Seth Lloyd - Events and the Nature of Time

Are events measured by time? Or is time created by sequences of events? Which is more fundamental, events or time? Worse, we may get different answers from quantum mechanics and general relativity.




Seth Lloyd is a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He refers to himself as a “quantum mechanic”.


Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[nowonda]

Robert, your interviews are an absolute delight, thank you a thousand times for what you're doing.

[tommyvictorbuch]

This will go down in science history as the famous "Whatever Interview" 😁

[plasticfantastk]

Seth is very pleasant for conversation

[woodywu]

Good honest answer “ I don’t know, whatever “ . Science should be honest and evolving.

[ronhudson]

The old-fashioned record is the (almost perfect) analogy. Your are the self-aware needle, your mind the speakers. As the record moves around you, you remember the past and anticipate the future. You only hear (perceive) the “now”. From your perspective the future does not yet exist and the past no longer exists. Look at a really old movie of a street scene. Seems so dated, doesn’t it? But for the people at the moment of filming, it was their tangible present. They could only anticipate and predict the future but from our greater perspective we know what was to come. All “presents” are equally real and coexisting. We can only perceive them sequentially because of how our mind works. Yet they all exist. You exist from the moment of your conception until the moment of your death. Always have and always will. As the guest says, when one can’t distinguish between competing explanations of time. They are all equally valid. “Who cares”?

[tomkwake]

Here are two types of time: Everythng universally is in motion, this is one type of time. Everything has it's own individual clock time, is the second type of time. One is at cause, the other is at effect.

[syz]

I think time is just the derivative of events happening. Events happen because of thermodynamics law, entropy must increase. Increase in entropy is associated with disorder, change in the configuration of the system, which means events happening. We perceive the change in configuration of the universe as the passage of time.

[tarikkamal]

Thinks for you, very important subject!

[KWifler]

I think he was confused by the question. A lot of people think of rivers conceptually as a static path, and flowing down the path would indeed be the same as experiencing a static universe.

Alternatively, one could ask, is time creating things in front of you and does history still exist behind you? Does the guest even know about the time crystal experiments that seemed to show that the future can affect the past and vice versa?

My view of time is that we are being pulled along a path as if by gravity. What if the end of our time journey goes into a black hole? What if we are orbiting something in a loop? What if time is creating a trail and we crash into it? What if the number of things in the universe is equivalent to the amount of cycles around that center that we've gone around?

[paultorbert]

Question:

Is the following example, two people Stopping Entropy, for a brief moment;
Person1-“hey can you hear me”?
Person2-“yes”.

?😊

[SamWitney]

I absolutely love Seth's answer to this! The whatever answer is awesome. The fact is it's there and it doesn't matter how you look at it. We know what time is, we have more then one way of describing it. But it doesn't seem that some people are satisfied with it. The why does time exist question is most likely not a question to ask, it probably has always existed and always will and just a part of space and the universe. Many other things to think about.

[tedgrant]

For God, there is no time. He invented time for our convenience.
He knows everything in our future just as clearly as our past, like a complete history book.
And the most important consequence is that he already knows who will be in the bosom of Abraham.

[FrankDeAlto]

Time exists because we need it in our physical existence. We organize almost everything in our lives around it. I doubt time exists in non-physical dimensions.

[LuigiSimoncini]

good to see somebody telling RLK that some of his questions don't just make sense

[kricketflyd]

Recorded events in time along the celestial clock of seasons eternal? The Phoenix cycle coupled with the Zodiac with 12 x 30 degrees and the Egyptian pyramids? What calendar do you guys use?

[kricketflyd]

Robert, could you do a program on physical tangible dimensions? What do people think they are and is the Spiritual realm within them? How does the Bible describe dimensions and is the second sight the ability to see the unseen? What does it mean that a person can see the light? Are they blessed with enhanced color depth? Is this a sign of the born again?

[TheTroofSayer]

Gosh, not too sure what to make of Seth Lloyd's flippant response to Robert's probing question. For an answer that might be more informative than Lloyd's "whatever", let's see if I can provide something with a little more substance.

Bodies wire neuroplastic, DNA-entangled brains, and experiences intercepted by bodies unfold within the context of space and time. What might that mean? Let's take a closer look:
1) Time is the meaning that an observer attributes to the progression of events happening in space. That is to say, time, as meaning, is illusion;
2) You can say something similar for space. Space is the meaning that an observer attributes to the vicinity within which events are unfolding across time. That is to say, space, as meaning, is also illusion.

And what exactly, is illusion? A number of people, from the Buddha to Jean-Paul Sartre, have been credited with the suggestion that *everything* is illusion. People are inclined to interpret this in the context of imagination, a vague notion that "it's all in our heads". But there is more to illusion than that. Much more. It relates to the principle of association (conditioning, associative learning, semiotic theory of CS Peirce). Association is a fundamental property for all forms of consciousness, and it is the foundation upon which we form our illusions... the meanings with which we navigate reality.

ILLUSION, MEANING AND ASSOCIATION

Some astonishing illusions provide examples of how association works, and increasingly they've been making a presence online. I won't include links to them because then my post gets blocked by yewtube's spmm blokker, but they're easy enough to find with our search engines:
[Ames Window]
[12 fascinating optical illusions show how color can trick the eye] (Washington Post article of February 27, 2015)
[Optical illusion of color: See if you see same or different colors] (Aureolls)

The illusions aren't always just visual. They include associating other senses as well, such as touch, or smell. For insight and some laughs, google terms such as:
[rubber hand illusion]
[rubber hand experiment]
[fake hand experiment]

When you encounter these illusions, try unseeing them, to appreciate their significance. Place your finger, or an object, over the section integral to the context.

Illusion, as meaning, is about the creation of context. A full moon in a clear night sky above is pretty, but when that moon is near the horizon, our brain makes associations between it and the objects on the horizon, to attribute to that moon, a sense of its size... its size becomes more meaningful, and you can't unsee it. The size of the moon on the horizon, the depth of a street along which we are driving or walking, our sense of vertigo standing high up on a ledge, all these are association-based illusions upon which our survival depends.

Optical illusions are the most common because they are the easiest to reproduce online, across computer screens. But *all* experiences intercepted by our bodies are associative, and so it follows that touch, smell, taste, sound *and time* can also be deployed to create illusions.

The principle that makes association so important is very simple. It's the combining of concepts to yield a new concept, context, meaning or illusion. It's fundamental to how we, and every other organism, makes the inferences that are essential to survival. Association plays out also at the cellular and neural levels (refer Eric Kandel's work on Aplysia).

BUDDHISM - SEEING THE WORLD FROM YOUR OWN LEVEL

Actually, Seth's "whatever" response is not that unreasonable. Every observer's automatic reflex is to just assume the reality of their subjectivity. Buddhism describes this as "seeing the world from your own level". Most human and nonhuman observers are reflexively predisposed to making this assumption, regarding the reality of their personal experience. In reality, however, things become more complicated, once you factor in the manner in which the mind-body engages with experiences in the real world.

HOW TIME IS EXPERIENCED DEPENDS ON THE BODY THAT INTERCEPTS IT

The mind-body problem is integral to understanding the nature of time, and how we project the meaning of time onto our experience of the progression of events. Small creatures with high metabolisms, like sparrows, hummingbirds, ants, or flies, experience "bullet time" (Max Payne reference) in comparison to humans (time runs much more slowly for us). 5 minutes to a fly on my plate might be experienced as five hours in human time. Humans have to be quick when swatting a fly, while for a fly to escape a looming swatter amounts to a casual stroll to an open exit. Notice how hyper and vigilant small birds seem to us? They are living in compressed "bullet time". Take for example the video referenced below (Jocelyn Anderson Photography), in which two birds' shared encounter with a human, things progress at a much more casual and relaxed rate (and then compare what it looks like, later in the video, sped up to real time).

Jocelyn Anderson Photography - Hand-feeding Birds in Slow Mo - Mourning Dove, Downy Woodpecker(youtube seems to prohibit the inclusion of html links into comments)

[RogerioLupoArteCientifica]

besides this guy somehow reminding me of Feynman's mannerisms and smiling eyes, I recognize how down-to-earth he is, as he seems to have clear the fact that the theories can dispute and be replaced, and yet our experience remains the same. Plus everything we know could be wrong all along, in spite of theories being able to explain empirical observations, predict and give structure to so many good inventions. So, in short, talks with this guy seem to be very inspiring and insightful.

[onemediuminmotion]

*'Separation in space' **_is_** 'separation in time.'.* Not only is [_my_ use of] this statement a reference to the fact that it takes "time" for 'light' to "traverse" ['propagate through'/'produce the sensory-awareness waveform image of'] the '"intervening space"' between any two {"separate"} mass objects, it also refers to the fact that each 'separate unique individual' 'particulate mass-object' is 'physically defined/manifested' *_as such_* by [means and in terms of] the unique series-sequence[-additive combination] of light (EMR) waves impinging upon it [as "it"] during the course of its "existence" as a _specific_ (i.e. distinct and distinguishable as such) 'spacetime event'. This 'ability' of the universal-BH to 'manifest' its CPS ('center-point singularity') as/at 'many different particle-locations in space' at 'the same time'/'simultaneously' isn't a physical 'paradox', but rather a 'physical necessity' in order for it to 'manifest' "the [history of the] universe as we see [and otherwise 'experience'] it" _as such_.

[gettaasteroid]

All times are not the same ... that is why Don Quixote has the Dulcinea del Toboso