Why does time move forward?
We all know it. Time is unidirectional. Space expands, and the structures in it evolved temporally asymmetric (because of heat) after their parts (real particles) got excited from a temporally symmetric of virtual particles by inflation of space. A probable scenario is that all matter in the universe eventually ends up in black holes, which evaporate into photons, accelerating away from each other to infinity, diluting fleeting memories into oblivion.
Why isn't it happening the other way round though? Why isn't all that happens running the other way round? Why isn't the universe collapsing, Sunlight moving towards the Sun, or the rain falling up? Why don't my thoughts run backwards, do I hear things after which sound leaves my ear? Why doesn't cause precede effect? Wouldn't it be easy for a god to precisely arrange for it?
Entropy would always decrease. That would be the new law. Our laws of thermodynamics would be thought backwards. So using the second law of thermodynamics to explain why this won't happen is of no use.
So again: Why aren't all processes moving exactly opposite to their present direction?
Why isn't it happening the other way round though? Why isn't all that happens running the other way round? Why isn't the universe collapsing, Sunlight moving towards the Sun, or the rain falling up? Why don't my thoughts run backwards, do I hear things after which sound leaves my ear? Why doesn't cause precede effect? Wouldn't it be easy for a god to precisely arrange for it?
Entropy would always decrease. That would be the new law. Our laws of thermodynamics would be thought backwards. So using the second law of thermodynamics to explain why this won't happen is of no use.
So again: Why aren't all processes moving exactly opposite to their present direction?
Comments (228)
Well, I will offer the most obvious and probably the most boring and non-progressive point in regards to the fluidity of the thread, 'Because it can't do that.' The Universe has no mechanism currently identified in physics, within which such action is demonstrable or possible. Heat and light radiate outwards,
'Them's da rools!'
Yes. But... Why they don't radiate inwards? Why isn't the beginning of time situated at the end? I think I'm drifting off from reality a bit now Stephen, but still... I asked this on a physics site, but the question was closed for being a duplicate of a question about the Loschmidt paradox I didn't agree though.
We actually don't. The very start of the post rules out C theory, which rejects temporal directionality. C theorists only agree with temporal order, and would tell you that the timelines (1) ABC and (2) CBA are identical in virtue of the fact that the betweenness relations (C-properties) of these timelines are sortally equivalent. Meanwhile, both the A-theorist and B-theorist would find there to be distinction between (1) and (2) through either A-properties or B-properties.
But neither of these are a default position that lacks a burden of proof, so the A and B theorist must be the ones motivating the A-properties or B-properties. And I'm not so sure any of the strategies used are adequate. Phenomenal or intuitive arguments used in an A-theoretic fashion can be perfectly rationalized by indexical accounts, and the issue I perceive is that the accounts B theorists use to undermine A theory are not sufficient (but necessary!) for B theory. In other words, undermining temporal dynamicity on its own is necessary for both B theory and C theory, but only sufficient for C theory.
Because of this, while I may not strongly commit to a C theoretic understanding of time I think it is a highly plausible one and one of our best explanations. So I would warn from presupposing it away in a discussion about time, and I'd definitely invite its insight.
For further reading, I recommend Matt Farr's paper On the adirectionality of time. It is excellent.
I had never heard of the 'Loschmidt paradox,' where do you come across this stuff?
I had a quick read using your link, its interesting that it was provoked by Boltzmann musings.
I wouldn't worry too much about 'drifting off from reality a bit.' If you can achieve such trips for free and they are good trips then you are a lucky sod. If they are not good trips then you need to work hard at manipulating them better. Take control of them more often and dictate their dierction. I do quite well with my attempts at 'lucid dreaming.'
There are many systems that 'oscillate' or 'reverse,' water-ice-water, solid-liquid-gas-liquid-solid, components available in the Universe - assembly-human-alive-dies-dissassembly-components available in the universe......
But heat radiate outwards - heat radiates inwards, just doesn't happen.
Can your personal conception of the attributes of God be reversed?
Forgot one of the most important ones. mass-energy-mass-energy
<-------------time
Imagine, just for the sake of argument, gods brought about the universe with all particles having initial conditions, momenta, energies, and positions, in an expanding space. Why didn't he arrange it to begin at infinity, ending at the singularity?
But how can space be infinite if it is expanding, It has no need to expand if it is already infinite.
If God arranged it, then why is it expanding?
Before cosmologists discovered that the expansion rate was accelerating, the big crunch was a front runner. I think however you are positing something akin to the fable of Merlin, who knew the future because his existence was in time-reversal from 'future to present.' I think that's why they presented him as a magical 'wizard' in the story. Would you like to live a reversed life from death point to fetus?
The classical approach is that the inflation happens in an infinite space, i.e, eternal inflation. In isolated pockets of this infinite eternally inflating space, inflation is halted and arrested. That pocket is our universe. Then in time, space starts inflating again and becomes one again with the inflating space it's embedded in.
There are problems with this view. How can space expand? What happens to the photons that emerged in all isolated pockets (universes)?
The infinite space I visualise is the (spatially) 4D bulk space our finite 3D space expands into. Why wasn't it set in motion from the other side of time (at infinity)? So an infinite space collapsing to a singularity and all particle motions, wavefunction and space metric evolutions, etc. Reversed. So all photons of the Hawking radiation that will be all that's left in our forward running universe
would reverse their momenta, meet at the black hole horizons, form black holes that eject matter (so they become white holes), and a universe crushing in towards the singularity that would be the end, instead of the begin as we perceive it.
This idea has a bigger problem than fine-tuning (which I think is not a fundamental issue in context of a broader theory of elementary particles), which is how the metric of space can change over time. It's easy enough to write down a time dependent metric but the question how space grows is not answered by that. So why isn't everything moving backwards? It's a possibility and if it happened you couldn't reverse it back in time (which would be forward in time). Why doesn't an inverse second law of thermodynamics hold which means an entropy always decreasing...
I don't think I can offer you any more than I have already on this topic. I will leave it to those members who offer more detail than I can.
As always, thanks for the exchange of views EugeneW! :grin:
That is not a good question. Maybe it is. Maybe time IS going backwards, EugeneW; we just don't know it, for obvious reasons.
You can't write off the second law in so cavalier a fashion, not legitimately at least. Entropy just reflects probability. Higher entropy is just more likely than lower entropy because there are so many more high entropy events than low entropy ones. There is no physical reason all the air in a room could not gather all at once into one corner. It doesn't happen because there are just so many more ways the atoms could be distributed evenly through the room. Time moves the direction it does because there is just one way an egg broken on the floor could regather into an egg but there are a billion gazillion trumpillion ways it could just sit there in a yellow puddle.
There are other ways of looking at it. Wikipedia has a good writeup of the Arrow of Time.
I understand the arrow of time, but I don't understand why the arrow doesn't point from future to past.
But why doesn't it and all around it move backwards. Why isn't the law that entropy decreases?
Quoting EugeneW
For the same reason I'm more likely to be dealt a pair of twos than a royal straight flush. There's no reason time couldn't "flow backwards." It's just very, very, very, very....very, very, very....very unlikely.
But you could just as well argue the other way round. If entropy only decreased, it would be very unlikely for time to go forwards. If the initial state of the universe would lay in the very far future, at infinity maybe, the universe could have started from there with everything in opposite motion. I know a gas in a corner has a low probability of occurring spontaneously, but if the initial configuration is right then there is nothing that prevents time from going backwards. Its a complete mystery to me.
I've given it my best shot, but I'll take one more swing. You're making this much more complicated than it really is. Entropy is the simplest thing in the world. Entropy isn't a force that directs events in a particular direction. It is just an expression of the fact that some events are more likely than others. Events that we identify as being in what we call the future are just more likely than those in what we call the past. Entropy is just another word for probability.
That's all I've got. Good luck.
As I already wrote, it's not the second law that I don't understand, or the arrow going forwards. I just ask why it doesn't go backwards. The fact that the forward direction has a higher probability isn't an explanation. Probabilities are no explanation. You simply say the second law of thermodynamics holds because it holds. That's circular. Saying time goes forward because it goes forward. Probabilities have nothing to do with this. But thanks anyway!
There is nothing mechanistically from us recreating the first snapshot after one second. If something had the power to reorganize the matter and forces of the universe to what it was one second prior, then we would be "back in time". But really, we wouldn't. Because the reorganization happened at the second second if we're an outside observer.
A -> B -> A. From the inside observer, time travelled backwards, and none were aware of it. Did A still come before B, which then came before A again? Yes, but that is only because we are recording state changes. We cannot erase the state change. We can't reverse everything so that the state change was never made. Time is just that, states of change compared to a memory of a prior state.
But think about internally once again. If it is the case that time is merely the state of change from one moment to the next, then if reality reorganized itself to A -> B -> A, the second A would never be aware that B ever happened. They would be sitting there asking themselves, "Why does time always move forward?" or, "Why do the states of change never go back to the way they were prior?"
Basically, if time did move backwards, you would never know it, because backwards time is merely a change to a previous state. And in a change to a previous state, you saw time as moving forward. It is absolutely impossible to be aware of the state of the universe being reorganized to a previous state, unless you are an outside observer. As we are not outside observers of time, we have our answer. Time always moves forward, because it is impossible for us to be aware if a state returned to a previous set up.
That's at the macroscopic scale.
At the atomic/microscopic scale, there really is no way of knowing whether time's going forwards/backwards. Try this experiment: put a bunch of steel ball bearings (representing particles) in a box, shake the box and record a video of the balls moving randomly in all directions. Now, call two friends to your house. Play the video you recorded normally (forwards) to one friend and play the video in reverse (backwards) to the other friend. Ask both of them this question: Was the video played forwards/backwards? They won't be able to answer this question. Hmmmmm. :chin:
How do we explain this? Anyone...
Well, you have to show them more than that piece. What they don't see is the balls causing sounds an electromagnetic radiation, and heat. In fact, you will always be able to see if a process goes forward or backward. The question is though why not everything runs in reverse (and not a tiny patch, maybe artificially arranged. Though it's the question if a small patch can be said to go backwards. All or nothing.
I see your point. Thanks for the contribution. I'm not sure if we'd not notice it. Forces stay the same if all particles and processes reverse direction. All particles and the spacetime they are in, as well as the developing wavefunctions could have started in a very (infinite) far future with all motions reversed. It would be strange though to first hear the thunder or see the lightning, after which the light and sound converges to the blitz.
Fecal incontinence? :grin:
It would turn to food. The apple would turn whole in my mouth and jump back in the tree. Counterintuitive but possible. If the futùre was the reversed begin it would happen.
I managed to make some progress into the matter. Ball bearings are symmetrical (reflection + rotational). If we were all symmetrical spheres, it would be impossible to tell whether time is running forwards/backwards i.e. time would lack a direction. :chin:
Correct. If we are part of time that is being changed to a prior state, it is impossible to notice. The only way we would notice is if we continued forward, while everything else continued backwards.
Good day, my beloved! Kudos! Wouldn't we notice time if we are symmetrical spheres? Imagine a transparent box filled with bouncing solid metal spheres in interstellar spaces. We videotap the scene with a camera that shows every physical process in and around the box. Then we show the tap in two directions, forward and reverse. Is there a difference? Could it be we tapped a time-reversed scene in the first place? If we reverse the tap, shouldn't we include what happened before and after? Can parts of reality start running backwards in time? If time ran backwards could it start running forwards? ???
You're wrong. Please don't go spreading your ignorance.
Why would arguments about time be physicalist?
Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of time and is forgotten through the lapse of time; but not wine song and love
There is a clear direction of time in a box full of moving steel balls. Perhaps you can hide it by continuing to add energy to the box, but the minute you stop the balls will all fall to the bottom.
Rather, from our perspective, we are moving forward while able only to look backward.
we are riding in the back of a pickup truck, trying to guess where we are going by looking behind.
Why don't gas molecules behave like steel balls, settle at the bottom of their containers? I believe [math]CO_2[/math] does that (vide Grotta del Cane).
Gas molecules are bound together much more weakly than solid molecules. They bounce quickly around inside any container - off the walls and each other. Temperature is a measure of the molecules' average kinetic energy. The warmer it is, the faster they move. Molecules are also affected by the force of gravity, but I guess the energy associated with gravity is much smaller than the heat energy.
Bravo! Muchas gracias señor!
:up: Eyes "at" or "in"?
Again, probability has nothing to do with it. It explains why time goes forward given initial conditions. If a flipped coin lands 10 000 000 times on the floor with heads up, and 2 times on tails, is the reason it lands on heads so often that it has a higher chance? No. The reason is the die itself. Likewise for time. The basic question is why the begin state of the universe is not situated at its end with all motion reversed.
What (I think) I know: Entropy gives time direction. The rule looks to be rather simple: If you're told the entropy is x at time T1, y at time T2 and y > x, then T2 is the future and T1 is the past.
Entropy increasing (2[sup]nd[/sup] law of thermodynamics) is a statistical law i.e. not true that entropy ALWAYS increases. SOMETIMES it can decrease, when it does, time flows backwards. It's not a question of if, but when (the entropy of the universe will fall and time flows backwards). Hindus, with their cyclical cosmology, seems to have intuited this 5k years ago (vide the vedas). The Phoenix is reborn from its ashes. :smile:
Yes, my beloved! But why not the other way round? Why don't things evolve from the future to the past? Universe starting from a reversed big rip, black holes becoming white, matter and light reversing to condense into a red giant, which gets smaller to become our Sun, Earth appearing, creatures raising from the dead getting younger, entering the womb with a screaming going inside their mouth, buildings torn down, planes flying backwards, the atmosphere getting cleaner, devolution to amino-acids, and finally a big crunch. Could have happened...
:brow:
Intriguing questions. If you want to prove that such events couldn't have/can't occur, you might wanna check whether it makes for a side-splitting joke (reductio ad absurdum).
Good luck!
Magnifique monsieur/mademoiselle, magnifique! :up:
I just realized - you're telling me to eff off! :grin:
I think this is a very good point, unenlightened. This looking backward in time is fundamental to observation, and the basis of the empirical sciences. But when we turn around, to face the future directly, we are faced with possibilities, anticipations, wants, needs, desires, and the moral obligations of ought. There is what I think of as a wall of non-existence in front of us in time. The future cannot be sensed, nor has it been sensed, and it's as if there is a wall of unintelligibility directly in front of us, which we relate to through prediction.
The act of predicting involves a turning around, from facing the past in observation, to facing the future in anticipation. Any such turning requires a system of orientation to account for the reality of the turn. In our society we seem to be lacking in such a system. It's as if we believe that we can turn back and forth, from past to future, at will, without adapting the principles we apply in understanding, to account for the change in direction. The first step I believe, toward rectifying this, is accepting what you've pointed out, that there is a change in direction, between "where we've been" and "where we're going".
Quoting unenlightened
We need to learn the true orientation, and this is where the mind is looking, not where the senses are looking. The mind looks to the future in anticipation, and the senses look rearward at the past. Therefore we need to adapt the rearward facing principles derived from observation, to be consistent with the true frontward facing direction of the mind, which is the future. The solution is not to try and tell the mind that it is facing the wrong direction, because the senses are facing backward in time, so backward is supposed to be forward. The solution is to understand that the senses are really facing backward.
From Wikipedia:
The interpretation of entropy in statistical mechanics is the measure of uncertainty, disorder, or mixedupness in the phrase of Gibbs, which remains about a system after its observable macroscopic properties, such as temperature, pressure and volume, have been taken into account. For a given set of macroscopic variables, the entropy measures the degree to which the probability of the system is spread out over different possible microstates. In contrast to the macrostate, which characterizes plainly observable average quantities, a microstate specifies all molecular details about the system including the position and velocity of every molecule. The more such states are available to the system with appreciable probability, the greater the entropy. In statistical mechanics, entropy is a measure of the number of ways a system can be arranged, often taken to be a measure of "disorder" (the higher the entropy, the higher the disorder). This definition describes the entropy as being proportional to the natural logarithm of the number of possible microscopic configurations of the individual atoms and molecules of the system (microstates) that could cause the observed macroscopic state (macrostate) of the system. The constant of proportionality is the Boltzmann constant.
Yes yes and yes again. The state of gas corpuscules being together in one corner of a container can be realized in way much less ways than them being all over it. That's no issue. The issue is why all motions of particles have the direction they have (which turns out to be compatible with the chances). Why don't they have the opposite velocities, so they meat in a corner?
I took my best shot. Nuff said.
I've decided to write "nuff said" from now on when I think the conversation is over in honor of Stanley Martin Lieber.
Did he die? Almost 100, so I saw on Wiki. If only time run backward.
Alas.
Nobody took this bait.
I cannot find a difference between B and C. B-theorists define directionality based on entropy levels. If the C-theorist denies this, it seems they are in denial of thermodynamic law.
Most of the literature I saw concerning C-theory mistakenly uses A-references in describing B-theory, which is a straw man.
As for the title of this topic "Why does time move forward?", I can only say that it is a problem only for those that posit that time is something that moves, forward or otherwise.
Second law of TD in time-reversed universe:
All closed physical systems evolve towards lower entropy (with local patches evolving to higher entropy, but these don't constitute time reversion).
Don't the hands of the clock move forward in time? 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock... Could be 3, 2, 1. But it isn't.
It seems like you are saying that, in a time-reversed universe, the system evolves from a more probable state to a less probable one. That...doesn't make any sense.
No, it doesn't. But it is exactly what would happen.
I'm pretty sure the only way that could happen is if fairy dust were involved.
There is no light coming from the future, only from the past. You say 'looks' but it is not observation but imagination. The trick to anticipation is to make one's imagining realistic and realisable.
Quoting T Clark
A stone and some shards of glass leap up from the floor; the shards form into a whole pane of window glass, and the stone leaps from its centre arcing to land in the outstretched hand of a boy who pulls his hand back and lays the stone down on the ground.
How did he know to stretch out his hand just at that moment?
Is that question intended as rhetorical?
So that's a 'no'.
Fairy dust is like dark matter. The only evidence that it exists is that all our theories will be wrong unless it does.
Well the theory that all our theories are wrong, must be wrong, because if it were right then not all our theories would be wrong. Therefore fairy dust necessarily exists.
QED
Normal matter is fairy dust in a universe where all moves opposite. The laws of TD are asymmetrical in time not because fairy dust is involved but because of initial conditions. Why are they not the reversed end conditions? Why not is the end of our universe a begin in reverse? Why not is the end the begin and aren't we heading back to the begin? What's so special about the begin? That its ordered? But why is that special? Does a reversed universe heading for the singularity needs incredible finetuning? So the stone jumps from the floor, together with broken glass and reversed sound, a window gets healed, and the stone is caught by a boy?
I wrote "Nuff said" six hours ago, but here I still am. Ok, this time I really mean it. Nuff nuff said.
Nuff but not nuff... Maybe the direction of time is proof of God.
I agree, "looks" is metaphorical. The usage goes back at least as far as Plato, "the mind's eye". So I think that "to look" in this sense is to direct one's attention in that way. So when we look for something, or look at something, we direct our visual sense in a particular way, also focusing the mental attention on that visual sense. A person can focus the attention of one's mind, in a very similar way, but looking without the senses, at something, or for something, completely mental, without employing the senses. Very often this thing focused on is a goal for the future, which a person might direct one's attention toward.
I agree that this is "imagination", but it's a special type of imagination, just like prediction is a special type of imagination, because unlike more random imagination such as dreaming, and the somewhat less random imagination of fiction writing, we assign some sort of reality to this type of imagined thing.
As you say, this type of imagining, which brings the imaginary into the real, is "the trick to anticipation". As a child I suffered from false anticipation. If I expected something really good, and it didn't pan out, I'd be greatly disappointed. I think that directing one's anticipation towards the real is a very important aspect of dealing with anxiety. The problem though, is that in relation to the past we have very clear principles as to what constitutes "real", we can refer to what has been sensed, "observed". But when I look to the future, how do I determine whether or not I will be disappointed, if I assign "real" to an anticipated event?
Quoting T Clark
In this situation, the proper conclusion is that the theories are wrong. What's the point in sprinkling fairy dust to support a bad theory?
Dark matter is not fairy dust. It is a real substance not proving that our theories need mending, a god of the gaps stuff. It is just dark because we don't see it. It could be primordial black holes. Normal matter could constitute a time going backwards. If all matter in our universe had exactly the opposite motion, time would run backwards. It's not a matter of chance that time runs forward. It's a matter of initial configuration.
That's all the evidence it needs. But the fact that time doesn't run backwards isn't evidence that it can't run backwards or that angel dust is required. Though our theories would indeed be wrong if it didn't existed.
Quoting unenlightened
The boy would be reverse thinking. The effect would have become the cause.
:up:
What are A, B, C theories of time? Be as concise as possible.
Thanks in advance.
:chin: Does logic have a direction?
Eurt si B neht A fo trap si B dna eurt si A fi
KO :down:
On a serious note, that [math]\uparrow[/math] is a kinda sorta mirror image of if A is true and B is a part of A then B is truE.
!!!GNIT GNIT GNIT...
1. If p then q
2. p
Ergo,
3. q
?
I was wondering about that reverse I gave. But in your snenop sudom, what is the reverse ot ergo and if...then? Then...if, and ??
We have q. It traces back to p. So? p and q?
q .3
,ogrE
p .2
q neht p fi .1
A, B: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_series_and_B_series
C: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreality_of_Time
but the C page seems to have fallacious reasoning
You can download a copy of Matt Farr's paper that @Kuro mentioned here: https://philpapers.org/rec/FARCOT-2. It might help to clarify the distinction between B and C for you.
Why does time always move forward? A happened before B. In such circumstances we never find that B happened before A. Also, when I have painted the wall red I never find that I have painted it blue. That is an odd fact about colours. But it is not a fact about colours at all. That is clearly not a fact about colours. It is less clear that the thread question is not a question about time. But it may be so.
Because that's the way a wheel rolls. But it can roll in two directions. So can time. Why isn't the begin situation of the universe situated at the end? With all motion reversed?
Indeed. But knowing this tells us nothing about wheels. It tells us that the question I asked is not a sensible question.
Quoting EugeneW
Why can't the top and bottom of the wheel roll in the same direction simultaneously? You said it, but you said nothing interesting about wheels because the question is not about wheels - despite appearances.
Why doesn't time run backwards? That's the analogy. The wheel question is not sensible and can only be answered with 'Because that's what a wheel is!'. I am raising the possibility that the time question is also not sensible - but less obviously nonsensical.
Then it's slipping.
On the other hand, time evolving to lower entropy is still time. Maybe the question is ill-stated. Time doesn't move forward or backward. Time just moves. The hand on the clock, that is. Or better, the pendulum. Why don't processes move opposite to the motion the actually have? It would still be time. The clock could still keep time. We wouldn't be constructing clocks but rather deconstructing them. Effects in the current universe would become causes.
Wise words, comrad Philos Agentus. Seems time starts all over again every mornig. To pbrase the wise words of comrad @butimfeeling2022, "over and over again". 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regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, , linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward, being born, linear progress, sleep, fast regress, awaking, linear progress, death, fast forward, fast reset, fast toward... etcetera. I think you get my point made. Maybe I understand hyperclocking now!
Wheels of a car moving?
What if our faces were on our back? Would time move backward then? We would see what we did only after we had done things, after turning around. We could wear a mirror device on our heads to look forward, like we can to look backward only. What if our whole front was on our back. Doesn't time move forwards because it was set in motion forwards? Time could have run backwards. If the begin situation was right...
But how then can particles move towards each other or repulse each other. If there is no time they can't move.
Scientific speculation, philosophical even, is always welcome. My own suspicion is that time moves obliquely according to a functional operator and we experience only a projection of it in our spacetime geometry. By generating a computer time-field it may be possible to break through.
Time dilation might be explained by a shift in the time-angle created by velocity.
I don't see any logical connection between time and particles or whatever moving. What is your basis for the postulation on the two? Things used to move without your imagination or postulation of time when you were a child, do you recall that? Now you are postulating time for the movement, because you have read something on time, and imagining that it is flowing or moving forward.
I dont think time is flowing. The hands of the clock move though. So motion is time. Periodic motion is the clock, irreversible motion what it measures and quantifies.
Quoting Hillary
You seem to contradict yourself. Is time something that flows/moves or not? If it is, then it isn't what clocks measure since two clocks can measure different durations between the same two events.
The topic title obviously presumes the former, since it asks why it moves, and not if it moves.
Quoting Hillary
Different interpretations of time both define motion as change in location over time, so this doesn't really distinguish which interpretation you're suggesting, or whether 'time is real' or not. I forget which interpretation is associated with 'time is real' since it seems quite real either way despite being a very different thing.
Who doesn't? The hands of the clock always move. Thermodynamic emergent time cannot stop. But a clock can stay put or move. So it can be that time moves while standing still. A clock is a periodic process in eternal motion. Before the emergence of one-directional TD time, there was a perfectly periodic time, still existent in the vacuum. The question is though why things don't move in the opposite direction, i.e., why time goes forward. Things could have moved that way. So the universe starting at its end, backwards to zero, and again backwards, and again, etc. So instead of eternal big bangs, eternal crunches.Entropy always getting smaller. You could say that's because the laws of chance but thats not sufficient. The laws of chance operate once the initial conditions are set. And that begs the question.
-Why? Are you asking a "why" question about a natural phenomenon....like "why little John eat all the cake" type of questions?
In nature we observe phenomena and we explain what empirical regularities force specific rules to emerge. We don't assume teleology as if it was a matter of choice. Processes unroll and cause other processes to emerge. There is no place for "why" questions of that short.
Now if you choose to respond to my post......it WILL be the cause for your reply.
So the answer for "why" things happen the way they do in nature...is ...because they do. Causes kick start effects and so on...
That was Aristotle's answer to the question 'Why do stones fall downwards rather than upwards?" It's their nature. They are heavy. That's what heavy things do. But it turned out that there are better answers and that it's not such a dumb question. On the other hand, there are dumb questions. Sorting out the insightful from the fatuous is not so easy and cannot be done with a broad sweep of response.
A better questions would be what makes processes unroll at a specific direction or stones fall downwards.
In Aristotle's case we know how detrimental this "why" question was for his philosophy. He was guided by a teleological fallacy by assuming purpose and intention in natural processes.
But the point is that all motion in the universe could be opposite to the motion we observe. Why is the begin situation situated at the begin instead of at the end? Particles will experience the same forces, the universe shrinks, and wavefunction collapses are reversed. Litterally all motion could happen in opposite direction. But it doesn't. Saying that there is no place for questioning why this is the case closes the road to comprehension.
-good luck providing evidence for that assumptions.
-" Why is the begin situation situated at the begin instead of at the end? "
-Not all sentences with a "why" in from and a question-mark at the end qualify as serious questions.
Quoting Hillary
-This is the quality of philosophy you have when you ignore the whole epistemic framework on why processes unroll at one direction....
-"Litterally all motion could happen in opposite direction. But it doesn't."
-no because you are forgetting essential elements in those processes....
Quoting Hillary
-No it only opens question that have already poisoned the well with the fallacy of teleology..but I know logic and soundness is not part of your philosophy....
It's about the philosophical or physical question why time is moving forward. It could have been such that the universe started in reverse at infinity. But it didn't. And that's the strange thing about time. It could have evolved in such a way that the Earth and life on it evolved backwards, to become part of the hot initial planetary system, the galaxy evolving back, the primordial black holex being white and "ending" up in the final singularity (which nowadays is the initial singularity). If the the now final conditions were reversed the universe would evolve in opposite direction. Entropy would get less, effect would precede cause. But that's not the case. The universe started in a ordered state and order decreases.
Same for comments.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
The point is that I understand that framework. All motion can be reversed. A collapsing wavefunction gets back in a superposition, all momenta could be reversed (the motion of hidden variables included) and spacetime expansion could be reversed also.
Quoting Nickolasgaspar
Which are?
This comment actually shows deep depth! Everywhere in space you can imagine small pendulums. They all show circular behavior, returning to an identical initial state periodically, while the processes the pendulums are placed beside continue linearly. The clocks oscillate on a line and the more oscillations made the further on the line you get! You're a natural!
If Kronos moved forward, we would never ever see the future, ja?
:chin:
You amaze me every time, AS, and that's more than I can say for some other people here! Jawel! Time moves from the future towards behind of us. It gets farther and farther away in the past!..:wink:
Warning! I'm not all there, if you catch my drift! :grin:
It very strange why some processes move faster than others. But if you think deeper the opposite is the case. It would be very strange if the all had the same temporal speed. Is the computer time field a field in complex space? The angle of velocity is actually a measure of time flow.
:starstruck:
Easy, easy, too much is harmful! I know... :wink:
I'm not sure if you are serious here... :chin:
Quoting EugeneW
Well, I don't. I don't know that time is unidirectional. That is, I don't know that time is moving in one direction. In fact, I don't think that time is moving at all. The wind moves in one direction. The water in a river moves in one direction. The earth moves around the sun in one direction. All these things have one thing in common: they are physical. Time is not. Thus it cannot move. It is itself movement. In the sense that it represents movement and change.
The unidirectionality of time is an illusion. It is we who have assigned this quality time. After of course having created the concept of time itself. Time itself does not exist. Not more than length, width and height exist. They are all dimensions. We have create them for purposes of measurement, comparison and reference. So we call the Earth's rotation around its axis a "day" and its orbit around the Sun a "year". It is these movements that are unidirectional. Not time.
***
As for the reason why all these movements are unidirectional, it can be found in Laws of Physics..
:up: :100:
Sometimes linguistic philosophers or people in linguistics like the idea that languages where verbs have no temporal inflection are used by people who have no awareness of time.
[...] Greek philosophers themselves did not notice the aspect system in their own language but began the tradition of thinking exclusively in terms of past, present, and future. Yet in the subjunctive and imperative moods, Greek verbs are only inflected for aspect. Thus, Aristotle's analysis of "future contingency" in On Interpretation would have been stronger and made better sense as "imperfect contingency."
If you are interested, I recommend you this essay: Past, Present, and Future, A Philosophical Essay.
I don't think time is flowing either, and it is not motion. Motion is not time. Motion is just motion.
I think periodic motion, be it the Earth strolling around the Sun, or a pendulum swinging, or an atom oscillating, can be considered as the motion in clocks. There are no truly periodic motions in nature, so it's a made up thing. We mentally compare the progress of processes with an ideal clock, and it turns out that the speed of this process, and thus the speed of the irreversible processes it measures the time of, has no inherent quality. Only when compared with other clocks, the clocks can be said to go faster or slower. The periodic motion with which we measure time passed is not a quality inherent to the process. But the number of times a, say, pendulum has swung next to a process says something about the process. The funny thing is that before thermodynamic time was kicked of, there were processes going on to make the kick possible. These processes did not have an asymmetry in time. They can be seen as fluctuating in time. The pre-inflationary state can be seen as a perfect pendulum. Not going backwards in time, nor forwards, as thermodynamic time still had to emerge. What kind of motion was that? Think about it. Did you have a good dinner at the office, btw?
Don't you think time goes forward only? What direction in time goes a clock or a pendulum? If it's an ideal clock you couldn't tell. It could be going forwards or backwards. All processes seem to be directed towards the future, even when you consider the universe a block. Why are processes on this rigid block structure move from small to big t? Why not the other way round?
You don’t consider that periodic motion?
Not according to Ilya Prigogine or Lee Smolen. For them time is fundamentally unidirectional. We didnt create time, although we create various theories about time. The things we are attempting to measure are in themselves incoherent without the prior being of time.
Yes, but the motion was periodic in time too. Virtual particles can be represented, if not coupled to real particles yet, as a closed propagator line in space time, or energy momentum diagram. A vacuum bubble is just a single particle rotating in spacetime (so not a particle-antiparticle pair).
Thanks for both your :up: and your reading reference.
BTW, in your quote of mine you have left out the most important part, namely, that time does not move at all. My whole point was that. (Just "I don't know that time is moving in one direction" can well mean that I think time is moving in two directions! :grin:)
Linking somewhere deep within the presuppositions
informing this physics vocabulary is a philosophy of time, but I’m not familiar enough with the physics jargon to get at it.
You think time is a stationary fixed axis, with clocks on it showing different times? If so, then what is moving?
I didn't say only that, did I? I also said that time does not move at all. My whole point was that!
I don't know about these persons. And good for them if they believe that "time is fundamentally unidirectional". (BTW, does "fundamentally" mean that it can also be otherwise?)
Quoting Joshs
I didn't say that we have created time. That would be totally ridiculous. I talked about the concept of time. In fact, in bold letters. I couldn't stress it more ...
Quoting Joshs
We are not "attempting" to measure. We are measuring them. Time is just a dimension. As is length. They do not actually exst.
Yes, that's clear. There are only irreversible particle processes. Don't they move in a stationary time?
Isn't a clock moving? Isn't a pendulum going to and fro periodically? Can't you move the pendulum? Doesn't the pendulum have double motion even?
Measurement presupposes a concept of measurement, so there is an ‘attempt’ prior to the measurement. Time understood according to certain long-standing assumptions shared by philosophy and science is just a dimension. But to philosophers like Bergson and the phenomenologists it is the structure of reality itself. Dimensions are convenient abstractions that are useful
to us, but original time is not an abstraction, an invention, an idealization. If time as dimension is a human invention, what features of the world can you point to that are not human inventions?
But how does that structure look like? What is it that is measured by the clock? If the periodic clock process has completed x periods, then what corresponds this x to? And what if time proceeds in steps, then how does the process know when a static scene has to progress to the next? How does it know it takes a Planck time?
I can physics babble as well as anyone here if I put my mind to it. :wink:
These objects which "represent" time are related to the move of sun, not to the motion of time. This is why the first clock ever created was in Ancient Egypt and this specific clock was connected to the variation from the sunlight
The "heliacal rising" of Sirius means the morning (and the Egyptian day began at dawn) on which the star Sirius can first be seen in the eastern sky right before sunrise. This was to the Egyptians the astronomical beginning of the year, though the actual heliacal rising moved through the Egyptian calendar, since the Egyptian calendar year was 365 days long with no leap day.
"Stationary" means "not moving". The possibility of moving is implied. Water can be stationary. A statue is stationary. Inflation can be stationary. They can all move but they don't.
Time cannot be stationary because it not something that can actually move. Only figuratively, e.g. "times flies", "time passes by", "time has topped" ...
Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze and Bergson have shown in different ways that a quantifiable, mathematizable nature presupposes the kind of time which consists of self-presences transitioning from future to present to past in sequential movement (existing ‘in' time). What does it imply to make a time measurement based on clock time, to state that it takes certain amount of time for some process to unfold?
A clock-time calculation counts identical instances of a meaning whose sense is kept fixed during the counting . To count is to count continuously changing instances OF something that holds itself as self-identical through a duration or extension.
The above writers agree that there are no self-identical objects, but rather qualitatively changing events, and clock time results from an idealization in which we posit enduring objects that are either at rest or in motion. The seemingly simple conpet of movement is a complex psychological construction.
Well, I haven't seen much physics babble here. I wished there was. So... mr. Gill... Explain please:
"that time moves obliquely according to a functional operator and we experience only a projection of it in our spacetime geometry."
Time moves obliquely according to a functional operator. What's the functional operator? Is there a motion of time outside of spacetime? Is there a rotation of a vector in a complex plane, underlying spacetime, which, when projected on spacetime, determines real space or time? I can feel what you mean somehow but am not sure of what you mean. You're just fooling around! Like we all are, I guess. Be it the wise Rovelli, the greedy Carroll, or the Witten mathematical ivory tower, or the friendly Smolin, or even AI-ist Piskas....
Interesting! So time was connected to day and night rythm? Aren't there many rythms to compare with,m
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Form Wiki:
“Smolin argues for what he calls a revolutionary view that time is real, in contrast to existing scientific orthodoxy which holds that time is merely a "stubbornly persistent illusion" (Einstein's words).[1] Smolin reasons that physicists have improperly rejected the reality of time because they confuse their mathematical models—which are timeless but deal in abstractions that do not exist—with reality.[1] Smolin hypothesizes instead that the very laws of physics are not fixed, but that they actually evolve over time.”
“In his 1996 book, La Fin des certitudes, written in collaboration with Isabelle Stengers and published in English in 1997 as The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature, Ilya Prigogine contends that determinism is no longer a viable scientific belief: "The more we know about our universe, the more difficult it becomes to believe in determinism." This is a major departure from the approach of Newton, Einstein and Schrödinger, all of whom expressed their theories in terms of deterministic equations. According to Prigogine, determinism loses its explanatory power in the face of irreversibility and instability.
Prigogine traces the dispute over determinism back to Darwin, whose attempt to explain individual variability according to evolving populations inspired Ludwig Boltzmann to explain the behavior of gases in terms of populations of particles rather than individual particles.[24] This led to the field of statistical mechanics and the realization that gases undergo irreversible processes. In deterministic physics, all processes are time-reversible, meaning that they can proceed backward as well as forward through time. As Prigogine explains, determinism is fundamentally a denial of the arrow of time. With no arrow of time, there is no longer a privileged moment known as the "present," which follows a determined "past" and precedes an undetermined "future." All of time is simply given, with the future as determined or as undetermined as the past. With irreversibility, the arrow of time is reintroduced to physics. Prigogine notes numerous examples of irreversibility, including diffusion, radioactive decay, solar radiation, weather and the emergence and evolution of life. Like weather systems, organisms are unstable systems existing far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Instability resists standard deterministic explanation. Instead, due to sensitivity to initial conditions, unstable systems can only be explained statistically, that is, in terms of probability.“
What if time is static, without the possibility to move? Just lines with numbers relative to which processes unfold. Can't the unfolding itself be time? And the line with numbers just a construct to catch the process with?
I guess it was compared to day/night rhythm for practical reasons. They did most of the actions during morning and afternoon, then they working day ended up at night. For Ancient Egypt it was so important the role of the Sun to all the characteristics. They even blessed it as a God.
[...] the birth of the sun god Rê, , which is going to be a New Year event.
So time passing through us from the future to the past. Showing us more and more what's in store for us?
Quoting Joshs
Yes. Say a calculation of a period of a pendulum. We can look how many times the pendulum has swung back and forth and calculate the time involved. If its a perfect pendulum it's of course the number of periods counted. But why should the processes it counts the passed time of go forward and not backward. Why isn't time pulled through us the other way, the past first and the future following, instead of the future first and the past following?
This is not true. In deterministic physics, not all processes are time-reversible. There are no reversible processes in nature. All processes are irreversible processes. The question is why they are moving towards higher entropy and not to lower entropy.
No. You don't know that and the concept of infinity ...isn't a starting point.
Quoting Hillary
Would you agree with this?
“Thermodynamics, then, appears to be one of the only physical processes that is NOT time-symmetric, and so fundamental and ubiquitous is it in our universe that it may be single-handedly responsible for our perception of time as having a direction. Indeed, several of the other arrows of time noted below (arguably) ultimately come back to the asymmetry of thermodynamics. Indeed, so clear is this law that the measurement of entropy has been put forward a way of distinguishing the past from the future, and the thermodynamic arrow of time has even been put forward as the reason we can remember the past but not the future, due to the fact that the entropy or disorder was lower in the past than in the future.”
Also, Hawking seems to have believed that Cosmological time is reversible:
“Dr. Hawking described three ''arrows'' of time: the Psychological Arrow, which he defined as ''the direction of time in which we remember the past but not the future''; the Thermodynamic Arrow, related to entropy and the Cosmological Arrow.
Dr. Hawking argued that the Psychological Arrow was controlled by the Thermodynamic Arrow so that both would always point in the same direction. But the direction of the Cosmological Arrow depends on whether the universe is expanding. If it started to contract, the arrow would change direction.”
Yes, I agree. But... the question is, the fundamental question, is: why does entropy grow? Why doesn't it get smaller, so time moves in the other direction, i.e., the direction of less total, universal, or global entropy? This could have been the case.
Some physicists (e.g. Sean Carroll) have suggested that time may actually be symmetrical, such that there is a mirror universe to our own, with an arrow of time running in the opposite direction.
Could you describe for me what time moving in the other direction would look like in everyday experience, or would it look just the same as it already looks to us, given that life is a bubble of resistance to entropy?
Exemplars of the obvious.
Obvious in the sense of obviously true or obviously problematic?
Former, IMHO. :smile:
Sometimes it takes philosophical probing to bring out hidden dimensions in what was taken to be obvious and common-sensical.
You would wake from the dead, get younger, thoughts go backwards, hear before spoken, return oxygen to the air, etc. You would feel like an unwinding poppet with a key clockwork, being pulled along, instead of being in control. You'll be pulled along to shoot back in the womb. How it feels? Dunno! It all depends on the initial configuration. Why isn't that the end of the universe but going in the opposite direction? Behold the problem of the direction of time.
That actually happens. You can consider our universe as part of a duo. Both stem from the same source but one moves away on one side of a higher dimensional structure and the other to the other side. There is a difference which shows up as our universe being left handed and with matter, while the other side is right handed with antimatter. But time still goes forward. Still an asymmetry. CPT theorem.
I feel the motion of planets around the Sun, and Sun rise and sets are just means to postulate time, but they are not time themselves. Their motions are just intervals - intervals which are regular, hence human perception can rely on it for measuring duration of all other things. But time itself, I feel is an illusion, which does not exist, and it certainly has no direction, therefore no movement at all.
So COVID had it's good sides as well! :smile:
I'm not sure why you think time doesn't exist so can't move either. Doesn't the Sun shine longer in the summer (in the northern hemisphere) than in winter? Doesn't the clock show, say, 8 hours in winter and 16 in summer (with or without clouds)?
Non-sequitur. A simple counterexample of different physics is Conway's game of life which is entirely deterministic yet not reversible. There's no way to determine the prior state from a given one.
With our physics, classic physics is time reversible, but our universe is not fundamentally classic.
Determinism at the quantum level is interpretation dependent and some of the deterministic interpretations (including all the ones typically discussed) are not time symmetric. The reversible ones have the causes of any given event as likely to be in its future as in its past, and need to abandon both locality and counterfactuals to do it.
Quoting JoshsThat kind of makes them different manifestations of the same arrow, not two different arrows.
Interesting. If the mass density of the universe was high enough, this would eventually be the case. Once the maximum expansion had been reached, the arrow would reverse. How is this suddenly a certain kind of time going the other way just because distant galaxies are now getting closer?
Quoting Joshs
This seems to be a question for Hillary, but meanwhile, it seem to be a 4th arrow of time being referenced which is none of the three (memory, entropy, and expansion) Hawking listed. It is strictly a philosophical arrow of time with no empirical tests, which is probably why Hawking didn't bother to list it. That said, an opposing position was given, as expected:
Quoting Hillary
Interesting response. It seems to suggest dualism coupled with some kind of growing block interpretation, where the free-willed mind/spotlight is suddenly reft of its undetermined future and is instead forced into the determined part (by way of already existing) of the (now shrinking) block. Memory is part of the immaterial mind, not the physics of the situation.
This isn’t authentic time you’re describing, it’s a game being played within the bounds of a pre-given schematics masquerading as time. Authentic time is qualitative transformation , not the frames in a movie moving forward or backward. Time moves
neither forward nor backward but otherwise.
Yeah, every cloud has sliver lining as they say. :)
The Sun shines longer in the summer than in winter, because of the the angle of the Earth changing on its rotation to the Sun. That is not time itself. That is just a phenomenon resulted from the physical structure of the planet Earth's motion and the Sun light.
Human perception notices it, and postulated time from the phenomenon. They even contracted lets say 1 year is the Earth's rotation around the Sun to the exact spot, and they went on diving a year into 12 months, and month to 28 - 31 days, and a day to 24 hours etc. Time is a human invention. It is just a contract on durations and intervals.
It's reversed time. But why isn't this actually happening? It could have been like that. Just reverse all motion. Why was it set in motion like it has been set?
Yes. The clock to capture time with, is a human invention. But time itself, the irreversible natural processes flow from less to more global entropy (with local reduction as on Earth). Aint processes flowing? The question is though, why not from future to past?
How's the guitar play? :smile:
There's no concept of "measurment". Measutement is an action. (Look up both words, "measurment" and "concept".)
Quoting Joshs
Right. I have said that already.
Quoting Joshs
Well, I respect their opinion. For me this doesn't make any sense at all.
Quoting Joshs
I'm not sure what you are asking here. Anyway, for one thing, the universe is not a human invention. Or, if you are talking about words/language, these are human inventions. But this is too obvious ...
Why not from future to past? Because it doesn't exist. Time is just illusion. All there is, is just human memory. If every human died today, then tomorrow there would be no time. Just silence and nothing. I
think it is what Kant said too - about time.
Space and time is nothing but a form of human intuition according to Kant. I think he is correct.
It is good fun. I like practicing it because it is a discipline that I can absorb my mind into it, and aim to improve. I like the tone of the guitars - guitars can have all sort of different voices depending on what genre of music you like to play to, and there is a universe in guitar finger boards - countless combination of melodies, riffs and chords that make up tunes in the little board with the frets.
I will try to put some of my guitar practice video links in the lounge forum. :)
Sounds reasonable! I wished I could see it like that. Indeed, when all life has gone, time and space are gone. Only black silence... And then... what's that sound...? Is it a guitar...? What lovely sounds! Aaahh! It Corvus, on the eternal guitar! Great thing not, the guitar! Timeless! :smile:
I wanna buy an electric one. It looks so easy, playing on them. With a headset for the neighbors and going fully fledged in the weekend. On Sunday morning...
It is good that you know about these guys and their opinions. I also know of a lot of guys who have or had an opinion about time. If cite them, and then other TPF members cite from their own guys, would that be called a "discussion"?
I believe that we are here to express our opinion, however it is formed. If, for example, I ask you, "What do you think about death?", would you answer "Well, Kierkegaard in his Philosophical Fragments said that ...". I don't care about what Kierkegaard said. I asked what do you think.
Ha! Good one!
Better one even! :grin:
In Physics, "static" refers to bodies at rest or forces in equilibrium. That is, it refers to physical things. Time is not one of them. But even then, something static has the possibility to change state, like something "stationary" that I mentioned earlier.
The clock can't be stopped. There is no configuration of objects that stays the same forever. The global arrangement of matter always moves in one direction.
Glad you agree! :smile:
It would be called a discussion among continental philosophers, who use close readings of texts to buttress their arguments. Not so much on this site, though.
You asked my opinion. I quoted those people because I agree with their views and they make a good starting point for discussion, given that the quotes I included articulated a physics-based view of time as fundamentally unidirectional. So if you don’t care what Bergson, Prigogine or Smolen think about this issue then you don’t care what I think. I dont march in lock-step with their views but relative to your position I’m much closer to what they offer. Never discourage the use of quotes when they can deepen the substance of a discussion. If you have questions concerning the relation of my position to the quotes just ask me. The whole point of the quotes is that I can begin from them and then elaborate my thinking in relation to what has been quoted.
I would love it if you used quotes to clarify your position. It would give me a resource to gain further information from.
You like his basking in his anti-intellectualism? Right, let’s dumb down all discussions by shutting off reference to those who have articulated the issues most throughly.
Do you mean Smolen or Smolin?
Why do you ask? Is there a Smolen as well as a Smolin writing about time and physics? Or are you just saying I made a spelling error?
I don't know. But I do know Smolin.
It can ... If take its battery out or I break it! :grin:
Quoting Hillary
I agree. Well, except that matter can move in all kinds of directions! :smile:
No, it's not that I don't like references, but Alkis is right that a lot philosophical conversation is about what other philosophers say. Which is good, don't get me wrong, but they are just humans too.
:lol:
And sometimes, when I clap my hands and yell: SILENCE!
I have seen a guy in English parliament smashing his writchwatch! Time's up!
Yes. All processes are reversible on the small level. But try to reverse it all. You won't get it done! That's why the laws of thermodynamics are time asymmetric. But why is entropy increasing, instead of decreasing? Of course the chance of a gas in a container to be in one corner is small, but if it's motion was reversed it would go towards smaller volume and the law would be that the smaller chance is visited. If the motion of the whole universe was reversed it would be crunching towards the singularity.
But not back to time zero...
Funny ... I have stepped on "Al-Ghazali’s 'The Incoherence of the Philosophers'" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philosophers). I have not read the article. It might be fun ... I just put it on my --ever growing-- TOREAD list!
Quoting Joshs
I know. It's only logical that people do that. Yet, what happens, even when you just quote someone, is that one has to know the context in which this quote appears, and to know that one has to read one or more works of the referenced philosophers. And this is quite impossible in a discussion, esp. when many such references appear in it. This happened when I once criticized a Wittgenstein's quote, nbut with arguments and all ... Many then have suggested to me to read his "Tractatus" or even his work, in general. Godssake, man! Just tell me where I am wrong and why. Well, no one did! See what I mean?
Quoting Joshs
No, this is not true at all. As I told you, I just ask you to tell me your personal opinion. You don't need to bring in philosophers or other authotities or experts to support your opinion.
Quoting Joshs
I rarely do so. I don't need to do that. I have to clarify my position --and I usually do that-- myself. If I can't it means that my opinion or explanation is not good or I have not understood the subject. Einstein has said “If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” Here, I used a quote myself! :smile: (But only after I have made my point and because I love this quote! :smile:)
:up: :grin:
(Excellent way to make his point and at the same time to get rid of his watch that didn't work well! :grin:)
No, certainly not that! :smile:
Are you my mirror image...? Damned, it looks so. Seems I read my own writing. Scarry! :grin:
Speaking of time... Its almost three in the night here... Gnight!
In the broad river of time there might be tiny eddies where momentarily particles of reality circle before being caught up in the forward momentum.
Quoting Hillary
(I enjoyed three seasons of a crime series produced in Holland on Netflix)
I guess you mean "Undercover"? The guy playing the major role, Frank Lammers, plays the role of the silly family father in a commercial for a supermarket. He runs for Jumbo, with an empty plastic Jumbo bag, passes people going there too, the camera shows his greedy face (which is fun!) he jumps on a small wagon, and rolls in, with arms wide open...
Actors, all suffering from identity crisis. I know...
Yes! Kind of. The vacuum contains particles fluctuating in time and from them forward time emerged, before the big inflation.
The question is not physical but philosophical. The physical answer states that time measures growing entropy. The chance of gas particles in one corner is smaller than being all around the the container. So particles move from small entropic states to higher. With local exceptions, like Earth, but the global entropy still increasing. The philosophical question, for which physics has no answer, is, why isn't it the other way round? Why doesn't the universe started at a time at infinity? Why shouldn't it start at maximum entropy and decrease to less? The end situation reversed will have such behavior. The law would then be that matter moves towards less probable states. Why should more probable states have the preference. That holds only if time is already going forward. But if the initial conditions laid at the end and were reversed time would go backwards. I know it's not the case, but why not? The end would be the beginning then. The initial conditions could have been a reversed end condition. But it's not. Why not?
Just because you can't answer is it doesn't mean there is no answer. Bye!
The local exceptions are life and being, all that really matters to us.
Yes, it are the exceptions that matter. That's where it's happening. But why isn't the exception an increase in entropy? So it all goes backwards? Why the fuck did it start at time zero? Of course it does and did. But the begin could just have well been at infinity. This is the fundamental problem of the direction of time. No more and no less.
I think now is a good time to point out that in the case of black holes... light and matter radiate inwards towards a singularity. Theyre a bit like dustbins sucking up everything that comes within their vicinity. If everything eventually got dragged into a black hole and then those black holes got pulled into one another eventually all energy and matter would be pulled into one super black hole - a singularity. However Hawkings radiation means that actually eventually even black holes radiate away. So the quest continues to ascertain whether it’s ever possible for “a Big Crunch” the opposite of the Big Bang where all things come together once again
As I can see from the time stamps, I also posted that 12 hrs ago ... same time zone ...
OK, for example, let say not everyone is dead, but let's say that you were put into a box, and buried under the ground with no clocks or watches or phones or anything - you had years of supply of water and food and the air to breath. You are in total darkness and no sounds or lights on your own for a few months. Would your be able to know how much of time has passed when you tried to guess?
Or more extreme example, if you were put in the box since your birth up to now, would you know what time it is now? Would you be able to tell how long since you have been in the box? Would you even know what time is?
Yeah, guitars can sound pretty good. When you are playing guitars and enjoying yourself, you hear the guitar, but you don't realise time passing. Because time doesn't exist. :)
It's the question we would survive, but I guarantee you that time would move like a snail, and we probably be bored to death. I read that they once put rats in an empty cage from birth. To compare with a rich surrounding. (speaking of torture...). It may come as no surprise their brain, the connections between neurons, and their size, was less. I could have told them that from the start! You would now no clock, of course not. Time, on the other hand... Just throw a guitar in the box and time flies! :smile:
I like the tones of these standing waves (getting lower when you lay your finger closer to the box hole).
I would count sheep. 3600 sheep an hour, 72 000 twenty hours, etc. In sleep that's difficult though. But one thing would be sure. It will be later than when I went in!
If you insisted, time exits, and we somehow agreed upon it does, then it must be mental existence, rather than anything physical. OK, there are motions, changes and historical events, but they are all your perception. Without the perception, they don't exist. I think that is what Kant must have meant, time and space is human intuition, not physical entity. :D
What we have is just present moments, and every single moment becomes past in our memories. Future is just imagination stemmed from present awareness and memories of the past. When one dies, the whole thing and the world disappears to the dead, to nothing and everlasting darkness and silence, which is eternal non awareness. Only the living ones keep playing the guitars and hear the sound. The dead ones cannot hear anything, feels nothing and doesn't know what time is. Time is just perception. :)
But so is the past. An imagination. So with the imagination of the future, an imagination of time is formed.
Quoting Corvus
Very true, my dear Corvus! But the sweet echoes of your guitar fill the universe! Unheard, unseen, in total darkness and unimaginable silence, but still...
Quoting Corvus
Very true. Again! But if time is perception, then there is something the perception is about. Your guitarplay would become strangely surreal if not. Desirable as that might be! :smile:
Time is made something physical indeed. The clock, which is projected upon an imaginary (!) time axis in relativity; it. In fact, ideal clocks, with a perfect periodicity, are a fantasy. Coincidentally, I saw on TV that "progress" is made. Time can now be measured more precisely than ever. In a million billion year (no kidding!) the clock runs off one second... Now what an image of progress... so time can be "measured". Which means putting a clock next to a process. Is the process then time? And what about the clock itself? A periodic pricess? Well, periodic processes don't exist. So how can time exist? The only truly periodic process involves virtual particles, which existed before the inflation of the universe. So real clock time only existed when there was no time yet! Far out, man! :smile:
Precisely! But don't they perceive time then?
They feel time, but it is different from visual or audible perceptions.
It is kind of intuition, or feeling rather than sensory perception.
:up: :100:
We could have felt it the other way round. Effects preceding causes. It would be completely weird, but I think this is what the "fundamental problem" of the direction of time is about. What problems men have created, including wo-men! :smile:
Any real life examples for effects preceding causes? :)
Well, in real life, cause always precedes effect. But imagine what it feels like if we time reverse you playing the guitar (it requires some stretch of the imagination, to say the least...). Let's say you have hit an accord and let it the sound die out. Now reverse time. The strings magically start to vibrate, out of the thin air (litterally!). The sound waves all reverse and even come from your ears and inner experience! Instead of hearing a dying accord, you hear one increasing in volume, after which you feel your hand absorbing the energy of the vibrating strings and gone is the sound. And this could be the case for the whole universe. There are no laws forbidding this to happen! But it didn't happen like this. Weird! :smile:
But cause and effect you mentioned, and the topic had been much discussed by Hume. I think he said that causality doesn't exist. It is, just like time, an intuited entity from your habit, of seeing some event(s) and what follows immediately after the event. You keep seeing them and happening the same result every time the event happens first, and you get the idea of causality. Would it be correct to say that it is just the way how time works? :)
For reference, frequency could be related to space and the process of becoming over time. Time is an indicator of the process of becoming and space is only an expression of the energy at work in terms of frequency. In the end, there is no temporal movement, but a regeneration of events in the present-dynamism. This means, in a twinkling of an eye, that all events or phenomena would fluctuate and be renewed infinitely. Just like the gravitational effects on earth for all different masses are the same (acceleration value, g = 9.80 m/s2) even though the rock strikes the ground before the feather per se. The applicable principle: -
Present-dynamism => Frequency x Becoming (Space x Time)
Well, that certainly clarifies the issue. :roll:
I really don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about. It could be me though...
The point is though, why I don't know about your answer before that backward memory disappears while reading your answer backwards. Why didn't the universe start at the end? The strange thing is that if the universe started as a wind up puppet and the unwinding is time, it doesn't feel like unwinding and this would actually be the case if it started at the end.
It has been said well before Plato time, by Heraclitus "You cannot enter the same river twice." By the way, I have never met Plato in real life, but just intuiting the time of his living from what I read on some of the books.
Why nit? Can't I jump in the Mississippi twice?
I think he meant that the river you jumped 2nd time was not the same river as the one you jumped first time.
Time is Flowing Backwards
Chronologically, Buddhism & Jainism preceded Christianity & Islam (can't comment on Judaism).
Logically, Buddhism & Jainism succeed Christianity & Islam.
[My argument is premised on the ethics of these religions. Mahavira's & Buddha's morality are more advanced than Jesus' and Mohammad's]