"Manifesting" -- maybe those girls that are into it, are right ;)
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
#72As a non-physicist I'm not sure I'm interpreting this correctly. Does this essentially mean that all states in time already exist and our consciousness is just traversing this 4D space in one direction on the time axis? If so, does that mean that the big bang could actually be the end of the universe and we're just experiencing time in "reverse" toward an initial starting state that we perceive as the future?
While most laws of physics may be time symmetric, the laws of thermodynamics are not - wherever there is a gradient in entropy.
In very informal terms, anywhere where there is very low entropy (higher order), any direction away from that will likely (to the point of certainty) be in a direction of higher entropy (lower order).
For instance, if you have a jar of red & blue marble, with high order (such as perfect alternating layers of red vs blue marbles) then any disturbances (such as shaking the jar, reaching in and moving a handful, …) will almost certainly reduce order.
And no practical amount of shaking the jar will ever return the marbles to a high order state again.
Even though any close up video of the marbles being jostled will reveal the same physical properties and behavior for the marbles, whether played forward or backward.
So at the individual marble level, laws are symmetric.
But at the jar of marbles level, one direction of time looks very different than the other.
We, and the particles that make us, and our environment, are the marbles whose configuration is more disordered the further in time we get from the Big Bang.
So we perceive the time direction away from the Big Bang as the future, toward the Big Bang as the past.
And the statistical “force” of increasing entropy provides the useful energy we use to survive, learn, create useful islands of order, in the greater sea of increasing disorder.
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#73I used to believe that the world is lazily loaded. That means the first moment I see something (e.g., a world map) is the point where all the past history to consistently explain the observation gets "locked in".
That was proven not to be the case:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-n...
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like this concept. Is there any sci-fi based on this premise?
Reminds me of the Tralfamadorians from Slaughterhouse-Five. They are able to see in four dimensions so humans appear as fetuses at one end of the four-dimensional person and dying at the other end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tralfamadore#Slaughterhouse-Fi...
Interesting concept. I wonder if it's compared with spatial 3D space, then how large would the 4th dimension of time be if it were to fit the timeline of a human lifespan
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#75As a non-physicist I'm not sure I'm interpreting this correctly. Does this essentially mean that all states in time already exist and our consciousness is just traversing this 4D space in one direction on the time axis? If so, does that mean that the big bang could actually be the end of the universe and we're just experiencing time in "reverse" toward an initial starting state that we perceive as the future?
I like this concept. Is there any sci-fi based on this premise?
Greg Egan - A Clockwork Rocket (book 1 of the Orthogonal trilogoy, all three of which I recommend)
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#76As a non-physicist I'm not sure I'm interpreting this correctly. Does this essentially mean that all states in time already exist and our consciousness is just traversing this 4D space in one direction on the time axis? If so, does that mean that the big bang could actually be the end of the universe and we're just experiencing time in "reverse" toward an initial starting state that we perceive as the future?
You can wish yourself well in the past. I believe this works.
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#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.
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue that factual past is unprovable without some sort of visual evidence, and even that can be manipulated...especially with AI on the rise. The problem with your point is that EVERYTHING is parsed through your perception, and you can just as easily make the point with the same logic that you can't prove that what you are currently experiencing is present reality. What actually happened is unprovable withou…
Given that people can hallucinate/make up false memories, you sure you ate a grapefruit for breakfast? So sure that regardless of what evidence you are presented, you'd be certain that you ate a grapefruit. Even if: - I showed you videoproof that you were eating a sandwich for breakfast - we had all of your family say they were having breakfast with you and saw you eating a sandwich - a doctor came and said "I analyz…
Given that, there are two, and only two possibilities:
Either
-my perception of reality is inherently opposed to objective reality
or
-the world, for some reason, is gaslighting me into thinking I ate a sandwich and the objective reality is that I ate a grapefruit.
See, my problem with this "philosophy" that objective reality does not exist is that it enables abusers. Have you ever seen the movie Gaslight? Its a classic. This poor woman lives with an abuser...someone who is committed to making her think that she is crazy. He contradicts everything she does and says, sets up evidence to objectively prove that she only imagined herself doing it, and keeps her under his thumb through those means. In the end of the movie, its revealed that none of the evidence is real and that she is sane. To combat against these types of people, its important to be sure of your own reality and only change if evidence is overwhelmingly pointed in the opposite direction. Even then, question these changes in belief heavily. Otherwise, you will believe just about anything anyone says.
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#79As a non-physicist I'm not sure I'm interpreting this correctly. Does this essentially mean that all states in time already exist and our consciousness is just traversing this 4D space in one direction on the time axis? If so, does that mean that the big bang could actually be the end of the universe and we're just experiencing time in "reverse" toward an initial starting state that we perceive as the future?
Must it be "the" time axis? Might it instead be "our" time vector? Maybe there are alien civilizations right next door which we fail to recognize as life because our time vector is orthogonal to theirs. Instead they're just gamma ray bursts to us.
Re: A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past
#80As a non-physicist I'm not sure I'm interpreting this correctly. Does this essentially mean that all states in time already exist and our consciousness is just traversing this 4D space in one direction on the time axis? If so, does that mean that the big bang could actually be the end of the universe and we're just experiencing time in "reverse" toward an initial starting state that we perceive as the future?
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