7 ms·
As a non-physicist I'm not sure I'm interpreting this correctly. Does this essentially mean that all states in time already exist and our consciousness is just
by wootland 4y ago
As a non-physicist I'm not sure I'm interpreting this correctly. Does this essentially mean that all states in time already exist and our consciousness is just traversing this 4D space in one direction on the time axis?
If so, does that mean that the big bang could actually be the end of the universe and we're just experiencing time in "reverse" toward an initial starting state that we perceive as the future?
- kwhitefoot 4y agoThe block universe: https://plus.maths.org/content/what-block-time https://plus.maths.org/content/what-block-time
- Apocryphon 4y agoIs it the same thing as the holographic universe theory that was in vogue a couple of decades ago? https://i.pinimg.com/originals/27/d7/8c/27d78c9c3ee93c13eda48fee57b18df0.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/27/d7/8c/27d78c9c3ee93c13eda4...
- icegreentea2 4y agoNo. The block universe is that 3+1D spacetime "exists all at once". We just happen to experience travelling through it in one way. Holographic universe is that the physics and information in a 3+1D space time could be encoded into a 2+1D universe (with it's own physics).
- Apocryphon 4y agoAh, Discover had an issue about that as well https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/from-here-to-eternity-02 https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/from-here-to-e... https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/xH8AAOSwryZi3Ef0/s-l1600.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/xH8AAOSwryZi3Ef0/s-l1600.jpg
- theGnuMe 4y agoI like this concept. Is there any sci-fi based on this premise?
- myth_drannon 4y agoAliens in the movie Arrival perceive time in circular fashion, basically live in future and past.
- jspank 4y agoReminds me of the Tralfamadorians from Slaughterhouse-Five. They are able to see in four dimensions so humans appear as fetuses at one end of the four-dimensional person and dying at the other end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tralfamadore#Slaughterhouse-Five https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tralfamadore#Slaughterhouse-Fi...
- imsaw 4y agoInteresting concept. I wonder if it's compared with spatial 3D space, then how large would the 4th dimension of time be if it were to fit the timeline of a human lifespan
- kelseyfrog 4y agoA natural interpretation leads to time being very large and us moving very very fast through it. It's convenient to model our movement through space-time as occurring at the speed of light. Thus, the faster we move in space, the slower we move in time all the while the length of our space-time velocity vector is invariably c. We can then imagine 1 second of time being interchangeable with 299,792,458m.
- Nevermark 4y agoWhile most laws of physics may be time symmetric, the laws of thermodynamics are not - wherever there is a gradient in entropy. In very informal terms, anywhere where there is very low entropy (higher order), any direction away from that will likely (to the point of certainty) be in a direction of higher entropy (lower order). For instance, if you have a jar of red & blue marble, with high order (such as perfect alternating layers of red vs blue marbles) then any disturbances (such as shaking the jar, reaching in and moving a handful, …) will almost certainly reduce order. And no practical amount of shaking the jar will ever return the marbles to a high order state again. Even though any close up video of the marbles being jostled will reveal the same physical properties and behavior for the marbles, whether played forward or backward. So at the individual marble level, laws are symmetric. But at the jar of marbles level, one direction of time looks very different than the other. We, and the particles that make us, and our environment, are the marbles whose configuration is more disordered the further in time we get from the Big Bang. So we perceive the time direction away from the Big Bang as the future, toward the Big Bang as the past. And the statistical “force” of increasing entropy provides the useful energy we use to survive, learn, create useful islands of order, in the greater sea of increasing disorder.
- soperj 4y ago> And no practical amount of shaking the jar will ever return the marbles to a high order state again. This can't be true. Take the case where there's only 2 marbles, it's likely that at some point that shaking them will return them to the original state. For higher numbers of marbles the probability becomes lower and lower, but is never 0.
- a257 4y agoWith enough marbles, the discrete distribution behaves like a continuous distribution. The point probability of a continuous distribution is infinitely improbable -- in other words it is 0. (0.00..0..1 = 0 just as 0.99 repeating equals 1)
- TechBro8615 4y ago
- quijoteuniv 4y agoYou can wish yourself well in the past. I believe this works.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y agoI think of personal growth as a conspiracy between present me, past me, and future me. Where our motives are aligned, good things happen.
- quijoteuniv 4y agoThis is good! And ask for help from the future :)
- culi 4y agosometimes I feel like I've already asked for too much from the future
- figassis 4y agoAllow me to steal this bit of insight
- __MatrixMan__ 4y agoI'm just another incarnation of you anyway, so it's not even stealing.
- RajT88 4y agoPast me leaves future me notes. I often find them insightful, especially if I am reviewing them again years later.
- lupire 4y agoThe reverse is the more interesting part. Roko's Baslisk loves you and wants you to be happy, and wants you to create him.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y agoMust it be "the" time axis? Might it instead be "our" time vector? Maybe there are alien civilizations right next door which we fail to recognize as life because our time vector is orthogonal to theirs. Instead they're just gamma ray bursts to us.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- layer8 4y agoSeveral things: – The laws of physics are essentially time-symmetric, and they have no concept of causation or of a preferred direction of time. In principle, the future causes the past as much or as little as the past causes the future. Physics effectively only says they have to be consistent with each other, as related by the laws of physics. – The apparent directionality of time that we perceive is suspected to be tied to the entropy gradient we are on. See the “past hypothesis” for example [0]. > Does this essentially mean that all states in time already exist and our consciousness is just traversing this 4D space in one direction on the time axis? – I would say that all moments in time are equally real, including our consciousness at any given moment. There is no actual flow or “travelling”. The flow we perceive is merely an illusion caused by the fact that we only remember the past and not the future (which again may just be a consequence of the entropy gradient we are on). This is known as the “block universe”, or as “eternalism” [1]. The opposing view that only the current moment is real, and that the future differs from the past in its “realness”, is known as “presentism”. – Note that any notion of “travelling” through time implies that you can draw a 2D diagram of where in time you are at each point in time, or which point in time is “real” at which point in time (in the sense that a moment in time isn’t real until time reaches that moment, but after that it is real and cannot be made unreal again), thus implying two dimensions of time. That doesn’t make any sense, and thus my personal conclusion is that the “presentism” view is nonsensical. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_hypothesis [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time...
- MayeulC 4y agoInterestingly, the norm of your 4D speed vector is constant, IIRC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_line