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FQXi FORUM
CATEGORY: Essay Contest
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TOPIC: Flowing with a Frozen River by Cristinel Stoica
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The voting deadline has been extended to January 1, 2009.
Please vote for your favorite essays soon!
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Essay Abstract
For discussing foundational questions, like the nature of time, we need a framework. Ideally, this would be provided by a Theory of Everything. Until the discovery of TOE, I propose a mathematical structure that can be used to represent theories of Physics in a unitary framework, similarly to the way in which the group actions represent various geometries in the Erlangen program. This construction extracts essential aspects of various theories, concerning the space, time, physical law, and causality. I introduce a causal structure and apply it to models of time and time travel. I propose an argument, based on causality, for the initial singularity of the Universe, and for the physical reality of gauge potentials (all three related in an unexpected way). Then, I discuss a new version of Quantum Mechanics, that replaces the discontinuous wavefunction collapse with delayed initial conditions, and has significant implications on time and causality. After presenting the arrows of time as emergent phenomena, I discuss the mind and its perception of time as flowing, in the context of the block spacetime. Then, I apply the previous observations to analyze the possibility of free-will. I propose a hypothesis about the free-will, and a crucial experiment that can confirm or reject it.
Author Bio
Cristi Stoica has a master’s degree in Differential Geometry with applications in Physics, and is enrolled in a doctoral program on the Fiber Bundle Geometry. He works as a computer programmer in the field of Computational Geometry. The present essay is based on the author’s independent research.
Download Essay PDF File
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Hello Cristi,
Loved your essay!
Love your introduction which establishes the duality of time--"As our understanding of the Universe increases, the
time becomes more and more geometric. Initially be-
ing only a parameter in the equations of Mathematical
Physics, it proved to be more related to the space than we
expected, mixing together in the structure named space-
time. With the Theory of Relativity, these geometric
aspects started to suggest the image of a frozen time {
the block time { named frozen river" by Brian Greene.
On the other hand, we have the acute feeling that the
time is °owing, that we are subjects experiencing this
°ow, and that we are free to choose our experiences. If
the time is really frozen, then why do we perceive it as
°owing? Is the frozen time idea compatible with the
indeterminism? Is Physics compatible with the idea of
free-will? But what is this free-will? I will present some
thoughts about these questions, mainly based on my re-
search [1{4]."
This duality is resolved, along with all the other dualities, via Moving Dimensions Theory.
The block universe is a human construct, and the scene of the crime, where they froze the river of time, is where physicists glossed over the fact that time is not the fourth dimension, but rather x4=ict.
I take it you did not encounter MDT before writing your essay: http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238 --Time as an Emergent Phenomenon: Traveling Back to the Heroic Age of Physics by Elliot McGucken
"In his 1912 Manuscript on Relativity, Einstein never stated that time is the fourth dimension, but rather he wrote x4 = ict. The fourth dimension is not time, but ict. Despite this, prominent physicists have oft equated time and the fourth dimension, leading to un-resolvable paradoxes and confusion regarding time’s physical nature, as physicists mistakenly projected properties of the three spatial dimensions onto a time dimension, resulting in curious concepts including frozen time and block universes in which the past and future are omni-present, thusly denying free will, while implying the possibility of time travel into the past, which visitors from the future have yet to verify. Beginning with the postulate that time is an emergent phenomenon resulting from a fourth dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, diverse phenomena from relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics are accounted for. Time dilation, the equivalence of mass and energy, nonlocality, wave-particle duality, and entropy are shown to arise from a common, deeper physical reality expressed with dx4/dt=ic. This postulate and equation, from which Einstein’s relativity is derived, presents a fundamental model accounting for the emergence of time, the constant velocity of light, the fact that the maximum velocity is c, and the fact that c is independent of the velocity of the source, as photons are but matter surfing a fourth expanding dimension. In general relativity, Einstein showed that the dimensions themselves could bend, curve, and move. The present theory extends this principle, postulating that the fourth dimension is moving independently of the three spatial dimensions, distributing locality and fathering time. This physical model underlies and accounts for time in quantum mechanics, relativity, and statistical mechanics, as well as entropy, the universe’s expansion, and time’s arrows and assyemtries."
--http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238
MDT allows the block universe (a human construct/tool) to coexist peacefully with time and all its arrows and assymetries, which are physically real.
Hope MDT helps you in your future research/contemplations!
You write, "The thermodynamic time arrow is an emergent law. It does not arise from the physical laws, rather from the highly improbable initial conditions of the Universe. The Universe evolves naturally to more probable states, and
entropy increases."
MDT is the mechanism that powers entropy.
Best,
Dr. E :)
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Hello Dr. E,
I am glad that you are interested in my research.
Thank you for your nice words. I look forward to read your essay.
Regards,
Cristi
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Dear Narendra,
Thank you for your kind thoughts. About entering late in the contest, I will do my best to read and appreciate all the essays, to learn from them, and from the comments I will receive.
Best wishes,
Cristi Stoica
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Dear Cristi,
Very best wishes to you. It certainly will be educative for you to go through the essays but also the posts on them. Yoour own essay and posts on other essays are the contributions i appreciate. Wish you all success in your future career!
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Dear Narendra,
You said “your view is restricted [...], confined to computation and geometry, your field of interest and activity”.
But is there anything else but computation and geometry?
Surely I’m joking. Although I trained myself to let aside my ego, and to learn from critical comments, I have to answer to this observation, because it may hurt the way my work is perceived.
As a scientist, I try to formalize my ideas. Let me explain this in your reference frame (I saw that in your essay you quote Patanjali).
According to him, the knowledge comes from 1) experience, 2) authorized persons, and 3) logical deduction. Experience is a) subjective or b) objective. In constructing a theory, there are some steps. The first is the creation of the hypothesis, which is based mostly on 1) and 2). Then, the theory must be formalized, corresponding to step 3). We then submit it to peers, which try mostly to test our theory by applying 1 b) (objective experience), and 3) (logical deduction). This is according to Karl Popper; Thomas Kuhn on the other hand, suggests that 2) (which extend to authorized paradigms) still weights much in the acceptance of new theories.
The differential geometry and computation are not a limitation. I used them at purpose, to formalize my ideas. These ideas go beyond geometry and computation, and are not limited by them, exactly as Patanjali’s ideas are not limited by the Sanskrit language.
Cristi Stoica
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- As your 'Geometry' is just computation or information (see Gunn Quznetsov on this forum) you could as well say 'Is there anything else than computation?' Cristi Stoica.
- I see you have a master in 'differential Geometry': God damn it! What is DIFFERENTIAL Geometry? This is Arithmetics! The problem of Geometry is: 'Where is the Unity of matter -sphera for instance- coming from?
The arrow of Time and the wave function are not 'emergent phenomena' as you say, they are just very very old ideas that are puting you under water.
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Dear F. Le Rouge,
Thanks for your observations.
I am not using the term “emergence” in a fundamentally reductionistic way. The reductionist “emergence” said that “this” occurred from “that” and it is caused by “that” only. The sense I use is that “this” is constructed over “that” by adding only additional rules, and no additional elementary objects. I wouldn’t say that music can be reduced to musical notes, for instance.
If you want to be reductionist in this manner, you may say “God damn it! What is DIFFERENTIAL Geometry? This is Arithmetics!”. But you are wrong. DG is arithmetic at most as we are a bunch of atoms.
Best wishes,
Cristi Stoica
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Dear Cristi,
I have enjoyed going through your essay. When i used the term 'restricted', it was not a criticism of your approach.It is just that one needs to keep the broadest vision while contemplating about a problem. his helps one get to know the dominating or most significant factors that are playing the role in a process we wish to understand. Variables are to be kept minimum but at the same time we need to forget not any variable that may be significant. To me Time is an important concept , as the entire Physics is all about motion of one or the other kind. The change of position with time just can't be replaced with any other alternative. However, my queries arisere. its linearity and scaling! What may happen if the 'c' is not a constant'. The realtion x4 = ict then assumes special significance. Similarly, E = mc^2 faces questions re. the concept of Energy. In my essay, i have discussed the early universe and the consequence of marked shift of the value of 'c' to be on higher side for the light coming from source 12 billion years away! How would your attempt take care of such possibilities?
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Dear Narendra,
Thank you for reading my essay, and for clarifying your position. I will post on your discussion thread my answer to the interesting question you raise about the speed of light, since it is not related to my essay, but rather to your inquiries.
Best wishes,
Cristi Stoica
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This is about Music indeed. Symmetry, Infinity and Differential are coming from music and sound phenomenon.
Music as well as the Looney Tunes gives the illusion of Time and the binary structure of Algebraic Geometry is included. If I was not afraid by your irony I would tell you that Riemann’s non-Euclidian ‘Geometry’ as he says makes me think about a saxophone.
The opposition between Geometry and Algebraic Geometry was still there in Greek Science six centuries B.-C. and may be before. And when Algebraic Geometry triumphated in History on Geometry, it was always linked with the triumph of Music. European XVIIth is a good recent example of that.
Although he is living in a musical epoch, P. Picasso after the event can be seen as a materialist and a geometrician against subtle poetry of some impressionist painters before him.
About ‘free-will’ idea at least that you seem to estimate as much as I do: what do you think about G. Vico (‘New Science’ – 1725) opinion? As History is made by people contrary to Nature that is made by God, Vico is suggesting to study Science History to avoid misunderstandings. I personally think that this immersed idea is not that bad.
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Dear Cristinel,
I think that mathematics is an increasingly crucial tool in the human aim of understands the universe. This is much truer because other more physical methods such as observation and experimentation are more difficult to perform each time; men are reaching its limits in these aspects. This is one of the arguments I take in my essay to argue on the convenience of a machine such as “simuverses” for calculating places, times and events not reachable by other means. Then, to have a deep knowledge of physic phenomena and to have the appropriated mathematical tool will be both invaluable and unavoidable.
Yours seems to be an in deep effort to manage an ideal tool. I am not able to criticize it more technically.
Congrats,
Venerando.
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Dear Venerando,
Thanks for your beautiful comments. Mathematics is, in a way, similar to your passion, Science-Fiction. In both, the author takes several ideas, and then develops them to the extreme, constructing, in the imagination, an entire world, with its own logic. Only that Science-Fiction has the difficult task to express important and difficult problems to the reader, to ask deep questions, under an entertaining form. Both Science-Fiction and mathematics can construct worlds that someday will become real, or that may remain forever a dream.
Best regards,
Cristi Stoica
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Noroc, Cristi! Felicitari pt. eseu, l-am citit cu mare interes.
"The thermodynamic time arrow is an emergent law. It doesn not arise from the physical laws, rather from the highlt improbable initial conditions of the Universe. The Universe evolves naturally to more probable states, and entropy increases.
The thermodynamic arrow is at the origin of the psychological time arrow: remembering the past is a thermodynamically irreversible process."
Excellent passage. Indeed, evolution as we understand it, is nothing but the direction towards probable states. It's either that or "nothing".
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Dear Bogdan,
Thank you for your interest in reading my essay, and for the appreciation. I look forward to read yours too.
Good luck,
Cristi Stoica
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Dear reader,
I decided to add several observations about the ideas in my essay on this forum. I was motivated by the impression that on these posts is preferred a particular subject, which is not the main idea of my article, being just a more or less known part of my larger argumentation. I will not blame the reader for missing my main points, because I am fully aware that it is my responsibility to make them clear. I tried in this essay to concentrate some of my ideas in less than 5000 words, which was a difficult task. Although this contest is a good opportunity to propose them, I don’t consider appropriate to spread my ideas on other contestant’s threads. These threads should be for discussing other contestants’ ideas. My purpose is to submit these ideas to the critical review of other researchers, and this is a good opportunity for doing so.
I will use my own thread to present them.
Cristi Stoica
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1. A mathematical framework for foundational discussions
Discussing about foundational things like time, space, physical law, causality, requires a framework, for example a theory of everything. In waiting for such a ToE, I propose a mathematical structure which I consider general enough to support such discussions and reasoning, without assuming the final form of the ToE. We can discuss at an abstract level, but in concrete terms, which, in my attempt, are mathematical. I consider this a feature, because anyway physicists are trying to move the discussions on mathematical realm.
To understand my approach, think at the geometries of the XVIII century. Klein managed, at the Erlangen program, to put all of them in the form of a set, endowed with transformations. The properties studied by each geometry are in fact defined as the invariants of the corresponding transformation (symmetry) group. My idea is much larger than that, generalizing the geometry such that it contains in a nontrivial way each theory of Physics. In http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00004355/ I present largely this World Theory, and show that it can be particularized on the currently available theories.
One important issue is that of causality, and I tried to define it in a general way, in the framework of the World Theory I proposed. I generalized it to local causality, in order to provide a basis for discussing branching and cyclic times, and to provide a mathematical framework for discussing the time travel and what appear to be paradoxes related to it.
Cristi Stoica
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2. The Strong Causality Principle
I propose a principle requiring the initial data to be independent in each point on the data at other points. This SCP is not respected by an important class of PDE in Mathematical Physics. I showed that this principle can be respected if:
A. The Universe started with a particular type of singularity. This argument is an alternative to the Singularity Theorems discovered by Penrose and Hawking. I believe that my approach is based on fewer hypotheses, and it arises naturally as a consequence of the SCP.
B. An alternative solution is to consider the Maxwell and Yang-Mills potentials as having physical reality, rather than the corresponding fields, as it was believed before Aharanov and Bohm proposed their celebrated experiment.
Cristi Stoica
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3. The Smooth Quantum Mechanics
Although it is not stated in my essay, in the World Theory I introduced a way to select the matter field, which generalizes the standard PDE + initial/boundary conditions approach. My way also emphasizes the idea that the initial conditions should be made invariant on the initial hypersurface and the particular values of the fields, when restricted to that hypersurface.
Starting with this idea, I realized that the discontinuous collapse in Quantum Mechanics can be eliminated, if we replace it with appropriate initial conditions for the evolution equations. In order for this mechanism to work, we cannot limit ourselves to the observed system. But, if the apparatus used in the previous measurement is taken into consideration, it can supply the free parameters required for the next measurement.
Because the initial conditions used in this solution converged towards the eigenstates of the observable, I decide to name them “delayed initial conditions” (as a reference to the well-known idea of delayed-choice experiment).
Consequently, the Smooth Quantum Mechanics allows new measurements of the same system, without requiring to discontinuous jumps. It is a deterministic theory, but doesn’t contradict the free-will, as it is usually believed in other deterministic theories. Moreover, not only SQM is compatible with a deterministic Many Worlds Interpretation, but also suggests such a possibility, if we remember that the solution is selected from a sheaf representing the physical law, and that in Quantum Mechanics this selection is not established by an initial condition, but by the measurements. The observer cannot make use of this hidden determinism, but he/she has access only to a limited set of measurements (therefore, of delayed initial conditions). Consequently, although my version of MWI des not allow the world to split, the data collected by the observer (the “registry”) can be completed in many incompatible ways, providing splitting of this registry.
Cristi Stoica
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4. Minds flowing in the Frozen River, and a Free-Will Hypothesis
This part is constructed around the current theories about the time arrows, and how the mind perceives the flowing of time. Its purpose is to prepare the reader for the next part.
I show that, if the world is reducible to the block space-time view, the free-will is limited to disappearance. In a physical world, the only sources of our decisions are the computation and the random inputs. We may or may not accept that everything in the physical world is computable, but what works for an algorithm works for the matter structures too. An algorithm can be deterministic, or indeterministic, in which case it uses for decisions a random number generator. But neither the necessity of decisions, which are consequence of a deterministic evolution, nor the randomness, which is the manifestation of indeterminism, can support the free-will.
Yet, there is another possibility. I propose a free-will hypothesis based on convergence. In this hypothesis, our decisions can select the appropriate (delayed) initial conditions that lead by time evolution according to the physical laws, to those particular decisions.
Here, if the reader has a particular sympathy for the free-will, or an antipathy, will judge me consequently. The reader who believes in free-will will consider that I should not question the free-will, and that I am a reductionist. The reader who considers that there is no place for the free-will in science will consider that I introduce mystical thinking in Physics.
Yet, I am neutral. My scientific skepticism makes me presenting the hypothesis of convergence-based free-will, together with an experiment that can confirm or reject this hypothesis. I will not claim that I proved or disproved the free-will, nor I will claim that we should accept it or reject it. All I propose is just a hypothesis. Let us be reserved, and let the experiment decide.
Cristi Stoica
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Frame is done for Painting and not Painting for Frame.
Framework question drives to Method question: but old 'Adaequatio rei et intellectus' problem is not solved by the new 'Adaequatio intellecti et intellectus'.
(-In case I explained on your friend Gambini's forum why 'free will' is still 'Time in the Frame' or why your Framework is skipping the question of the Nature of Time.
-I intend to make a comment too as soon as possible about what you call the 'dicontinuous collapse in Quantum mechanics' that what still there in XVIIth Century trigonometry -another proof that the worm is in the apple or the frame from the very beginning of Differential Science.)
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Dear F. Le Rouge,
“Frame is done for Painting and not Painting for Frame.”
This is nice, and I totally agree with you. If you considered otherwise, then perhaps you assumed that I made claims that I haven’t. Once, you said something about my irony. I don’t think that I used irony, with you or anybody on this forum. I try to be clear, and if sometimes my words sound like irony, I regret, it is not at purpose.
I like your comments, and I appreciate your interest. They are difficult for me to grasp, because you are using metaphor, and I am accustomed to discuss with the premises on the table, but I try to keep up with you.
Best wishes,
Cristi Stoica
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Dear Cristi,
your contribution is based on the assumption that spacetime is something real. You implicitly use several time-dependent concept, in particular when you try to say something about the arrow of time. I'm not sure you can define it without using time-related concept. I will appreciate if you can tell us, at the end of the day, what is time according to your contribution.
John
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Dear John,
Thank you for your observations.
“your contribution is based on the assumption that spacetime is something real.”
I don’t know whether spacetime is real or not, and I haven’t used this assumption. I am just trying to capture the relations between spacetime events, and these relations are mathematical. Spacetime may be reality or illusion, but from the viewpoint I presented, it doesn’t matter, because the relations are still relations. Reality or illusion, it has a logic which we are trying to understand and to express mathematically.
“You implicitly use several time-dependent concept, in particular when you try to say something about the arrow of time.”
Sure, when you tell a story, you may use verbs. Even if you describe a painting, no matter how static it may be, you may still use verbs. As long as we are concerned with the spacetime and matter only, the block spacetime view (in a broad meaning) is enough, and, in the mathematical description, there is no circularity about time. Only the verbal description is time-dependent, the mathematical description is not. If we want to discuss things above the material world, like the type of free-will from the final part of my essay, then the mathematical picture needs to be completed with something (I don’t know what), and we remain with circular reference, I agree with that. In that case, I proposed an experiment to test this type of free-will. The experiment can give us back the free-will, or, if it disproves it, at least we are set free from the circular reference in the definition of time.
“I will appreciate if you can tell us, at the end of the day, what is time according to your contribution.”
1. I don’t know how the final theory will be (together with its version of time), I don’t know yet the true nature of time, and I still want to discuss about time. To make these discussions more clear and precise, I propose a mathematical structure which can describe a large class of kinds of times, causal relations, and the relation of time with space and the physical law, in a way applicable to a wide class of physical theories.
2. I propose a version of a principle of causality, which may have implications about the beginning of time.
3. I propose an interpretation of the wavefunction collapse in Quantum Mechanics, which avoids the usual discontinuities, and have some implications on time. The world becomes a bunch, a sheaf of deterministic worlds, because of the to-be-determined initial conditions. Our choices (particularly, we choose the observable to be measured), and the outcome of the measurement, uses this freedom in the initial conditions, to choose them at the end. We choose the world, and our choice includes the past, as long as it does not contradict the precious choices. This feature is well known in QM, in my version is combined with a deterministic evolution. The only indeterminism occurs because we have not registered all the initial conditions.
4. I present a block view of time, and of the illusion of time flow, which is based on what is presently known. I do this to show that the free-will is not guaranteed by the indeterminism, and certainly not by the pure determinism. The free-will seems to have no place. Yet, I propose a place for the free-will, which employs the initial conditions freedom, or, alternatively, the freedom of indeterministic theories. This type of free-will, the only possible in a world that can be described mathematically, is based on something outside the spacetime. This is the feature with circular reference in explanation, and I agreed with that since the beginning. But this is the only type of free-will compatible with the world described there. The good news is that it can be tested experimentally.
On short, if we are not just algorithms frozen in the river of time, then this experiment should be able to show this.
I hope I answered to some of your questions, thanks for the opportunity to clarify some issues.
Best wishes,
Cristi Stoica
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"I don’t know whether spacetime is real or not, and I haven’t used this assumption. I am just trying to capture the relations between spacetime events, and these relations are mathematical. Spacetime may be reality or illusion, but from the viewpoint I presented, it doesn’t matter, because the relations are still relations. "
John probably meant that you implicitly use spacetime as a whole. It becomes clear also in your 3. : the word "collapse" implies a time evolution, but which time? The time you are trying to speak about with the collapse itself? I don't have the anwser, like you also admit, but it sounds that the approach contains a loop and does not work.
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Dear John,
Addendum: I don’t know what is the nature of time. I don’t know the nature of anything. What I study are only relations.
Cristi Stoica
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Dear anonymous,
Thank you for pointing out this expression I used, and for providing the opportunity to clarify it. The collapse is part of the quantum description of the world, which is temporal. Also you may find the expression “time evolution”. You can view the same world in two ways: 4-dimensional, and 3+1-dimensional. In the 4-d view, the time is included in the geometry, and the “collapse” or “time evolution” can be recovered by decomposing back the spacetime into space and time.
I will provide you an example. Imagine a classical charged particle, which doesn’t change its position in space, and that there is nothing else in this space. This is a static world, so we will use only 3 dimensions. If I say “as you go closer to the particle, the electric potential increases”, this description is temporal, but applies to a static world. There is no need to be somebody who goes closer to the particle, and the potential doesn’t change in time, but vary with the distance only. But this is a way to describe the variation of the potential with the distance. It implies the use of verbs, but it does not describe time by appealing to a meta-time. Similarly, in a 4-d spacetime, we can speak about “time evolution” or “collapse” as a dependence of the fourth dimension, but this does not mean that we appeal to a meta-time. In the geometric view there is no circular reference, it is only the language that employs verbs to express the dependence of one variable on the fourth coordinate. Ideally, for avoiding such misunderstanding, the physicists may develop alternative words and expressions, and a dictionary to translate between 3+1-d language to 4-d language and back. I am not aware of such development, and I think that I will not employ it, because it will complicate the things. The physicists could survive without it simply because, once they understand the geometric picture, they can go back and forth between the two models, and overcome this vagueness of the language.
Thank you for the remark,
Cristi Stoica
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Dear anonymous, Dear John,
Dear John, if you agree with the comment made by anonymous, please read.
I will explain below the block spacetime paradigm (or the frozen time), assuming that the reader doesn’t know it. I haven’t explained it in my essay, because for physicists is well known, and there are many good explanations in both popular and advanced texts.
Once the block spacetime paradigm is understood, it becomes clear that there is no circular reference in it. Yet, after understanding it, several problems can be raised, and I mention here a part of them. In my essay I assumed it well known, and I proposed a broader version, as well as some observations about the related problems.
1. How the irreversible changes can be explained within the block spacetime paradigm?
2. How can this view account for the flowing time, which is so vivid for humans? How can a block universe contain minds like ours, experiencing the flow time?
3. Is there a place for the free-will in the block spacetime?
For the reader who understands the mathematical background of relativity and quantum mechanics, I recommend my essay, and other essays presented here. For the reader who wants a simple explanation of the block spacetime paradigm, I propose the next post.
Cristi Stoica
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The block spacetime
This idea is natural if you understand how the physical phenomena are expressed by mathematical equations of evolution in time. But I will try to explain it without appealing to mathematics.
Imagine a movie, made by frames. Each frame is a static 2d image, a snapshot, and running them fast enough creates the illusion of motion. If we cut the film and arrange the frames in a deck, like a deck of cards, we obtain a 3d object, made of many 2d frames. All the motion is contained in this deck. The movie can be recovered unambiguously from this deck.
A mistake that we can do now when we try to recover the movie from this deck is to imagine that at any instant, one of the frames in the deck is highlighted. We can do this to understand that the deck contains the motion, but then we have to remember that highlighting each frame at a time makes reference to a meta-time. Here occurs the circular reference in the definition of time.
To avoid it, we have to assume that the snapshots contain also the minds states of the characters in the movie. For example, if John is one of the characters, we will have many Johns: John1, John2, …, for each frame one version of John. Each of these John have different ages. John perceives himself as experiencing the time flow. In fact, at any instant there is another John, whose mind state contains the think “I am John at the instant n, and I remember things about me at the instant n-1”. John_n identifies himself with all the previous Johns, but in fact they are different, occupying different places in the deck of frames. John_n will not be able to experience any change, because his mind is in one frozen state. He will not be able to experience that he is static, because this experience is temporal. He will just contain the state of mind which thinks “I am John at the time n, remembering things about John at n-1, and n-2,...
If you play in your mind with this kind of stuff, you may be able to understand it. Yet, if you do this, several problems will arise, and I listed some of them in the previous post. At request, I will detail them.
On the other hand, if the reader still can’t accept this paradigm, maybe he/she will formulate the possible problems.
I think that there is no circular reference about time in this view, but I am willing to listen to arguments. I am not aware about a result proving such circularity. This discussion may have to outcomes: either the reader understands it, or the reader brings new arguments into discussion, which may open new directions of research.
I want to mention that this is the basic block spacetime paradigm. In my essay I introduce a broader class. Maybe some of the reader’s questions, together with the problems I raised in the previous post, can find their answer in this class.
Cristi Stoica
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i am an experimentalist with limited awareness of intricacies of mathematics being increasingly involved in solving the unsolved physical aspects. Quantum gravity found necessary to explain the black holes introduced such considerations that were not earlier associated with Gravity, the oldest force/field that came out of the 'Unified field' that lasted till very very early moments of the Universe. Then, followed the strong nuclear to synthesize nuclei. The atomic and molecular structures required electromagnetic to separate it from electro-weak. All this follows the original logic behind the Creation of the Universe, that we don't know in entirety as we continue to unravel the mysteries of the Universe( may be you read my little contribution in this competition). The implications about the non-constancy of the Physical Constants (like 'c') can affect the concept of 'time' we have thus far accepted. Similarly, the varying relative strengths of the four force/fields appears o be needed in order to understand the first billion years of the universe. Unfortunately, cosmological data is currently confined to 12 billion years back, eevn confirming that value of 'c' was a small fraction higher than our currently accepted value. How do you perceive such eventualities, a per your approach in this essay!
Please treat me as rather poor in understanding mathematics involved!
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Congratulation to Stoica, which collected more than all the other competitors summed toghether in only three days, as you can see from the attached table.
I believe that self-voting is not a good practice.
I'd like to know the ratio between downloads and votes, and whether multiple votes came from the same IP. I'd also like to know if multiple submission came from a single IP, so a dummy alterego could vote the main contribution as a participant, since self voting is not allowed for restricted votes. I'd also like to know if members of FQXi are allowed to vote twice, as participants and as members.
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"Congratulation to Stoica, which collected more than all the other competitors summed toghether in only three days"
I highly doubt that you've read all the essays posted here.
:)
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Answer to the two previous anonymous posts.
First post.
I am very happy about the restricted votes, and I wish to thank to the contestants who generously offered them. Although you may be surprised, I haven’t used the practice of self voting. Please make an inquiry to the foundation and take all the data you want, and please post it here. As far as I know, one contestant cannot vote twice the same contestant, and is not allowed to self-vote. I don’t know personally any of the contestants. I am, like you, also a little surprised about the public votes, but being subjective, I tend to believe that they were people who were attracted to read the essay by the title, which I consider inspired, and who liked what I wrote. I am sharing my ideas from years to my friends and colleagues, and perhaps some of them also voted me, when I presented them the essay. I also explain partially my success on the conjuncture that I submitted few days before the deadline, and right before the high wave of postings in the last few days. As I remember, there were two-three days right before closing when my essay was the newest, and perhaps the “older” contestants had the time to read my submission.
Second post.
Unfortunately, I was only able to read forty-fifty essays from other contestants. My intention was to read all of them before 15, and to post to everyone to whom I have something to say. I took several days off to finish them, when they were only about 70. Considering the large number of last-minute submissions, I hardly doubt that I will be able to read them, at least with the same attention, before December 15. I sincerely regret this, because I found so far very interesting essays. At least I may hope to read them after the closure, and if I will not be able to do this, I will definitely read the winning essays.
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To “anonymously written on Dec. 3, 2008 @ 16:27 GMT”
A friend suggested me that your message may not be addressed to me, but a response to the previous post. I am sorry if I made a confusion, but I am happy to have the opportunity to express my regret for not reading all the essays in the competition.
Best regards,
Cristi Stoica
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Dear Dr. Narendra,
I read a lot of theoretical physics, mostly Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and QFT, and much mathematics, which is inevitable for understanding these subjects. I have the tendency to think a lot about the fundamental problems. Unfortunately, this, and my day job, left me with little time for other areas of Physics. I consider that I neglected an important and fundamental part, concerning the beginnings of the Universe. In fact, this gap in my research can be seen from my essay, in which I propose just one contribution to the beginnings, in the section III. B. Therefore, with all my good willing to discuss with you about the beginnings, I have serious limits here. The only thing that occurred to my mind was that we can locally rescale the time, such that ‘c’ remains constant. I don’t exclude at all the possibility to be wrong about this. Moreover, my rescaling proposal will not explain other values that were considered constant, and appear not to be.
Best regards,
Cristi Stoica
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hello Chris,
in your post, 12-02, you wrote:
"I don’t know whether spacetime is real or not, and I haven’t used this assumption."
my compliments on your honesty.
we're all in the same boat there.
warm regards,
:-)
matt kolasinski
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Cristi
Your essay does not show how the change is possible in the frozen block universe. You just assume it.
S
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hello again Cristi,
ach, i should at least get your name right.
my appologies, so many papers, getting to be a bit of a blur.
matt k.
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Once again the problem is that you are justifying here 'Empiricism' by 'Empiricism', C. Stoica, that is to say a method which consists in including Time in the framework of Physics from the beginning. And why? For ballistic reasons that have nothing to do with Physics.
Triumph of algebraic Geometry in the XVIIth century is mostly due to ballistic experiences.
What I am saying on my own essay -not against C. Stoica, C. Rovelli or Gambini but against Empiricism- is that A. Einstein or M. Planck cannot be taken as serious Scientists because they do not event look out the Empiricism reference as if Science could not exist out their own idea of Science. It is something like 'Absolute Science' although my opinion is that there must be a choice in Science or Art. If you do not choose, you are a slave, and worst than a slave: something who does not even know he is chained.
Skepticism but one cannot doubt about Descartes method. Relativity but Einstein is absolute.
About metaphysics one must add that if Anglo-Saxon Science doez not tolerate that one let the Time on one side, it is because Light is behind Time and God behind Light. One must add it for scientific reasons: because today Metaphysics is incorporated in Physics. Einstein's Theories are as much 'religious' than they are 'scientific'.
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4 out of 5 sources in your essay are papers you wrote. Are the papers peer reviewed? What is the thesis of your essay? Is it TOE?
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Dear anonymous,
Thank you for reading my paper and for the interest you show.
“4 out of 5 sources in your essay are papers you wrote”
My first draft of this essay had 7500 words, and contained about 30 referenced to peer reviewed papers of various authors. I wanted to present as much as I can about my work related to the subject, but in the meanwhile I wanted to have under 5000 words. During the process of compression, the style become very laconic, some of the arguments were omitted, together with most of the references. Though, for these details I insisted to keep the references to my papers, where I provide details and the omitted references.
“Are the papers peer reviewed?”
Although I performed my research in many years, and I have many drafts, it is only this autumn when I started to write them as articles, and posted at an eprint archive. The oldest of them, “Smooth Quantum Mechanics”, is presently under peer review at a review of Physics. I intend as soon as possible to submit to various reviews the other articles, but lately I was concerned most of the time with this essay.
“What is the thesis of your essay? Is it TOE?”
My essay is not about TOE (it is much more modest). One section, based on one of my papers, introduces the World Theory, which, as I wrote in the essay, is a framework for dealing with aspects related to time, space, physical laws and causality, until the TOE will be discovered. I try to make the least hypotheses, such that any current candidate theory to fit the definition of the mathematical structure which I named “world”. I used this general picture to discuss more formal about time and causality, without knowing exactly the final form of the TOE. On the other hand, I used also more particular results from QM and Relativity to construct an image of time, of how we can understand the time flow in a block universe, and whether or not there is a place for free-will, and how can we test this experimentally.
Best regards,
Cristi Stoica
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Dear Matt,
I appreciate your kind comments, thank you.
Best regards,
Cristi Stoica
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Dear SW,
Thank you for being interest in my essay.
“Your essay does not show how the change is possible in the frozen block universe. You just assume it.”
The frozen block contains time evolution, in the following way (which is not the point of my essay, it is a well-known picture which I assumed in the essay already understood). Consider it a 4-dimensional spacetime as in relativity. The history of an observer is represented by a timelike curve (I employ here the word “observer” in its meaning in relativity). We can determine a transversal spacelike surface at any point of the timelike curve. With care, we can make a proper choice of the spacelike hypersurfaces transversal to the observer’s timelike curve. Let us for the moment allow us to use a meta-time in the description, just for explaining the ideas, then we will throw it away. If we move along the timelike curve in the spacetime, the restrictions of the fields at each spacelike hypersurface we constructed, will be different. Yet, they will not differ much between two spacelike hypersurfaces that are close one another. Like in a movie, when we replace one frame with another and obtain the illusion of change, we can do this in the spacetime. When we move along the timelike curve, we take successive 3-d slices, and the restrictions of the field will be different. We can interpret this as changes in the fields.
One step next is to understand that every physical quantity is such a field. The description of a field in space, changing in time, contains the same information as the 4-d description, without change. To the 4-d description we have to add the observer, because the changing picture depends on the observer. Any physical information contained in the 3d flowing view is equivalent to an information in the 4d+observer frozen view, and reciprocally. Given this equivalence, it follows that the change is also contained, if we view it as a “parametric change” – moving along the observer’s timelike curve provides the illusion of change. Like when you move the pickup needle from one place of the disk to another, you enter a different time in the song.
Now, it is the time to drop the meta-time we used. I used it for explanatory purposes – only to show that the same information can be contained in the block spacetime view.
How can we drop the meta-time? Let us recall that the observer (as the one who perceives the flow of time) has a mind, which is manifested physically as a brain. For simplicity, we can think at a computer, not necessarily a brain. Each thought process is a succession of mind states, like each computation is a succession of the states of the computer. There is an equivalent representation as a succession of states. If we have on each spacelike slice a state of the brain, arranged properly, we have a 4d “movie of the thought”. All the information concerning the thinking process can be represented in the frozen spacetime. From “outside” the spacetime there is no change. A changing observer can be viewed as a succession of instantaneous observers, one at each instant. Each instantaneous observer has a mind state which contains thoughts about the previous states, in a static way. There is no change, only that each instantaneous observer identifies himself as the flowing observer. We are made from a long line of instantaneous observers.
I think that this is the common image of the idea of block or frozen spacetime.
Yet, we can use the same ideas to representing also classical mechanics, nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, etc. In relativity, there is also a geometric relation between space and time, and this provided a supplementary reason for employing the block universe image. Also, in deterministic theories, it is easier to accept the block universe than in the indeterministic, yet we can use the block view also for them, branching or not. Moreover, my solution to the discontinuity of the wavefunction collapse provides another view: a deterministic universe, in which the initial conditions are yet-to-be-determined. This is an alternative to indeterminism, which provides the same liberty for the free-will. Yet, neither indeterminism, nor delayed initial conditions don’t guarantee the free-will. I argue in my essay that the free-will cannot be thought as following in a deterministic way from the past, nor as simple randomness. I propose a version of free-will, and an experiment to test it.
So yes, I don’t give many arguments for the well-known picture presented above, since it was not the central point of my essay.
Best wishes,
Cristi Stoica
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Christi Stoica,
You are eloquently and polite enough as to enough as to meet the public taste. I read your essay in order to check to what extent you are aware of possible mistakes at the very basics.
While an other leading candidate did not answer a seemingly
simple question of mine, you did not even mention a complex Ansatz. To accept or refute the main point of my essay would require serious and unbiased reasoning.
What about the word frozen in mathematics, you might know Fraenkel 1923.
I realized that you mentioned non-Hausdorff in connection. with smooth. So far, I did not exclude to be the almost only one who disdains Cantor's paradise.
If you need someone who supports your PhD program, I recommend John Baez. I doubt however he will appreciate your thought experiment instead of a little bit more mathematical background.
Good luck,
Eckard Blumschein
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Dear anonymous who wrote “anonymously written on Dec. 6, 2008 @ 06:51 GMT”,
You can check the submission date of the articles referenced in my essay at the eprint archive between 19-23 November 2008. Please acknowledge that there are two weeks since then, and not publishing them in such a short time does not mean that they are not publishable. I wrote them very recently, to backup my essay, because I knew that I cannot explain everything in 5000 words. Since it is allowed to have new and unpublished ideas at this contest, I took this opportunity to submit some of my ideas to this jury and contestants for peer reviewing.
One of them is a second version, the first one dating from the end of September, when I submitted it to a respectable physical journal. Following the suggestions of the reviewer, I obtained the second version, which is cited in the essay. Now I wait the reviewer’s comments on the second version. The editor informed me that in the case of that journal it takes 3-6 months for a decision.
You are just rejecting on general basis my ideas, instead of pointing out where are the mistakes. I acknowledge that I may have some errors, and your help will be valuable. On the other hand, you cannot use the principle of peer-reviewing to reject new ideas, because any new idea is, initially, not peer reviewed.
Best regards,
Cristi Stoica
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Dear Eckard Blumschein,
Thank you for pointing out a potential error. Fortunately, it was not an error, as you can find exemplified in some differential geometry books. Please refer to the following entries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Hausdorff http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~md384/examplesheet1.pdf
In your defense, I may say that perhaps the name Hausdorff made you thinking at fractal sets, hence the confusion.
I appreciate your effort,
Best regards,
Cristi Stoica
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Comparison between a computer and a brain is the point. If you prove that the brain works as a computer, you prove that the Time does exist and that Algebraic Geometry or Empiricism method is Science.
But if the brain has nothing to do with the binary computation of informations, you are entirely wrong.
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Dear F. Le Rouge,
You referred to the final part of my essay. I do not claim that the brain is entirely equivalent to a computer. What I said is that, assuming that someday in the future this equivalence will be proven, then this will rule out the free-will as is usually understood, by reducing all our decisions to either determinism, or randomness. But I say further that, even in these hard conditions, there exists a last possibility for the free-will, and I propose an experiment for verifying this hypothesis. I do not claim that free-will exists or not, nor that the brain is, or is not, a computer, since I don’t know how to prove such claims. I just propose a hypothesis and an experiment.
Cristi Stoica
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Dear Cristi Stoica,
You are formally correct. Perhaps you nonetheless did not get my point because of lacking time for reading my essay
"Let's benefit from special mathematics for elapsed time".
I am mainly pointing to improper interpretation of complex domains that possibly are to blame for serious mistakes.
The reason for me to read Hausdorff's 1914 textbook "Grundzuege der Mengenlehre" was to find the reason for unresolved mathematical questions that relate to the notions point (something that does not have parts) and continuum (something every part of which has parts). An integral transform maps points on continua and vice versa.
I know that Hausdorff admittedly followed Cantor's naive set theory, and I guess having found the questionable point: The Peirce-continuous "real" line is ordered but not numerically metrizable.
Aren't Buridan's donkey and Schroedinger's cat both based on the same illusion? You certainly know that topology is unable to perform a symmetrical cut.
When I asked mathematicians how to deal with t=0 between past and future, I got as many mutually excluding suggestions as possible. I hate unfounded arbitrary definitions.
As a way out I am suggesting to understand the reals as useful hybrids but what I would like to call irreal numbers the non-Dedekind union of irrationals and non-canonically embedded rationals.
I am arguing that embedding into irrationals makes rationals likewise unapproachable "indiscrete" numbers being lumped together in indiscrete topology. Neither past not future time lacks the nil because points do not have an extension.
Eckard Blumschein
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Dear reader,
In Dec. 2, 2008 @ 08:28 GMT I wrote several posts presenting very briefly the main points of my essay: a mathematical framework for foundational discussions (the World Theory), the Strong Causality Principle, the Smooth Quantum Mechanics and delayed initial conditions, minds flowing in the Frozen River, and a Free-Will Hypothesis.
In this essay, I intended to put together several ideas, because I think that, together, they propose an interesting view about the nature of time. The drawback was that I was compelled to present too briefly my ideas, as well as the connection between them, since I wanted to respect the 5000 words rule.
Because I don’t know how will be the final theory, I tried to be as general as I could, when discussing the problems related to time, space, causality, and physical law. It is difficult to maintain generality when discuss alternative incompatible viewpoints, therefore I cooked up a mathematical structure named World, which is consistent, but general enough. In this structure, spacetime is a topological manifold, and the physical law is a sheaf (think of it as a collection of possible local solutions) over this spacetime. The matter field is a global section of the law sheaf. To determine the matter field, we need something like initial/boundary conditions. I abstract (in the cited article about World Theory) the conditions imposed both by the physical laws and the observations in such a manner that it become clear that the initial instant to which we apply an initial condition is not absolute.
On the other hand, trying to find an alternative to the discontinuity of the wavefunction collapse in Quantum Mechanics, I constructed a mechanism that uses this “relativity of the initial time” used in an initial condition. My explanation recover the unitary evolution at a higher level, while maintaining the appearance of the collapse, but replaces the discontinuous jump with a set of delayed initial conditions. This mechanism becomes clear when we account for the entanglement of the observed system with the preparation device.
As a consequence of the Smooth Quantum Mechanics, the matter field is determined gradually by each measurement, but we are not able to access the entire set of delayed initial conditions. We collect them in a “registry”, which, being incomplete, can be employed only for probabilistic predictions. Therefore, even though the wavefunction evolves deterministically, it appears to us as collapsing, and as having a probabilistic behavior.
Returning to the mathematical structure named world, in the Smooth Quantum Mechanics we see that the matter field may be never determined, it is only a solution of the evolution equation and an incomplete registry of delayed initial conditions.
On the other hand, it seems that the observer, by making a choice of the observable, can impose a delayed initial condition, determining incompletely determined parts of the initial conditions in the past. The global solution don’t preexist, only the set of possible solutions, which is gradually reduced by the observations, and the observer’s choices of the observables.
This suggests the possibility that the free-will manifests in this deterministic world by the freedom to choose yet-to-be-determined initial conditions. This mechanism, if it exists, works also within the standard Quantum Mechanics, only that in the smooth version is more dramatic. In order to test this free-will hypothesis, I propose an experiment, which relies strongly on our progress in science and technology. Therefore, I suggest waiting until we can perform this experiment, or find another proof, before drawing a final conclusion about the free-will.
All the best,
Cristi Stoica
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Congratulations on your essay, Cristi! What you wrote proves that this is your concern for a long time and this contest was only an opportunity to make your ideas more known than before. I am glad you were given this possibility and I congratulate you for your diplomacy and open spirit proven during discussions about your essay! All the best to you, too
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Dear Cristi:
I have taken a look at your article; but unfortunately, I don't have the background vocabulary to follow your reasoning. Sorry about that. I hope that you are able to progress with good results, in the future.
Take care,
Ken.
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