5 ms·

> Lots of clever people seem to agonise about this, but I don't see any problem. What am I missing? I feel the same way. The past is just the direction where t

> Lots of clever people seem to agonise about this, but I don't see any problem. What am I missing? I feel the same way. The past is just the direction where things were more ordered (to be glib about it.) Even though the large scale implications of the statistics are profound, star fusion, rivers, etc. the “cause” is statistics. The one place (that I am aware of) where the statistics -> time effect still needs explicit work is how the timal fabric dimension operates differently (but very similarly) to the 3 spacial fabric dimensions of space-time in the very large scale. Often represented by a negative (for time) and three positive (for space) signs in equations. But I assume when we understand how space in the small works, the topology will still have a statistical explanation. — A very close topic, and the same forehead slap feeling for me, is all the contortions many physicists go through to avoid the many worlds quantum interpretation. Which is the parsimonious interpretation. (Should more accurately be called the “quantum field web” interpretation, according to … me.) Again statistics: we just think there is a “collapse” in possibilities when super-positioned information becomes to mixed up for us to remix. The alternative: a mysterious collapse with yet unexplained cause, with deep problems regarding how this introduces another unique “time” effect, of nearly infinite new information constantly being injected into every interaction everywhere and everywhen in the universe! And this information is supposed to be causeless or self-caused in some mystical (but don’t ever say “mystical”), way. And don’t point out the mockery this makes of “conservation of information” if 99.99…99% of information now wasn’t there just one quantum event ago, for all quantum events. Again, statistics completely explains why us biggies experience fields making choices, based on the field equation defining field connection (we experience as event) point distributions, and … statistics. Yet every day physicists who can’t admit to themselves that we are ourselves constantly expanding webs of superpositions, take for granted that anything they can scale up in the lab will have superpositions, subject to experimental practicalities. Because anything else would violate the field equations.

Trasmatta 2y ago
> I feel the same way. The past is just the direction where things were more ordered (to be glib about it.) The only problem is that this ignores the fact that we still don't know WHY entropy was lower in the past. It's an open question in physics.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  It also sidesteps another important distinction: why the past is the direction we can form memories of. Due to time-reversal symmetry, you could easily do a t<-->-t substitution, flipping the time axes around. Now entropy decreases over time, with the big bang being the point of minimum entropy, located far ahead in time. But regardless of the convention, our memories exist along the direction between us and the big bang, rather than the other direction. So if increasing entropy is to be the arrow of time, it needs to relate to why we form memories of the past but not of the future.
  - Nevermark 2y ago
    > It also sidesteps another important distinction: why the past is the direction we can form memories of. That much is very well understood. Order from the past is what we harness to make memories. That’s why you can’t have memories the other direction. Think of a computer. It takes ordered energy, organized as a stream of electrons, which end up in a less energetic form we can’t use and heat we can’t use. But in the eddies of that entropy, the computer calculates a few things. Uses up that order to store a few things. The net is massive loss of order. One electron can go either way on a wire. With (usually) or against (mostly) voltage. (Because we randomly decided electrons are negative.) But a trillion electrons statistically can only go one way. The order we build in our minds and computers is a fraction of the order from the past. Which is just saying, we get order from the direction there was more order. You could set up a tiny few particle experiment, shield it from interactions, and operations can randomly go either direction. But our neurons and brains are built out of countless particles. We can only do ordered things with them by consuming order from the direction there was order. A windmill can do work, but only if you let higher water push the wheel. If the river stops from above, no amount of water below is going to power it. Statistically to the level of certainty. The order in the universes origin, statistically cascades away in all directions. And all those directions, radiating from order, away from order, are what lets us think, store memories, and have an experience we call time. But with a constant total net loss of order. We are just those eddies that defy the rivers flow, but only fractionally, by harnessing the rivers flow. (For how there can be places where order “first” appears, see my other comment. Unlike this one, it is highly conjectural.)
tsimionescu 2y ago
> Again statistics: we just think there is a “collapse” in possibilities when super-positioned information becomes to mixed up for us to remix. You're ignoring all of the major problems which require additional assumptions for MWI to appear so parsimonious. The biggest of which being the preferred basis problem: a quantum system isn't just in a superposition of states along one axis, it's in a superposition of states along the axis you choose to measure. If you and I both choose to measure the same system along different axis, we'll get different (but correlated) kinds of results about the same particle pair (which is the root of the Bell inequalities). Take an entangled pair of polarized photons, such that they must have opposite polarization, and send one towards you and one towards me. You'll measure the polarization of your photon along some axis, and I'll pick an axis that is 30% off yours. If we repeat the experiment many times, we'll conclude that percent of photons was polarized along the axis we each chose, and some percent was perpendicular. The percentages will be different, of course, and if we compare measurement results for individual events, we'll find that they correlate perfectly. But what can't be done, even in principle, is decide along which axis the photons were "actually" polarized. So, the problem for MWI is: how come classical objects have real properties independent of measurement choice, and they all happen to have properties along the same axis, given that the quantum objects they're made of don't, and there is no collapse? And this can't be explained away by statistics or entropy, because the amplitude of the wave function in QM is the same regardless of the choice of measurement axis. Even decoherence doesn't solve this problem, because lack of self-interaction doesn't affect the choice of basis. The other problems with MWI have to do with the very notion of doing probability calculations, and then statistics based on them, in a perfectly deterministic world where every outcome of every experiment is fully realized. If you flip a coin and both sides come up, how can you tell if the coin is biased or not? Or, since you prefer the quantity of information concept, in the MWI it seems that there is 0 information from any experimental result, because you know ahead of performing the experiment that all of the possible results will happen with probability 1 (in some "branch"). So yes, information is conserved: it's always 0.
- Lammy 2y ago
  When the object enters the timestream, time begins to correct itself. Let me use this example: Imagine four balls on the edge of a cliff. Say a direct copy of the ball nearest the cliff is sent to the back of the line of balls and takes the place of the first ball. The formerly first ball becomes the second, the second becomes the third, and the fourth falls off the cliff. Time works the same way.

Trasmatta 2y ago

> I feel the same way. The past is just the direction where things were more ordered (to be glib about it.) The only problem is that this ignores the fact that we still don't know WHY entropy was lower in the past. It's an open question in physics.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
It also sidesteps another important distinction: why the past is the direction we can form memories of. Due to time-reversal symmetry, you could easily do a t<-->-t substitution, flipping the time axes around. Now entropy decreases over time, with the big bang being the point of minimum entropy, located far ahead in time. But regardless of the convention, our memories exist along the direction between us and the big bang, rather than the other direction. So if increasing entropy is to be the arrow of time, it needs to relate to why we form memories of the past but not of the future.
- Nevermark 2y ago
  > It also sidesteps another important distinction: why the past is the direction we can form memories of. That much is very well understood. Order from the past is what we harness to make memories. That’s why you can’t have memories the other direction. Think of a computer. It takes ordered energy, organized as a stream of electrons, which end up in a less energetic form we can’t use and heat we can’t use. But in the eddies of that entropy, the computer calculates a few things. Uses up that order to store a few things. The net is massive loss of order. One electron can go either way on a wire. With (usually) or against (mostly) voltage. (Because we randomly decided electrons are negative.) But a trillion electrons statistically can only go one way. The order we build in our minds and computers is a fraction of the order from the past. Which is just saying, we get order from the direction there was more order. You could set up a tiny few particle experiment, shield it from interactions, and operations can randomly go either direction. But our neurons and brains are built out of countless particles. We can only do ordered things with them by consuming order from the direction there was order. A windmill can do work, but only if you let higher water push the wheel. If the river stops from above, no amount of water below is going to power it. Statistically to the level of certainty. The order in the universes origin, statistically cascades away in all directions. And all those directions, radiating from order, away from order, are what lets us think, store memories, and have an experience we call time. But with a constant total net loss of order. We are just those eddies that defy the rivers flow, but only fractionally, by harnessing the rivers flow. (For how there can be places where order “first” appears, see my other comment. Unlike this one, it is highly conjectural.)

tsimionescu 2y ago

> Again statistics: we just think there is a “collapse” in possibilities when super-positioned information becomes to mixed up for us to remix. You're ignoring all of the major problems which require additional assumptions for MWI to appear so parsimonious. The biggest of which being the preferred basis problem: a quantum system isn't just in a superposition of states along one axis, it's in a superposition of states along the axis you choose to measure. If you and I both choose to measure the same system along different axis, we'll get different (but correlated) kinds of results about the same particle pair (which is the root of the Bell inequalities). Take an entangled pair of polarized photons, such that they must have opposite polarization, and send one towards you and one towards me. You'll measure the polarization of your photon along some axis, and I'll pick an axis that is 30% off yours. If we repeat the experiment many times, we'll conclude that percent of photons was polarized along the axis we each chose, and some percent was perpendicular. The percentages will be different, of course, and if we compare measurement results for individual events, we'll find that they correlate perfectly. But what can't be done, even in principle, is decide along which axis the photons were "actually" polarized. So, the problem for MWI is: how come classical objects have real properties independent of measurement choice, and they all happen to have properties along the same axis, given that the quantum objects they're made of don't, and there is no collapse? And this can't be explained away by statistics or entropy, because the amplitude of the wave function in QM is the same regardless of the choice of measurement axis. Even decoherence doesn't solve this problem, because lack of self-interaction doesn't affect the choice of basis. The other problems with MWI have to do with the very notion of doing probability calculations, and then statistics based on them, in a perfectly deterministic world where every outcome of every experiment is fully realized. If you flip a coin and both sides come up, how can you tell if the coin is biased or not? Or, since you prefer the quantity of information concept, in the MWI it seems that there is 0 information from any experimental result, because you know ahead of performing the experiment that all of the possible results will happen with probability 1 (in some "branch"). So yes, information is conserved: it's always 0.

Lammy 2y ago
When the object enters the timestream, time begins to correct itself. Let me use this example: Imagine four balls on the edge of a cliff. Say a direct copy of the ball nearest the cliff is sent to the back of the line of balls and takes the place of the first ball. The formerly first ball becomes the second, the second becomes the third, and the fourth falls off the cliff. Time works the same way.