On 4 February 2014 16:56, <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks for all that. Very interesting. So what sort of implications would > block time have for individual lives. Do they happen only onetime while > their time is being actively blocked in? Or does blocktime exist statically > as the end-to-end story of the universe? >
Block time doesn't have any implications for individual lives. It can't make a difference to everyday life, because obviously it predicts that everyday life will be exactly what we observe it to be (otherwise it could be shown to be false). It would seem that the 4D space-time manifold "exists as the story of the universe". > > I appreciate the construction is the chain of relations, but does anyone > say whether the relations necessarily happen like a domino effect from the > big bang through, just the one time? Or can they get washed through like > waves of an incoming tide? is another version of me happening on the wave > just behind the one I'm on? > This interesting possibility is explored in Barrington Bayley's novel "Collision with Chronos" which I heartily recommend even though as far as we know it doesn't have anything to do with real physics! For things to wash through block time you need an extra time stream. So you move your block universe out to 5D - 3 space and 2 time dimensions. There's no reason to posit this to explain any observed phenomenon. A 4D space-time manifold appears to be sufficient. > > I think what I'm realty asking is what is blocktime giving the world? It's > giving us a deeper vision of reality (if true). But if it is objectively > true, what purpose or utility does it serve, if any? > My experience when I ask something like that is normally puzzlement..."what > do you mean what purpose/utility?' It's an implication of relativity! :o) > Well, it's more an ontological underpinning of relativity, since the whole thing is based around the concept that the universe is a 4D manifold (a warped one in GR). So I guess the puzzlement is similar to if you'd asked "what is the purpose/utility of the big bang, or of evolution?" It sounds like a theological / teleological question. > > But it's strange really. Where are knowledge is strongest, at the core of > our own universe, there is no part of it that does not serve a fundamental > purpose in the workings of physical law. If someone asked what purpose were > served by neutrinos, or dark matter, or gamma rays, gravity....there would > be several interpretations involving some utility in the scheme of things. > > But what happens at the edges..of our theories, of our knowledge, is > completely different. And tightly linked to what action we take. This one > here is in the same class as what takes place with QM. An interpretation. > Both times then, MWI and this time, the result is an - albeit completely > differently configured - sort of translation even from a set of > relations in one universe, to the same relations distributed in a > multiverse-like construction. > It isn't really an interpretation, except insofar as all physics could be called that (I think "model" would be a better term). It's one of the entities postulated by SR and GR, much as (say) mass is. I suppose it has the benefit of being the only view of time that actually makes sense - at least, I've never seen a physical theory that explains time any other way, and it's hard to imagine any other way of explaining it - although presentism expands the scope of the block universe to extra time dimensions, but I don't consider that a good thing. > > Obviously we don't see this as a multiverse in that blocktime happens > along the passage of time we associate with this single universe. But > relative to the old concept of a single version of objects moving through > the passage of time, blocktime is a multiverse-like construction IMHO. > QM posits a block multiverse. > > Guess what we're getting could be objective , or it could be an artefact > of doing something improper, brought about by circumstances involving > invoking a process of interpretation of some sense of an exposed edge of a > theory. > Any idea what? > > Two possibilities > Only one of them has had amazing predictive success, however :-) -- 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.
