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.