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Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

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Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#11

Post by perl4ever »

simondedalus wrote: post #9
everdev wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nature of existence" probably encapsulates all of those ideas including time as time seems to be required for a creation/destruction type event.

nature of consciousness is the biggest one IMO, precisely because it doesn't appear to be captured by "nature of existence." we have good physical/mathematical models on hand re: causation, such that we can at least start hypothesizing about what change is, where the universe came from, what if anything differentiates life from other motion, etc. but consciousness is so categorically different that we can't even star…

If you accept that other people are conscious like yourself, it seems like you have accepted the physical origin of consciousness. If you don't accept that the subjective experience of consciousness is just a product of physical events, then how do you avoid viewing yourself as the only conscious entity? You can be a solipsist or not, but you can't have it both ways. Experiencing thoughts from outside yourself is a common experience, but it's generally considered a delusion.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#13

Post by crb002 »

Planck's constant, speed of light travel when you chain across space which Planck himself should have understood if he thought about transmissions of information in series. Curves when gravity pushes/pulls light from straight paths. What questions are there?

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#14

Post by codethief »

perl4ever wrote: post #10
make3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is death misunderstood?

I don't know, but here's some food for thought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortalit...

This is hardly casting doubt on the nature of (human) death. This is purely a question about quantum mechanics, I'd say.

On a side note, I fail to see how the experimenter is supposed to survive with probability 1 in Everett's many-worlds interpretation and thus be able to distinguish the latter from the Copenhagen interpretation. Yes, there will be one world where he survives but in the "vast majority" of worlds he will be dead. (Disregarding for a second that counting how often the world bifurcates in the many-worlds interpretation is a somewhat delicate issue.) So in terms of probabilities, he will still die with absolute certainty as the experiment gets repeated infinitely many times.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#15

Post by make3 »

perl4ever wrote: post #10
make3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is death misunderstood?

I don't know, but here's some food for thought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortalit...

people will really adopt convoluted schemes to convince themselves their supposed eternal soul will survive

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#16

Post by whatshisface »

jfaucett wrote: post #5
pmoriarty wrote: post #2

Not to nitpick, but I'm not sure the nature of time is so indisputably the greatest remaining mystery. The nature of consciousness, life, and death can all certainly give it a run for its money. Incidentally, would anyone happen to have a direct link to a version of this article that could be read without enabling javascript?

Yes. For me the greatest remaining mysteries are more in this order. 1. Nature of Life (we are still nowhere near understanding how it arose or how living organisms work in all their intricate detail). 2. Nature of Consciousness - what is consciousness, how can living matter instantiate it, how can we quantify it, etc? 3. Origin of the Universe 4. Why do we seem so alone in the Universe? 5. Resolving Quantum Mechanic…

I would bump the origin of the universe to the top, because no matter what universe-generating physics you come up with I can always ask, "but what set things up to work that way?" I'd also put consciousness up there, because it's fundamentally distinct from measurable things. Consciousness and the origin of the universe get place 0, and the others all get place 1 because they're solvable but we don't know in which order.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#17

Post by 8bitsrule »

everdev wrote: post #4
pmoriarty wrote: post #2

Not to nitpick, but I'm not sure the nature of time is so indisputably the greatest remaining mystery. The nature of consciousness, life, and death can all certainly give it a run for its money. Incidentally, would anyone happen to have a direct link to a version of this article that could be read without enabling javascript?

"Nature of existence" probably encapsulates all of those ideas including time as time seems to be required for a creation/destruction type event.

Time is a convenient measure of relative energy. (Just as the length of a king's ulna once defined distance.)

IMO, 'creation/destruction' is another convenient idea, invented because our minds are boggled by 'eternity'.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#18

Post by ballenf »

Royal Institute presentation that I really enjoyed. Has some visual aspects, but can be mostly listened to while driving:

The Physics and Philosophy of Time - with Carlo Rovelli

> From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Carlo Rovelli brings together physics, philosophy and art to unravel the mystery of time.

https://youtu.be/-6rWqJhDv7M

Posted 13 June 2018, recorded 30 April 2018.

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#19

Post by simondedalus »

perl4ever wrote: post #11
simondedalus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nature of consciousness is the biggest one IMO, precisely because it doesn't appear to be captured by "nature of existence." we have good physical/mathematical models on hand re: causation, such that we can at least start hypothesizing about what change is, where the universe came from, what if anything differentiates life from other motion, etc. but consciousness is so categorically different that we can't even star…

If you accept that other people are conscious like yourself, it seems like you have accepted the physical origin of consciousness. If you don't accept that the subjective experience of consciousness is just a product of physical events, then how do you avoid viewing yourself as the only conscious entity? You can be a solipsist or not, but you can't have it both ways. Experiencing thoughts from outside yourself is a c…

there's a gulf as big as the ocean between acceptance and explanation. we have good reason to assume that consciousness (whatever it is) depends on the physical. great, but what is it?

Re: Carlo Rovelli on the ‘greatest remaining mystery’: The nature of time

#20

Post by _8j50 »

I think I'm a simpleton because I could never imagine time being it's own thing. I see time as simply the amount of change in reality we can perceptually sample. Much like how an object in motion will continue in it's motion until it meets resistance,reality in my opinion is in continuous motion that has yet to meet resistance. Time (imo)is our measure of this change divided by our ability to sample it(where this ability could be second,minute,etc...)

Again,that's my opinion as a layman. I've always wondered why time was the focus, when I at least have been more curious about universal change. Why is everything in motion? and how is everything universally connected to where it changes at the same rate?

Maybe there's already plenty of work on this and I'm being ignorant(apologies if so).

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