Block universe

[DragonFly]

So, Faradave, quantum indeterminism provides for an open future, whereas in the Block Universe the future is closed?

[hyksos]

And still another forms the dimensional aspect we call life of consciousness.

There is a video on the E8 lattice as regards emergence theory. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa4JkgKDaR0&t=38s)

(Even if you know the theory the girl is pretty hot) Anyway, she does a demonstration holding the lattice up to the light and different patterns are seen on the ground below. Consider reversing this and these wave patterns on the flat universe could be seen producing the 3d world, or more appropriately the 4d world we experience.

[Faradave]

So, Faradave, quantum indeterminism provides for an open future, whereas in the Block Universe the future is closed?

As other's have, I'm suggesting the future is as closed or as open as the past, consistent with a block universe model. Mere knowledge appears to effect our disposition toward these.

Nature has at its disposal, in every fermion, a perfect random value generator - far better than any possessed by a digital computer. Our brains may well make use of this, perhaps relating to free will and the unpredictability of individual behaviors.

What makes a random sequence "random" is the degree to which it is unpredictable. It doesn't matter so much if that sequence is yet to be generated or if it was made long ago. The randomness of a past list is demonstrated in that someone not yet familiar with it can't predict it. To that observer, knowledge of the list is still in the future. The past is as random, thus as free, as the future. Being cast in the stone of a block universe doesn't change that.

The combination of perfect random value generators (manifest in quantum spin) and the reality of speed limit c (which absolutely precludes communication from the future) assures that the closed future of a block universe is utterly indistinguishable from an open future. That, and it's infinitely less extravagant than a Many Worlds model.

[davidm]

A bit off topic, but I am glad I discovered Bee’s blog. Right or wrong, she doesn’t mince words.

I found a blog post in which she trashed one of Max Tegmark’s books in a review. In the comments section Tegmark joined in, and she was pretty dismissive of him. In the same comments section, she wrote:

If the person I'm arguing with has any brain, they come to agree with me pretty quickly and not surprisingly so, because what I say is obviously correct.

When someone objected that this was “cynicism,” she replied:

No, that's a status report.

Sorry for the brief derail, just wanted to share my amusement. :-)

[TheVat]

Haha! Yes, Bee does not always dispense honey.

MOD Note: The E8 video, despite the charming Marion Kerr, is full of misleading characterizations of quantum theory and indeterminism. And, for any youthful males who are contemplating changing their college major to physics, be apprised that Ms Kerr is an actress and not an actual physicist.

Be aware that the founder of this group, Klee Irwin, is well-known as a pseudoscience scam artist who has been subject to many lawsuits over his nutritional and vitamin products.

From...

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Klee_Irwin

Klee Irwin is a pseudoscience proponent and fraudster.[1] He became widely known for his infomercials for "Dual Action Cleanse", a "natural" remedy,[2], which was subject to numerous lawsuits.[3] Some have reported being scammed by his company.[4]

The FDA is not a fan. In 2001 they sent a letter warning him about serious safety concerns and multiple violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act,[5] and in 2004 a letter saying that they had reviewed the claims about the "Maximum Strength Phase 2 Carb-Blocker" product and concluded these claims were not supported by reliable and competent scientific evidence.[6]

[DragonFly]

The Ultimate Existence must of necessity be eternal, that is, it just ‘IS’, given that that it cannot have come into being from the impossible ‘non-existence’; thus there is neither beginning nor end to it. It never gets generated and it cannot not be. It is always present.

What does no beginning imply, aside from that it is ever? No plan!

The instance of our own block universe is well defined, in its specifics, as any block universe would be, regardless of how well any of them work.

There can’t be a definite plan for just one single instance of an arbitrary specific Block Universe, for there is no design point for that which has no beginning. There can’t be any plan at all for anything eternal!

Therefore, the Ultimate Existence is as indefinite as could be, random; thus providing for all possible unique block universes (or as all possible paths gone down for a generative Presentism), with no ‘happenings’, for nothing ever happens in a block universe, thus the static state being but being the necessary essence of the Ultimate Existence as it ‘IS’.

Each specific block universe then contains the usual pictures of changes, these changes never occurring, but are just that particular block universe’s blueprint portion of the Ultimate Existence Blueprint of Everything possible.

The Ultimate Existence, having no opposite, but for the trivial, impossible ‘Nothing’, necessarily needs to be Everything.

Note that the information content of Everything is the same as if there weren’t anything: zero!

[Faradave]

...nothing ever happens in a block universe, thus the static state being...

There's a lot to be considered in that. If something did "happen", what would it look like?

Worldlines in a block universe are indelible, so if one could somehow "move" it would smear.* It would also dim. For example, if an electron's worldline is pushed sideways (perpendicular to an observer's proper time coordinate), that happening would be instantaneous. The electron would seem to occupy more than one location at a time. But since it's still just one electron, it's not fully at any one of those locations but instead, distributed over them. Instantaneous motion isn't "moving", it's "being".

Such hyper-motion would seem preposterous if it didn't happen to fit the description of an electron occupying an orbital and numerous other quantum weirdnesses.

*Reminiscent of your post (years ago) where you built a line by smearing an inky point, a sheet by smearing the line and so on...

[hyksos]

The Ultimate Existence must of necessity be eternal, that is, it just ‘IS’, given that that it cannot have come into being from the impossible ‘non-existence’; thus there is neither beginning nor end to it. It never gets generated and it cannot not be. It is always present.

The Ultimate Existence, having no opposite, but for the trivial, impossible ‘Nothing’, necessarily needs to be Everything.

Note that the information content of Everything is the same as if there weren’t anything: zero!

if we want to consider the Hamiltonian (total energy) of the universe we come up against a problem. As we have just seen, there are no axes of reference outside the universe. Hence, it is impossible to define a position for our “universe object” (so we cannot say it has a potential energy) and it is impossible to define a speed (so we cannot say it has kinetic energy). As Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler say on page 457 of their book “Gravitation”: “There is no such thing as the energy (or angular momentum, or charge) of a closed universe, according to general relativity, and this for a simple reason. To weigh something one needs a platform on which to stand to do the weighing” (see here). So in this case, the Hamiltonian (the total energy) of the universe is zero:

This is called the Hamiltonian constraint (it is actually true that the Hamiltonian is zero for any system which has general covariance – for a derivation of this, see here).

https://www.skepticink.com/tippling/2012/09/24/time-free-will-and-the-block-universe/

[Brent696]

https://www.skepticink.com/tippling/2012/09/24/time-free-will-and-the-block-universe/

Excellent article,

The only snag I would mention, as he shifts from the objective state of reality (The universe), back to free will, he does not quite notate that the motion we perceive to be out there, still exists, but it is us, or perhaps more precisely consciousness as that which is actually in motion.

The energy of the universe might be zero, expanding out of nothingness as it were, but it does allow a context whereby consciousness and identity can find experience as we are moving through the block.

And what can be said when the block if fully applied to QM, if birds don't fly, how can even subatomic particles spin. And what do we consider knowledge, are we actually observing real behavior, or simply cataloging the illusion.

[Faradave]

...applied to QM, if birds don't fly [in a block universe], how can even subatomic particles spin.

Chronaxially. See above or this brief video.

[TheVat]

More broadly, elimination of the flow of time is done by physics dealing with a universe of events, what Carlo Rovelli and others call a relational universe, rather than a universe of things or substances. You don't need time to have ordered events or relationships. At the quantum level there is no time, just transactions and a relationship between fields. Time is only emergent in large populations of events, as in thermodynamics. An intrinsic "flow" of time is no more fundamental than is, say, liberal democracy. If you get a large enough group of people interacting and trying to survive then some system of social order and governance will emerge and we may call it something but we don't think individuals each contain cells or bodily fluid essences of democracy or theocracy or monarchy. Our type of conscious existence is one where the thermodynamics seem to create a consistent flow... we are like people who live on the slope of a mountain and come to believe that all rocks just naturally roll a certain direction (toward lower elevation) and that this is inherent in all nature. Their perspective is skewed because they've never been to the other side of the mountain or down on the valley floor or floating in the asteroid belt. If they traveled, they would realize that rocks rolling northwest is not some basic dynamic of nature.

[Brent696]

Faradave » October 6th, 2018, 2:53 pm

Chronaxially. See above or this brief video.

Not being directly from a physics background I have to absorb terminology that is unfamiliar, I will process this more but for now, the word "Tension" seems to come to mind.

[DragonFly]

How is it, I wonder, that birds, planes, and insects seem to fly, due to their structure, yet in the block universe there would be just a 3D film playing containing 3D pictures of changes that we take as motion?

[Faradave]

...terminology that is unfamiliar

While it is meant to be self-evident, "chronaxial spin" is a term I coined to describe spin about a temporal axis. It's not yet a recognized term of art in physics.

I have a long habit of doing this and can be neglectful about defining them to newer members. Sorry for any confusion.

How is it, I wonder, that birds, planes, and insects seem to fly, due to their structure, yet in the block universe there would be just a 3D film playing containing 3D pictures of changes that we take as motion?

If a particle's worldline is straight, it is in constant relative motion that can be transformed away by switching reference frames. If such a worldline is curved, the particle's motion is changing as a result of an applied force. There are however nuances, relating to what "straight" and "curved" mean in the presence of gravitation.

[TheVat]

Faradave » October 6th, 2018, 2:53 pm

Chronaxially. See above or this brief video.

Not being directly from a physics background I have to absorb terminology that is unfamiliar...

The post directly before yours was me trying to address the current approach in physics in less technical language. I can't tell if it was of any use here, due to lack of response.

[Brent696]

Braininvat » October 7th, 2018, 11:22 am

The post directly before yours was me trying to address the current approach in physics in less technical language. I can't tell if it was of any use here, due to lack of response.

I assume you are referring to the Thermal time hypothesis, which is described as an ambitious attempt to marry aspects (not all) of GR with QM. No doubt many physicists are enthused about this theory, but I have not seen where it is accepted as it were, across the board. Offered is one review that expresses some of it's limitations

"https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04558-7"

I have no problem seeing the universe as a collection of events, and intervening relationships, (yet even the word "events" conjured up a necessary time flow).

Here's a problem I have with physics from a philosophical angle, by analogy imagine you are watching your flat screen tv, on it is portrayed a certain reality, a universe of sorts. Now we want to find out what is behind that universe, what caused it. So a man get a magnifying glass and begins to study his screen, eventually breaking it down into pixels, then he announced the universe is made up of pixels (atoms), later he discovers digital coding, and the mathematical order. The he announce the universe is made up of code (QM).

But the coding is designed to produce a desired effect to bring about a particular experience. We might ask what is the universe really, is it the macro which is easily observable to us as the only thing in the universe that is capable of observation. Or is the universe a mass collection of code.

The analogy is loose as many are in dealing with this subject, but my point is just as we conceive of cars and trains, we think the universe is "BUILT", and so we look deeper for the blocks we think it to be built upon, as if those blocks are the source rather than a means.

Rovelli seems to want to built "Time" as if it is an effect, yet for an "effect" to come into existence it takes "Time".

IOWs, If "time" were not an fundamental and directional dimension to the universe as a whole, from the beginning as it were, there could be no effect known as time.

GR, appears essentially to say, Time is non existent in the block, the universe simply is, and this would include the quantum level too. The only thing which is experiencing time is the observer, or us as we are tapped into the dimension of life that is consciously observing the universe.