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Why We Can't Remember the Future

posted by martyb on Tuesday May 06 2014, @02:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the second-chances-come-first dept.

AnonTechie writes:

Thought experiment proposed to reconcile psychological versus thermodynamic arrows of time:

A pair of physicists has proposed a thought experiment to help reconcile the seeming disparity between the psychological and thermodynamic arrows of time. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review E, Leonard Mlodinow and Todd Brun claim their thought experiment demonstrates that the two seemingly contradictory views of time, must always align.

When ordinary people think about time, they see the past as something that has come before and the future as a great unknown yet to come. We can remember the past, because it has happened already, but not the future, because it hasn't. Physicists, on the other hand see time as able to move either forward or backwards (towards greater entropy), which implies that we should be able to remember events in the future. So, why can't we?

It's because of the way our memories work the two say, and they've created a thought experiment to demonstrate what they mean. Imagine, they write, two chambers connected by an atomic sized tube with a turnstile in it. If there is gas in one of the chambers, individual atoms of it will move through the tube to the other chamber (towards higher entropy) tripping the turnstile as they go, in effect, counting the atoms as they pass by, until both sides have equal numbers of atoms-creating a state of equilibrium.

http://phys.org/news/2014-05-thought-psychological -thermodynamic-arrows.html

Arrow of Time FAQ

http://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/47

http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysR evE.89.052102

 
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  • (Score: 1) by Oligonicella on Tuesday May 06 2014, @03:25PM

    by Oligonicella (4169) on Tuesday May 06 2014, @03:25PM (#40182)

    This is the greatest blind side of some mathematicians. Never ever will anyone (to use yet another example) find a huge ball of fiery gasses condense themselves back into a puddle of flammable liquid and a match. Math says it's possible. Reality disagrees. Math guys frantically continue to believe it's true. They cannot seem to grasp that what may be true on a molecular level (and in discrete if not singular instances) will not occur on the macro.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by naubol on Tuesday May 06 2014, @06:30PM

    by naubol (1918) on Tuesday May 06 2014, @06:30PM (#40266)

    I think you are being unfair to many mathematicians and physicists who already are cognizant of this issue by being so general in your speech. I doubt you have taken a survey, and your invective is not a good way to promulgate your (or anyone's) perspective.