Did Einstein Secretly Believe The Universe Thinks? (part 1 of 3)

Some Physicists Today Seem To Think So

Acknowledged up front, physics has accomplished amazing things. It has built a profound body of knowledge about the physical universe, some of which was un-intuitive and thus more difficult.

But also, sometimes physics apparently has made blunders and repeatedly engaged in dogmatic thinking and circular logic. Such is humanity.

Surely the more advanced ETs out in the infinite universe are well beyond such fallibility? We must face our serious thinking problems and improve on them, dramatically. Ubiquitous faulty thinking in humanity seems to be the biggest challenge for survival of earthlife.

This article is about the recurring faulty thinking in physics around the subject of “time”.

If anyone might want to snarkily declare to his/her friends that he “knows something that Einstein apparently did not figure out”, then here is the opportunity to do that. Please dig into this dilemma about “time”.

Philosophers and others have debated about “time” over maybe 3 thousand years, although when “they the philosophers” go daffy about various topics then there usually are not big negative consequences of their faulty thinking. Philosophy nowadays is mostly off the board, sadly.

But physics, wow, the physicists are the experts who should be very clear about “time” and they should communicate that clarity to the public. However, they are not clear about time, a lot of them.

But then here too, we could remember that physicists are experts in physicality but maybe not so much in psychology and neurology, where thinking is studied. Time occurs only in thinking.

In any case, the future of earthlife critically depends on the human engine of knowledge, i.e. science, and physics is a leading science.

Here’s the problem with physics and time. There is “human time” that occurs only in thinking, and there is alleged to be a “physical time” that is an intrinsic part of the physical universe, which Einstein believed in and many physicists today still believe in.

But physical time does not exist. And, if physics accepted this reality, that it does not exist, then so much of physics apparently would have to be re-worked. This could be huge.

We can easily and clearly define what “human time” is and then we can make some stabs at what some physicists seem to think their “physical time” is.

Then we can lay out some important consequences of the faulty thinking about time by some physicists in this long-standing dilemma over time.

Of course human time was invented long ago and it has been further developed since then. It is a concept in thinking. It is a standardization of rates of physical motion, against which the rates of all other motions and activities can be compared.

Concepts and standards are not themselves part of the physical universe. They are not physical.

Of course, in the physicality, there is flow, motion, and movement, but there is no “rate of motion” in physicality, which is what we define “human time” to be.

The characterization or the measurement of physical flow, e.g. how fast something moves across a given distance, itself is a concept in thinking and this concept does not have a counterpart in physicality.

Clocks are the human-made physical tools that provide the standards for rates of motion, in thinking. But there are no concepts of time inside clocks. There is no time inside clocks. There is motion inside clocks.

Human time, a concept which DOES NOT have a counterpart in physicality, and motion, a concept which DOES have a counterpart in physicality, are not the same thing. These 2 things are not equivalent. The concept of motion is a component of the concept of time.

Surely all physicists and everybody who gives this controversy some thought would fully agree about what human time is.

But here is where some physicists go bonkers.

(This ends part 1, which argues that physical time does not exist, and it explains what “human time” is in some detail, and more.

Part 2 will get into more details about how some physicists think of physical time, how a thinking universe might have made physical time but didn’t, and more.) https://medium.com/@thenking/did-einstein-secretly-believe-the-universe-thinks-part-2-of-3-292dc6224c0

(This article was originally published on Medium.com January 29, 2023)