

New Model of the Universe Says Past Crystallizes out of the Future - ca98am79
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24497/

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jberryman
It sounds like what is being described in the article is more or less the
intuitive understanding of past and future which I imagine most people have.
Is there a better summary of this model that someone can provide?

Anyway, the title made me think of this passage from a lecture of Alan Watts.
He's describing the universe as you experience it when you are first born (the
universe in its truest nature to a taoist):

" When one experiences oneself and the universe as happening together, the
other illusion one is liable to have is that what is happening now follows
necessarily from what happened in the past. But you don't know anything about
that in your primal ignorance. Cause and effect? Why obviously not, because if
you are really naive you see that the past is the result of what is happening
now. It goes backward into the past, like a wake goes backward from a ship.
All the echoes are disappearing finally; they go away, and away, and away. And
it is all starting now."

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krav
Fantastic quote. Thanks for posting it.

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Tichy
It seems to me that this article is not saying anything at all. Instead of the
commonplace "the future becomes the past" it says "the past crystallizes from
the future", which is arguably the same thing.

Just another example for the importance of selling your research in the right
way. Marketing wins.

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eggoa
Yes, "the future becomes the past". But I think the point of this article to
to reconcile this concept with experiments that affect the past.

From page 17, discussing such experiments:

"Many of them in fact assume that the future already exists (if the future did
not already exist, it would of course not be able to influence the present or
past). Our claim, by contrast, is that the future does not yet exist; at
present the future is merely a set of possibilities."

~~~
mnemonicsloth
_From page 17_

In other words, the article didn't say anything, so you went to the actual
paper instead.

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lowkey
Here is a download link from the bottom of the article pointing to the source
paper: <http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.0808>

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WilliamLP
> "The arrow of time arises simply because the future does not yet exist,"

In other words, we eliminate a philosophical dilemma by saying meaningless
gibberish and obfuscating the meaning of ordinary words.

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jackfoxy
No mention of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, at least in the review. I'll
stick with Feynman's interpretation for now,
<http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/> (select Feynman's videos,
then lecture 5).

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dhimes
So, the transition from future to past is a phase transition?

