On Sunday, August 24, 2025 at 12:40:44 PM UTC-6 John Clark wrote:
On Sun, Aug 24, 2025 at 10:29 AM Alan Grayson <[email protected]> wrote: *>> If you want to understand the nature of time and why it only moves in one direction, the science of thermodynamics can explain half of that puzzle, but only half. If tomorrow is different from today, which by definition it must be, and there are astronomically more ways to be disordered than ordered, then the overwhelming probability will be that tomorrow will be more disordered and have a correspondingly higher entropy than today. BUT **yesterday was also different from today by definition, and it's still true that there are far more ways to be disordered than ordered, so yesterday should also be more disordered and have a correspondingly higher entropy than today. And that is very clearly untrue! * *> You don't seem to like entropy increasing forward and backward in time. Why not? AG* *Because if you're trying to understand why time moves in only one direction but entropy can move in 2 directions then entropy alone is of no help and explaining why time moves in only one direction. That's why you need an axiom that says the Big Bang produced a very low entropy state.* *> One of my axioms is that Something cannot transform into Nothing, and Nothing cannot transform into Something. Do you find this axiom completely ridiculous* *It's not ridiculous, it's just unnecessary because experimental results can be explained without it, and General Relativity would need a complete overhaul because as it is now "conservation of energy" doesn't have a unique meaning because energy doesn't have a unique meaning in GR. And you don't fix something if it's not broken, and as of today there is no evidence that General Relativity is broken. * *It is broken, or let's say incomplete. When energy is lost in the context of red shifting, it can't explain where the energy went (or came from in the case of blue shifting), other than to rely on de facto magic. It seems to me (ISTM) you've calculated and got the answers you want (predicted by GR), so the issue of invoking de facto magic becomes irrelevant. AG* *By contrast, if there's a way to explain the arrow of time without postulating that the universe started out in a very low entropy state nobody has found that explanation yet; if anybody ever does we can drop that axiom because you should never have more axioms then you absolutely require. * *What I don't get is why increasing entropy is necessary, or even related to the arrow of time. AG * * John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* d'a -- 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 view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/c61a701b-8aec-443a-88af-375eed782e34n%40googlegroups.com.
