Calculate “as if “… but be careful by Eckard Blumschein

Dear Hippolyte,

Let me try to clarify in what context I am claiming to be careful concerning causality and QM: A basic and perhaps irrefutable argument of mine is that there is only one non-arbitrary reference to real (ontological) time. I nonetheless suggest calculating as if the reference point of time may always be chosen at will as cosi fan tutte.

Does any essay in this contest offer something with more claimed practical relevance than the prediction uttered by Kadin and supported by Klingman and McEachern? Don't get me wrong: I am unable to read the 50 references given in Bruckner's "Quantum correlations with no causal order". So I feel not in position to judge whether or not he and you are correct.

The tiles of all referenced papers seem to indicate that they altogether ignored the logical justification of what Einstein denied as the now, the objective actual border between pre and after. Isn't QM all about PREdiction?

From QuantumPhysicsLady.org I quote: "The key to understanding spin is to realize that, whatever it "really" is, its physical manifestation is the magnetic field around the particle."

Well, both Heisenberg/Born and Schrödinger followed Fourier who confused any chosen reference point with the objective one. As a corollary: Calculate as if we all were correct but be careful. The journal nature.com is definitely something else than nature.

Incidentally, I would like to distinguish between the "frozen" causal structure of the past and the open in the sense of not yet finally structured future.

Best regards,

Eckard

Dear Jonathan Dickau,

Thank you very much for your encouraging comment. I sadly admit that I was not able to persuade anybody, not even you, that there is something very foundational beyond a taken for granted reckoning: At least the late Einstein confessed that "the now worried him seriously". He felt forced to attribute the distinction between past and future to something outside science.

Let me try again by copying what I wrote on May 14, 2020 in FQXi Forum, article "Why Time Might Not Be an Illusion":

"Steve Dufourny, When I was in position to use an oscilloscope with Gigasample resolution, I was able to find out whether one very short event happened before or after another one, which one was the cause, which one the effect. Accordingly, I reject presentism. Your worries about a putative origin of universe etc. did and will definitely not guide me to anything, not even back to religious belief. I go on trusting in the reasonability of conjecturing reality and in the possibility to make progress by means of critical reasoning, trial and error. Perhaps the most important revelation of my life is the insight that Fourier was wrong when claiming that complex FT is as extended as is reality. Actually, FT introduces unjustified and misleading redundancy in terms of an arbitrarily chosen phase. The mistake is already hidden in the otherwise clever choice of an arbitrarily chosen reference t=0 to any time scale. Consequently the abstracted from reality time can be shifted at will. The border between past and future cannot be shifted. It naturally provides the unique reference point for past as well as future time. "

Dufourny is certainly correct when stressing that my reasoning relates to "the philosophy, the maths and physics". However, I question that "we can just accept the proved laws, axioms, equations ... this reality". I see causality including the distinction between before and after not yet represented in "scientific" (in Einstein's above mentioned understanding) theories, while being indispensable in common sense.

Dufourny mistook me. I don't confound "the philosophy and intuitive interpretations about the universe and its origin, with the religions and the esoterims". I don't at all deal with ideas that cannot be proved. I even suggest calculating with abstractions "beyond physicality" (as if), on condition careful use of the result is provided. We seem to agree on an obviously irreversible time clock. The question of mine is merely the point t=0 of reference. Can a chosen at will reference correctly describe what we are assuming as really existing? Why not humbly accept the natural border between what is frozen and what may change.

Eckard

"Calculate as if there was no causality ... but " implies what I wrote to Steven Dufourny:

"Steve, Instead of writing t=0 I should perhaps be more careful and write

t_past=t_future=0.

You (and perhaps many others) did not understand that t_past can be imagined counting for a snapshot the distance backward (leftward) from actual zero toward older events. For the same snapshot, t_future counts forward (to the right as does usual time). The reference zero is the same for past and future. You could call it the point now: Actually, the notion now in the sense of something perceivable is as fuzzy as also are today and within this millennium. Of course, the natural reference is permanently shifting relatively to the ordinary time scale: Age is growing. So far, this perspective is utterly uncommon in physics. All religions were forced to choose different points of reference for the same time scale."

A majority of physicists will, in principle, agree with his reply:

"Hi Eckard , I respect your analyse but I don t understand why you make this link past and future, they are just parameters of time, the past is the past and the future is not still there , and the present is just a Clock of evolution, a pure duration, is it important to analyse this time, we cannot check it for me , we can just utilise the relativity like a tool, like we see our past more we go far in space due to this special relativity, like we see our sun 8min 20 sec in late and we can decrease our internal Clock , so we can go in the future more quicly but we cannot retrun at our present and reality, so is it relevant ? it is odd for me to analyse this time, there is nothing of odd with this time, it is just a paramter of evolution irreversible entropically speaking for me. Could you elaborate please why you consider this past and future =0 , what is the philosophy really beyond, what we must understand about this and why you insit Always with Fourier ? please elaborate, light me, regards"

Because presentism is unable to specify the duration of a "the present", it deliberately blurs the alternative between past and future. As there is nothing between positive and negative numbers there is no extended state but merely a border point, something that has no parts, between past and future.

While, people tend to agree on that "past and future are just parameters of time", I would like to be more careful and clearly distinguish objectively measurable reality from any abstractions that stripped off the link to reality, for instance records and models. The usual notion of time is thought to extend from minus infinity to plus infinity. Hence it belongs to the latter: Future data cannot be measured in advance. Philosophy has it: In reality the past is unchangeable, the future is open.

We will perhaps agree on that it was and is reasonable to conceive annual cycles (in Christian religion) or moon periods (in others) as a fundamental temporal pattern. While they quasi provided arrows with equidistant marks on it, a natural point of reference (t=0) is missing with this usual notion of time. Numbering the marks requires to either agree on an arbitrarily chosen reference point, or to choose the border between past and future as the unique, natural, and common to past and future reference point. The laws of physics are valid in both cases. Usual time favorably attributes a fix value of time to an event. The distinction between past and future time avoids a lot of intentionally veiled inconsistencies. When Fourier claimed that the complex transformation is exactly as extended as is reality, he introduced an undecided redundant freedom of arbitrary choice that arose from the usual notion of time.