The Block Universe Theory

[Ninshub]

New controversial theory: Past, present, future exist simultaneously
Our experience of time may be blinding us to its true nature, say scientists.
Paul Ratner, 23 September, 2018

• Time may not be passing at all, says the Block Universe Theory.
  
• Time travel may be possible.
  
• Your perception of time is likely relative to you and limited.
  

We seem to perceive time as passing in one direction. After all, we can't just just forward to the future or revisit our past if we felt like it. Every minute of every day appears to move us ahead, pulling us through our lives towards an inexorable demise. At least that's what the conventional experience of time tells us. But what if your present, past, and future all existed already? Time, from that point of view, would not flow.

The block universe theory says that our universe may be looked at as a giant four-dimensional block of spacetime, containing all the things that ever happen, explained Dr. Kristie Miller, the joint director for the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney.

In the block universe, there is no "now" or present. All moments that exist are just relative to each other within the three spacial dimensions and one time dimension. Your sense of the present is just reflecting where in the block universe you are at that instance. The "past" is just a slice of the universe at an earlier location while the "future" is at a later location.

There seems to have been quite a lot of comment about this online recently, much of it presenting this as a revolutionary new theory. I have trouble seeing how it's different from the standard view of spacetime in the macroscopic universe.

Disconcertingly, most of the online presentations seem to include comments like "But what if your present, past, and future all existed already?" What does "already" mean, if we are supposed to be considering the whole of spacetime as external observers?

I have been rewatching some early episodes of Doctor Who from the 1960s. This reminds me of a comment made by Marco Polo (1964), discussing with Kublai Khan his encounter with the time travellers - "I wonder where they are now? The past or the future?"

New controversial theory: Past, present, future exist simultaneously
Our experience of time may be blinding us to its true nature, say scientists.
Paul Ratner, 23 September, 2018

A few thoughts on this. This hypothesis would seem to invalidate free will, since all human decisions are already decided in the block universe frame. The physicists apparently inventing the block universe concept really invented nothing - their apparent intentionality, imagination and analysis leading to this was already fixed deterministically forever in the higher frame. The new hypothesis is psychologically disabling. Why bother, why should they strive to create anything? This applies to all human creativity, and also to all mundane decisions like whether to buy that ice cream cone or not. 

The same would apply to what strongly and unanimously appear in great numbers of experiments to be nondeterministic truly random quantum mechanical events, such as the fission disintegration of particular uranium atoms.

In fact, concerning the status of the block universe hypothesis as "real science", no physics lab experiment could ever detect this ultimate fixed deterministic frame for quantum mechanical events. So, like the multiverse hypothesis, the block universe hypothesis appears to be non-falsifiable and therefore not really science.

And the block universe hypothesis also begs the question of where such an incredibly complicated, organized system came from, since it already encompasses all time. No origin story, so it is profoundly counterintuitive at least to limited human beings. The usual existential mystery of why is there something not nothing. There is also the usual logical implication, that some ultimate intelligent cause must exist outside the postulated frame, whether that frame is the "block universe", or whatever.

A few thoughts on this. This hypothesis would seem to invalidate free will, since all human decisions are already decided in the block universe frame. The physicists apparently inventing the block universe concept really invented nothing - their apparent intentionality, imagination and analysis leading to this was already fixed deterministically forever in the higher frame. The new hypothesis is psychologically disabling. Why bother, why should they strive to create anything? This applies to all human creativity, and also to all mundane decisions like whether to buy that ice cream cone or not.

I must be missing something, because I don't see how being able to view the whole of time from outside time has any implications for free will, any more than being able to view the past from the present does.

I must be missing something, because I don't see how being able to view the whole of time from outside time has any implications for free will, any more than being able to view the past from the present does.

I don't see how humans can ever see anything from outside of time. Our existence as conscious beings inherently involves change from moment to moment in order to have conscious thoughts of any sort, and time can be defined as the measure of change. No time - no change - no consciousness, at least human or imaginable.

I don't see how humans can ever see anything from outside of time. Our existence as conscious beings inherently involves change from moment to moment in order to have conscious thoughts of any sort, and time can be defined as the measure of change. No time - no change - no consciousness, at least human or imaginable.

Yes, I agree, humans can't. To be able to view it, you'd have to be a kind of eternal being, not subject to time.

But by the same token, the block universe doesn't "already" exist as the article describes it doing. Because that would imply the block universe itself was subject to time. On the contrary, it contains time.

So I think the difficulty with free will is illusory. But on the other hand, from that point of view, I can't see what the theory does, apart from stating the obvious.