Tim Maudlin and Avshalom Elitzur on the Nature and Flow of Time
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- Dr. Tim Maudlin is an internationally-renowned physicist and philosopher of science at New York University. He is known for the clarity of his thought, above all in the foundations of physics. Maudlin has undergraduate degrees in physics and philosophy from Yale University and a PhD from the Univ. of Pittsburgh. His books, released by the world’s most respected publishing houses, include "Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity", "Truth and Paradox", "The Metaphysics Within Physics", and two volumes of "Philosophy of Physics". In addition, his "New Foundations for Physical Geometry" has received wide acclaim as a novel mathematical approach to a better understanding of space-time.
Dr. Maudlin is a member of the International Academy of the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi). He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, taught at Rutgers for many years and has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard. He is also founder and director of the John Bell Institute for the Foundation of Physics.
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Dr. Avshalom Cyrus Elitzur (Hebrew: אבשלום כורש אליצור; born 30 May 1957) is an Israeli physicist, philosopher and professor at Chapman University. He is also the founder of the Israeli Institute for Advanced Physics. He obtained his PhD under Yakir Aharanov. Elitzur became a household name among physicists for his collaboration with Lev Vaidman in formulating the “bomb-testing problem” in quantum mechanics, which has been validaded by two Nobel-prize-winning physicists. Elitzur’s work has sparked extensive discussions about the foundations of quantum mechanics and its interpretations, including the Copenhagen interpretation, many-worlds interpretation, and objective collapse models. His contributions have had a profound impact on both physics and philosophy, influencing debates about measurement, the role of observers, and the ontology of quantum states. Elitzur has also engaged in discussions about consciousness, the arrow of time, and other foundational topics, including a recent breakthrough in bio-thermodynamics and the “ski-lift” pathway.
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Timeline:
0:00:28 - Introduction
0:04:35 - Maudlin opening statement on time
0:16:33 - Elitzur begins his first presentation on classical time
0:50:33 - Maudlin responds to Elitzur's first presentation
1:00:43 - Maudlin invokes Hugh Price and expounds on the block universe
1:12:25 - Elitzur explains his early work with Yakir Aharanov and the two-state approach
1:16:26 - Elitzur starts his second presentation on the quantum aspects of time
1:38:19 - Maudlin and Elitzuer discuss Elitzur's latest quantum results related to time
1:52:08 - Razo elaborates on the pragmatic approach to interpretation in physics
2:02:40 - Razo on the importance of Maudlin's efforts to study the foundations of physics.
2:03:45 - Elitzur and Maudlin agree to return for a follow-up discussion.
Timeline:
0:00:28 - Introduction
0:04:35 - Maudlin opening statement on time
0:16:33 - Elitzur begins his first presentation on classical time
0:50:33 - Maudlin responds to Elitzur's first presentation
1:00:43 - Maudlin invokes Hugh Price and expounds on the block universe
1:12:25 - Elitzur explains his early work with Yakir Aharanov and the two-state approach
1:16:26 - Elitzur starts his second presentation on the quantum aspects of time
1:38:19 - Maudlin and Elitzuer discuss Elitzur's latest quantum results related to time
1:52:08 - Razo elaborates on the pragmatic approach to interpretation in physics
2:02:40 - Razo on the importance of Maudlin's efforts to study the foundations of physics.
2:03:45 - Elitzur and Maudlin agree to return for a follow-up discussion.
I've watched every lecture of both Elitzur and Maudlin - having both of them together is a real treat.
I feel the same way. Thanks for the interest.
Marvellous talk! Can't wait to see the second one.
It doesn't help that Mr. Maudlin gets triggered and impatient, and we're only 20 mins into it. According to Iain McGilchrist -- who has his own philosophical insight into the nature of time -- getting angry is a sign that you are unable to access depth, connection and insight (left brain characteristics of mind).
Dear fine sir , sometimes passion is viewed as aggressive behavior, and it is , as it should be.
In relation to the first part, before they get into quantum mechanics:
Maudlin is right in defending the common sensical view of time as flowing and having directionality (asymmetry between past and future) and in stressing that - even within the conceptual framework of general relativity (which is just a model of reality, not reality itself, by the way) - time is different from space and we should not confuse spatialised representations of time with time itself (on this last point, Bergson had already shed light quite well). He is also right in highlighting the indexical nature of "here" and "now".
He is right again in saying that (from a non-perspectival, non-situated point of view) past, present and future are "equally real" (the past was really real, the present is really real, the future will be really real).
What the present, the now, is is an indexical matter: it depends on "when" you are "situated".
On the other end, Elitzur is right in saying that the present is special. But he is implicitly talking from a situated point of view, I would say almost from a phenomenological point of you. From this perspective, we are always in the present, a "moving present" which is where agency "always" and "only" is. In this sense, I believe, he rightly sees the present as "really real" in a way that past and future aren't.
I think they actually agree on more than they realise they do, it's only that they're looking at the question of time from two different perspectives: Maudlin is describing time from a non-situated point of view. Elitzur is describing it from a situated point of view (situated in the present) and is struggling to get the nuances of Maudlin's position, because he's taking the "block universe" view as a purely frozen model, which is not how Maudlin interprets it (that's why Maudlin stresses that he agrees with that model only insofar as you retain the flowing and directionality of time).
When he abandons his situated perspective and tries to interpret Maudlin's view, Ekitzur "looks at" the block universe "from outside" and finds it an implausible lifeless crystalised block, where the special nature of the present is missing.
Whereas Maudlin thinks that "looking at the block universe from outside" doesn't make sense. There's no "outside" the universe. And if you're in it, you're in time and time flows, time passes by.
I think the common ground is that what is special is THE Present, not this present (which will pass).
From a situated perspective, this means that the "when" in which you are now is special.
From a non-situated perspective, it means that there is a real difference between past, present and future, but that what "present" means (where you position the "index") is relative, not absolute, and if you "remove the index", past, present and future stand on equal ontological footing.
Said otherwise: from the perspective of the One, the totality, the whole of time is real. From the perspective of the Many, the multiplicity, what is real is the situated now in which each of the many are.
I think it has to do with nature of identity! Hey can we chat more on this issue ? Hoping to mutually share some insight and correspond!
@user-ky5dy5hl4d read bergsons explanation of time as durey, it might shed some light
I think time does not exist like a space as an entity, i think it's just the feel of the experience of bergsonian duree , it has no separate existence , the proof of this is there is no feeling of passing of time in the deep sleep ! This shows time must be generated with respect to experience and this consciousness also leads us to the measurement problem of quntam mechanics, when we measure ie when we are conscious of the position or momentum of sub atomic particles , they collapse to a probabilistic wave function ie being conscious that is being in space and time (because without consciousness there is no space and time because we don't experience it in deep sleep ) we can understand sub atomic particles are before measurement or of not space and time because if they are the collapse would not occur or uncertainty principle would not have been there , as Kant says space and time are construct of mind ! We admit or not the collapse only occurs in the conscious world , you won't have quntam experiment in deep sleep , now if we solve the question of identity and who we are all the puzzles can be put into place and where philosophy takes over science!
@endgcns7399 I am familiar with this idea according to which consciousness/subjective experience would generate time.
I don't think it's consistent with Bergson's philosophy.
For Bergson, as I understand him, reality is intrinsically temporal.
Reality, for him, is an indivisible movement, an indivisible whole and incessant flow of creativity and innovation (novelty generation).
At its basic level, it's a "sea of vibrations", of movement, but there isn't one single duration.
Each living being perceives reality at a different time scale, depending on its level of consciousness, the level of complexity of its sensory-motor system, etc (so a human and a fly live at a different time scale; in a different umwelt, von Uexküll would say), and depending on the mental state (ie, the same person experiences time differently depending on the mental state)...
This depends on how a given living being can contract and prolong different vibrations into one single intuition.
This, in turn, defines how a given living being can act on the world. Perception is "virtual action" and is an eliminative/selective process: we only perceive that subset of reality on which we can act and by which we can be acted upon. The rest is filtered out, so to speak.
But even at the level of matter, there is duration, although its the shortest possible, basically instantaneous action-reaction.
The more conscious a living being is, the more free: consciousness opens up a "zone of indetermination"; the more a living being can hesitate and delay action, the more it is free. Freedom is room for choice and action.
So, yes, the sense of time is intrinsically related to subjectivity, but there is time, there is duration, also "outside" of individual consciousness, because the whole of reality is temporal, it's durational.
This may be because, for Bergson, the whole of reality is essentially psychical.
In Creative Evolution he describes evolution as a creative process, through which life and consciousness gradually sping up in a rising movement to which matter offers constraint and resistance and through that constraint the élan vital individualizes itself (it concretizes in individual beings).
Consciousness is the current released by the élan vital, the vital impulse, and which runs through matter.
But he describes a spectrum: on the one end there is pure creativity, pure freedom, pure innovation (represented by the élan vital, the initial impetus that drives the unfolding of life and consciousness through matter) and on the other end there is matter, which tends to pure extension, to the ideal limit of pure geometry (motionless juxtaposition of elements in space, one external to the other).
So there are two contrasting movements: one of contraction, of tension (due to which a multiplicity of basic vibrations is contracted into a single intuition, giving rise to a given time scale at which reality is perceived in subjective experience) and one of relaxation, tending to pure extension.
So in inert matter there is ex-tension, relaxation; in consciousness there is tension, contraction.
But what Bergson is opposed to is a view according to which reality would be all already given, already done. This is the logical conclusion from mechanistic determinism, according to which everything can be predicted in theory (Laplace 's demon...) as well as of finalism, according to which it is all already "written in the plan".
On the contrary, for Bergson the future is open; reality, as a whole, is unpredictable because it's a process of pure creativity and innovation, never repeating itself, an incessant flow of heterogeneity and multiplicity (but, yet, an indivisible whole).
If time was just the effect of subjective experience and reality-in-itself was in fact timeless, what would that mean for freedom? Wouldn't that be all already given? That's the opposite of Bergson's philosophy.
@@francescoangeli1087 my question is if time is subjective and can be produced inside an individual and also outside in world out there , what is that which is dividing them ? Of course except ur notion of identity that ur body ;
I think tomorrow today and the figure exists is pure memory binding yesterday to today and today to tomorrow, how come there is tomorrow without conditioning and division of days , maybe I am doing different activities on the same day ; yesterday and tomorrow and today are just memories binding you !
Secondly the validation of the empercisim
Even though Berkeley came close but didn't get to full point, how do you validate the instrument of perception?
"I am seeing " is again is the perception of mind not you ,
"I am doing work " is essentially sense organs (mind , ears , eyes ) etc are giving points but what is the proof that that is real ?
I think to search for truth entirely different approach which is not scientific or empiric but experiential must be taken.
There is no time!! It is only a fraction or multiplicity of distance. And look into Lorentz transformation and time can be done away. There is no time only the human poetry of false immortality.
I just read the Einstein’s response to Gödel in the “Reply to Criticisms” portion of Schlipp’s book: Albert Einstein Philosopher-Scientist. I strongly disagree with Avshalom that this is some kind of evidence that Einstein believes there is no asymmetry in the direction of time. Einstein is talking about special cases where two events happen outside a causal horizon of eachother. And the issue in these cases is that there can be no claim which event came first. Einstein said it disturbed him when developing relativity that there wasn’t an answer to this and he never resolved it. However, Einstein points out that there is asymmetry in 2 events that can be connected by a time-like line and “the assertion: ‘B is before A,’ makes physical sense”.
The reading Avshalom recommends actually defends the idea that, in general, Einstein believes time is asymmetrical, not the other way around as Avshalom claims. And as an aside, it’s interesting that Tim’s approach to have a theory with a preferred foliation of space, would likely solve these special cases that bothered Einstein in the response to Gödel.
If we had solved the event ordering problem, then we wouldn't need or use time!
Imagine a perfect solution to the problem of the universe, where every event is connected in a giant causal network from the beginning to the end of the universe...
Why would you need time if you already knew the precise ordering of all the events?
By extension, because we can't have a perfect information model of the universe, we have to resort to using probabilistic measures of spacetime.
Personally, I think there's problems with common conceptions of spacetime.
Spacetime is an imaginary, theoretical, probabilistic quantity, and we project it on to our surroundings to make otherwise intractable ordering problems more salient.
It's an indexing system. It's not that there's nothing real it's related to, it's just that the universe doesn't care much for our simplistic notions of how it's ordered.
How did the word 'probabilistic' enter this polemic of yours? It seems you have more metaphysical bagage behind this story to share with us, as in you've thought more about this you are not sharing...@@ywtcc
@@Robinson8491 When you're timing events with clocks, what's between the ticks?
It's not more ticks ad infinitum. Because sooner or later you're not going to have a small enough clock!
It's probablism.
We arrived at sub tick time by summing and averaging many ticks didn't we?
This is how we did it. It's just a description of what's going on mathematically at the smallest scale.
@@ywtcc this implies you define time by physical dynamics, in this case quantum jumps. According to Newton (and Einstein, and the rest of the world) time is a dimension, continuous and independent of whether objects are there to jump or not. According to Einstein time exists also in empty spacetime, as a continuously progressing dimension. According to him it is unrelated to whatever dynamics inside it, inside that space and time, except that it can relatively slow down compared to other lesser curved spacetime positions. This implies you are a Leibnizian I think. Do you identify as a Leibnizian?
@@Robinson8491 Heisenberg isn't actually in contradiction with Einstein. Susskind has some good work to this effect.
I'm describing spacetime at a small scale, Einstein describes it at a large scale. I don't disagree with Einstein on a large scale, on a small scale, however...
I think you're correct Einstein wouldn't have realized that these two positions are compatible, but there you have it.
The uncertainty principles, despite abundant opposition, remain perfectly intact with zero known violations after almost a century of attempts from the world's greatest minds. They're as good as it gets empirically, up there with energy conservation.
It's the indeterminacy implied by Heisenberg that makes the principles uncomfortable for some, especially ardent determinists.
Pretty much all current cutting edge theories of spacetime take Heisenberg into account.
It would be nice if a few more people noticed the admission of indeterminacy into physics when doing so.
Indeed past present and future do exist again. Reality is created by small differences in iterations creating the illusion of time and space. Because consciousnesses takes relatively more iterations to create than a rock, and then can only interpret reality in arrears to the creation process we lag behind in being able to see a greater depth of field in time and space living in just a single moment.
The creation process from beginning of the universe to some unreachable future repeats with small changes until the black hole evaporates. No moment in time is the same. In the far future we may have a history without Jesus but we will not know or remember that there ever was a Jesus.
So, you can go back in time but not the past of your current present from which you departed, that past has dissolved away. The past that you go to is the future past of a future event. Hence, there are no paradoxes and you can exist in multiple copies - Nature does not care for your human perspective.
Indeed, Nature permits all possibilities, even that which you cannot imagine. So, you can create incredible technologies to explore Nature but it will always be less than Her.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen Tim correct lifelong misconceptions of a physicist.
Hiya Luis Razo, Thanks for publishing this content. Great speakers and great talk!
I just visited the IESM website and I'm so tempted to take some of these courses they look amazing!
Thanks for your comment and interest. We hope to make them available online at some point. Thanks again.
The contrast of character here was so refreshing to me. Both sides had very intelligent and provocative points. Thanks again !
I clocked Time recently. It elapsed at PRECISELY... 1 second/ second. Accurate locally to 1 ppb.
Avshalom keeps repeating ideas such as, "They have the same degree of existence". It's fine if he wants to introduce his own ideas to explore or challenge GR but if he's teaching GR to students, he has to make the distinction very clear because he is stating things which are not supported or are irrelevant in general relativity. He should instead say that he is philosophically not satisfied with GR and discuss that as opposed to implying that there are Einstein's theory has internal contradictions. His approach is messy.
EDIT: He doesn't understand, which is the minimum requirement to be able to say, "I don't agree".
Thank you!
To exist means simply to be "actual". Real things exist outside of the mind as opposed to those that exist inside someone's mind. Therefore, everything that is real must be actual.
The past is no longer actual, and the future is not actual yet. Therefore, neither of them can be real. While the present, because it is actual, is real.
Can you make up a word that covers what was actual, what is, and what will be? Yes, but what would be the usefulness of that?
What an interesting and eloquently projected discussion. I'm eager to see the follow-up. Thank you.
it's relieving to hear that everything isn't happening all at once
It definitely makes trips to the bathroom easier.
It would be more fruitful to discuss in depth if entanglement effects refute the speed of light limit on the propagation of effects decisively. In that case: why worry about relativity theory, the block universe and the relativity of simultaneity. The basic assumptions are already refuted. The question is: do the experiments stand on their own or is quantum theory needed to interpret them.
You're never going to create a basic intuitive picture of a 4-D spacetime.
Our brain refuses to see it, so we then have to use a mathematical set of ideas and perform calculations. That's how you get the most accurate predictions. It's not a philosophical situation. It's a matter of practicality. If it could be translated into English we wouldn't require giant, complex equations.
perhaps the circumstances of space and time were given to us, but the experience and perceptions of space and time emanate from us, and it is we who are the authors of these perceptions and experiences, and it is our natural native right to describe it, symbolize it, transform it, any ways that our exclusive authority on it may choose.
We don’t count backwards for a rocket launch. We start at T -10 seconds and count forward.
Very important topic to me and 150 million Americans 50 + like me I'm sure.
I get that for the western coalition it's a need for shared terminologies or practices but American intently is reductionist ,it knows phenotypical data encoded and form and shape is weak sources & often all we have but it would not rationalize the universe the same as uk or France etc etc.
By not teaching that these are tools of approximation used on a paradoxical reality and not showing our many different notions of time, in public school levels garuntees you miss some of the most creative minds and all you get is more passive Euclidean abstract minds that may have been good for army of mathematicians demands at one time but now aren't.
It just became to eclesatical and your models are in a cage with no 3 degrees of freedom for nuances or ability to engage and rationalize the world uniquely.
Time can only be defined in terms of the change of states of matter. If matter were static there would be no time. We define time in terms of the period of the micro-fine transition frequency of cesium atoms. Likewise, distance in three dimensions can only be defined in terms of the relative positions of matter so in a sense both the space dimensions and time are properties of matter. Time is different from space because although space can exist with static matter, time cannot. Time is a measure of comparative/relative change of matter and change has direction. If their is no difference between the future and the past how come we can't remember the future. That is because memories are states of matter that have been set by past states and persist as unchanged brain states which are accessible to us. If I cannot remember future events then they must be qualitatively different from past events.
If I see an exploding star that exploded millions of years ago, I am seeing the star just as I see my hand when I look at it. Their is a delay in both cases. Exploding stars are a red herrings big ones, but they still smell very fishy.
The arrow of time is created by the fact that some states persist whilst others change or in other words some changes in the states of matter occur slower than others this is what makes memory possible. If we assume there is causality there must be a direction of time from past to future. Memories are caused by causality.
So I agree with Tim.
We have evolved memory that "freezes" events into brain states. The question is, could we have evolved a memory for future events if we assume causality? I cannot see how this is possible.
Using quantum mechanics to discard the arrow of time is flawed because the theory is incomplete and the mathematic formalism proves nothing. The formalism predicts probabilities nothing else. Probabilities don't have signs.
Of course I don't have a clue what I'm talking about.
Robinson Ruth Jones Amy Harris Michael
Annoying argument - focused on use of language rather than a real debate on eternalism verses presentism. I feel like the mod should have stepped in to frame the debate more clearly.
Brown Michael Brown Robert Walker Mark
But there is no direct proof that senses see reality, it is just assumed identity that "I am looking" and whay i am seeing is real ie it is also model of reality!
I thought there were new nows always based on previous nows and not that one now is morphing through time.
I think there is some confusion between "what was, is and will be real" and "what exists". By definition exist means now. But the realness itself does not require that implicit notion of now. Please note the composite words are "was real", "is real" and "will be real". And similarly there are "existed", "exists" and "will exist".
Yup. The past is real. The future is real. But they ain't real now.
Gonzalez Shirley Hernandez Larry Martinez Jose
Anderson Steven Young Daniel Walker Helen
I give up. Why am I watching him give Tim a powerpoint presentation. Jezus.
Don't be lazy. Listen to the presentation or read the papers and come up with a valid objection to the ideas.
Can anyone highlight the disagreement between both of them please
The only way this can work is if our souls or spirit lives in or touches the 5th Dimension
Tim is too clever in this debate to fall for a fallacy
❤✌️
I totally agree with Avshalom Elitzur. If we are all connected (which I personally believe), then it's easy to understand how we are connected to the past and the future. Science has shown even fungi are connected to the whole forest. Humans need the forest to survive, connecting all living things regardless of time and measurements. Time is like a tool we use. Just because the past, the present, and the future are all happening at the same time; it doesn't mean it's not real.
I like your comments. They remind me of the Aboriginal concept of time as something more like a river. Life may move past us, but it is no more gone than the water that went past in a river. It's just all flowing.
My brother said the Earth is a very complicated rock. I countered him by talking about all the deep earth bacteria and interconnectedness of all life forms and the complex geoprocesses taking place on much longer time scales than we can truly appreciate.
The earth and universe are every bit as alive as a plant, insect, or human. Just as a human is comprised of more water, minerals and microorganisms that aren't what we concieve of as us than what is us. It is all part us and we are all part of it. It's all one. Om😊
@@marcariotto1709 It's nice to know that people like you are out there, who understand what I'm talking about. Thank you for being you.
Past present future are not "happening" . They are at the same time. To happen you need time. But this is looking at universe from outside of the constraints of time and space aka spacetime. There (or here) ot all just is. Your consciousness just moves along a path which branches out at every option. You don't know for other options since you didn't take them but they are there in other alternatives where you did, the past ones, the present and the future all now. You only are limited with your conscious to a particular time-space and you progress forward. But there is still a young you were you were a child, just in a different higher dimension frozen in time. Or if you would go back in time and run it for a specific period of time again you would be in that time or that space-time dimension. The same there is already you an old man about to die as from that you, you now where reading this are his past and due to relativity you are in no special place. You are the future of your past self and at the same time the past or your future self. It just is that to yourself here now you think you are the present. But in reality you are in. O special place, no more special or real or unreal as your past self or your future self from current place of space-time perspective.
People confuse the notion of a perception of what is going on from the point of view of an entity at a specific location in space to mean simultaneity. This is what is local simultaneity and it consists of the events on the surface of past light cone (for strictly visual perception - at the speed of light - the fastest possible) or inside of the past light cone for slower perception e.g audio perception etc. But this should be called "local simultaneity" or "perceived (local) simultaneity". And sure enough this "local simultaneity" is not by definition the universal simultaneity, as it depends on the past light cone of a event.
But there is another notion of "global simultaneity" - which still makes sense. Andromeda galaxy is X light years away, but surely there is something happening there now - let us call it E. And sure enough we will actually perceive what happened in X years from now. Then we will perceive E is to be happening in Andromeda in X years - and that will be part of our "local simultaneity" in X years.
Perhaps a more precise description of simultaneity is an inability to measure time between two events.
t1 - t0 cannot equal precisely zero when measured.
It's not that we measure simultaneity, so much as we fail to measure non simultaneity.
Time is the change of events in our universe. The universe is expanding, moving so if it were to STOP, there would be no time. People's perception of time is dependent on seeing changes in the environment (day/night, movement of trees in wind). If we watch a movie of a still room how would we know it's not a photograph. What was Einstein's saying about time and a pretty woman?
So if you stand very still for a long time, you won't get old?
12:03 Time spins happening in small niches, like someone snapping his fingers. Have nothing whatsoever to do with macro time spins, like that of climate developing in months.
One causation and effect has nothing to do with the other.
Hence there is no succession of time relevant, measured in one model. As if all times are related to the same unit. They are not. "The clock is an illusion."
* So, also the concept that things happening in history have been seperated by certain centuries does not correlate with the meaning or structure of the event.
They are discrete and happen within their own time dimension.
Frankly I don't get the concept of a light cone. This would suggest time is not discrete.
Thanks for your various comments. I wish I had time to give them the attention they deserve. In any case, I appreciate your interest.
Too much arguing the interviewer should have intervened a bit more to move on to different topics .
Thanks for your feedback.
30:15 I will give you two postulates. Regarding Napoleon.
When Napoleon had not come from Corsica, which generally rejected France for suppressing the people. He would not have chosen for the side of the people in the revolution and behave just like the other officers only taking orders from the king.
1 - Napoleon could not have determined there would be a revoluion in France. So the past does not determine the future, in this correlation. It is dependent of it. How it will unfold.
2 - Because the promise of freedom and sovereignty in imagination comes from the future. It determines the past differently. Although this is only present in human observation. The future expectation really changed the past. Before an unchanged future could have happened.
When the outcome had not been achieved in reality, its past could not have been exactly the same.
There is an interdependent relation.
Another example from Steve Jobs.
When he had not been so successful with Apple, beating conventional viewpoints in the industry (Macintosh beat Big Brother in the promo film, setting the people free), he would not have chosen for an alternative cure for his cancer later on. He did not survive.
1 - So the past does not determine the future.
Had he not been successful with Apple. He probably would have chosen for a conventional treatment and survived.
2 - So, in this case the future has determined the past in both configurations.
That is, the future of Apple created his decision in the past of the future outcome of his disease.
Although they do not exactly cover the same subject, the proximity creates an entaglement which is inversely predictive.
Because breakthrough innovations in industry predominantly fail. He believed the exception had become the rule.
Sort of the same mistake Napoleon made in the end.
Surely entanglement is non-local, so:
- non-local in space (surprise), but acknowledged by most (Bell, PBUH)
- non-local in time (more surprise), perhaps not often considered
But but it must be, right? Special Relativity And All That. So no _REAL_ surprise.
There is _no_ space and _no_ time for an entangled system
until the next interaction (re-entanglement).
Seems obvious.
We use time to describe the supernova because humans have limitations on what they can perceive. We only use five senses. The supernova could be happening at the same time as everything else, but our eyes can't see it. Just because our eyes can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening. Using before-and-after or cause-and-effect is one way we pass on information, but which came first the chicken or the egg?
20:13 I object against time being the fourth dimension. Since width, height and depth measured in matching directions, do not have a similar property, when time is circular and in motion (that is how it is measured) and a dynamic sphere cannot have been equal to the properties of a static square.
A circle is only determined by its radius, which is undetermined in its direction.
Should time be the line going through past and future connecting them, like a depth line, it would fit within the three dimensions. Although it does not give a spatial definition to a visible object.
Time is something else. Why should it be similar to a spatial dimension? When both the spherical definition in space and the line connecting past and future should be included and one would want to use counting in numbers to order it, the whole consists of 5 dimensions. Not 4.
In measurement it originally was determined by lightfall.
Lightfall is not a spatial dimension, but a condition of the fabric of space in observation.
So, like so often happens humans borrow a definition from one template, to fit it into another. Suggesting the whole represents a complete order, however creating disorder.
Its logic only approximates reality and leaves most of it undefined.
I am always confused by singular particles derived from statistics. In the double interferometer example. To know that it, the particle, was in one place means it hit a counter. For the same particle to then hit another counter doubles its energy. Where would it, that energy, come from? To take the rabbit out of the hat, you first have to put it in the hat!
23:36 Two remarks. First: the contraction of the subject only exists in the observation/ not in the physical object itself. Otherwise it could not function like a rocket anymore.
There is no such thing as one determining time for all things.
Second (hence): it is not true the tunnel moves in the same speed as the rocket. Because it rests in its space, it does not have the same spatial properties of an object moving with almost the speed of light.
When a speed is measured compared to 0 (standstill) one cannot assume both had the same speed at the same time. In total being some 500.000 km.s.
Because when switching them randomly, this should have been the case. When the observational direction was undetermined. They could not have been both true at the same time. Because you said the speed of the rocket was 250.000 km.s. This fixed the choice in observation. It could not have been undetermined (0) at the same time.
I really appreciate Elitzur's imagination. Its a breath of fresh air. I guess thats the tempermant of someone who challenges the status quo.
Something that I think alot about is how my consciousness ALWAYS exist at the edge of a time and space that extends beyond comprehension in all directions. Really?!? Im just not that special lol. It's got to mean that my consciousness has somehow imprinted on the universe.. right?!
The notion of 4 dimension universe is so much ingrained in the academia, and especially a very loose use of the word dimension causes all of the confusion. The dimension in a very precise sense means an independent degree of freedom, but sloppy understanding of the word dimension is taken to be implicitly space dimension by many and then the confusion ensues. Therefore we should not think of the universe of special relativity as a 4 dimensional object, but insist on saying that it is a 3 space dimensional + 1 time dimensional object and constantly remind ourselves that these two kinds of dimensions are qualitatively not same kinds of dimensions. No wonder they have different units even - length unit (meters) and duration units (e.g. seconds). This will free us from the silly notion that time dimension does not have direction. It does and that is what Tim is saying. For example there is a field called dimension analysis. Also in thermodynamics even temperature, pressure, volume, density could be thought of as dimensions. And we will never temperature dimension of such system to mean space dimension. Similarly we should not think of time dimension in spacetime as a space like dimension.
To add to the confusion, the standard form of education tool - a text book is a static medium and sure enough the pictures we draw of the spacetime therefore end up drawn as a block - where 2 dimensions of space are shown and third dimension represents time and because the picture looks like a block, people start believing that the universe is a block universe. So representation of the universe is taken to be more real universe instead of the real universe itself. An astute observer should also note that the 3 dimensional looking block diagrams of block universe on a page of the book are in fact drawn on a 2 dimensional page.
BTW in the SR the time is shown as a vertical axis (bottom = earlier, top = later), but in electrical engineering the time is drawn on horizontal axis. Moral? these are only representations or models shown in media which has its own limitations. And in the particular case of spacetime, the representations tend to favor space. A medium like video can show the time dimension as it is not a static medium. In fact a DVD when not playing acts like a block universe similar to the one drawn on a page of a book. But when the DVD is played then it truly unrolls the time dimension. And the DVD player's play head acts like "now" or "present".
The reason there is any debate about this is because space is a construct (emergent) and time is measured by events. If we truly live in a holographic universe then at some boundary these “events” take place and this is encoded in the volume of the bulk space by means of entanglement. The fact that pointillistic photons do not experience time because they “move” through space should tell us something about the boundary events. Our perspective is skewed because we are macro projections of boundary events that exists in a construct of space.
15:35 That convention doesn't hold in General Relativity ( e.g. in the usual Schwarzscild or Eddington/ Finkelstein etc. coordinate systems, the time coordinate in the interior
{ the trapped region } of Black Holes { that is the "radius" r, not the "t" coordinate that becomes spacelike inside } counts from r=2M ( the Horizon) until r=0 ( the future singularity).
The same in rotating Black Holes with the Boyer/ Lindquist coordinates etc...
Maudlin here - like so many others - does not understand that past and future cannot in fact exist. He could easily have read up on this really brand new physics in the ArXiv paper of the following team work: Eliahu Cohen, Marina Cortês, Avshalom C. Elitzur, Lee Smolin; Realism and Causality II : Retrocausality in Energetic Causal Sets , arXiv:1902.05082v3[gr-qc] 1 Nov 2020. Retro-causality only exists here as a coarse grain of the causally irreversible arrow of time. So it only exists emergently, just like non-locality - if you stop taking space fundamentally seriously. Mach (in his realistic moments) and Einstein himself already started with this by making it clear that the energy-momentum interactions (and the resulting universal inertia) must be realistically fundamental. Understanding this also makes it easier to understand what non-local entanglement might have to do with universal inertia (Penrose). In both cases, space tends to stand in the way of an adequate description of the latter.
Every event has of course existed once (in a causal context) and certain events will exist once - but they do not exist in actual time (as in Einstein's block universe - in a strongly spatialised, relativistic coordinate time). The present also only exists in a kind of blink of an eye and disappears as quickly as it arrived (Bojowald assumes in this context, for example, quantum moments or time atoms that are located around 10 orders of magnitude above Planck time). Only with these individual present states can an arrow of time be formulated without contradiction. And this can only be formulated fundamentally at quantum level or as a flow of these momentary atoms. This is because only the quantum level shows states in a permanent becoming respectively unfinished as actually existing (flowing) quasi-states of the respective possibilities of matter due to the universally existing wave-particle duality of all quantum systems (therefore, fundamentally - even from a realistic point of view - one can of course only make probabilistic predictions (determinism does not work at the quantum level because it is always uncertain where the wave will be driving the particle jump). But here we are focussing on objectively existing possibilities. At the same time, this involves an objective concept of chance. Only on classical size scales do we have something like "crystallised" matter (through before decohered wave components) - in other words, something like states that are not held in suspension. In order for this to remain conclusive, the authors call for a new concept of simultaneity for the set of energy-momentum events that are taking place in a respective presence. And this concept can only be meaningfully added to the theory of relativity if all relativistic expressions are regarded as descriptive conventions (which Einstein himself already saw as such).
To clarify: retro-causal effects (which Elitzur is talking about here) do not affect the irreversible arrow of time or the true (resulting) causality. If one imagines the irreversible arrow of time as a tube within which "disordered" causality (i.e. also backward causality) bounces back and forth between the walls in zigzag movements, so to speak, one has a picture of the kind of backward causality that the authors mentioned were able to demonstrate in MZI experiments. The fact that this does not involve any inconsistency with "real" causality (as the authors also call it) can be made clear by the following division:
There is (1) a so-called " birth order", an order in which events are procedurally irreversibly generated. They are described as discrete sets of events that are connected by time-arrow-irreversible causal relations. Only these sets are regarded as a "true" causal order. Then there is (2) a dynamic partial order, which contains the microscopic energy and momentum flows between events. In addition, there is (3) an emergent geometric Minkowski spacetime in which the events of the causal sets can only be embedded in the form of a so-called "disordered" causality: "However, the embedding of the events in the emergent Minkowski spacetime may preserve neither the true causal order in (1), nor correspond completely with the microscopic partial order in (2): "We call this disordered causality, and we here demonstrate its occurrence in specific ECS models." Quote from the Arxiv paper (above). ECS = energetic causal sets (first in Smolin, Cortes).
(Norbert Hermann Hinterberger)
13:09 So, you would suggest a collapsing star is just the reverse of an expanding star?
Then it would be reversing towards its past/ in stead of still traversing towards its future. As measurement suggests.
So what is it? Should we measure it in our time/ or should it only be measured in its own time.
In the discussion - which let us say happend on day D, there was a talk about the reality of Tim thinking of talking to Avshalom tomorrow (day D) on day (D - 1). And during the meeting on day D, which they were calling real and existing in real-time they were saying that was real as well. In some sense both were real - but when they happened - so it is a qualified real - qualified by moment. It is true that without qualifiers - the realness is same. But from the point of any event (moment) the realness of the other is qualitatively different.
I also do not understand what it means when people say e.g. when Avshalom talking about Time on day D-1 and the Time during the meeting being equally real. Does that mean Tim on day D-1 was experiencing events of day D-1 and Tim of say D was experiencing events of day D? But it also got very confusing when Avshalom later started saying that the notion of now IS special, which BTW I agree with. You can call me presentist. BTW physical (according to physical definition of time), precise present or instant is different than the human perception, psychological present which is not a single instant but is extended over few milliseconds, because humans perceive different senses - sound, light, touch at different speeds, but the brain puts all this together. This duration of psychological present is said to be about 40 milliseconds. For example, if a person bounces a basketball very close to you, the visual perception of the bounce and the sound of the bounce are in sync. This is because the light and the sound perceptions reach your brain within that 40 milliseconds window and things appear to be in sync. However if they start walking away there is a certain distance your brain starts noticing that the visual and auditory perception is not in sync. This is because sound travels much slower than light.
1:59:37 while being impeccable, also leads to questions about (quantum) realism. Mauldin and Avshalom usin quantum and particle paradigm concepts, while these might only be an emergent features of this level of theories. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised at all if many, if not all quantum-related theories could explain these phenomena. And as Tim said, how would we, how could know for certain, at least before next paradigm that is.
And on that note, I wouldn't be surprised at all, if the next level of theory, next paradigm would reveal to be something pilot-wavish-but-more-profound-kind. I bet it'd be some Bohmian string kind of theory, where these spooky actions, weak values and fake histories would be a part of this quantum level's features. I bet these kind of anomalies turn out to be just a limitation of current paradigm, where thinking in terms of particles (and measurements, which are essential to this "particleism") is the one thing making things hard and "spooky", albeit also catchy.
And maybe, just maybe we will get the answer, whether the time actually passes. But hopefully we don't, as there's possibility that time might also turn out to be emergent feature after all. And wouldn't that be boring: to have an answer to the very question of this video.
Nice video, nice discussion, leads to more mysteries. Waiting to hear more.
56:00 this is something I am wrestling as well currently: what does the spacelike area outside the light cone exactly mean? Two objects are necessarily spacelike disconnected, until they are connecting in their position-fourvector due to interaction after their future light cones met. This spacelike separation is the same for two atoms in a chemical, as it is for earth and Andromeda. Yet we feel what this spacelike separation means in atoms in a chemical molecule, yet we surely don't when talking about Andromeda and earth. Avshalom talks about simultaneity as a relativistic hyperplane, but it could also be the spacelike bowtie area; it depends on how you move with speed and direction. It is very confusing. I feel general relativity does have an actual plane of simultaneity in it, but people always refer to special relativity and Andromeda for problems. This distinction between past light cone as what is current (what Lee Smolin calls a view), the horizontal hyperplane or foliation of the light cone...but what is the space like area in between those two things? This is where a lot of mistakes are created. The bowtie spacelike area, the horizontal hyperplane and the past light cone
Because the light cone also slants when moving inside a black hole. So it is also important to know what the spacelike 'extended present' means for this light cone entering the event horizon!
1:03:00 I feel basically Tim believes in the block universe, but with flow. But saying that, he basically has to explain this tensed flow inside the block, which can only be done by the biological system of a brain. But he never makes that step, which is necessary, he stays inside philosophy but should accept that he basically says the brain explainse the experience of tense. So he is being a little bit dishonest with himself
1:35:00 I love that Vaidman experiment and need to dive more into that! It confirms my suspicion that the wavefunction is static and thus instantaneous and manifest everywhere, but the observable and its time /trajectory of the observable is in the operator. So basically the metaphysics of Heisenberg picture is ontology
I love this interaction! Hope Tim takes up the challenge posed by Avshalom
I'm particularly surprised that Tim let the ball rolling along the carpet experiment (@45) go by, it's an incomplete description of the system as the agent couldn't be bothered waiting for the ball to come back and squirt some glucose into her.
In many mathematical representations of nature, an objects scale can be altered through numerical operations, however, this procedure often misrepresents reality. Seeing as though objects in the physical world are composed of atoms, their scale cannot be changed to arbitrary values as increasing its dimensions equates to adding atoms to its structure. I feel in some way that this is relevant to Tim maudlin's description of special relativity and the idea that objects have no fundamental length or size.
Time is a compactified dimension one single Planck second in size.
This is why there are limits < limit theorem
This is why there is conservation.
Neither HAS to be.
Compactified time is why.
Because space is loosely coupled we can the evolve a hyper plane of the present. Matter on one side and antimatter on the other.
An Ingle to one side of an pygmies from the other.
But the truth is that this manifold is a single sided surface connected by a node of maximal density.
Event horizons.
Neutron decay cosmology is inevitable. 🖖
How do we know if time passes? How do we "know"? We can only save a memory, a recorded facsimile taken from our sensory feedback that works by comparing potential differences external in their frequency ranges, then comparing that to our storage memory of recorded facsimiles for similarities. And from this comparison those connections, ground connections, we can "know" anything.... called frame of reference, but think of trying to to measure a voltage with no ground reference..... Time can only be perceived by how many ground references or frames of reference are saved to the memory facsimale storage. And without ground reference to another person you could not compare/measure their perception of "time"
13:09 So, you would suggest a collapsing star is just the reverse of an expanding star?
Then it would be reversing towards its past/ in stead of still traversing towards its future. As measurement suggests.
So what is it? Should we measure it in our time/ or should it only be measured in its own time.
"here" of space is equivalent of "now" of time. "elsewhere" (distant places) of space is equivalent of "elsewhen" (past and future) of time.
Some people who have had near-death experiences report that their entire life passed before their eyes within seconds or all at once.
The flow of time, aka the motion of matter in space. 😅 one part memory, one part observation, one part imagination. Unless you are into predestination, forget it.
Well, it has been 3 months...will there be a follow up?
Thank you for asking. I hope to follow up on this at some point, but at this point no date has been set. Sorry.
Thank you for this, lovely to see that both of them had enough time to really expound on their positions
Will be nice to see how this relates to Wolfram Physics project.
Tim Maudlin is brilliant, but I think he's entirely missing the point, and if someone like Ryan Mullins or William Lane Craig could have neen his interlocutor, I think they could have done a better job of helping him see the issue.
To me it's as simple as this: Imagine a rod that is so many feet long. Even if there were an inherent directionality to the spatial dimension along which it is X feet long, would we regard its being different over here than over there as "change", or as the "passing" of anything, or as "becoming"? Of course not. It's this way here and that way there. If that's how things are in time (treating time as some sort of dimension of extension), then it doesn't matter if it has a directionality; all you have is difference here from there, not change, becoming, or the passage of anything. The 3D object that was Tim Maudlin having this discussion is over there and never leaves that location or moves on, nor does anything "pass" for him. He has always been right there and always will be. That that is "later" than his being a child on his first day of school and "earlier" than the day of his retirement is just an issue of location, and those distances have always been the case and always will be. There is no passage.
The right way to symbolize temporal becoming is not with a static line that is different here than there, but with a picture that morphs and ceases altogether to be as it was. The metaphor of extension on a time line is useful in some ways, but it is taken way too far.
I am watching this in May 2024, 3 months after appearance and in the end they agreed that Tim will take a look at papers that Avshalom would send him within 2 weeks, so I am really curious if there was a follow up discussion and what came out of it.
Thanks for your interest. We have not been able to follow up, but hope to do that soon. Thanks again.
In the opener Tim you enlighten me. Time is slices as described by Newton, the one slice now is an instance of a one everywhere, whole time of the universe is every single one of those slices combined.
Also the quantum realm is the clockwork of time , this is somewhat apparent im not sure what theories out there coincide.
Maybe the waves are what are the actual fabric of time ? Or is time flowing on some dark dimension , or being pushed or pulled from other dimensions ?
"Time slices" cannot be combined into one time. That's the point. Relativity theory prevents that. It is why Tim incomes the concept of "foliashion"
…but the rocket and the barn are accelerating relative to each other and can be viewed from a mutual reference frame, so their lengths are unchanged and there will be no paradox. When viewed from other accelerating frames, the measured information seems incompatible, but really lengths don’t physically change, just your relativistic measurement.
Im out. ☆israeli philosophies
Realism is a bit of a distraction. As if anyone here has reality figured out!
As soon as you performed a measurement, and wrote down a quantity, you turned reality into theory.
We're always describing theories, not realities, because our theories are simple and tractable, and reality is indescribably complex, and intractable.
However, if our simplifications and approximations work, who's to complain? LOL!
I'll take a working, tractable imaginary theory over an unworking, intractable reality every time.
You can make inferences about relations between events that are not directly measurable: that is a form of realism. It doesn't imply you know all that is to know about external reality, only the assumption that one is out there and can possibly be known. Instrumentalism or operationalism was popular in the thirties to fifties/sixties, but has been 'outlived' by any sensible person decades ago. 'Theorationalism' or whatever would you call your position, I have however never heard of. Are you a Platonist?
@@Robinson8491 Everyone says they're a realist, I doubt you can tell me what it is.
Nothing in my position has anything to do with theology, I'm an atheist for the most part.
Definitely not a platonist either! In fact, what I described in my post was pretty much the opposite.
What's made you defensive? You're making some really bad guesses.
I often wonder how time has time to be.
Strangely blurry video image? Otherwise excellent as usual
Yes, I did everything I could to fix this but it didn't work out. The original is not blurry at all, which of course does nobody any good. Thanks for your comment.
Very excited for this one; thanks for doing these interviews!
Thanks to you and to our guests!
3xcellent !
What is the title of the paper which Elitzur would like to discuss with Maudlin? I would like to take a look at it
Thanks for your interest. Here is the paper where the Two-State Vector Formalism is used to get a surprising result about negative mass particles, validated by ordinary strong (not weak) measurements:
www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/20/11/854
and here is the experimental demonstration:
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/5/pgad157/7160261. Thanks again.
@@eismscience Thank you, I've read both papers and in the second I have several problems which, frankly, are embarassing since they involve nothing more but the multiplication of matrices: still, with the psi_f as defined in a paper I'm getting non-zero weak value of B in time t_2 (A in time t_2 simplifies to zero but already one of the vectors for which we compute inner product in the numenator is zero which looks suspicious). After changing the sign in the second coordinate of psi_f everything looked fine to some moment until I arrived at fig.3 where the authors suggest that the weak value of A in time t_3 should be -1 and I;m getting +1-so again a problem arises. Finally I've tried with psi_f=1/sqrt{3}(i,-1,1) but then it is the same as U^2psi_i and we get 1 in the denominator so surely we won;t get weak values to be equal to 1 or -1 (but rather 1/3 or -1/3 at most). Maybe it is just a computation error, but still let me ask you whether you went through those calculations?
@@eismscience On a more conceptual level: I don't quite get the clear message what this weak value corresponds to? Is this some sort of realism ,,what is really going on'' in time between measurements? And do we control postselection state (and are therefore free to choose any state for psi_f)?
@@Adam_Wegert I would argue, as the author do, that the appearance of mirage and re-appearing particles suggest an ontology that goes beyond current models of physics. If in fact some physical entities are more transient than others, it has far-reaching conceptual and causal implications -- for the same reason that a house made of brick exhibits different characteristics than a house made of straw. In other words, what the fundamental nature of reality ultimately is will have a dramatic effect on everything else in the univers.
That, in any case, is what I would argue. Thanks again.
@@eismscience Yes, I agree that the ontology would be different. My problem is that they infer something about the existence of mirage particles based on the computation of weak values and I'm not convinced what does weal value actually represent (maybe the logic is turned upside down in this inference)? I have also written another comment which has disappeared, it was more technical and I was asking whether you went through calculation in Okamoto's paper: for the final (postselected) state as it is defined in the paper the weak value corresponding to B at time t2 turns out to be nonzero. If you change sign on the second coordinate then everything worked fine since I arrived at fig. 3 where authors claims that the weak value for A in time t3 should be -1 and I;m getting +1. Maybe one can easily fix this but I at the moment it is not clear for me how to change initial and final vectors.
15:59 Counting backwards before an ignition, actually is inverting the direction of time before the moment which predicts the ignition.
When functions are executed in the background in that order, they do represent inverted time, before the opposite event could expand.
It is not just a convention.
Just like winding the spring of an old clock actually was the reverse of its later expansion ticking away slow time.
When something is predictive for a property, it had the same property.
Maudlin does not discuss in what philosophers would call 'good faith'. 'known for the clarity of his thought' don't make me laugh!
There are many hours of Maudlin conversing online. Do you have an example of him doing so in bad faith?
@@eismsciencejust listen to your own video. He is not conversing with Elitzur in a manner that exhibits good faith. Elitzur is clearly describing the Block Universe, together with his own doubts arising from the sense that his Now is something unaccounted for by standard physics. That is easy to grasp, yet Maudlin goes on the attack as if he were a Maga rep trying to support Trump's indefensible position on anything.
Not to mention his mocking tone of voice.
Don't know the guy but he lost his temper very quickly. This is not a good sign. I will pursue my studies elsewhere. @@eismscience
The problem with Maudlin is that he lectures some of his theories as if it is some kind of indisputable truth and not just a theory along with alternative views from others. It seems to me that he insist that his view is the only valid one and thus mocks any opposing views or critics.