• bendak@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    the only thing in the universe that requires linear time in one direction is consciousness. So we only experience time like that. Everything else really doesn’t give a shit about time

    Is that really true? I feel like a lot of things thay are not consciousness still have causal relationships.

    A simple example is combustion. It needs fuel and an ignition. It produces light and heat that transfer energy to its environment. This couldn’t work in reverse or independent of time.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      This couldn’t work in reverse or independent of time.

      No, we can’t make it happen in reverse in the perception of time we need to have consciousness.

      It’s not that everything has to confirm to how we experience it. It’s that we can only observe things in the way we can experience it.

      Now, while Penrose finished up Einsteins work on relativity, I get most people do t know who he is.

      But even Einstein himself disagreed with you before Penrose finished it.

      Einstein’s statement was not merely an attempt at consolation. Many physicists argue that Einstein’s position is implied by the two pillars of modern physics: Einstein’s masterpiece, the general theory of relativity, and the Standard Model of particle physics. The laws that underlie these theories are time-symmetric — that is, the physics they describe is the same, regardless of whether the variable called “time” increases or decreases. Moreover, they say nothing at all about the point we call “now” — a special moment (or so it appears) for us, but seemingly undefined when we talk about the universe at large. The resulting timeless cosmos is sometimes called a “block universe” — a static block of space-time in which any flow of time, or passage through it, must presumably be a mental construct or other illusion.

      https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-debate-over-the-physics-of-time-20160719/

      Serious, if you’re saying time is constant and can only flow in one direction, you’re arguing with the literal foundation physics is built on.

      Time just isn’t a necessity for anything except consciousness.

      This is crazy complicated though, and I’m not even going to pretend to understand all of it. So it’s hard to explain. I’d suggest a lot of reading if you want to know more rather than me try to summarize.

      But yes, if you do the actual physics of something being set on fire, the equation works just fine both ways

      Instead of saying it can only work one way, it’s more accurate to say a consciousness can only experience it one way. Which might not even be technically true.

      A self contained universe with fixed energy and infite time will eventually see a pile of ash turned into an apple. And it wouldn’t violate a damn thing with our system of physics.

      Edit:

      Specifically for causal stuff:

      Show a person a causaul relationship out of order (acb rather than abc) and they’re report that they observed abc. The conscious mind can’t rationalize acb, so it overrides it

      This may very well be happening constantly and we just don’t even know it.

      All this stuff is incredibly interesting, it’s just even harder to wrap our minds around, because our minds may have evolved to handle all this stuff as a background process. Because consciousness needs to experience stuff in abc order to make any sense out of anything.

      It’s a real mindfuck, literally. There’s a very good chance we’ll never be able to understand because we’re conscious

      • TheChurn@kbin.social
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        8 months ago

        Beyond consciousness, the second law of thermodynamics also implies the presence and direction of time. In fact, it is sometimes called the Arrow of Time as it appears to direct physical processes to happen preferentially in the direction that increases entropy.

        A self contained universe with fixed energy and infite time will eventually see a pile of ash turned into an apple. And it wouldn’t violate a damn thing with our system of physics.

        This occuring spontaneously would indeed violate the 2nd law. This is a core disagreement between classical thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, which seems to re-derive classical thermo from probabilistic arguments over system states.

        I feel it also warrants stating that Penrose’s theory is not widely accepted, has yet to be tested, and is based mostly on an argument to elegance - it “seems weird” for their to be uncountably infinite parallel timelines spawning at every instant. It is far too soon for it to be taken as fact.

      • Vendificate@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Einstein abandoned the static universe theory when we confirmed expansion. Time is absolutely not constant but it is unidirectional according to Einstein himself after the Hubble Telescope verified that everything everywhere is expanding. The radius of the universe depends on time.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Einstein abandoned the static universe theory when we confirmed expansion

          If I showed you a 1 second video of an apple falling from a tree, would you say the apple would continue to fall forever? After all, the only evidence you have is the apple falling.

          Penrose, (who again was the one to finish up and prove a lot of Einstein 's work btw) believes we’re just looking at a very tiny piece of the puzzle. And Big Bangs are cyclical.

          https://bigthink.com/hard-science/black-holes-prove-the-universe-keeps-exploding-claims-physicist/

          https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/36137

          Personally I think it’s more like fireworks going off in the sky all over than one single repeating big bang.

          But Penrose literally just won a Novel a few years ago. He’s literally the person most qualified to talk about this. And he’s been doing it for decades. Right after he finished up Einsteins work.

          What you’re doing is like insisting the sun orbits Earth because that’s what accepted.

          Penrose is literally bleeding edge physics. Just because he hasn’t convinced everyone he’s right yet, doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Science moves pretty fucking slow, someone next generation will.probably price Penrose right, just like Einstein wasn’t proven right until Penrose and Hawking showed up to do it while working together.

          It’s literally how science works man…