we mean by time when we use it to evolve a physical model. If time is treated as an operational quantity, then the change of values requires no additional explanation: it is simply the evaluation of physical quantities at different times.

In my view, the discussion on causality becomes more transparent once this basic fact is recognized: physical dynamics presupposes a temporal parameter that is not produced by the equations themselves. The real conceptual issue is not “what moves the numbers,” but what role we assign to time within the formalism.

Lorraine Ford

Claudio Marchesan
When the world is represented in terms of categories, mathematical relationships between the categories and numbers that apply to the categories, time is just another category whose number change needs to be explained.

When the world is seen as genuinely standalone and self-sufficient (i.e. the world created and knows its own categories, relationships and numbers), the small parts of the world (i.e. matter like particles and atoms) are not “mysterious entities or external mechanisms” that have a mysterious ability to change the numbers. When the world is seen as standalone and self-sufficient, it would be expected that matter (small parts of the world) would change some of its own numbers.

I’m wondering what natural or unnatural entity you think is doing the “evaluation of physical quantities at different times”? You seem to be introducing a consciousness and an agency aspect.

yusrob

Claudio Marchesan
I recommend reading these revolutionary articles:
Solving the Fundamental Problem of Time
https://philpapers.org/archive/YUSSTF.pdf
What is time?
https://philpapers.org/archive/YUSWIT.pdf
The Secret of Time (The second Treatise on Time)
https://philpapers.org/archive/YUSTSO-3.pdf
Treatise on Time
https://philpapers.org/archive/YUSTOT.pdf

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