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March 6th, 2009
12:13 pm - Timelike collapse
I am sure many people will not agree with it but this paper in New Scientist exactly captures my intuition about what Time is.
"It is not reality that has a time flow, it is our very approximate knowledge of reality that has a time flow," says Rovelli. "Time is the effect of our ignorance."
Time does not "exist" as a fundamental feature of the universe, but is an emergent property based on collapse of probability of independent events into the probability of a series of events.
I've been trying to write an SF novel on this basis for like a decade and I can't express it in words that aren't incredibly turgid and unreadable. Actually I more or less gave it up a year or so ago and turned to poetry instead. It's quite a relief to see someone else expressing it more methodically and calmly than I can. (Of course the notion of timelike collapse wasn't all I was trying to say, but it was one of the most tricky things to try to write, and source of a lot of fail).
The possibility is that I am so pleased to see this done that I'm leaping to read them as saying 'what I wanted to say' when they actually aren't.
ETA metafilter discussion here
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