Dear LizR, Umm, I thought that I wrote up a semi-technical argument against the block universe concept. Maybe you didn't see it. I will try again to make the case using your remarks below.
On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 3:18 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > On 26 January 2014 08:54, Stephen Paul King <[email protected]>wrote: > >> >>> Either way the concept of a block universe is one of the most mind >>> blowingly moronic ideas anyone ever came up with. It reminds me of the >>> ideas me and my buddies used to come up with in Jr. High School just for >>> laughs but which no one was dumb enough to ever take seriously. >>> >> >> But people actually do, very smart people too! >> >>> > Even I do, so not just smart people. > > Stephen, you have to provide some reason why the block universe concept, > which was used in both Newtonian and Einsteinian physics, is wrong. > We now know, given the weight of evidence in support of QM, that Newtonian physics is "wrong", even thought it can be used for making approximations when we can safely assume that the uncertainty principle and relativistic effects are negligible. There are metaphysical assumptions built into Newtonian physics, many of which survive into GR. One of these assumptions is that objects have properties innately, completely independent of whether or not those properties are measured. We know that this assumption is nonsense and should not be used in our reasoning. I hope that I don't need to duplicate what one can find in any good article by, say Jeremy Butterfield, about the implications of Bell's theorem. See, for example, http://philoscience.unibe.ch/documents/physics/Butterfield1992/Butterfield1992.pdffor yourself. > Your attempt using QM misused the concept of simultaneity, and in any case > QM works fine it you make the block universe into a block multiverse - all > the quantum probabilities come out correctly, as per Everett, from a > deterministic evolution. > Not at all! A block universe is a static 4 dimensional object. Am I mistaken in this belief? A "block multiverse" is a word salad, IMHO. > The fact that it's a block Hilbert space (or whatever) doesn't stop time > evolution being mapped along a dimension. That is all 'block universe" > means - that time is a dimension. > Ah! How exactly does this "mapping of time evolution" occur? If a block universe is all that exists, what is doing the action of mapping energy, spin, charge, etc. measures to a sequence of points that can be faithfully represented as a "dimension"? Trajectories of objects are curves in a space, not "dimensions", at best they are partially ordered sets of "events" that have properties associated with them. The association is done using tangent spaces... I digress. The idea that time is a dimension has been repeatedly been shown to be problematic by people such as Chris Isham and David Albert, I didn't just make up that it is a problem. > > There is no problem with change in a block universe. Change occurred in > the past, which is a good example of a block universe. No one has refuted > that argument as yet, and in fact they can't - the past clearly *is* a > block universe, by all the definitions given, one that extends from the big > bang to just before the present. The logical inference is that it continues > through the present into the future, and our feeling that time "flows" is > an illusion (no one has ever explained what that metaphor means, by the > way, except with reference to a second time stream - but that just moves > the block universe from 4D to 5D). > I disagree. We forget that when we think of a 4d object we are involved with it, we are associating change with features of it. They are not "in it". Our thinking using this idea only re-enforces the mistake that we can observe things in a way that is 1) faithful to what is "actually out there" and 2) that our observations are passive. No work is required nor disturbance of the observed occurs. This thinking is wrong. > > The argument from incredulity has never worked very well in science. > Could you point to an example of an "argument from incredulity" so that I might understand how you are claiming that my arguement is such? > A lot of things that people couldn't get their heads around turned out to > be true. But for most physicists the BU isn't one of them, it has long been > understood and accepted. Anyone who draws a graph with a time axis > implicitly accepts it. Anyone who describes time as a dimension implicitly > accepts it. No sensible alternative has ever been proposed. Saying that "it > doesn't explain becoming" is disproved with reference to the past - clearly > things became other things in the past. > I have proposed a sketch of an alternative, it may not be sensible yet... I welcome questions... > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/TBc_y2MZV5c/unsubscribe. > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- Kindest Regards, Stephen Paul King Senior Researcher Mobile: (864) 567-3099 [email protected] http://www.provensecure.us/ “This message (including any attachments) is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is non-public, proprietary, privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law or may be constituted as attorney work product. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, notify sender immediately and delete this message immediately.” -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
