Lee Smolin Public Lecture: Time Reborn
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- Опубліковано 11 гру 2014
- What is time? Is our perception of time passing an illusion which hides a deeper, timeless reality? Or is it real, indeed, the most real aspect of our experience of the world? Perimeter Institute Faculty member Lee Smolin examines these and other timely questions from his book Time Reborn during his April, 2013 Perimeter Institute Public Lecture.
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This is a scientist with balls. We need a lot more of this.
I completely agree with you. I love his thinking and observation.
Agree
Octagonal shaped balls ,bless him
@@elifonkonsolakis2521 ... Motivation Octivation ...
@36:30 It strikes me that Prof. Smolin‘s description of time is exactly what a certain French philosopher who shall not be named was driving at with the “critique of presence” i.e. that the future (and the past) can’t be treated as only a “modified present.” The future holds things that are genuinely new. The past is available to us, but only in traces.
Smolin sounds like a true godfather!....I like his science but love his voice!
He's spot on. Even the Cosmological natural selection. Win different universes doesn't explain how the first universe was born..
Presented by Canada Dry Ginger Ale " The soft drink so tasty, it makes you re-evaluate space-time itself "
With an added shot or two of Rye! Indeed
Thumbs down
Fascinating! Touched on a lot of issues I have been pondering for a while. Smolin is such an interesting thinker to me.
I read Henri Bergson maybe twenty years ago and he profoundly influenced my thinking about time as a fundamental property/aspect of our physical universe in fundamental ways (I'm a professional photographer, so "capturing time" is an ongoing interest of mine.)
[Bergson, Time and Free Will, 1889; Matter and Memory, 1896, etc.]
Smolin has expanded on Bergson's philosophical efforts and moved Henri's conjectures from the metaphysical into the mundane "scientific" and experimental/ refutable plane, as is proper, science being a subset of "metaphysics" with Smolin's expertise in "practicable/real" physics. [Karl Popper ~ "no theory (metaphysics) is completely correct, but some substantial portion must be subject to falsifiability, which is to say, subject to objective experiment by multiple observers"]
I've always objected to Platonism (laws, models, that somehow exist beyond our perception - "universal laws, objects, i/0 gates, rules & regulations out there" - in modern theories of science and mathematics (not just in religion), and Smolin has supplied me some powerful theoretical arguments to refute Plato.
As for Smolin's universe "bounce" creation theory, Sir Roger Penrose has also proposed the same argument (Sir Roger has also made the observation that our present cosmology is "not even wrong".).
Bringing the metaphysical in to the realms of mundanity should be the ultimate goal of research, but sadly it has become career and funding oriented in sometimes harmful, always ignorant modes. I don't mean that science is, or was, flawed and shouldn't be considered, but that the motivations fluctuate between advancing understanding and advancing status.
@@jtorelli7341 Well Said.
For me, one of the key indicators that time is real is that traveling backwards in time is impossible because to do so would require traveling faster than the speed of light, which we know is impossible. Thankfully, that eliminates all the time paradox problems. And although time dilation is real, no matter how fast you travel up to the speed of light, time is still moving forward, just at different rates. That to me indicates that time is real and not an illusion.
Incredible clarity about hugely complex systems.
One of my favorite talks on the internet
This is an excellent lecture. I enjoyed and plan to listen to it 6 more times (because among many other time immutable laws one sais that you know something after repeating it 7 times :) ) I am glad to learn that Einstein pondered on the notion of NOW having realized it is not captured by science. I've delivered hundreds of lectures in mathematical and technical sciences and know that students love these kind of reasoning; surely there is a sparkle in Lee. It is true that today new kinds of models are being developed in which time is absent and the relations are in terms of A(B), B(C), C(A,B) where A, B,C are directly observable. It is interesting that Lee's opponent Carlo Rovelli brought me here (opponent, but dear friend). In his book "What if Time Does Not Exist?" he remembers Lee Smolin's honesty and integrity as a scientist when he proposed that Carlo should publish the first paper on loop quantum gravity rather than publish the first historic paper as co-authors. His honesty as a scientist is visible in this lecture as well and it is not common in the world I know from my own experience.
Lies again? Hello Manchester
Personally I think it's a load of crap
@@NazriB ... reaLies the truth, Nazri, and, be free. OR, reaLies freeze truth ...
@@virgilmccabe2828 ... Yes,Virgil, shit happens, ecoli is everywhere and is basis of our immune system ...
'The questions are more important than the answers.'
Great, I'm much better at questions than answers.
Remarkably helpful since there IS a single REALITY -- All there is. There is no final distinction between the truths of science and those of philosophy. Triadic Philosophy is based on these premises.
My favorite author, I listen to his books over and over.
Lee is a very interesting man. I would assume someone so interesting in his books is probably a pretty cool guy
Finally some recognition of Peirce by science and cosmology. To read him, CP is an online PDF with much of his work -- convert it to word and enjoy.
Fabulous talk. For me, it helped to run at 1.5 speed, but freeze when they show the slides.
PI's own Lee Smolin co-authored a new book called "The Singular #Universe and the Reality of Time" (one of the #books just recommended by Symmetry magazine): ow.ly/FOjCs And we've just re-released Smolin's 2013 PI Public Lecture to mark the occasion:
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics I took a shot at understanding "motion", and thus in doing so included both Space and Time. Having absolutely no education in physics, this was a layman's independent investigation of "motion". The outcome was an independent full understanding of Special Relativity, along with an independent and 100% unique derivation of all of the SR equations. Thus a layman can discover Special Relativity by using the mind and some simple geometry. Here, Time becomes real. Anyhow, I tried to get someone or anyone at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics to have a look at my 9 mini videos, which revealed my method, but I got the cold shoulder instead. ua-cam.com/video/KKAwpEetJ-Q/v-deo.html
This is fascinating: the lecture is a teaser. I'm ordering the book, there are obviously gaps in what he could cram into the allotted time. "Do we have agency in the world we live in?" The answer changes everything.
Dr. Lee, For some reason in my mind, I understand and completely agree with you. I will be following your genius. Go for it.
Regards Philip.
Dirac lectured on this subject at FSU, he has his Large Number and sites Milne's work.
The idea that the constants aren't constant over time is a conjecture, and the attempt to explain the Fine Structure constant is also part of those works.
Experimenting in this area to prove conjecture seems next to impossible.
Interesting lecture by Smolin.
Mind opening. Thank you!
Truly fascinating!
Lee Smolin - the embodiment of a highly super intelligent person that is highly unhappy with the standard model. I admit, I love his Books. Especially his Fecund Universe hypothesis has many interesting points and his work shows he really is thinking outside of the box - unfortunately those of us involved know that the Standard Model is highly successful - but it leaves many questions that will lead automatically to breakthroughs.
It's like this - so long we can't figure out Quantum Gravity nothing else really matters.
But obviously we need guys like Smolin - too many Quantum physics / String Theory followers and less classic Relativity Physicists like Smolin or Penrose... Science goes where the funding is NOT the highly speculative... Those times ended in the 60/70ies.
Very correct assumptions IMO. Penrose is my favourite ;)
It helps me to modify most cosmological statements that start with “The universe is _____ years old” to “The observable universe is _____ years old”. That way, time remains within the totality of the entire universe (the boundless eternal universe is not within time but time is within the universe). Thank you for this thought provoking talk. Re philosophers, please also look into “existence exists”, the metaphysical axiom of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism.
Math ‘reality’. That is just genuinely brave and hard-working in the age of shut up and calculate. Life changing.
What a mind! Wonderful.
Agreed, so many Theoretical Physicists are unintelligible
Excellent and challenging.
I'm only halfway through and I'm blown away. I love this lecture. I really need to get this book.
30:35 - This is resonating with me. There are a whole host of things that hard core scientists try to claim that just have never seemed anything but ridiculous to me. Don't get me wrong - I like science quite a lot. But *of course* time is real. *Of course* we have free will. *Of course* consciousness is not an illusion (what would be experiencing the illusion, if it were?). These are just completely obvious elements of what it's like to be in the world, as far as I'm concerned. When a framework of science gets so far afield that it loses contact with things like this, I think it's getting lost.
Now, to be clear, there are other things that someone might claim fall into this category. What about "*of course* velocities directly add" - that's an example. But that is not in the same category. Velocities *seem* to directly add, but I can recognize that my base of experience is restricted to very small velocities, and things might be different outside of that narrow realm of my experience. And I accept that they *are* different - as far as I'm concerned Einstein's thinking in this area has been completely and thoroughly validated. The things I'm talking about (like the two things I started off with) are different - they lie precisely within our experience, and there are no "outside of experience" arenas to draw on for "disproof examples." I'd go so far to say that time and free will are almost the entire basis of our conscious experience.
Science is about modeling reality. Reality is nothing if it's not the sum of our experiences. When you have to remove major components of reality in order to get your model to work, you've got a bad model. It has shock value, and there seems to be some marketing value in that - saying audacious things get attention. But it hardly strikes me as seeking the truth.
It is simply not known if any of us has free will. Perhaps the whole history and future are a big DVD that is playing, and we are now at chapter 2022...... If that is the case, everything is already determined and you do not have free will. You think that we of course have free will, but reality does not prove that!
I think when we use the word time we are conflating several things. One is the existential moment within which things happen. One is entropy. One is our own sense of past and present. Maybe some aspects of time that are wrapped up in the word are illusory, others more concrete.
His concept on the compartmentalization of physical laws is radical! We know that laws morph when the scale changes with our current model [from the quantum to the quantized[?]] - its highly probably that just like electrons the laws of physics exist in discrete scales.
his boy dream is the most amazing ive ever heard.
I had a very interesting professor at UCLA who theorized that time did not exist, but was simply human measurement of existence, movement, and change based on the observation of repetitive events, such as the orbit of the Earth around the sun. He gave numerous credible examples of why this speculation might be true, and that the question of whether time existed in physics was a fundamental misunderstanding of reality.
Does the principle of precedence relate to what others have called morphic resonance?
Lee might like Stephen Wolfram's work. It is fascinating to think about these other fundamental possibilities although I am particularly skeptical about these arguments, I'm glad some of these matters are properly questioned like the observer problem.
Even though I disagree, I like the questions he asked, especially the ones he called crazy.
Noone knocks human ego down a couple notches like Lee Smolin. He just might be Galileo of our time.
I prefer this point of view because it parallels my own.
Those ideas are highly speculative and thoroughly beautiful. It connects to the Big Conversation video where Roger Penrose discusses with theologian William Lane Craig the origin and justification of the universe. They posit three domains 1. physical, 2. mental/consciousness, 3. mathematics. Smolin posits only one, the physical where the present is realized and from which mathematics and physical laws emerge and evolve. Lane, of course, posits the origin and justification in the mental domain, specifically in one of its members, an omniscience intelligence that snaps heavenly fingers and things pop out into existence. Lane likes his "theory" because it explains everything. Penrose does not see how it would explain anything at all. Instead, Penrose believes, we need to look at the connections between these three domains and their "From many to few" transformations. From lots of energy a fraction with c^2 in its denominator becomes matter. From lots of matter only a small portion becomes life. From lots of living organism only a tiny portion develops conscious. From among all the people in the history of this planet, only a very tiny portion understands mathematics. Why? asks Penrose, we have this arrangement. I think Smolin has the answer, if he looks carefully to the binary representation of consciousness in a succession of universes. Can mathematics achieve immortality? Can consciousness offer Xenia to mathematics in all future universes? There seems to be tremendous odds against mathematics. A long sequence of events must happen, many of them with very low probabilities for life to emerge. The past tells us the truth ad the truth is that it is very rare for life to emerge. And scientists know that it is very difficult to usher mathematics into the theater of consciousness of most students.
On topic, Reciproction-recirculation Singularity repositioning-shaping corresponds to e-Pi-i sync-duration infinitesimal Calculus.
Good title real-ly.., can imply a Centre of Time Duration Timing Conception, WYSIWYG Reciproction-recirculation Singularity repositioning, with only a little tweak or two.
Time is like a rope fuse. Everytime you go into a grocery store you give off sparks of information. You also collect sparks of information from other singularities. You can't help gathering information as long as your eyes and ears are open. We all live in the burning now.
I guess he's challenging all the old challengers when countering that time is not an illusion. Of course, he's pitted himself against a powerful crowd of Block Space General Relativists and B-Time theorists etc so he'll have to do more than philosophize to gain any ground, but he's show himself capable enought to do battle with the best of them in the past. We need more than "it is real because we experience it." It would be good if he could answer the question of from where it emerges.
He claims he isn't doing philosophy but what he is doing is precisely metaphysics, in its most literal sense. That which is prior to physics, that which must be comprehended in order for physics to be comprehensible. I'm presently in the middle of his very interesting talk and I'm wondering whether he'll be discussing Bergson's ideas, which to some extent anticipate his.
Physics resides within metaphysics.
HAIKU
at the end, a moment of enlightenment.
during Q+A.
Professor Smolin participant says "give me both questions at the same time.
question participant should have said "that is not physically possible" (at this time).
Hi, a slight impairment of the argument for self determination came to me while I was watching this lecture. The fact that we need to be outside "the box" in order to be able to conduct several iterations of an experiment with different initial conditions so as to derive a law out of what remains the same, does not rule out there being a driving law for the universe, it only rules out our capacity to arrive at it conclusively.
One way to strengthen such an argument however would be to set up a "box" with a maximised level of control of initial conditions and a firm understanding of the laws governing the system, and come to repeated mispredictions of its evolution over several iterations. Or better yet, to desicively conclude that there is no way to predict certain variables.
I think he's talking about "the box" not from inside the bigger box, but that there is no bigger box and truth will be cross disciplinary and all encompassion but only ubiquitous in a dimension we're still trying to fathom even partially. His fascination with time as emergent of the aggregate of all other reality is that it can't be thought of as "outside".
Thats how I understand and color all of his commentary and prose.
And for complete understanding of the universe, set up an experiment with every variable possible (trillions exponentially) in play at every moment progressively. I’ll wait. Lol.
Time is actually a notion
In which we measure an object
From point A to point B
I share the same understanding as this fellow here. Most of what he says I agree with except the freewill part.
When asking fundamental scientific questions it is not so easy to dispense with philosophical questions, such as : what is knowledge? What is being? etc. (epistemology, ontology). Does knowledge exist without the existence of some being with sufficient conceptual ability to appreciate it?
Fantastic lecture.
Absolutely wonderful comment, Bravo
Analogy is always drawn from the dominant thoughts and experience of the era, so although the underlying principle is constant and some part of the analogy is consistent, the analysis that was used, the methodology by which the information was discovered, gets set aside as each "new" explanation is made. Journalists say "there's no new news, only new angles", with good reason. Anaximanda's observation is good, but changes in technology implies that techniques of analysis are redoing from effects, at another angle, instead of restating the observation from the established principle.
The Antikythera Mechanism modeled the calender-clock universe without angles, so as soon as the Sun centered Solar system became the prevailing creation antithesis of the ruling political angle, the population saw the politics differently. (I don't know if there's an argument for or against, ..that's how it is)
The most common ideas of time for over a century are affected by the moving picture story telling technology, and it's a persistent influence of ruling psychology moulding minds in a way that probably isn't good for anyone's heath and stability.
But it may also be the reason why the Quantum concept is at least comprehensible as a process, it's just imagined in reverse. The observer is in a "ground state" and the universe is a stratified compound of cycles of temporal interference constructed, (of phase angles at that point), by virtual projection of information in the format experienced.
If you realize that the perceptions of reality are equivalent to looking into the infinitely complex mechanism of the calender clock, the way radar or sonar sees its surroundings, (at the limits of the principle, infinitely fast is reflected from infinitely slow time, and that's all there is "Superspin" modulation), then the combined history of the images experienced or provided by your education are who and what you are, a kind of evolved biological instrument for information storage and propagation.
History is everything. No matter how detailed or extensive the records, it is only a matter of time...
Yes, I think it is very clear that time is real in a non-Newtonian sense, but whether or not this has an affect on evolving "laws", who knows.
Now I will take issue what something Dr. Smolin said about the principle of precedence: "What is beautiful about this is there is no metaphysics." This can't be true because one still has to ask why the matter/energy/system responds in a way that is in accord with the principle of precedence?
In short, if there is *any* regularity in the physical cosmos, this means there must be some sort of "law" (whether they change is another question).
The most coherent understanding to this whole thing is Aristotle's metaphysics. If we understand that material things have what are called a "nature" (also termed "formal cause"), then we understand why a quark acts like a quark and why an electron acts like an electron. Simply because that is their nature! Now, it is science's job to figure out what it means for a electron to act like an electron, and so on. But science can't discover the metaphysical principle of "natures"/"formal causes", good philosophy tells us that.
Science is a divine/natural gift, enabling us to discover the mysteries of creation. Nature hides truth, but how successful are we in unraveling truth. Sure physical laws evolve, but mathematical truth are timeless and 'unseasonably effective', in our search for knowledge.
How y changes due to change in x, when z=x+iy is mapped to the w-plane, displays the relation between 'cause and effect', by the number i [explained in page 217 of Visual Complex Analysis by Tristan Needham] is one example how reality is more mathematical than physical.For three hundred years empiricists thought cause and effect are independent of each other, how surprising that they are related by a mathematical number.
I think there are infinitely many laws of nature, every potential for interaction, from which things themselves follow in creating paths through time and space of which time and space consist.
The best thing he said was that "natural laws" evolve through space, just as all systems evolve in a manner that has "mutation," allowing for the development of uniqueness. His argument against "time is an illusion" is opposed to the linear-mathematically predictable unfolding of a thing from an initial situation allowing for no novelty. He wants to account for now, in its uniqueness. For example, he proposed each time a black hole is created that a new UNIQUE universe is also created. It is unique in the same manner that offspring are unique, with new combinations and mutations from the parent universe.
Laws are set in place by an authority. Authority is established by means of might/power. Another element necessary for unchangeable (organized) laws is intelligence, an engineer with a blue print/purpose.
Time is duration, always was, always will be. All laws of physics have not been discovered because there are unanswered questions. A miracle is a phenomena that science can not yet explain.
This was absolutely fantastic by the way (just to balance out the negative comments!)
Julian McCormack , have you read his book?
God damn! Mind blown.
Very interesting and unique views.
The views themselves are not unique (except for the black hole bit).
Philosophers and theologians have held these views since the dawn of .....time.
There is a fundamental difference between a multiverse as opposed to an infinite number of successive universes. The latter is perfectly compatible with Smolin's argument that time in real. It didn't begin with our big bang. It has underlaid infinite numbers of big bangs.
The reason the universe has the laws that it does, and not any others, is because there have been infinite universes and this just happens to be the one that has these laws, laws that allow for the formation of stars, and planets, and biology, so of course we exist in one of the infinite universes that have laws that allow us to have come into existence.
I've got a lot of time for Lee smolin
It's sad, that it's taken him so much time to come to this realisation, that time is real, and not a fiction or illusion.
Time Reborn, Lee Smolin, notes on
Language itself is sequential and inadequate to describe non-linear time.
I think the question here is wether time is malleable or fixed. I would say that malleable time includes fixed time, but fixed time does not include malleable time. Malleable time allows sequential events, whereas fixed time demands sequential events.
7:40
“Is time real or an illusion?”
The thought itself is linear. It is both and neither, rather that one or the other.
8:27
“Is truth timeless? Or is all truth, true in a moment?”
The questions imply sequential experience. One or the other. Or testing them both to choose only one.
The operational truths that are present in the now depend on conclusions made to support the strength of the truth being examined. If one changes ones conclusions, the now truth is altered in some aspect.
8:50
“Does time emerge from timeless law? Or does law emerge and evolve in time?”
The terms emerge and evolve are strictly linear ideas.
The latter is closer to real, but weak in it’s dependance on sequence. To evolve one must employ the “arrow of time.” This is inadequate to describe malleable time.
For this to work, we must be able to “evolve” in any and all time directions as well as none at all.
This does, however, require that the “law” avail itself when needed by a now. This is a non-sequential relationship.
9:40
“Is the future already determined? Or is ti open?”
The action of observation causes determination. It is open until observed. Observation initiates time.
The position of the determiner within time-space also influences the position of the determination as it becomes an event.
“Is novelty possible? If we knew everything about an instant, could we be surprised by the next?”
Is novelty in nature different from novelty in personal experience? Is the same temporal mechanism employed?
Time is a change of entropy state. As we see it in multiple ways the most important is state of change in a finate state machine of universe and when include virtual fields and higgs we do not have a true vacuum anywhere so whole universe is in essence mathematical compuational dynamic and states change which we can see as passage of time.
I think Lee's ideas are so much more interesting and thought out than these goons in the string theory camp like brian greene.
One point he made that was interesting was about how time in physics seems to not play any role in models, and it can be completely omitted when you have a block description of the universe, and then the conclusion is time is just an illusion.
The only other phenomenon like that that exists is consciousness. From a naturalistic standpoint its believed to be acausal and with our current models of reality, and if we consider it a noncontributing factor, then it appears as if it shouldn't exist. But it clearly does.
Bolzmann brought time into physics (entropy tends to increase). That is the only time assymetrical law of physics but it is o, so deep. Most entropy resides in black holes, so, yeah.
I think Physicists don't believe that Time doesn't exist, or is literally an illusion, but that it's directionality feels immutable b/c of our evolution, and not a real physical phenomenon. Time is real, but the way we experience time is not close to the full picture. So is he rally challenging the view of most Physicists? I don't think so.
But this was a great talk.
Dr. Smolin should have mentioned the debate between Einstein and Bergson, which focuses on this very topic.
Interestingly, my first thought after watching this video on time: Now here is an hour I won't ever get back.
True. However, we don't usually get back any hours.
Like i often like to tell myself, Good ol'e days are never coming back, so we'll have to make new ones (good new days).
Prove it.
It's impossible for me to imagine that anyone *truly* believes they have no free will. People say those words, but they give lie to them by the way they live their lives. No one lives as though they are a puppet.
Time _is_ an illusion - if you are traveling at _c_ * ... but if you are locked to this particular configuration ** via e=hv - you get a gift of experience with a curse of time;)
--
* I know this has some weird implications - like there should be lot's and lot's of "experience" on the boundaries of black holes:)
** Yes, I mean one of many universes;)
edit:un-html5'ing ;)
Who else loves his theory of Cosmological Natural Evolution?
It seems to me, like the past appears to be determined, because we have memory of the past.
If the future was determined, you would expect us to have memories of the future, equivalent to our memories of the past.
But, we do not have memories of the future, because, it is yet to be determined.
A very interesting talk but there were many things he said that nagged at me during the lecture. For instance I fail to see how logic and time are at opposition at all! In type theory we take the function to be a primitive concept, this structure fully captures the notion of change hence equivalently time. Hell even proofs have attached to them a notion of one fact following from another. Time is inescapable
so time in reality are happennings of events where which space have the property to permit events to happen and the question would be what are those properties, we would have to go to the very starting , where the spacetron appears this particule has a spin and rotates around the other spacetrons, the spinning creates a pulsing or intermitent vibration ,yhas the property by which happenning arises into space, and the rotation imakes wave so distance appears and olso geometry
Often the case, but each of us needs to progress at his own rate and party to apprehend what is the case.
I'm going to think about time whenever I have some to do it in.
My question: How does Mr Smolin explain the reported human experience of knowing what will happen in the future? There is scientific evidence that the body recognizes a moment before an experience if it will be rewarded or penalized.
Entropy equals god
Lee smolin said when we create a theory we must consider all possible configurations of the system and that there are an infinite number of possible configurations.
I wonder ... If space time is quantised this must place a finite limit of the number of possible configurations. How does this affect his hypothesis?
srudkin1 if space time is quantized, but the universe is open, then the large scale curvature of the universe is zero or negative, and it goes on forever, which the current astronomical measurements suggest it does, in which case the number of possible configurations are countably infinite, rather than the cardinality of the continuum, so this would only limit the number of possibilities to a "smaller" infinity
The evolution of gravitational acceleration.
10m/s primary school
9.8m/s secondary school
9.81m/s university
laws can change over time? Rupert Sheldrake talked about this right?
The ordered universe we see is the only possibility derived from all the other ways that fail before they begin at a quantum level. The emergence of now belies the evolution of the universe from moment to moment, as probabilities are crystallised we move from one moment to the next driving time itself. The inability to occupy the same moment/point in spacetime requires a variation in at least one of the coordinates to produce order and procession, at the beginning of the universe this was not the case but the heat gradient and freezing out of matter from the beginning at the big bang or bounce drives the procession along with the recycling of structured matter by super massive black holes. From this entropic uncertainty comes the opportunity for choice and the potential for agency.
Quick question for anyone - isn't the Inflationary Period in the early universe an example of the laws of nature changing?
Nope. You're on your own for researching this topic.
Yeah, I think so. At the very beginning of the universe, there was a "superforce" that comprised all the main forces (gravity, strong and weak forces, electromagnetism). Time passed and they split apart.
This may be one of those talks which are considered to be best listened to after a bottle or two of yummy wine. This following quote is to be expressed using your best Yoda vocal inflection: "This one the imagination runs deep in. Yes, hmmm."
The problem with interpreting the measuring of the mechanics of awareness of the choice made by our minds as some testable hypothesis of the non-existence of free will, is embarrassing to anyone aware that a scientific hypothesis requires both a means to verify and a means to falsify the claims.
- My first question is how does this experiment verify that the mind responsible for the choice, is or is not aware of the network of information, experiences, reasoned process of methodology, desires, conceived emotions, immediate sense perceptions, multiple unique feedback conceptions of the illusions of past and future, immediate perception of the real moment that is used to in the formation of a choice?
- My 2nd question is can determinism be defined in a way that does not result in it being broken down to interpretations of conceived dependency in changes in stored patterns organized in conceived moments or what could be classified as the illusion of history?
- The human ability to imagine a future that does not actually exist, is greatly improved by the application of the scientific method. If we could hypothetically build a Devine Computer Mind that can track 100% of all deterministic dependencies between every moment, if free will is an illusion, we should be able to ask the Devine Computer Mind (DCM) anything about the future and the DCM should be able to incrementally step through moments until applying each deterministic step until it discovers and delivers back to our awareness, and this answer should be 100% correct and verifiable as moments proceed. To falsify this hypothetical all we need to ask is one question that results in a incorrect answer.
The question that demonstrate the free will to rebel against the notion that free will is an illusion because determinism prevents it from being possible is: What is my next question?
laws and time together from big bounce.
1:14:31 it's The Mystery Man from Lost Highway!
The universe needs emergent life to exist for time/events to unfold. The universe is fine tuned to be measured as a result.
This is radical
8:43 - well, what you can say is that events in the past that become true *stay* true, forever after. The temperature at the top of the Empire state building on May 14, 1990 at noon was what it was, and that will always and forever be a true fact. So things aren't true at only *one* instant of time.
This is very fascinating but difficult for a non-scientist as myself to follow even if I agree with the general argument of the primacy of time. Lee talks about the evolution of laws (... though I wish he had just said mutability), but then lays out this first principle of precedence where laws are not just emergent but superfluous. I can't connect the dots at this point, and stopped where I am at 52 minutes into the talk it sounds to me like he's going full deleuze. That's great... in my opinion headed in the right direction, but it's a potentially treacherous road. Interested to hear principles two and three...
You are not the only one. I can't tell what he is saying, either. I am not even sure he can. :-) If you want to hear something truly profound about the universe, listen to Nima Arkani-Hamed. That guy is the real deal.
Could the spontaneous absorption and emission of light form an Arrow of Time for each reference frame? Each photon electron interaction only occurs once, but the process of energy exchange forms the uncertainty of the ever changing world of everyday life. At the smallest scale of this process this is seen mathematically as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle ∆×∆pᵪ≥h/4π
I would have thought Heisenberg said enough to prove Thomasina wrong.
'Time, The Total Mind'. by Edmond Cohen 1988
Someone - can't remember who - once said "There is only one I." Big I, billions of little windows. Along those lines, why must the 'inside' of black holes each be separate when everything which separates their location is collapsed? Perhaps there is only one black hole on the 'inside.' Reproducing or . . ?
Yes! How do you distinguish singularities?
Mr. Smolin, could you please define time?
Imagine you are in your car driving across the country, and - all of a sudden - you’re in airplane, flying, instead of riding down the road… Or, “gradually”, the sun stopped rising from the East and began announcing morning by coming from the West… Something’s amiss… That would be “dreaming”, not reality…
So “no” [i.e. I give a no-go] - to the idea of “dynamical laws” (if that means laws that somehow evolve during the course of “one session”). However, [I say] “yes” - to the auto-tuning universe in between sessions (and the changing laws in that sense, or (merely) self-tuning parameters): the information++ (accumulated in one run) is preserved*, and it seeds the “initial conditions” for the next run [auto-tuning universe and information++ being my constructs]. Laws of the nature (or physics, in this context) are analogous to the computer code (or “the algorithm”), and we don’t like self-modifying code (a.k.a. viruses); besides, one cannot change the code “on-the-fly” (except in extremely rare circumstances) because that may lead to undefined states and violation of causality or to contradiction (if the program doesn’t crash sooner it will crash later - or produce nonsensical results, “at best”)… Physicists should learn the principles of programming (a little deeper, incl. OOP, e.g. inheritance & late binding, pointers, etc.) and also the basic computer engineering (e.g. clock generation & time synchronization, the essence of, e.g. for keeping the data “useful at all” - and not garbage - in multitasking/multiuser or distributed systems) because computers (in general) are the most sophisticated type of technical systems that we’ve ever conceived as a civilization (that is, they are conceptually complex, and technically real - realized & operational). Once again: OS is to hardware, what laws of physics are to the material universe (and, by the way, there’s only one “machine”). Also, my take on “mathematical universe” differs slightly from Smolin’s presented here in this lecture (from 2014), and I approve of the concept. Once again: Objects, instances and classes (the blueprint, on one side, and the instantiation, on the other). | The principle of precedence: “no”. Overall: Lee Smolin is one very interesting character… This is the first time that I’ve heard from somebody else of the idea of slight transformation (i.e. small variations, presumably in consecutive initial conditions) in the cosmological context, and I like it… | Needless to say: Time is real! (Although, few more components are needed to make this “model universe” operational and self-consistent…) 2022-11-30
Ain't nobody got time for that.
7:15 - I think it's worth asking another question. How do we FEEL about the temperature being 6 degrees warmer in 2080? I would say that as a population we'd disagree. The popular politically correct position is to oppose such a change, but I have no doubt that some people in the world would be delighted with that change. And I see no way to decide *objectively* which group is "right" and which is "wrong." It's a matter of preference. So, can we influence future temperatures? Maybe. Probably. If we can, how should we do it? I honestly don't know. I don't accept it as a foregone conclusion that it's automatically "bad." The world changes as time passes - it's done that ever since it began. Mitigating the next ice age might be something that our descendants, living during that ice age, would be deeply grateful for.
To suggest that laws evolve overtime suggest that there is a linear aspect and progression to existence cyclical in nature or not it exist so perhaps it always has and as it is a multiverse it can also be a multi dimensional multiverse but time is a fundamental aspect only altered through dimensional perspective viewed and calculated by the observer and only by the observer for if there is no observer it holds no meaning unto it self because it must be observed to be relevant from any perspective so the metaphysical would have very little meaning otherwise because it is the conscious observer who postulates what is observed thus giving meaning to the universe and the fundamental progression of linear time or space time so in order for time and existence to exist it must be observed by a conscious observer which ultimately means we are real the universe is real and space time is real or we wouldn't be having this conversation in the first place because in order to have it we must exist
This is very consonant with Buddhism
I love this man. His work is deeply philosophical, but still grounded in falsifiable pretense.
I find it ironic that Mr. Smith often refers to other (previous) originators of thoughts he has (essentially) co-authored. The thoughts repeat themselves. and logical things will tend to be rediscovered over and over.
Mr Smith?
Still seems to have infinite regression through all the parent universes.
Yes, that thought occurred to me also. What got the first universe going and that one would have to have been capable of spawning at least one new universe? So I am not sure that the theory has as much explanatory power as Smolin wants to imply.
srudkin1 ... a solution to infinite regress is the existence of an infinite potential field that converges in to finite force field verses that diverge back on to the infinite potential field. Black Holes may be the gate to a divergence bridge on to the infinite potential field.