some notes on time in response to Time Regained by James Gleick, a review of Time Reborn by Smolin
I'm quoting some of my own previous post material:
"This is also why there is time, I think. Because the universe or nature tends toward entropy, it has direction. it goes "forward", and it is very difficult for it to go backward (but not impossible). This forward movement is time."
Is time just subjective, a perception. The way humans make sense of entropy? Time is the measure of change.
Smolin argues that there are no timeless natural laws, but that nature itself changes, the laws of nature change . . .
It seems like reality has so many "levels": what we perceive is the "top" level; while nature or the experienced universe, if you will, shared among others is the second level (and this shared universe changes all the time, literally as you view it, it changes--maybe this is also "classical" physics nature?); and then there is at least one more level, the quantum level which is kind of this burbling stew of quarks that is perceived by humans and by other perceiving organisms as "reality" but the laws of the burbling quarks never change . . . (but is this third level really just our mind's understanding of quantum physics and not quantum physics at all, which is in fact inaccessible?)
Could time have a place in the top two levels but at the third level it's simply that directional chaos of the entropy of the quarks?
Smolin, says Gleick, rejects the notion of answering why questions, just like existential phenomenology. They are not answerable, both theories argue. Which suggests that there is a "reality" or maybe reality isn't the right word, but something that is unknowable at any human level or alternatively, can we imagine a randomness to the universe that ultimate causes do NOT exist?
How would Fuchs react? To what extent does his notion of qbism deal with Smolin's concern over time. Is time a subjective state separate from the quantum world or vice versa? Smolin says we are always in a particular moment--is this our subjective experience? Or is this quantum reality?
Unfortunately, Gleick does not seem to have the knowledge to critique Smolin but only to summarize parts. I went hunting for a critical review but most of what I found was summary (The Guardian, NPR). I found lots of criticism on Amazon, but have no idea who the critics are or if they should be believed. I did find this review from a Mathematician at Columbia, Peter Woit's on his blog. He argues that Smolin is wrong mostly, I think, because he dismisses the fundamentals of math and more particularly, gauge symmetry, which I know nothing about (I guess I need to find a book on that. . .). What I couldn't find was any physicist praising the book's conclusions. The blurb on Smolin's website was written by Jarod Lanier who I believe is a computer scientist. . .
This review on backreaction.blogspot seemed to provide the most succinct summary of Smolin's arguments.
Like many readings I've read recently, I am reminded over and over again at how incompatible our intuition seems to be with reality. I think Rosenberg might argue this is a neurological issue related to how we've evolved, but it certainly seems to limit or delay our ability to progress (if by progress we mean "understand the universe). Here's a quote from backreaction.blogspot that captures this issue:
"One of the likely reasons many people believe in free will is that if fundamentally there is no such thing as free will, how come that most of us* have the feeling that we do make decisions?"
I've got to quote another piece of that blog because it so captures Rosenberg's claims in An Atheist's guide to reality:
"Whether the universe evolves deterministically, or whether its time evolution has a random element, an individual, fundamentally, has no choice over his or her actions in either case. It is then difficult to hold somebody responsible for actions if they had no way to make a different choice."
This is exactly what Rosenberg says. We attribute moral reasoning to behaviors when, in fact, they have evolved, and have nothing to do with making a "moral decision". Knowing that the world is deterministic does nothing to our evolution . . . We will still behave the same way (I can see how this kind of thinking freaks out most of the universe--what would that mean for religion? to blaming others, to the whole structure of crime and punishment--is this what Dostoevsky was actually getting at?). Makes me wonder if what seems to me to be the inevitable march of human progress (and here by progress I mean the development of respect and tolerance for others and the movement towards your responsible but it's not your fault systems) is simply the inevitable result of evolution. (David Eagleman's essay Your Brain on Trial, deals directly with this topic).
I've been calling the conservative clinging to old values and ways, "The Last Gasp", referring to the dying off of a whole group of old white men (mostly) who are watching their power fade, but maybe its just entropy and evolution. Could entropy explain tolerance? Is tolerance of higher disorder than intolerance?
The blog backreaction says that the solution to crime in a world without free will is to figure out how to reduce the causes (but if the causes are neurological and thus complex are we willing to do brain surgery to get rid of them?).
Offers a nice explanation for why in a world without free will we still have to make choices. Choice is, in fact, simply a crunching of the data to spew out the already known conclusion (well, not known to us but known to the universe).
I'm quoting here from neil Bates on the backreaction.blogspot comments (I have no idea what the correct citation is for this, but hopefully, this is enough information!)
"Instead, a candid assessment must recognize a genuine level of unpredictability in the universe. You can say "that's not really choice", and maybe for a particle it isn't, but if your brains are an interactive system with some organized "wholeness" (see below), that character could be expressed as "choosing" (the thinking and weighing, without a predetermined outcome.) In any case, any reader of Hume knows that even the idea of "causality" itself is questionable."
Very intriguing comment which allows for the fact that we seem to make "choices" all the time by redefining really what a choice is--the interactive system of our brain "thinks and weighs", and Bates, seems to suggest comes up with a not predetermined outcome. But I'm still not convinced. I guess this is Smolin's point--if there are not universal laws then choice would exist. . . This certainly fits with "intuition" but intuition seems to be as reliable as Fox news. . .
Many comments posted refuting determinism reference the writer's experience as "proof" of something. This must also be an evolutionarily evolved characteristic to somehow think our individual experience is proof of anything.
What if we were to step up our probability understanding and use this as a means of guestimating our intuition's accuracy? Is that possible?
(How did I get here? well, I wondered and wandered off the path when I was searching for Smolin reviews and ended up at this interesting essay)
"This is also why there is time, I think. Because the universe or nature tends toward entropy, it has direction. it goes "forward", and it is very difficult for it to go backward (but not impossible). This forward movement is time."
Is time just subjective, a perception. The way humans make sense of entropy? Time is the measure of change.
Smolin argues that there are no timeless natural laws, but that nature itself changes, the laws of nature change . . .
It seems like reality has so many "levels": what we perceive is the "top" level; while nature or the experienced universe, if you will, shared among others is the second level (and this shared universe changes all the time, literally as you view it, it changes--maybe this is also "classical" physics nature?); and then there is at least one more level, the quantum level which is kind of this burbling stew of quarks that is perceived by humans and by other perceiving organisms as "reality" but the laws of the burbling quarks never change . . . (but is this third level really just our mind's understanding of quantum physics and not quantum physics at all, which is in fact inaccessible?)
Could time have a place in the top two levels but at the third level it's simply that directional chaos of the entropy of the quarks?
Smolin, says Gleick, rejects the notion of answering why questions, just like existential phenomenology. They are not answerable, both theories argue. Which suggests that there is a "reality" or maybe reality isn't the right word, but something that is unknowable at any human level or alternatively, can we imagine a randomness to the universe that ultimate causes do NOT exist?
How would Fuchs react? To what extent does his notion of qbism deal with Smolin's concern over time. Is time a subjective state separate from the quantum world or vice versa? Smolin says we are always in a particular moment--is this our subjective experience? Or is this quantum reality?
Unfortunately, Gleick does not seem to have the knowledge to critique Smolin but only to summarize parts. I went hunting for a critical review but most of what I found was summary (The Guardian, NPR). I found lots of criticism on Amazon, but have no idea who the critics are or if they should be believed. I did find this review from a Mathematician at Columbia, Peter Woit's on his blog. He argues that Smolin is wrong mostly, I think, because he dismisses the fundamentals of math and more particularly, gauge symmetry, which I know nothing about (I guess I need to find a book on that. . .). What I couldn't find was any physicist praising the book's conclusions. The blurb on Smolin's website was written by Jarod Lanier who I believe is a computer scientist. . .
This review on backreaction.blogspot seemed to provide the most succinct summary of Smolin's arguments.
Like many readings I've read recently, I am reminded over and over again at how incompatible our intuition seems to be with reality. I think Rosenberg might argue this is a neurological issue related to how we've evolved, but it certainly seems to limit or delay our ability to progress (if by progress we mean "understand the universe). Here's a quote from backreaction.blogspot that captures this issue:
"One of the likely reasons many people believe in free will is that if fundamentally there is no such thing as free will, how come that most of us* have the feeling that we do make decisions?"
I've got to quote another piece of that blog because it so captures Rosenberg's claims in An Atheist's guide to reality:
"Whether the universe evolves deterministically, or whether its time evolution has a random element, an individual, fundamentally, has no choice over his or her actions in either case. It is then difficult to hold somebody responsible for actions if they had no way to make a different choice."
This is exactly what Rosenberg says. We attribute moral reasoning to behaviors when, in fact, they have evolved, and have nothing to do with making a "moral decision". Knowing that the world is deterministic does nothing to our evolution . . . We will still behave the same way (I can see how this kind of thinking freaks out most of the universe--what would that mean for religion? to blaming others, to the whole structure of crime and punishment--is this what Dostoevsky was actually getting at?). Makes me wonder if what seems to me to be the inevitable march of human progress (and here by progress I mean the development of respect and tolerance for others and the movement towards your responsible but it's not your fault systems) is simply the inevitable result of evolution. (David Eagleman's essay Your Brain on Trial, deals directly with this topic).
I've been calling the conservative clinging to old values and ways, "The Last Gasp", referring to the dying off of a whole group of old white men (mostly) who are watching their power fade, but maybe its just entropy and evolution. Could entropy explain tolerance? Is tolerance of higher disorder than intolerance?
The blog backreaction says that the solution to crime in a world without free will is to figure out how to reduce the causes (but if the causes are neurological and thus complex are we willing to do brain surgery to get rid of them?).
Offers a nice explanation for why in a world without free will we still have to make choices. Choice is, in fact, simply a crunching of the data to spew out the already known conclusion (well, not known to us but known to the universe).
I'm quoting here from neil Bates on the backreaction.blogspot comments (I have no idea what the correct citation is for this, but hopefully, this is enough information!)
"Instead, a candid assessment must recognize a genuine level of unpredictability in the universe. You can say "that's not really choice", and maybe for a particle it isn't, but if your brains are an interactive system with some organized "wholeness" (see below), that character could be expressed as "choosing" (the thinking and weighing, without a predetermined outcome.) In any case, any reader of Hume knows that even the idea of "causality" itself is questionable."
Very intriguing comment which allows for the fact that we seem to make "choices" all the time by redefining really what a choice is--the interactive system of our brain "thinks and weighs", and Bates, seems to suggest comes up with a not predetermined outcome. But I'm still not convinced. I guess this is Smolin's point--if there are not universal laws then choice would exist. . . This certainly fits with "intuition" but intuition seems to be as reliable as Fox news. . .
Many comments posted refuting determinism reference the writer's experience as "proof" of something. This must also be an evolutionarily evolved characteristic to somehow think our individual experience is proof of anything.
What if we were to step up our probability understanding and use this as a means of guestimating our intuition's accuracy? Is that possible?
(How did I get here? well, I wondered and wandered off the path when I was searching for Smolin reviews and ended up at this interesting essay)
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