Minuses: it's not from an astronomer or a physicist, but from an MIT philosopher. Also, either he or the journalist hasn't done the reading. Probably it's the journalist.
An incredible new theory established as the “block universe” theory asserts that time does not actually “flow like a river”; rather, everything is ever-present.Dr. Bradford Skow, a philosophy professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposes that if we “look down” on the cosmos as if it were a piece of paper, we would see time stretched out in all directions, just as we perceive space at any given time.
This is not a new theory. This is roughly Aquinas' theory of what reality looks like to God, who 'looks down' on time from eternity, which is not everlasting time but something beyond time. Thus, God can see the whole at once.
Immediate downside: predestination and collapse of free will. In addition to being undesirable, the loss of free will violates our most basic experience. You can't do the scientific method without free will, because you have to decide what to study and decide to take the steps, and at every point in the experience of conducting an experiment you're making choices -- at least apparently.
They go on to say how this enables a new theory of time travel, but even insofar as it does it makes time travel pointless. You can't 'go back' and alter the past or change bad decisions you'd made if everything is frozen in a big block of time -- or, to put it in the Norse mythological terms, if the Norns wove the skein of wyrd long ago, and all will happen as foredoomed.
Alternative theories have existed for centuries to grapple with that problem. You can read a layman-level explanation of two of them, one of them my own, in my novel Arms and White Samite. One of them, mine, preserves free will more successfully than the other. The other one is known as perdurism, or 4D-ism, and there are numerous scholarly books about it.
14 comments:
It does sound like the reporter didn't do any background research.
It isn't obvious that Aquinas' or Boethius' ideas of time demand predestination. That's the simplest model, of course, and we have enough trouble understanding even that because our ideas of the eternal carry connotations of the temporal with them. But if the Creator creates co-creators, it doesn't seem to me to modify His perception of the world--even with multiple creators involved. Last time I checked I wasn't God, so I could be mistaken in how He perceives.
Perdurantism seems to be as good a model as any--so long as you recognize the problems with the word "object". Objects might be people, but the church would be one too.
IIRC CS Lewis used some of this in The Great Divorce.
"Immediate downside: predestination and collapse of free will."
Is that true though, or is that perception one of the problem of visualizing a four dimensional thing (space time) with a three (or even two, as in the example) dimensional mind? It's akin to the problem of Flatland's inhabitants considering the third dimension. I actually think the model you described in Arms and White Samite and this one could be compatible if viewed the correct way. There are ever present probabilities, but our observation/action cement the actual in place- in a similar way as you can't know where an electron is till you observe it, but when you observe it, there it is.
I suppose what I'm arguing is that they're proposing a new *way* to look at space-time, rather than a *different* space-time. Through the lens of time rather than space. Something like that.
Think of it this way- if the map is time, we are still only present on one spot on that map- we are not omniscient of the time landscape- so it's a change of frame of reference, from the human temporal view to the God's eye view beyond time. But the thing "space-time" hasn't changed.
This might be a better article to get the gist of what he's saying:
https://news.mit.edu/2015/book-brad-skow-does-time-pass-0128
I'm not sure my ideas are reflecting his very well after reading this.
"Is that true though, or is that perception one of the problem of visualizing a four dimensional thing (space time) with a three (or even two, as in the example) dimensional mind? ... the model you described in Arms and White Samite and this one could be compatible if viewed the correct way. There are ever present probabilities, but our observation/action cement the actual in place."
The problem with that, my friend, is that even if it works that way the final fact about how we will perceive (and therefore cement) them is already determined. There may be a point in the matrix in which it remains determined, but from the Divine perspective you can just 'look ahead' and see how it works out.
So ironically the problem that results in determination is that there's no time on this model for anything to change. All the time already exists actually, and thus there's no potential remaining. It's all already been worked out.
Indeed, potentiality -- so important to Aristotle and to us -- turns out to be an illusion of perspective. A tree doesn't have the potential to become a house or a ship: it's already determined what it will become, and since it's already written 'ahead' of you, the appearance of having options is illusory.
This is more akin to the version I assigned to Merlin in the novel, the sight which loves actuality. Actuality is what it sees, or thinks it sees: what will be, rather than what might be.
The sight of the faerie was on my own model, in which what becomes actualized is not determined. That's a sufficiently different model from this that I won't discuss it now to avoid confusion.
"It isn't obvious that Aquinas' or Boethius' ideas of time demand predestination. That's the simplest model, of course..."
What you have to introduce to avoid that is backwards causation. That's one thing at work in the faerie model I don't want to go after right now until we're all clear on the one we started with.
"Perdurantism seems..."
Do you think there's an important distinction between perdurism and perdurantism?
I don't know any distinction, I just copied the name from the web page I was reading. Your reference was the first time I'd run across the word and I looked it up.
I'm not sure backwards causation is impossible to deal with (there's a convenient construction in quantum mechanics), but I was thinking more along the lines of distinguishing between our experience in time and our existence in time--my decisions of the moment are part of my decisions of a lifetime. I perceive the first but not the second.
I don’t think it’s impossible either; indeed my own system insists upon it. But that’s how you get free will in a system in which the whole field of possibilities exist actually.
"...from the Divine perspective you can just 'look ahead' and see how it works out."
Is that so? Or is it so that from the God view you can look ahead and see *all* the possible ways it works out- without 'knowing' (which is itself a temporally loaded term) what the actual choice is in advance? Much like Schrodinger's cat?
I still think there's just an inherent problem with thinking of time as a 'landscape', as much as there is with thinking of it as a 'river'. It truly is something we really aren't equipped to see in it's fullness- again, *at least* as bad as Flatlanders imagining 3D space.
Is that so? Or is it so that from the God view you can look ahead and see *all* the possible ways it works out...
There are multiple views here. On the 4Dist view, it's determined. If it's not determined, then there has to be backwards causation.
Let's take an example. Merlin, the seer, can see the actual future. He is able to 'look ahead' and say that event X will happen (because, you could add, all these various observations will set in concrete various things at the quantum level etc; or you could leave that out and assume he can see at the quasi-Newtonian level how the math of the physics will play out).
On the 4Dist view, if Merlin is a true seer that just means that he can see the 'block' far enough to see how a given path plays out. It plays out that way because block reality is like a crystal: it just is that way. Nothing can change it, because all the things that 'might' happen in the future actually will happen in the future, and there's no changing it.
On the alternative view, free will exists and some hero might make a decisive choice that alters which version of the block is actual rather than potential. This is a much more complicated picture! Now all versions of the block must be in some sense real, as Aristotle talks about the potential as being a kind of first actuality: you can potentially make a saw out of iron, but not out of wool. Thus, to have the potential to be a saw is part of the way along to being a real saw.
On this view, a Merlin might see along the most probable path, and declare to what will happen. The hero makes a substantially different choice, however, and that alters which route reality ultimately follows. But it alters it both ways, so that what was less probable at time X is now 100% probable at time X+n (because it has already now happened). That means that Merlin's sight, which sees the most probable outcome, will now have seen the alternative outcome: as a true seer, he sees the truth. But that means altering how he saw it at that time.
God in this sense is like (but above) the faerie, capable of appreciating the drama as it unfolds yet all at once. Ultimately God knows what paths were actualized, and which were left unrealized, and why. (In the novel, the faerie have the ability to go to any of these paths, realized or not, and take things from them -- that's how they get the best possible horses, etc.)
"..because all the things that 'might' happen in the future actually will happen in the future, and there's no changing it."
That's harmfully ambiguous. I meant to say that, on this view, there is only one set of things that really will happen in the future -- and it already has, in a sense. The other things that 'might' have happened already, in that sense, didn't happen. Only one set of possibilities actually exists, even before we get to the event we are concerned about. It definitely will happen that way, because in this special sense it already has.
Yes, ok- thank you for taking the time to give a detailed answer.
I will have to reread the book, because I'm sure I did not fully appreciate all of this the first time- much as I did appreciate it at the time.
You are certainly welcome.
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