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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

#281

Post by Barrin92 »

bsder wrote: post #165
jonny_eh wrote: post #77

> 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.

> Slow down. Assuming that time moves in one direction is not comparable to geocentrism. Why not? The "arrow of time" almost always requires thermodynamic arguments. And that requires a concentration of "low entropy" to move toward "high entropy". Which, by definition, are "boundary conditions" and not a fundamental part of your physical rules. If, for example, your universe is entropically uniform, is there an "arro…

>If, for example, your universe is entropically uniform, is there an "arrow of time"?

Nope, and there's a really great 'physics slam' about this, sadly only in German but auto-translate seems fine. https://youtu.be/z64PJwXy--8?t=519

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

#282

Post by tshaddox »

photochemsyn wrote: post #164
0xBABAD00C wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the analogy, per Sean Carroll [1]: - There seems to be a special direction "down", where things fall by default, because we live in the vicinity of an influential object in space, called Earth - There seems to be a special direction "forward in time", where things happen by default, because we live in the vicinity of an influential event in time, called Big Bang If we had stuck to the local Earth context and g…

It's difficult to see how such a hypothesis could be tested either experimentally or observationally. Sounds more like metaphysics? Stars shine until they run out of fuel, and the age of a star - the status of its fuel, the buildup of fusion products - happens as time passes. Life on planets taps into the flow of sunlight from the star (and/or the flow of heat and chemical energy from the a hot planetary core) to gen…

> It's difficult to see how such a hypothesis could be tested either experimentally or observationally. Sounds more like metaphysics?

Sure, but some claims which cannot be tested experimentally or observationally are nonetheless important. For example, the claim “it’s important that scientific hypotheses be tested experimentally or observationally.”

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

#284

Post by yesenadam »

ChancyChance wrote: post #195

It's an article about QM. On Vice. About a QM thought experiment. On Vice. Why would there be any expectation of scientific rigor whatsoever? "retrocausality, may seem like science fiction grist at first glance" Stop there, vice.

The main thing I didn't like about it was pretending it's all scientists involved and not philosophers. The article talks mostly about Huw Price—and from phrases like "Scientists, including Price", you'd think he's a scientist. He's an Australian philosopher. He was my professor for a couple of philosophy-of-science-related courses at Sydney Uni 20 years ago. He started the Centre for Time there I believe. He's a great lecturer—a very impressive mind and a nice guy. Not a scientist though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huw_Price

https://prce.hu/w/

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

#285

Post by mnd999 »

ChancyChance wrote: post #195

It's an article about QM. On Vice. About a QM thought experiment. On Vice. Why would there be any expectation of scientific rigor whatsoever? "retrocausality, may seem like science fiction grist at first glance" Stop there, vice.

Couldn’t read it anyway because of the ridiculously intrusive ads.

Sure, journalists need ads to make money but this way too much.

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

#286

Post by matthewdgreen »

felipeerias wrote: post #227
prerok wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I have no idea what you are talking about. Certainly, there is merit in practical calculations when we are all this close to the ground where it all seems either flat or at least geo-centric. But... the movements of the other planets in our solar system were really strange to model in geo-centric models. In short, each of the other planets should rotate around an imaginary axis to compensate for their c…

In the XVII century, the alternative to heliocentrism was Tycho Brahe’s model: Earth at the centre, the Sun and Moon and the stars revolving around it, and the other planets revolving around the Sun. It was basically equivalent to the heliocentric model with a different coordinate system. It’s important to understand that astronomers chose it because it really seemed to provide a better explanation given the knowledg…

There was even more to it. Cosmographers of the time were willing to consider the possibility that the stars were very far away, far enough to make parallax changes undetectable. The main stumbling point was that they assumed the stars would be similar in size to our sun, but based on naked-eye and telescopic measurements of the diameter of the “disk” of the stars (many taken by Brahe and Galileo themselves), any solution that explained the parallax effect would have resulted in enormous stars, and this they couldn’t accept. Eventually the measurements turned out to be an optical artifact.

I read an entire book on this subject, published by a Catholic press. There seems to be an active interest in the Catholic science establishment in rehabilitating some of Galileo’s critics.

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

#287

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

yyyk wrote: post #150
jonny_eh wrote: post #77

> 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.

The comparison is bad all around. Geocentrism actually had decent reasoning and was not a superstition. It's just we couldn't see the parallax with then-current instruments. As soon as instruments allowed, humanity changed rather quickly.

We've always been able to detect that some celestial objects appear to move backwards at times.

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

#288

Post by hinkley »

ChancyChance wrote: post #195

It's an article about QM. On Vice. About a QM thought experiment. On Vice. Why would there be any expectation of scientific rigor whatsoever? "retrocausality, may seem like science fiction grist at first glance" Stop there, vice.

They cite a preceding article, though I've no idea if 'the conversation' has any more gravitas (literally first I've heard of it).

https://theconversation.com/quantum-mechanics-how-the-future...

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

#289

Post by edgyquant »

Ygg2 wrote: post #130
weknowbetter wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing actually moves according to Zeno's paradox.

Zeno's paradox assumes space is infinitely divisible.

can you profe to me that the physical space between everything isn’t?
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