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A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

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Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is because in both cases, you can work out that you'll never make an observation that really proves it one way or the other, but you might come up with some laws of physics that are more conveniently expressed in one way than another. They're both ultimately questions about your coordinate system, and in fact it is easier to invert time than it is to work out how everything's supposed to function in a rotating+sun…

If we reverse time and this implies running everything backwards in physics, do we include gravity in the set of things that are reversed? Then everything would fly off the face of the earth in reverse-time.

Reversing time on an attracting force still gives you an attractive force. Velocity is reversed, but acceleration isn't.

Imagine a ball being thrown up and then falling down, in a parabola. Reversing a video of that still gives you a video of a ball in a normal parabola trajectory.

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t have a time symmetric model of wave function collapse, to my knowledge. If I’m wrong I’d be super curious to read about it

Wouldn't many worlds be time symmetric?

Yes, but it’s not a model of wave function collapse. Its very premise is that there is no wave function collapse.

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#124
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was proven not to be the case: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-n...

Sounds like that link supports the idea?

Only if you didn't read the article, though I agree that the scientists' choice of terminology is confusing for regular people.

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can wish yourself well in the past. I believe this works.

I think of personal growth as a conspiracy between present me, past me, and future me. Where our motives are aligned, good things happen.

Past me leaves future me notes.

I often find them insightful, especially if I am reviewing them again years later.

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we reverse time and this implies running everything backwards in physics, do we include gravity in the set of things that are reversed? Then everything would fly off the face of the earth in reverse-time.

Reversing time on an attracting force still gives you an attractive force. Velocity is reversed, but acceleration isn't. Imagine a ball being thrown up and then falling down, in a parabola. Reversing a video of that still gives you a video of a ball in a normal parabola trajectory.

[deleted]

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#128

Interesting because it messes with the school of thought that everything is determined already and we're just following a sequence of actions that arise from the starting conditions of the universe. If causality is broken then maybe we have free will?

The compatibilist view is that there is no contradiction between free will and determinism, because free will refers to macro states and determinism refers to micro states.

In addition, in the many-worlds view of quantum mechanics, we don’t follow just a single sequence of events, but all physically possible sequences of events, where the points where sequences branch off each other can correspond to different decisions we “freely” took. Meaning, when we make a decision, all applicable options of choice will become actual reality.

Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past

#129

> It may seem eerie to our brains, which process events sequentially, but the history of science is also littered with examples of human biases leading to bad conclusions, such as the Earth-centric model of the solar system. Slow down. Assuming that time moves in one direction is not comparable to geocentrism.

It's comparable to GPT4 being shocked that we can read backwards!
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