09 Dec '10 09:00>
Black beetle asked me to try and put my views in writing. Here goes:
Try to imagine the current point in time as a static state. From here, there is the past and the future. Based on the state of the present, we can calculate using the laws of physics both the past and the future.
Many of the laws of physics are rather ambiguous as to the arrow of time, but not all are.
When we calculate the past, from the present, we can usually be fairly sure what happened.
When we calculate the future however, we are a lot less certain.
This difference creates the illusion of time.
However, when you look at the details, especially at the quantum level, we find that the past is not entirely predictable - and this gives rise to the apparent wave nature of quantum particles.
If we throw away the illusion of time, where we see the past as being existent and having happened and the future as being non-existent and yet to happen, then we should no-longer have a problem with the wave nature of particles. There are many possible pasts and many possible futures. To ask which slit the photon went through is the same as asking which slit it will go through in future. You could say it went through both slits in the past, but you could equally say it will go through both slits in the future. The difference is that when a photon is absorbed you can often narrow down its source to very few possibilities, but when it is emitted, you often have no idea which way it will go.
Another way of looking at it is that there is a strong bias which makes information flow one way through time much better than the other way. It does go both ways, but the bias is so strong that it seems to only go one way.
Try to imagine the current point in time as a static state. From here, there is the past and the future. Based on the state of the present, we can calculate using the laws of physics both the past and the future.
Many of the laws of physics are rather ambiguous as to the arrow of time, but not all are.
When we calculate the past, from the present, we can usually be fairly sure what happened.
When we calculate the future however, we are a lot less certain.
This difference creates the illusion of time.
However, when you look at the details, especially at the quantum level, we find that the past is not entirely predictable - and this gives rise to the apparent wave nature of quantum particles.
If we throw away the illusion of time, where we see the past as being existent and having happened and the future as being non-existent and yet to happen, then we should no-longer have a problem with the wave nature of particles. There are many possible pasts and many possible futures. To ask which slit the photon went through is the same as asking which slit it will go through in future. You could say it went through both slits in the past, but you could equally say it will go through both slits in the future. The difference is that when a photon is absorbed you can often narrow down its source to very few possibilities, but when it is emitted, you often have no idea which way it will go.
Another way of looking at it is that there is a strong bias which makes information flow one way through time much better than the other way. It does go both ways, but the bias is so strong that it seems to only go one way.