TIME EXPLAINED (v2.1)

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Leo

If they are present on both time slices simultaneously, then what does "simultaneously" mean? This is some version of Blockworld, isn't it? If our universe works that way - or rather stands frozen that way - there is a monumental waste of useful resource at the conception. And why would this universe need physical laws? Why not pile up slices of any shapes in any order, or in some esthetically pleasing way, not too mechanical? I look like joking, but I'm dead serious, eh. If there are rules, what are they for?

Aha! Another segue into the mind of Mr. Fuller. For indeed, he is of the mind we have a 'block' world. I see you capitalized 'Blockworld', and I am not familiar with any specific work it may refer to, but as to Fuller and Synergetics it doesn't matter.

The thing of it is, Fuller's blocks are tetrahedrons, not cubes. Whether or not the Universe 'needs' laws, there is no getting around our agreement that it 'has' laws. Fuller's tetrahedrons (your shapes) pile up as they do because of the unique properties of the geometry of triangles, which are the absolute minimum (and therefore most efficient) polygon.

So we have a geometric bias towards talking of time as a dimension or even the standard 3 spatial dimensions in terms of x, y, z cubic space. I have been reading Synergetics off and on since it came out in 1983 and I still haven't min(e)d it out to any great degree.

Anyway, in my own view, the rules are the background, and a background is both necessary and sufficient for a foreground to exist. As I suggested earlier, at this point in time I think Time is the interval of measurement of their differentiation [differentiation as in telling a difference between foreground & background], regardless of the scale or context.

[Buffy]

Occam's Razor folks....I'd love to know why you guys seem to be making this all a much more complicated issue than it needs to be.

I understand arguments about the quantization of time (for which there is *no* experimental evidence whatsoever), but like quantization of objects we measure in our familiar 3 dimensions, you don't have to come up with some sort of completely different way of thinking about it. A "snapshot" is not the same thing as a "time slice" and it sounds like you're tying yourselves in knots trying to say they're the same.

Parsimony is golden,
Buffy

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Buffy

Occam's Razor folks....I'd love to know why you guys seem to be making this all a much more complicated issue than it needs to be.

I understand arguments about the quantization of time (for which there is *no* experimental evidence whatsoever), but like quantization of objects we measure in our familiar 3 dimensions, you don't have to come up with some sort of completely different way of thinking about it. A "snapshot" is not the same thing as a "time slice" and it sounds like you're tying yourselves in knots trying to say they're the same.

Parsimony is golden,
Buffy

Aha! We drew you in! We are of course, making it hard quite simply because we can. Now of course no experimental data yet exists, but without positing quantized time first, no experiments to support it are likely to be attempted. Time heals all wounds.

Likewise, while no one has 'to come up with some sort of completely different way of thinking about it.', they can and do. Fuller, Cantor, Gödel, Popular?, etcetera. Knots you say? Mmmmm....Poincare conjecture proved just 3 years ago. Yep, 'we do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard', and time heals all wounds. I think. (Therefore, I am? )

Parsimony is Tetrahedral,
Turtle

[Buffy]

I'm not trying to stop you! I just think you're "unstuck in time!"

Not seeing the additional explanatory power of making "time go away," in fact it seems to be an exercise in showing that nothing exists, and trying to prove that we're all asleep in pods in The Matrix.

Just don't see the point in counting the number of Angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

Might make a pretty picture though!

The Tralfamadorians assert that there are no less than seven sexes on planet earth, all but two invisible to humans,
Buffy Pilgrim

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Buffy

I'm not trying to stop you! I just think you're "unstuck in time!"

No indeed; rather than stopping us, I rather saw it as you had joined us, at least for a short time.

[hardkraft]

I don't think it's just a useless mental excercise. Julian Barbour sees some real implications of this point of view. Now that I started to think about it I finally understand the question posed by Steven Hawkins: why don't we remember the future? With the "classical" view this question doesn't make any sense but with permanent and coexisting time sheets it seems kind of obvious to ask and is not trivial.
The way I managed to resolve it is by looking at the physical laws. Their very existence gives nature direction. Whatever they would be they make some things easier and other things harder. If it was as easy to go up as go down there would be no up and down. Maybe there is some other matter in the universe with a different set of laws applying to it that push it in the opposite direction. Maybe that's why we can't detect the dark matter

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by hardkraft

I don't think it's just a useless mental excercise. Julian Barbour sees some real implications of this point of view.

I know Julian Barbour is a pretty smart guy, and I've even read bits and pieces of "End of Time" and the synopsis of my critque above basically applies. He's no Steven Hawking. I know Ray Kurzweil is a fan, but Ray's gone a little bit nuts in the last few years, so although I've paid a bunch of money at least indirectly to Ray for his cool gear over the years, it doesn't really make me warm and fuzzy about Barbour.

Originally Posted by hardkraft

Now that I started to think about it I finally understand the question posed by Steven Hawkins: why don't we remember the future? With the "classical" view this question doesn't make any sense but with permanent and coexisting time sheets it seems kind of obvious to ask and is not trivial.

Hawking and Kip Thorne have done lots of work on directionality of time, but its not terribly earth shattering. The question he poses, he's actually answered, but the answer is annoying to us 3-d beings who would like freedom of movement in the time dimension.

So much of what people like Barbour seem to by trying to do is not so much answer fundamental questions, but seem to be wanting solely to address this "annoyance..."

Until it looks like there's something useful it contributes, stuff like The End of Time just seem pointless...

Timeless,
Buffy

[Leo]

Originally Posted by hardkraft

Well, the slices could be in any order but the "logical" order is the only one that we can make sense of.

It's true that we tend to see only what we can and want to. I for instance never accepted gravity, and never understood why people drop things onto the floor whereas I simply keep them at hand floating around in the air. For those interested, it's quite easy: Just choose the next time slice carefully, a slice where things don't follow geodesic avenues.

Originally Posted by hardkraft

Oh, I think I know what you mean by the resources now. You meanthat each of the slices contains the entire universe, right? Yes, they do but I don't think it's a big problem since each object can experience only one slice at any given moment.

Oh, I wouldn't mind visiting random slices if I could - I'll train harder. What bugs me is that I don't see the need for the past and the future to exist fully developed when a few fundamental physical laws can produce the next time slice indefinitely.

Originally Posted by hardkraft

Anyway it's better than dealing with all possible universes of all possible physics and all possible times and so on, what string theory is proposing.

I suspect the dimensionitis of string theory is a direct consequence of Uncle Minkowski's mathematical inventiveness. Once people believe that relativity can be explained only by his spacetime model (or the more elaborate one of GR) instead of taking it for a mathematical metaphor, the gate is wide open to sticking hidden dimensions onto anything not yet understood.

Originally Posted by hardkraft

The same with physical laws. What's the purpose of having them now? I agree the view I talk about doesn't answer that question but it doesn't make it any more difficult either. Julian Barbour actually thinks it makes some questions easier but some of his physics is a bit over my head.

I haven't read Barbour. Is it him who says we pick only the logical next slice? Is human consciousness required or does it work for any object? Intrigued...

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Originally Posted by Turtle

Aha! Another segue into the mind of Mr. Fuller. For indeed, he is of the mind we have a 'block' world. I see you capitalized 'Blockworld', and I am not familiar with any specific work it may refer to, but as to Fuller and Synergetics it doesn't matter.

I capitalized "Blockworld" because it's something absolutely enormous, bigger than the universe itself.

Originally Posted by Turtle

The thing of it is, Fuller's blocks are tetrahedrons, not cubes. Whether or not the Universe 'needs' laws, there is no getting around our agreement that it 'has' laws. Fuller's tetrahedrons (your shapes) pile up as they do because of the unique properties of the geometry of triangles, which are the absolute minimum (and therefore most efficient) polygon.

Is Fuller's block world four-dimensional like Minkowski's? I know one can make a nice 3D network out of dodecahedra, but how does one get one in 4D with tetrahedra?

Originally Posted by Turtle

Anyway, in my own view, the rules are the background, and a background is both necessary and sufficient for a foreground to exist. As I suggested earlier, at this point in time I think Time is the interval of measurement of their differentiation [differentiation as in telling a difference between foreground & background], regardless of the scale or context.

I get only part of what you wrote, but I too feel that the rules for dynamics (the truly fundamental rules we have no clue about) can be something much more than just an abstraction, and be the origin of other things we currently believe to be supremely fundamental.

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Originally Posted by Buffy

Occam's Razor folks....I'd love to know why you guys seem to be making this all a much more complicated issue than it needs to be.

Occam was a great guy, and I shave with his Razor every morning - well, every week, because it's so sharp it cuts more flesh than hair. Do you really think we are complicating the issue? I'm under the impression that there is a quest for a fundamental simplicity behind the fog.

Originally Posted by Buffy

I understand arguments about the quantization of time (for which there is *no* experimental evidence whatsoever),

It's because the clocks we measure time with are quantized too, maybe? Nah, such quantization would be that fine grained that I have no idea how we could measure it. I won't come back until I have solid proofs... where have I put my Planck clock?

Originally Posted by Buffy

but like quantization of objects we measure in our familiar 3 dimensions, you don't have to come up with some sort of completely different way of thinking about it. A "snapshot" is not the same thing as a "time slice" and it sounds like you're tying yourselves in knots trying to say they're the same.

We could imagine a quantized time scheme in which a time slice is really like a snapshot with all the information contained to produce the next slice, no? The slice doesn't even need to be "flat" if it looks too simple. Maybe I misunderstood what you said.

-----

Originally Posted by hardkraft

The way I managed to resolve it is by looking at the physical laws. Their very existence gives nature direction. Whatever they would be they make some things easier and other things harder. If it was as easy to go up as go down there would be no up and down. Maybe there is some other matter in the universe with a different set of laws applying to it that push it in the opposite direction. Maybe that's why we can't detect the dark matter

Antimatter once postulated for the backward-in-time-traveler championship, but in a block world nothing moves up or down or sideways because everything is frozen, so the competition was canceled. However, if I was really really obliged to accept a block world, I would say that all matter and antimatter runs backward against the entropy since it resists the dissolution of its energy. But I'd largely prefer a more simple explanation.

[hardkraft]

I don't really remember what Hawking said about the directionality of time but if it was that we are being carried by the torrent of the 4-th dimmension and we as 3-d creatures can't do anything about it because that's how the time works then it's not much of an explanation, it's more like a description.

With the introduction of time slices you can picture that "time" doesn't have a direction however each slice still looks different and you can track a progression. These differences can only be accounted for by laws, whatever they might be.
Let's say we start with a uniform universe and introduce a law that forcess all the matter to go to the "left" and settle there. This law would cause the matter to pile up on the left. Since time has no direction we could say that there is another law at play that takes the matter from the primodial left pile and throws it to the right and scaters it throughout the universe. Both views are equally valid.
However if we wanted a sencient being to live in this world it could only have memory from the first perspective. First, the creature would have to insulate a piece of space, second, be in control of the order in it. So although the stuff is still falling to the left the creature somehow is able to form regular stacks within the borders that it controls. It is able to go over the patterns of these stacks to recall memories. There is no scheme that I can think of for storing memories if we start reading the timeline in the other direction. I suspect that it's impossible to come up with such a scheme because forming a memory depends on creating and preserving patterns and going from left to righ, in this example, is about destroying those patterns. That's why the memories and therefore a sense of time can be only formed in one particular direction.

The same happens in our universe. So if nothing else the idea of time slices at least seems to make it easier to understand why the laws work the way they do and why whe can have memories of the past and therefore perceive time.

[InfiniteNow]

Time slices still imply a separation, which is baffling. Okay... so we freeze the absolute and have a slice. Super... but why does that change to the next slice? What about the distance between slices?

Now, as much as I hate the idea of associating it this way, is like an ever expanding absolute, containing that which came before, and changing the dynamics of the expansion as result of... well, as a result of change. Change is the collapse of a wave function, but calling it a wave function or a collapse helps not in deciphering the subtler qualities of that which is time.


Tomorrow's yesterday is today, but it will still be right now.