Smolin against the timeless multiverse
There is a new article by Lee Smolin at Physicsworld.com, “The unique universe“, where he exposes his metaphysical position on the multiverse and the notion of time as fundamental, not emergent.
My thoughts are close to Smolin on those issues, see my previous post on the multiverse here:
and, in a funny side, my cartoon here:
Concerning the question whether time is fundamental or not, my philosophical position is that it is fundamental, although there is a facet of it which can be made artificially emergent. See my essay on concurrent time here .
June 3, 2009 at 2:24 pm
But philosophically Bergson (of 1907) is much more interesting on the subject, while physically … but where did you see physics there?!
The second of Smolin’s great three “fundamental principles”: “All that is real is real in a moment, which is a succession of moments. Anything that is true is true of the present moment.”
Look, Christine (or anyone else), do you want to imply that THIS can be a great discovery or a strong physical or philosophic insight into great laws of nature, really?! And the rest of it is not really different… And since it is SO great “fundamental science” that finds luxurious support in the best, particularly “advanced” world’s science institutes, one may actually have doubts that such a “developed” world can be real…
. Or is it just such a special “moment”, when “anything that is wrong” is also considered as “true of the present moment”?! 
It lasts already a bit too long, however, that very special “moment”…
With a reference to our previous exchange here and while respecting all your freedom of choice, I still wonder why you can find time and interest in this kind of “result” and cannot find time for a causally complete, physical, mathematical and realistic (rather than only abstract!) explanation of what is real time and real, rigorously specified and physically transparent world dynamics, without mysteries, arbitrary postulates and ruptures, and precisely realising in addition your “concurrent (and emergent!) time” dreams. It’s just my extraterrestrial curiosity in human nature, quite innocent. Just can’t understand it as anything “reasonable”. Help! Of course, “girls always prefer rich and powerful” (and boys too, alas!), but I thought it shouldn’t have anything to do with science, or should it? I mean if something is “covered” in their “central magazine”, then it’s of interest, even when it is of SUCH quality, and if it’s not published in a central magazine, then it cannot represent any interest, again irrespective of consistency, real problem solutions, etc.? What do you call OBJECTIVE science then, I mean why “objective”? The same question to those “science journalists” and editors, of course… Is it all real or just a bankrupt matrix from a nightmare virtual reality? Corruption…
With that kind of “advanced science” upon your head, no wonder one may have difficult “middle-age problems”! Better read Andrei Kirilyuk and welcome back to your 17!
Take me as a cure for the headache from their “advanced science”… 
Or take me seriously and let’s explode their small world of ugly lie with objective and harmonious truth. Welcome to eternity.
June 3, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Andrei,
Smolin’s points are metaphysical exercises. There are no objective scientific results there. All I mention here is that I find that my (also metaphysical) ideas approach his own concerning the following facts:
1) the universe is one by definition, there are no multiverses: such concept is not necessary or is simply meaningless.
2) time is fundamental, not emergent.
I have not commented (nor I am willing to) here on his cosmological “evolutionary” models, or about his “principles”. The importance of hi popularization article, as far as I can see, is to add a voice against the profusion of multiverse nonsense spread elsewhere, and also to position himself in a line of research that probably (will) diverge(s) from Rovelli’s notion of a timeless quantum gravity. It is aimed at the general (educated) public, who is interested in physics, cosmology and philosophy.
Concerning your other complaints, I believe that you feel the need for attention. Well, I feel honored that you value my attention on your work, for whatever reasons you believe that my attention can make any difference whatsoever to increase the relevance or recognition to your work. But the fact is that my attention makes no difference, except perhaps for fulfilling your own curiosity?
I see that you have several articles posted in the arxiv, most of them as reports in conferences (correct me if I am wrong). Your work may or may not have received the attention it deserves. I am unable to evaluate it so quickly. I have no current position on your work. I may or may not have one. And yes, there is no point to discuss my availability of time. I do what I choose to do with my time, under my own daily constraints. So in order to gain recognition on your work, you should “enter the system” and publish a refereed paper on a well-known, high impact journal. If you have already done this, give me a link to your paper, and I may read it first.
Best,
Christine
June 3, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Still, “a refereed paper on a well-known, high impact journal” is important for your personal estimate, this fact of publication in such journal is more important than the actual paper content? But you know, don’t you, how it works, peer review and the rest? My direct competitor (it could be Smolin, among others) is given the absolute right to decide the publication or not of a paper that claims, directly or indirectly, producing the results desired but missing in the work of those referees. And it is like this for ANY real progress in any paper. Very logical, because it’s science.
Myself, I always thought that results, the content is always more important and interesting. When necessary (for CERTAIN authors), references to arXiv preprints are quite sufficient, even for physicsworld.com! Anyway, you may have a look at http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0401164 and hopefully find a noticeable correlation with “concurrent time” ideas already in the abstract and other links to other arXiv abstracts there. One of them refers to a presentation of a (published!) book of 1997, although it’s a purely verbal one (see also http://books.google.com/books?id=V1cmKSRM3EIC ). In any case it seems strange to have this situation: same ideas as yours but in a physically and mathematically well-specified, problem-solving form, but which are without interest to you … because they are not published in a “good place” (all of them known for never publishing anything essentially new, for many years). Do you know any other refinement of these specific ideas? I know only the UNREDUCED de Broglie’s approach (beyond its often cited reduction, see my papers and web site for references), but … it is “poorly known” within the “international community” (although the guy was really great, you know, in any possible sense, and strongly insisted on those “special” ideas, published of course, but now so thoroughly “erased”!).
I think that you are trying to advance something more elaborated than Smolin’s empty philosophy. He has nothing scientific, well-specified (let alone realistic!) in those directions, and philosophically, where is he essentially more advanced than e.g. Bergson or Prigogine? Is it only because there is a still greater nonsense elsewhere, like all those “multiverses” (and closely related “quantum computers”, for example, massively promoted everywhere) or e.g. “inflation” versions? But even popular science writers, such as John Horgan (with literary education!), are able to very convincingly denounce them. It’s all too banal for professional science, to first advance evidently absurd concepts (and publish them just in those “peer reviewed” and “high-impact” journals!) and then thoroughly “disprove” them, in the same “top” journals, but with which net result? Empty talks, high positions and prestigious salaries for that resulting nothingness, evident from the beginning?
And Christine, the highest, final purpose is always understanding, in “science”, or (any!) “paper”, or this our discussion, or any other discussion. I hope modestly that we could agree on something like that… But please remain ruthless! It’s truth, right, no compromise with it. Well, almost no compromise…
June 4, 2009 at 10:24 am
Hi Andrei,
I think you are making a big confusion here, so let me try to make my points very clear:
1) No, I do not value a paper *only* based on the fact of it having been peer reviewed. Yes, the contents of a paper are more important than anything else. All I have asked of you was to point to a peer reviewed paper of yours, if you had one, so that it would be the *first* paper that I would choose to read. Read carefully my last sentence.
2) Yet, the peer review, although having some problems, which I faced myself some occasions, is still an important method to have your work evaluated by other scientists and to receive valuable input and feedback. This is why I always submit my scientific work to peer reviewed journals. I do not consider my FQXi essay a scientific work (it is a philosophical exercise). I have indicated the importance of having your work being peer reviewed as a chance of receiving more recognition from the physics community; otherwise you won’t have any. This may be not important to you, it is acceptable if it has a meaning to your own ideals. But peer review is how the system works, you may like it or not. Otherwise I see no importance of having only myself making an evaluation of your work, since I have no status in the community whatsoever to promulgate it adequately.
3) The fact that Smolin’s article was published in Physicsworld.com is irrelevant. I am not claiming that his article, which was probably not peer reviewed, is more important or more interesting than yours (which you even claim to have precise results concerning my “concurrent time” ramblings). Smolin’s article is a fast reading and interesting for the reasons I have pointed previously. I have studied several previous, peer reviewd works of Smolin, and it took a lot of time and effort. In order to read your work, I am certain that I will have to take a lot of time and effort. I never claimed that your work does not interest me. It does, as well as many other works, and I have a pile of books and papers to read right now over my desk. I also have several other responsabilites at work and at home. So, do not expect prompt feedback on your work. This is why I have asked you for a peer review paper of yours, since such work would already have passed through some criticism, which would probably be valuable to improve its contents and make it easier on me to understand it. Also, can you imagine how many people have sent me papers and ideas since I have started blogging? I can assure you that it has been a reasonable large amount, and I have simply no time to be evaluating all that material (some are clearly crackpot stuff, so it’s easy on such cases). Also, I have my *own* work, my *own* ideas which I am exploring right now. I have to find time for all that.
4) With time, I came to the conclusion that there are two types of science. There is Science, with an “S”, which is the pure search for understanding nature, wherein sociological matters must have the least interference. And there is science, with an “s”, which is a pure sociological activity, wherein the search for understanding is just an excuse.
I hope my considerations are now clear to you.
Best,
Christine
June 4, 2009 at 12:45 pm
You just don’t say which letter size in the word “science” you prefer yourself (the opposition between the two is evident from your description). It can even give a funny idea to make this difference between these two kinds of science explicit and why not official. So “social” scientists will be able to amuse with their political hierarchies, peer reviews, exchange of services, brilliant careers and “prestigious” rewards, while condemned truth seekers will be free from the above but will be responsible for real progress in consistent, realistic truth establishment (by explicit solution of problems concerning real world structure and dynamics).
You also provide the fundamental criterion for truly high level of a scientific paper: it is when it is so exciting that a female scientist can forget even about her house work and family while reading and trying to understand those results.
I think that Nobel Prize is a ridiculously small level with respect to that truly strong criterion. Therefore I am not really discouraged that I cannot yet approach that terribly high level. (Just don’t say that Smolin could because then I shall be truly disappointed! 
) And Christine, I don’t insist on your attention to my results at all: as I repeated many times, I just noted that rare correlation between your dreams about desirable real-time and other problem solution (clearly expressed as such) and my explicitly presented results. Apart from that, I don’t look for any “promotion” or “mark” from you. I’m condemned to the great, self-sufficient S, you know…
But of course any opinion naturally looks for a support, and in that sense your vision of “clear considerations” is somewhat incomplete. Even when everything is clear (which is never so simple), there is a place for evolution (should be!) and everybody’s trying to influence that evolution. I’d say it’s OK provided there is a real, “natural” proximity of views and no artificial pressure. Personally I prefer something like free, interested discussion, so that if you’re not interested (I had those reasons to think you may be), it’s quite enough to put it aside.
But after all, you do see, don’t you, the difference between all that “timeless”, traditional science and that another “Bergsonian” attitude that does want to find real time and related explicit structure “emergence” (Prigogine wrote much and rather correctly about it)? And whatever Smolin may say about his “philosophic” preference, the “hard” science he and others are actually doing in Perimeter Institute and elsewhere is clearly of the first, timeless kind. That’s why “philosophically timeless” attitudes Smolin tries to criticise are more honest than his own philosophically pro-time, but scientifically still timeless activity (his “philosophical” materials on the subject, with all those details are or will be of course published in peer-reviewed sources, how could you doubt that?!
). It also looks curious that yourself you seem to like the real-time attitude, but often switch in favour of clearly timeless particular results. Oscillating a little? Between S and s? 
What is the asymptotic behaviour of this transient oscillation process? It’s a good house-wife, I know… 
Joking, joking. Keep posting.
June 4, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Well, Andrei, you disappoint me a little, not knowing, from my blog writtings, which one I would choose! Ok, the answer should be self-evident, but in fact it is a bit complicated. So I will take the opportunity and just scratch the surface of the problem. In my whole life, I believed firmly in “S”. I still believe in “S”, deep inside me, but it became a somewhat submerged belief, because I came to understand that I cannot escape from struggling with the “s”, as long as I really want to continue professionally working in science. I don’t like, don’t agree, don’t have the profile for the “s”, but somehow I have to live with it. or otherwise, quit. “S” is generally regarded as a romantic, idealistic view, with no room to flourish in our times. Maybe it reigned in past epochs. But today, it appears not have much value. Yet, it is the “S” which keeps me going on. So, it’s not a kind of oscillation between the two, as if I were in doubt which one to choose, but just an aknowledgement of the situation. My choice was made a long time ago. But I have to live with the unfortunate interferences of “s”.
Best,
Christine
June 7, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Hi Christine,
I just noticed you have begun to post again and in this instance regarding a subject I enjoy reading and thinking about. For the most part I share Smolin’s sentiments on time being fundamental and not emergent as well as the view that the isomorphic multiverese concept being absurd which you hold central. Yet his insistence that mathematics can be equated holding no significance beyond that of a game I find more than a little deceiving.
That is he shirts around the fact that mathematics is dependent on logic, which I would hardly call an invention yet rather a restriction of what can and cannot be, given certain parameters. True you can change the parameters to then have different results, yet this has nothing to do with logic itself. Then I’m brought to wonder if time is fundamental what else is required to have a universe. I would suggest that as mysterious as time seems to be, the fact that both structure and outcome are found to be restricted by logic is also perplexing; which can’t be so readily dismissed or disregarded by simply having mathematics as only an invention while ignoring its underpinnings. I’m not however suggesting that mathematics is fundamental, yet rather logic itself. The question then to ask is not why much of nature can be explained mathematically, yet why as it being so able to therein restricted is by logic? My way of looking at it to ask, in as time can be thought as a river, what decides where, when and why it flows?
Best,
Phil
June 7, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Hi Andrei,
“The real, and positive, role of Bohmian mechanics is that is serves as the optimal, though not complete. reconciliation of a mathematically consistent description with the physically consistent, truly casual double solution concept of de Broglie conceived and further developed during practically all the period since the appearance of quantum mechanics……….We have generally the same type of relation between Bohm’s Theory and the original de Broglie approach as that between standard Copenhagen Interpretation and complete quantum mechanics in the whole, and it should be estimated with the same comprehension.” -page 111 (Universal Concept of Complexity by the Dynamic Redundance Paradigm) – Andrei P. Kirilyuk- Naukova Dumka, 1997
For me the most convincing aspect of time that suggests it is real and fundamental is that it has both a distinct direction and effect, which can’t be changed and more than simply being a dimension also has aspect as that of a force. This force however cannot be altered, mitigated or diverted by the actions of other forces or what we see as what constitutes to be matter. This of course is non Newtonian, particularly when it comes to the third law, yet I find it strange that with the coming of the implications of GR and QM many still feel that somehow this must be maintained as truth. I have therefore long imagined that the wave as first envisioned by de Broglie and expanded upon by Bohm was perhaps nothing more then what manifests as being the action and signature of time.
“Although ψ is a real field it does not show up immediately in the result of a single “measurement,” but only in the statistics of many such results. It is the de Broglie-Bohm variable Q that shows up immediately each time. That Q rather than ψ is historically called a “hidden” variable is a piece of historical silliness.” -J.S. Bell
Best,
Phil
June 10, 2009 at 6:53 pm
I didn’t quite understand the strange responses above but I read that article after seeing your blog, and I noticed that the message and argumentation is close to identical to a talk smoling made (available as mp3) october last year. http://pirsa.org/08100049/
I also hold a point of view similar to smolin and it’s interesting to hear different arguments.
I definitely see a connection to that, and Christines “deadlock avoidance”. Again it’s interesting to see how apparently different starting points and choice of reasonings lead to similar conclusions. My own personal arguments for this is different but the result is quite similar. I try to hold a kind of informational view, and from that perspective I find it almsot obvious that from the point of view of a predictive context, there is no fundamental unambigous decomposition between KNOWLEDGE about initial conditions and KNOWLEDGE about law. The information must be treated symmetrically. IMO the main difference is that of confidence, which I think of as closely related to inertia. We simply have more confidence in a law, than in initial condition.
If we consider information processing, physical law is something constantly evolving and emergent and to be seen as a compressed version of an observer time history. The initial conditions is simple the bleeding edge of this evolving ifnormation structure.
I think of the deadlock avoidance as a trait, if you picture physical systems as biological organisms populating the universe. Thus there is selection for deadlock avoidance. I think you can approach this from several directions. I’m trying to find te informational view, that explains this. If you consider a deadlock as an inconsistency, and puts that in an informational perspective, then even an inconsistency must be acquired, and it somehow lies in the nature here that an inconsistency is unlikely to stay coherent. It will destabilise, and ideally mutate into a compromise, that avoids a deadlock.
A system in particular must be able to handle the situation that new information arrives that is in flat contradiction with the prior one. What to do? A machine might halt. But a deadlock avoiding system should be able to rate both contradicting information, and somehow find a compromise, that becomes the new information. One problem is that if you believe in a intrinsic information model, a simple bayesian approach doesn’t work here because it implicitly assumes a probabilistic framework, which defines the negotiations say as per bayes rule.
Instead the rules of negotiation themselves must be evolving as well. This would lead to a hierarchy of informaton processes “laws”. And I picture that this information structure, hierarchical is bounded by the observers complexity.
And that all physical interactions can be abstracted as such information strucutres negotiating. There would then be emergent, also in hierarchial order various levels of “observer invariant agreement”, this would be the effective laws.
There are plenty of problems here, for example to describe, in general the process of negotiation – this would really have to be a new sort of logic, since it must be able to make sense out of things that A AND B when A and B are as per boolean logic inconsistent.
One would also have to explain how the complexity(masS) of this information structure can loose and gain complexity. The hope is that this will predict gravity, working as a “constraint” on all other forces, thus somehow distinguishing itself from the other forces.
I definitely see potential that going in this direction can yield very predictive and deep results. but it is a massive reconstruction that is needed, and I agree with smoling that it really is a new way to see science and law, because the sub-system approach yielding the newtonian scheme simply breaks down. And it really does imply a new way of reasoning for the scientists, and thus these ideas might even have suggestiongs for new writigns on philosophy of science.
/Fredrik
June 12, 2009 at 8:17 am
I now understood when reading more than some responses was about Christine more than the topic of smolins timelessn notion and the deadlock avoidance. I didn’t read it carefully.
Phil wrote:
> the fact that both structure and outcome are found to be restricted by logic is also
> perplexing; which can’t be so readily dismissed or disregarded by simply having
> mathematics as only an invention while ignoring its underpinnings.
The question I raise, is if it really is true! that future outcomes is *restricted* by some fixed logic?
As I see it, which I also find to be somewhat in line with smolins ideas, is that the choices of logic of reasoning, as a basis for our actions (and generall of course the action of any system), is emergent as a result of the past interactions, and the past is of course observer dependenet as always.
So I do not think the case is that mathematical formalism is an hoc invention, however it’s how you view it, does the history of outcomes form this, or does it as a preexisting sturcture determine the future?
It’s funnt that you used the word game, because I often think of nature as a game. All subsystmes are players, somehow competing with each other, negotiating etc, andn they are all evolving as a result of this.
The point I see with smolin trying to propagate this new ideas, is that with a new way of seeing what is physical law, what is science, then we could do even better!
Somehow I don’t see that mathematical platonism that has lead to research strategies more like mathematical toyery and beauty as the only requirements has been very successful.
I don’t perceive at all that smolin is thinking that mathematics is flawed, but perhaps the “mathematical poisoning of physics” he talks about occasionally is more that it has induced a realist vision of physical law (represented by mathematics) in alot of scientists that possibly isn’t a good trait.
Somehow the mathematicics gives an impression of an underlying mathematical reality that has no physical justification.
Physical interactions, might not be able to describe from the inside as an accumulating body of timeless axiomatic structure.
In that sense I think Smolin is right, and everybody else is wrong
Thank you
/Fredrik
June 12, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Sorry everyone: I’ve got a cold and can’t think straight. I’ll get back to the discussions here when I feel better, or at least when/if I have something useful to add…
Christine
June 12, 2009 at 1:06 pm
I hope I didn’t add any “blogg-stress” by the lenghty reflections, I really don’t expect any lenghty responses at all, I just added my comments.
Take care and cure yourself properly without feeling any stress to respond to our trivial ponderings.
Have a nice weekend.
/Fredrik
June 18, 2009 at 10:22 am
Not at all!
I’m much better now (it wasn’t swine flu anyway
).
I’m just a slow blogger at the moment, with so much to do and so little time.
best,
Christine