Stephen Paul King wrote:
>
> No, I disagree. The mere a priori existence of bit strings is not
>enough to imply necessity that what we experience 1st person view points.
>At best it allows the possibility that the bit strings could be
>implemented. You see the problem is that it is impossible to derive Change
>or "Becoming" from Being. Think of this in terms of thermodynamics, if we
>assume a universe that is in perfect equilibrium there will never be any
>possibility of a deviation from such equilibrium unless we introduce some
>mechanism to "disturb" it. If we use the mechanism of a "quantum
>fluctuation" then we are forced to introduce some kind of "potential to
>change" into a structure that by definition has none.
> This has long been a problem for thinkers trying to understand the
>notion of Time. Unless we assume some form of change or Becoming as
>existing a priori to time and that out notion of Time is a "local" measure
>of change, we are forced to construct ideas where we ask questions like how
>fast is a second. We end up with a Time_ 1 to measure the rate of change
>that is somehow different from the usual time (Time_0) and this, in turn,
>would have to have a Time_2 and thus a Time_3, etc.- an infinite number of
>times, each to measure the rate of change of the one below it.
Why do you need to believe that there is any "change" at the ultimate level
at all? The idea of "block time" has always seemed plausible to me, where
events in the future and past (or various parallel futures and pasts, from a
multiverse point of view) are just as real as events at other spatial
locations in a single moment (and relativity suggests that there is no
unique definition of the 'present moment' anyway). This point of view is
discussed in a nice article from Scientific American by physicist Paul
Davies:
http://www.american-buddha.com/myster.flow.physics.htm
Jesse
Received on Fri May 06 2005 - 17:23:51 PDT