Re:Einstein and Hume’s philosophy of time
by danbruc on Monday January 18, 2021 @09:47AM
(#25822262)
That's not what I meant. I meant if time is not fundamental, then there must be a time-free formulation of the laws of physics and also the universe itself must fundamentally work without time. I can somewhat - but certainly not fully - wrap my head around a time-free formulation of physics for specific situations and recovering time from that as an emergent phenomenon. But thinking about the universe as fundamentally time-free just breaks my brain, I can not overcome the thinking that change happens over time while the truth is probably closer to time emerges from change, roughly speaking. I guess because we are so used to reductionism, thinking about things as the sum of their parts and how they work, we or at least I struggle when something is not decomposable. But time seems to fall into this category - if there is a single isolated particle, then there is no time, it only shows up once there is a composite system and relations between its parts can change.
The term "Arrow of Time" is something that might be relevant to what you're considering; which is a somewhat unsolved problem but generally thought to be caused as a statistical consequence of there being a very low entropy state in the past.
Re:Einstein and Hume’s philosophy of time
by danbruc on Monday January 18, 2021 @07:44PM
(#25828618)
This is a different problem - the laws of physics when formulated in the usual way with a time dimension are mostly symmetric or reversible, i.e. there is no obvious difference between past and future. As you said, one of the proposed solutions is a low entropy initial state that can break this symmetry and help to explain the perceived difference between past and future.
It's not that time doesn't exist in the block universe, it's just a free parameter in the block.