George Ellis on EXISTENCE

About | Information | History | Online | Facts | Discovery

Author: FQXi

4444View

24m 34sLenght

32Rating

http://fqxi.org George Ellis at the FQXi SETTING TIME ARIGHT conference, an interdisciplinary meeting investigating the nature of time.

Why not do some experiments to decide between block,growing block, presentism etc? What! no experimental differences? Then this is all pointless metaphysical nonsense. Just different ways of describing exactly the same thing. Arguing about no differences at all.
I find it funny the speaker throws away block universe theory and replaces it with growing block universe theory. Funny because a growing block universe leaves a solid block behind it. That block has all the content needed to be a normal block universe (non-growing). It's so unnecessary to propose a growing block, it's helps nothing. My other beef is he assumes a block universe must be laid out a certain way. There are no limits I know of that are required. Nearly a straw man.
This talk is about the "existence of time". If I understood correctly, the speaker rejects the relativity based block universe view of spacetime (s.t.), and seems to prefer the quantum mechanics based variable-future s.t. instead. Personally, the only resolution I know of is a larger block multiverse, with all possible s.t. states - if I am not mistaken, this has previously been suggested by Max Tegmark - this allows for both perceived variability per QM and also for a relativity based block.