Anthony Aguirre
We recently ran an article (courtesy of Nautilus Magazine) in which physicist Paul Davies ran through some open questions about the nature of time.
I want to alert you to another discussion currently taking place on the Big Questions Online site based on a terrific essay by none other than FQXi's own supremo Anthony Aguirre asking, "What Does Our Understanding of Time Suggest About the Nature of Reality?"
Anthony close his essay with a terrific set of questions, which I am just cutting and pasting here:
1. If the speed of light were much slower, so we could really experience the subjectivity of simultaneity implied by Relativity, how to you think it would change our experience of time, space, and the world?
2. If you truly believed that the past, future, and present all exist in just the same way, as in the Unitary Block view, would it change your attitude toward life -- or death, or decisions?
3. If there are aspects of the world that are unpredictable in principle, is there still a sense in which we can say that they are determined? 聽Or do those two ideas go hand-in-hand?
4. I've suggested that part of the controversy over how to think about quantum mechanics is a controversy over whether the classical, macroscopic world emerges from the quantum world, or whether the quantum world is a particular, stripped-down limit of an essentially classical world. 聽How do you see it? What theoretical or experimental findings might lead you to accept one view as more viable than the other?
Please do visit BQO to take part in this discussion and more.