From: Thomas Buckner (tcbevolver@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Mar 27 2007 - 19:07:24 MDT
--- Dagon Gmail <dagonweb@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yah, who knows, time may progress diagonally
> across a dimension 3+n.
> Or it may even spiral or go in a circle.
Time is a function of data processing. All the
arrows of time recognized by physics are the
result of changes which run only in one direction
(entropy, nuclear decay, and so on). Information,
as presently understood by science, is only
available about past events, i.e. events that
have left a physical trace. While Feynman
diagrams may run equally in forward or backward
directions, we experience past time only, as a
result of those physical traces in our brains or
in physical objects we are able to sense. For
this reason, even if universes with 'backwards
time' existed, their inhabitants would still
experience it as ordinary 'forward time.' Any
arguments you may encounter that time would
reverse at some later epoch in the universe would
founder on this fact.
Time can be usefully considered as an information
dimension, as all other dimensions are. Though
spatial dimensions can be described as N feet or
N meters, time has been described in terms of
degrees of change. Even the oldest systems of
timekeeping sliced time into day/night cycles,
changes of the moon and seasons. These were
low-tech observations of purely local events,
germane to our planet alone; but now physicists
know something of the granularity of spacetime.
The smallest bit of space is the Planck length
and the smallest bit of time is the Planck
interval, there being no physical/energetic event
in our universe that can happen in any smaller
space or time; but like the day or the lunar
cycle, the Planck time is predicated on an
experienced change. There can be nothing
arbitrary about it, relativity notwithstanding.
The fact that we know spacetime is granular and
has a time arrow strongly implies that physical
reality really is like a computer program,
cellular automata, Go, or some similar stepwise
iterated process. This could mean we are living
in a sim, or it could mean that's the only way to
build any universe.
Tom Buckner
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