Time's Arrow; requires a brain (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, September 27, 2016, 14:55 (2978 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Time requires a brain. Physical laws do not need or recognize time nor does quantum mechanics. Time requires memories: - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/09/26/the-arrow-of-time-its-all-in-our-head... - QUOTE: Our paper shows that time doesn't just exist “out there” ticking away from past to future, but rather is an emergent property that depends on the observer's ability to preserve information about experienced events. - As a naïve non-physicist may I suggest that CONSCIOUSNESS of time depends on there being a conscious observer. That does not mean time does not exist independently of the observer. (See below) - QUOTE: All our scientific theories tell us that we should be able to experience the future just like we experience the past. - For this naïve non-physicist, all our human experiences tell us that the future has not yet arrived and so we cannot experience it. Maybe there is something missing from our scientific theories. (See below) - QUOTE: The answer is that we observers have memory and can only remember events which we have observed in the past. - Yes indeed. As a naïve non-physicist, I think I know by experience and observation that I would not be here if I hadn't been born as a baby, and nobody would have been born if the universe hadn't existed, and so there would appear to be a process of cause and effect which depends on a sequence of before and after. If things appear to be different in the quantum world, this does not in any way alter the fact - verified by zillions of personal experiences, observations and scientific experiments - that x happens as a result of a preceding y: e.g. if I step out in front of a bus and get hit, I will also get hurt. Cause and effect. Before and after. A sequence of past and present, with the future yet to come. That is what I understand by time's arrow. And I sincerely believe (apparently an unscientific act of faith on my part, but there you are, I am a naïve non-physicist) that the sequence of cause and effect, before and after, has existed, exists now, and will go on existing even without my being there to observe it and regardless of what happens or is thought to happen in the quantum world.