The Mind and Time

[ragarth]

A thought problem I grappled with back in high school to gain a deeper understanding of God is the roles of knowledge and it's effects upon free will. Basically it goes like this:

If we assume the space and time dimensions are the same, with the key difference being rate of velocity between temporal and spatial dimensions, then the path of matter through all four dimensions as viewed from higher dimensions would be that of spaghetti.

If both past and present can be viewed in this way, that means the future and past are set and immalleable. Viewed from the inside (as us), however, the idea of free will is preserved by a lack of knowledge of future events.

The potential for external, higher dimensional manipulation of this 4-d spaghetti (us) of matter can be summed up as a multi-temporal collision. To do so, two separate dimensions would have to represent time, and the higher-dimensional time would have the potential for causing causality issues within the lower dimensional time. The solution to this is to assume that any higher-dimensional manipulation of the lower-dimensional time would be perceived as not being any manipulation at all by lower-dimensional (us) entities, since they would never perceive the higher-dimensional manipulation from any external view point. To them, no change ever took place, the state before the change never existed to the lower-dimensional entities.

This still incurs a paradox, however, where the higher-dimension is concerned. the higher dimension would perceive both the before and after states of the lower-dimension of time, and because both dimensions represent time, paradoxes in action can be induced in the lower-dimension, effectively breaking that flow of time beyond it's capacity to maintain causality. The only solution to this is to define lower-dimensional time as immovable objects, which to our knowledge do not exist.

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Alternatively, one can view the model another way without referencing higher dimensions:

Without referencing higher dimensions, the simplest model of the universe is that of a closed system, in other words, no influences outside the universe effect it (thereby nullifying the potential for higher-dimensional or multi-verse cosmology issues). This produces the grandfather paradox where if you go back in time and kill your grand-father, how could you go back in time and kill your grandfather? There are two prevalent solutions to this paradox, summarized as follows-

The universe splits every time a potential decision is possible. This produces many problems. It turns our closed system into an open system (not a problem) but is reliant upon true randomness to produce the effect since anything but true randomness would be a chaotic system, which would lead more easily into the 2nd answer. Further, it's my opinion that this breaks the conservation of mass and energy, since the creation of a new universe requires the input of energy, either the energy comes from nowhere, the energy is 'borrowed' (alternate universes created by choice dissipate and disapear, merging into the total till a single universe once again remain at the end of time), or the total energy of the universe is halved every time it splits. The first is right out, even in higher-dimensional cosmologies there is no denying thermal dynamics, the 2nd is unlikely, branching cosmology preserves the idea of free choice (ie, the random factor) which simply incurs the risk of higher-dimensional causality issues if choices never lead to a dissipation to the original energy level, and the final would lead to an observable decline in the amount of matter and energy in the universe, leading to a rapidly escalating point at which there isn't enough matter and energy to sustain the universe's structures.

The other major solution is a kind of clockwork universe cosmology, where-in, the state of every particle is dependent upon the state of every particle a moment ago. This eliminates the need for true randomness by predicating that everything relies upon the moment before it. Randomness in this cosmology as we perceive it is produced through the universe being one massive chaotic system, whereby any individual within the system would find it impossible to muster the computational power to plot every particle in the universe and thereby manage to gain absolute predictive knowledge. The grandfather paradox is resolved in this cosmology by the simple realization that if you are alive now, then your attempt to kill your grandfather has already failed, so that when you go back in time, you have no choice but to fail. This gives us the general rule that true knowledge of future events (Your birth) cannot be subverted, in other words, you know you are alive in the future, therefore you cannot do anything to prevent your being alive in the future. This rule extends forward as well as backwards, for you to have knowledge of future events is to reduce your effective 'freewill' to manipulate future events- one could say that ignorance of the future is bliss, because to know the future is to lose control of your actions (even if, from an outside view, your free will is an illusion even without future knowledge.)

My bias is clear, I'm an advocate of the clockwork cosmology, I consider the conservation of mass and energy issues, plus the reliance upon true chance having macro-scale impacts upon our lives to be the assumptions that break the branching cosmology's back when hit with Occam's Razor.

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Given both these potential methods of looking at a 4-d universe (inner and external views) such as our own, we gain the same basic rule for the grandfather paradox: To know true facts about future events (The nazi's lost, you are born, you will live in such and such house, etc) Is to reduce your freewill- your ability to manipulate the future. Since it's generally assumes that God is omniscient, or has perfect knowledge of everything both past, present, and future, then God would have no free will. If God has no free will, is God truly intelligent, or just another force of nature.

A potential rebuttal of this I had thought of a while back is that God exists in a momentary state beyond time as we know it. The time from universe birth to death to us is a period of time to God represented by a mathematical point. Existing beyond the boundaries of time, God both lives and dies instantly and never. This rebuttal falls apart quickly once you realize that God's thought process, while taking place instantly, does nothing more than setting out a string of events that would still have no capacity of modifying the flow of time, and so God would still be a marionette on strings, a non-intelligent force of nature.

What are y'all's thoughts on this? It's been a while since I've thought these thoughts, (5 years? I did so much thinking in high school.), so it's fun to put them out for analysis.

 

[[serious]]

A few things:
1. I've never heard of an idea that would include two dimensions of time. I'm not sure what this would have to do with collisions either as in order to collide they would have to be proximal in all dimensions. Having a different value for any dimension would cause a miss.
2. As far as the universe splitting theory causing issues with thermodynamics, this isn't necessarily so. Thermodynamics is maintained in any given timeline, but like wave particle duality, prior to a timeline being chosen, all possible timelines can be said to exist. If we remove ourselves to a higher dimension, we would see thermodynamics hold for any given timeline.
3. Clockwork cosmology doesn't seem to work experimentally. The uncertainty principle pretty much negates even the possibility of such a clockwork system. In fact, it is theoretically impossible to plot the exact velocity and location of even a single particle, never mind all of them. There are also difficulties with black holes "eating" information. They destroy matter and output only hawking radiation which is determined only by their mass and rotation. While there is still some debate about if it is possible suck information is trapped at the event horizon and as such theoretically preserved, I'm not sure how this could hold in the final death of a black hole due to hawking radiation.

There is also string theory which posits as many as 11 dimensions (generally just 10)

Gotta go, I'll add more later.

 

[ragarth]

A few things:
1. I've never heard of an idea that would include two dimensions of time. I'm not sure what this would have to do with collisions either as in order to collide they would have to be proximal in all dimensions. Having a different value for any dimension would cause a miss.
2. As far as the universe splitting theory causing issues with thermodynamics, this isn't necessarily so. Thermodynamics is maintained in any given timeline, but like wave particle duality, prior to a timeline being chosen, all possible timelines can be said to exist. If we remove ourselves to a higher dimension, we would see thermodynamics hold for any given timeline.
3. Clockwork cosmology doesn't seem to work experimentally. The uncertainty principle pretty much negates even the possibility of such a clockwork system. In fact, it is theoretically impossible to plot the exact velocity and location of even a single particle, never mind all of them. There are also difficulties with black holes "eating" information. They destroy matter and output only hawking radiation which is determined only by their mass and rotation. While there is still some debate about if it is possible suck information is trapped at the event horizon and as such theoretically preserved, I'm not sure how this could hold in the final death of a black hole due to hawking radiation.

There is also string theory which posits as many as 11 dimensions (generally just 10)

Gotta go, I'll add more later.

Thanks for the answers!

1) This is a thought experiment, just as you can likely never ride a train going at near the speed of light, the presumption of a collision between multiple temporal dimensions is not likely. This does not mean that it's not a thought experiment though. Think of it like this, the 'lower' dimension is flatland, with a 3rd dimension representing time, and the 'higher' dimension is us, with the 3rd dimension representing space for us. In this case, we would see a given flatlander represented by a long tube, their movements viewed as variations in the position and shape of this tube at any point during it's length. To manipulate this tube in complicated ways has the potential for causing causality issues, hence why I call it a collision, not because higher dimensional matter is effecting lower dimensional matter, but because the 'higher' dimensional value of our time frame allows us to manipulate a flatlander in ways that could shatter their perceived timeline.

2)If you don't mind explaining this further, my understanding is that each potential for a choice incurs a split, so that every potential choice is represented in an alternate timeline. If the new universe is created at the moment of the choice, then in my opinion, from a higher-level perspective, this breaks thermodynamics by producing new energy in the form of the new universe. If on the other hand, a sufficient number of universes exist from the get go to represent every potential choice throughout the lifetime of the universe, then this necessitates that each universe by akin to the clockwork universe. Since part of the original proposition was that going back in time to kill your grandfather would split you off into a universe where you didn't exist, this does not seem likely in this cosmology.

3)The heisenberg uncertainty principle dictates that we cannot know both the position and the velocity of a particle at any given time, only one or the other. This effect arises from the act that measuring one or the other changes the reciprocal value because we have to interact with the particle to ontain the data. We can gain the particle's position by bouncing a particle off it, thereby changing it's velocity, or we can get it's velocity by bouncing a particle off it, thereby changing it's position. This does not necessitate a break from a clockwork cosmology, it just means we cannot know the state of the particles, not that the state of the particles are dependent upon the previous state of the particles. Again, this is a thought experiment, so the physical inability to plot both location and position at the same time is not a concern.

Further, 'weak' measurement methods have been proposed that preserve the quantum state of particles, allowing a potential avenue for disproving the uncertainty principle. Information on this can be found here and here

About blackholes eating information, if you remember, there was a bet between Stephen Hawking and Jacob Berkenstein over this issue, hawking said blackholes eat the info, berkenstein said no, and the wager was a set of encyclopedias. Stephen Hawking gave Jacob Berkenstein a set of encyclopedias in 2005, quantum perturbations in the event horizon of the singularity can contain information about the matter within the singularity. More info here

 

[[serious]]

Thanks for the answers!
2)If you don't mind explaining this further, my understanding is that each potential for a choice incurs a split, so that every potential choice is represented in an alternate timeline. If the new universe is created at the moment of the choice, then in my opinion, from a higher-level perspective, this breaks thermodynamics by producing new energy in the form of the new universe. If on the other hand, a sufficient number of universes exist from the get go to represent every potential choice throughout the lifetime of the universe, then this necessitates that each universe by akin to the clockwork universe. Since part of the original proposition was that going back in time to kill your grandfather would split you off into a universe where you didn't exist, this does not seem likely in this cosmology.

Your mistake is in that you are trying to start with one timeline and introduce another. However, to get to the point that we are talking about multiple time lines we first must get outside the 4th dimension. Think of it this way, all time lines currently exist. As we travel through time, we reach forks in possible states of the universe. However, those alternate forks are only not true in our timeline. In any other timeline, our timeline would not exist.

3)The heisenberg uncertainty principle dictates that we cannot know both the position and the velocity of a particle at any given time, only one or the other. This effect arises from the act that measuring one or the other changes the reciprocal value because we have to interact with the particle to ontain the data. We can gain the particle's position by bouncing a particle off it, thereby changing it's velocity, or we can get it's velocity by bouncing a particle off it, thereby changing it's position. This does not necessitate a break from a clockwork cosmology, it just means we cannot know the state of the particles, not that the state of the particles are dependent upon the previous state of the particles. Again, this is a thought experiment, so the physical inability to plot both location and position at the same time is not a concern.

Further, 'weak' measurement methods have been proposed that preserve the quantum state of particles, allowing a potential avenue for disproving the uncertainty principle. Information on this can be found here and here

About blackholes eating information, if you remember, there was a bet between Stephen Hawking and Jacob Berkenstein over this issue, hawking said blackholes eat the info, berkenstein said no, and the wager was a set of encyclopedias. Stephen Hawking gave Jacob Berkenstein a set of encyclopedias in 2005, quantum perturbations in the event horizon of the singularity can contain information about the matter within the singularity. More info here

Unless I'm mistaken, weak measurements only allows us to reach the Heisenberg limit. I'm unaware of any violations of the uncertainty principle and I very much doubt that an overthrow of such a fundamental law of physics would get by me unnoticed.

Hawking's solution to the information problem of black holes was branching timelines in a higher dimension. He basically said they were both wrong.

 

[ragarth]

Your mistake is in that you are trying to start with one timeline and introduce another. However, to get to the point that we are talking about multiple time lines we first must get outside the 4th dimension. Think of it this way, all time lines currently exist. As we travel through time, we reach forks in possible states of the universe. However, those alternate forks are only not true in our timeline. In any other timeline, our timeline would not exist.
Unless I'm mistaken, weak measurements only allows us to reach the Heisenberg limit. I'm unaware of any violations of the uncertainty principle and I very much doubt that an overthrow of such a fundamental law of physics would get by me unnoticed.

Hawking's solution to the information problem of black holes was branching timelines in a higher dimension. He basically said they were both wrong.

I see what you're talking about now. Let's start with the relevance of the black holes. To preserve the information of the matter within a singularity hypothetically necessitates the use of multiple dimensions, thereby invalidating the closed system model, correct? Since the closed system model is invalidated, one must now explore the effects of time travel and knowledge within a multiverse cosmology.

In the multiverse cosmology, you're looking at the branching effect of universes as pre-existing, effectively hybridizing the idea of a clockwork topology with a branching universe to have alternate possibilities but all splits being pre-existing and already plotted so that a higher-dimensional view of the multiverse would look like a mass of branching spaghetti. Correct?

 

[[serious]]

I see what you're talking about now. Let's start with the relevance of the black holes. To preserve the information of the matter within a singularity hypothetically necessitates the use of multiple dimensions, thereby invalidating the closed system model, correct? Since the closed system model is invalidated, one must now explore the effects of time travel and knowledge within a multiverse cosmology.

In the multiverse cosmology, you're looking at the branching effect of universes as pre-existing, effectively hybridizing the idea of a clockwork topology with a branching universe to have alternate possibilities but all splits being pre-existing and already plotted so that a higher-dimensional view of the multiverse would look like a mass of branching spaghetti. Correct?

More complicated than that. I'm still talking about just possible timelines of this universe. This is different than looking at other possible universes. Information is preserved, according to hawking, in that there exists timelines in which that black hole never came to be. Now, getting back to clockwork cosmology, look at a beam of light. Each particle, prior to detection, exists as a probability of possible positions and velocities. When we detect it, we collapse those probabilities into a state. Likewise, all events in our possible timelines exist as a probability function until we observe them and collapse them into a given state. When we observe the universe in a given state, we are necessarily not observing it in other states. Just like a photon doesn't gain any energy by existing as both a wave and a particle, so too multiple possible timelines don't gain energy by simultaneously existing.

Just like a particle position can only be described as a probability curve prior to measurement, so too timelines can only be expressed as probability curves until we are in the timeline collapsing it to a single path.

 

[ragarth]

More complicated than that. I'm still talking about just possible timelines of this universe. This is different than looking at other possible universes. Information is preserved, according to hawking, in that there exists timelines in which that black hole never came to be. Now, getting back to clockwork cosmology, look at a beam of light. Each particle, prior to detection, exists as a probability of possible positions and velocities. When we detect it, we collapse those probabilities into a state. Likewise, all events in our possible timelines exist as a probability function until we observe them and collapse them into a given state. When we observe the universe in a given state, we are necessarily not observing it in other states. Just like a photon doesn't gain any energy by existing as both a wave and a particle, so too multiple possible timelines don't gain energy by simultaneously existing.

Just like a particle position can only be described as a probability curve prior to measurement, so too timelines can only be expressed as probability curves until we are in the timeline collapsing it to a single path.

Okay, to clarify, answer this: If I go back in time and kill my grandfather before my dad is born, we can assume timeline A is the one in which my grandfather lives, and timeline B is the one in which he's dead, but in which I live because of my time travel, ergo, I now reside in timeline B.

Did timeline B come into existence when I killed my grandfather, did it already exist, or did the branch already exist as a predestined split?

 

[[serious]]

Okay, to clarify, answer this: If I go back in time and kill my grandfather before my dad is born, we can assume timeline A is the one in which my grandfather lives, and timeline B is the one in which he's dead, but in which I live because of my time travel, ergo, I now reside in timeline B.

Did timeline B come into existence when I killed my grandfather, did it already exist, or did the branch already exist as a predestined split?

When you are in a timeline at a point prior to that event, both timelines exist as a probability function. Likewise, if you could go back in time to before an observation of a photon you detected, the photon would exist as a probability function of all possible states until it was observed.

 

[ragarth]

When you are in a timeline at a point prior to that event, both timelines exist as a probability function. Likewise, if you could go back in time to before an observation of a photon you detected, the photon would exist as a probability function of all possible states until it was observed.

Problem is, quantum mechanics fails at the macro-scale. To use it to describe the movements of large scale matter is problematic. This is why we still use relativity, and why there's a hunt for a unifying theory. Also, wouldn't the moment you were born be a collapse of that wave function, eliminating that previous possibility, making your travel back in time a retroactive change in the state of an already collapsed particle? This seems like a step away from what I had originally thought you were saying.

As a side note, I don't accept the copenhagen interpretation. It's my opinion that the state of particles is not dependent upon the existence or nonexistence of observation.

 

[[serious]]

Problem is, quantum mechanics fails at the macro-scale. To use it to describe the movements of large scale matter is problematic. This is why we still use relativity, and why there's a hunt for a unifying theory. Also, wouldn't the moment you were born be a collapse of that wave function, eliminating that previous possibility, making your travel back in time a retroactive change in the state of an already collapsed particle? This seems like a step away from what I had originally thought you were saying.

As a side note, I don't accept the copenhagen interpretation. It's my opinion that the state of particles is not dependent upon the existence or nonexistence of observation.

Er... where did you get the idea that QM fails in the macro scale? That is most certainly NOT the case. Relativity deals with slightly different things all together. Both QM and relativity are simultaneously driving factors in small fast moving particles. Both increase their influence at high speeds. Also, time travel, while useful to address thought experiments, is impossible in almost all models. (as a side note, it may be theoretically possible to fold space/time through a higher dimension under string theory, but this would result in exactly what I'm talking about. Us branching off into a different timeline from our origin)

 

[ragarth]

Er... where did you get the idea that QM fails in the macro scale?

look here for an explanation. It's the book Quantum Mechanics by Bas C. Van Fraassen, and pages 261 to 272 are the ones of interest. The final few pages detail the use of a Josephson Device to test superposition at macro scale. The short and sweet of it is to setup a system by which you have the option of testing the state, or the difference pattern of the superposition of the states. Finally, a positive result for superposition violates the Bell Inequality principle.

(pg 271)
It appears that in 1980 the superselection rule solution to the problem of measurement was developed independently by Beltrametti and Cassinelli, and Kay-Kong Wan. The suggestion that there is no superposition between macroscopic states had been in the literature for some time, in various forms. In Chapter 6, Section 8, I stated Wan's description of quantum systems with superselection rules. To this he added the postulate that time evoluion is unitary. Wan explicitly discusses the point that the Hamiltonian is not an observable, in his solution. He cites parallel examples elsewhere: Dirac;s Hamiltonian formulation of General Relativity, and the Gupta-Bleurer formulation of quantum electrodynamics. It is not clear to what extent we can be sanguine about this with respect to the measurement interaction, however.

The Josephson effect is one oin which the temporal evolution of a macroscopic variable can be controlled by a microscopic energy on the order of the thermal energy of an atom at room temperature. The 'Josephson device' on which Leggett concentrates is an RF squid ring. This is a bulk superconducting ring interrupted by a single Josephson junction. THe macroscopic dynamic variable is the total flux (circulating current) in the ring. The ring has available to it two degenerate states, corresponding to the current circulating in either hte clockwise or anti-clockwise direction. THe magnitude of the current is on the order of a few microamperes- is is proposed that this be counted as macroscopic, because it is a current that could certainly have been studied in classical expiremental context, before the advent of quantum theory.

If a measurement is made to detect the direction of the current at any given time, one of two results obtains: clockwise (+1), or anti-clockwise (-1). The question can now be posed: what are the probabilities of finding +1 twice for measurements made at distinct times t, t'? Let th relevent observable be denoted at P(t); then with the usual idealizations the calculated expectation value is

(1) <P(t)P(r')> - cos[delta(t' - t)]

where delta is the characteristic resonance frequency of the system. This is the expectation value of we regard the total system as a quantum-mechanical system not subject to superselection rules. THe formula reveals a correlation between P(t) and P(t'); e.g., if t' - t is half a cycle, then the predicated value of P(t'), conditional on value of +1 for P(t), equals -1 with certainty. If however we add the supposition that at an intermediate time, e.g. at quarter-cycle, the state was a mixture of the +/-1 eigenstates, we obtain a different prediction.

It is more instructive to look at the general demonstration adopted from Bell's argument than to continue with these details. One ofrm in which Bell's Inequalities can eb stated, for expcation values of observables P(i), i = 1, 2, 3, 4 which take only value +/- 1, is the following:

(2) <P(1)P(2)> + <P(2)P(3)> + <P(3)P(4)> - <P(1)P(4)>
=< 2

but if we set the difference between successive times t, t'(t' = 2, 3, 4, t = t'-2) equal to (pi/4)delta, and hence the interval between t 4 and t = 1 equal to (3pi/4)delta, the formula (1) implies

(3) <P(1)P(2)> + <P(2)P(3)> + <P(3)P(4)> - <P(1)P(4)>
= 3cos(pi/4) - cos(3pi/4)
= 3(1/sq(2)) - (-1/sq(2) = 4/sq(2) = 2sq(2) > 2

a violation of (2), and hence of Bell's Inequalities.

Also, time travel, while useful to address thought experiments, is impossible in almost all models. (as a side note, it may be theoretically possible to fold space/time through a higher dimension under string theory, but this would result in exactly what I'm talking about. Us branching off into a different timeline from our origin)

This thought experiment is designed to test the effects of knowledge on free will. Before I had a deeper understanding of neuroscience, and before I started using it to pose questions about the validity of God, I used it to test the idea of free will, and the potential of the soul as a driving factor for conciousness vs a deterministic view of human cognizance and choices. I'm not claiming time travel to be a valid possibility, but as a media for experimenting with questions of free will versus determinism.

(If we could create wormholes, we could take one end of it and send it hurtling off at near light speed. The timeflow difference between the two ends would translate into an increasing difference in time between the two ends, so that if they were eventuall put next to each other, you could come out one end before you went in the other. Trying to think of ways to make time machines is fun. )