Lee Smolin Public Lecture: Time Reborn

This is a scientist with balls. We need a lot more of this.

@36:30 It strikes me that Prof. Smolin‘s description of time is exactly what a certain French philosopher who shall not be named was driving at with the “critique of presence” i.e. that the future (and the past) can’t be treated as only a “modified present.” The future holds things that are genuinely new. The past is available to us, but only in traces.

Presented by Canada Dry Ginger Ale " The soft drink so tasty, it makes you re-evaluate space-time itself "

Smolin sounds like a true godfather!....I like his science but love his voice!

Fabulous talk. For me, it helped to run at 1.5 speed, but freeze when they show the slides.

He's spot on. Even the Cosmological natural selection. Win different universes doesn't explain how the first universe was born..

Fascinating! Touched on a lot of issues I have been pondering for a while. Smolin is such an interesting thinker to me.

I read Henri Bergson maybe twenty years ago and he profoundly influenced my thinking about time as a fundamental property/aspect of our physical universe in fundamental ways (I'm a professional photographer, so "capturing time" is an ongoing interest of mine.) [Bergson, Time and Free Will, 1889; Matter and Memory, 1896, etc.] Smolin has expanded on Bergson's philosophical efforts and moved Henri's conjectures from the metaphysical into the mundane "scientific" and experimental/ refutable plane, as is proper, science being a subset of "metaphysics" with Smolin's expertise in "practicable/real" physics. [Karl Popper ~ "no theory (metaphysics) is completely correct, but some substantial portion must be subject to falsifiability, which is to say, subject to objective experiment by multiple observers"] I've always objected to Platonism (laws, models, that somehow exist beyond our perception - "universal laws, objects, i/0 gates, rules & regulations out there" - in modern theories of science and mathematics (not just in religion), and Smolin has supplied me some powerful theoretical arguments to refute Plato. As for Smolin's universe "bounce" creation theory, Sir Roger Penrose has also proposed the same argument (Sir Roger has also made the observation that our present cosmology is "not even wrong".).

Incredible clarity about hugely complex systems.

This is an excellent lecture. I enjoyed and plan to listen to it 6 more times (because among many other time immutable laws one sais that you know something after repeating it 7 times :) ) I am glad to learn that Einstein pondered on the notion of NOW having realized it is not captured by science. I've delivered hundreds of lectures in mathematical and technical sciences and know that students love these kind of reasoning; surely there is a sparkle in Lee. It is true that today new kinds of models are being developed in which time is absent and the relations are in terms of A(B), B(C), C(A,B) where A, B,C are directly observable. It is interesting that Lee's opponent Carlo Rovelli brought me here (opponent, but dear friend). In his book "What if Time Does Not Exist?" he remembers Lee Smolin's honesty and integrity as a scientist when he proposed that Carlo should publish the first paper on loop quantum gravity rather than publish the first historic paper as co-authors. His honesty as a scientist is visible in this lecture as well and it is not common in the world I know from my own experience.

Truly fascinating!

Finally some recognition of Peirce by science and cosmology. To read him, CP is an online PDF with much of his work -- convert it to word and enjoy.

Dr. Lee, For some reason in my mind, I understand and completely agree with you. I will be following your genius. Go for it. Regards Philip.

For me, one of the key indicators that time is real is that traveling backwards in time is impossible because to do so would require traveling faster than the speed of light, which we know is impossible. Thankfully, that eliminates all the time paradox problems. And although time dilation is real, no matter how fast you travel up to the speed of light, time is still moving forward, just at different rates. That to me indicates that time is real and not an illusion.

My favorite author, I listen to his books over and over.

Dirac lectured on this subject at FSU, he has his Large Number and sites Milne's work. The idea that the constants aren't constant over time is a conjecture, and the attempt to explain the Fine Structure constant is also part of those works. Experimenting in this area to prove conjecture seems next to impossible. Interesting lecture by Smolin.

One of my favorite talks on the internet

Mind opening. Thank you!

PI's own Lee Smolin co-authored a new book called "The Singular #Universe and the Reality of Time" (one of the #books just recommended by Symmetry magazine): ow.ly/FOjCs And we've just re-released Smolin's 2013 PI Public Lecture to mark the occasion:

Remarkably helpful since there IS a single REALITY -- All there is. There is no final distinction between the truths of science and those of philosophy. Triadic Philosophy is based on these premises.