Einstein, Backwards Bob and a new look at the mystery of Time's arrow

An examination of time, higher-dimensional space and entropy. Offers brand new theories as to what causes Time' s arrow.

Chapter 2 of book II

Einstein once commented that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe was that it is comprehensible.

If you consider the universe, you must also consider that you are part of it, and that at some fundamental level the universe observes itself and then defines itself relative to you and nothing else. And that this whole and complex wonder can be equated in some relatively simple mathematical laws.

If the universe can somehow be summed up in some fundamental way, and that it includes a description of you, and that you can define and analyse this description, then the description that would fundamentally describe your imagination is more complex than anything else that we have observed thus far. The comprehension of the universe by necessity dictates that the act of comprehension adds to the complexity of the description of the universe. Even mere observation without comprehension, which is a more truthful description of us, adds to the complexity of a description of the universe. The complexity of the mind that imagines must outweigh that which can be imagined, and yet that which can be imagined, must at some level give an ultimate reason and explanation of the thinker. This is the paradox of existence.

If the life of a man is looked at in reverse we get an interesting picture.

A pile of dust coalesces into a skeleton; the skeleton grows organs and skin from the surrounding muck.

Some people arrive and dig up our hero, watched by his grieving friends and relatives.

When all the conditions are right our hero comes to life. There’s some pain at first but the overall prognosis is very good. He’s going to be fine.

Let’s call our hero Bob.

When Bob becomes sentient, his mind and genetics hold all the knowledge required to account for his every movement, until his eventual conception. This Bob is 100% efficient, no wastage.

Anyway, Bob proceeds backwards in an inevitable fashion for some years until he’s young enough to work. If Bob’s memory of the past is accurate and presumably it would be so particularly when Bob approaches an event that is remembered, he functions in the universe solely influenced by his will.

Before he can start work he must give his employer all his money. Up until this point, his life has been pretty easy. Money was easy to come by thanks to sewage works. He just sucked up some muck with his arse and puked it out as food and put it in some wrapping created when he created a match by drawing the fire out of some ashes with a piece of charcoal. Then he traversed backwards to his local shop. He’d put the food on to the counter. Some loose change in his pocket would jump into his hand and he’d hold it in his palm as the shop assistant would guess how much he was giving her, count it backwards and put it in the till. The assistant would hand Bob a wad of cash which he’d put in his pocket. Sometimes before leaving Bob would show the shop assistant a cool trick. He’d carefully place money in a seemingly random pattern on the floor and as he’d begin to move backwards towards the exit chanting the magical words “well fuck it anyway” all the money would jump into the air to be caught in a single grab by Bob whose skill was such that it didn’t even require the need for him to look at what he was doing.

This way of making money is so profitable that once a week Bob is drawn to the local post office, where he generously gives the bulk of the money he has acquired away.

Anyway, Bob goes on though this existence which is a series of acts of creation and acts of destruction, which are relatively and inappropriately mislabelled.

He gets younger and younger, at any one point on this backwards scale his mind is ultimately responsible for the rest of his life; the universe functions as he knows it has to, yet he doesn’t have free will.

For instance knowing that he killed his cat doesn’t prevent him from rolling over poor Tiger in his car at precisely the time and in the manner that was preordained. Of course once the act is done, it is blissfully forgotten and the cat is brought back to life. Never to be contemplated again. Schroedinger would be very proud.

Then comes childhood.

Bob just can’t get stupid fast enough. He enters the educational system in reverse and teachers suck knowledge straight out of his head. Sometimes they punish him so that he will not do his homework.

If Bob is an obedient child he will be punished so that he will be disobedient. If he is bold he will be obedient afterwards without having to be punished.

Then comes the period of utter degradation, his loved ones will stick soiled nappies onto him until he absorbs the waste. When the nappy is clean enough it will be taken off to be put in a pack of similar nappies to be sold when there are enough. Another soiled nappy is then put in its place.

It’s almost a relief when the doctors and nurses cram him into his mother feet first after beating him for crying.

After nine months of his mother absorbing him he is nothing but a couple of strands of DNA. At this point Bob’s father has reverse sex with Bob’s mother and sucks half of what’s left out. Bob’s father and mother have similar fates ahead of them. Each creation will be destroyed by its creator.
This destructive process continues until life turns into matter which in turn eventually turns into hydrogen and helium, all of which disappears during the Big Suck.

When looking at a life in this fashion or in the popular fashion, which version sums it up correctly?

The story forwards through time or backwards through time?

Bob is the constant in this picture. At any point in this picture Bob’s mind, body and whatever are ultimately responsible for what happens next, regardless to which direction it is examined in.

Maybe the past and the future are like light and darkness, not really opposites but really the same substance that oscillates. It could be possible that all dimensions are oscillations that Bob either reacts to or causes. Because Bob is Bob irregardless as to which way time flows, whether he reacts to or causes these vibrations becomes irrelevant.

Let’s think about this in terms of good and evil. I reckon evil is pretty self evident. I also reckon good is self evident.

I reckon it’s pretty simple to infer from the above that a man’s goodness is derived from willing to act properly and then acting thus.

Let’s see if Bob can commit a sin backwards in time.

Bob is feeling stuffed, so he pukes up a bun and sneaks into a shop and puts it in a display case and leaves without being paid.

Or; Bob knows he has wilfully killed another human being in cold blood. He then goes and pulls the knife of his victim’s heart and gives him life. Then the murder will never have happened forever and its occurrence will be erased from the minds of everyone.

So it is hard to be evil backwards through time. Basically going backwards through time Bob undoes the evil that is in his mind, and he undoes the good that is in his mind.

Evil should be self evident irregardless as to which direction we visualise it in.

And it is. Action is neither good nor evil it is simply the result of either. Evil is the will to act or have acted thus. And this is self evident; and is so, regardless to which way it is looked at. Beliefs temper action tis true, but it is the will that dictates it and which must ultimately bear responsibility.

The will of Bob is constantly the will of Bob no matter whether you examine him backwards or forwards through time. Whether this will is perturbed by outside events is inconsequential. We can understand all that we see or at least have the ability to.

The easiest way to put this is that if we derive an equation that can sum the mind and will of man, that this equation will also sum up the universe. To search for an equation to explain the universe is to search the universe for an equation that sums the mind and will of man.

Or how about this: The mind of man can create a universe that is more complex than the universe that is observed. An example of this is politics.

All of this begs the question; the mind is capable of producing a universe but is the universe capable of creating a mind?

That’s a tough question, particularly so when the function of the mind is very dependant on the function of an organic brain, which in turn requires matter.

This is reminiscent of the “Chicken and Egg” argument from the first book. Only this time it becomes, “which came first, thought or brain?” It is complicated more by the fact either can be considered to be the potential of the other.

The brain can be a potential thought.

Because thinking and learning physically alter the structure of the brain, my mind is potentially my brain.

Let’s talk about dimensions.

Imagine the instant of the big bang. A super hot, super condensed explosion of energy follows the inflation of a super vacuum. A spherical wave (assumption) of electromagnetic radiation inflates at the speed of light, and energy begins to cool in the created space due to entropy. The forces separate out and gravity is born. This has the effect of trying to put the Big Bang in reverse, whether it will or not we don’t know.

That’s the big bang from a participator’s perspective.

Imagine being outside the vaccuum as it inflates.

Remember that electromagnetic radiation is energy and is mostly light and is travelling at the speed of light.

If you are outside this bubble you cannot see it. It is inflating at the speed of light, to observe it is to become part of it and to never be able to escape; you would be witnessing a singularity or a Black Hole. Rather than see it expand you would witness matter disappear into its event horizon as if gravity were sucking it in, provided there was matter to absorb.

You’d also witness nothing before this bubble began to inflate. Again it has to do with light or rather the lack of it.

Here’s where the idea of dimensions comes into it.

If the big bang has created space then the expansion only takes place in the four created dimensions of space and time. If you are outside these dimensions trying to witness the big bang then you neither notice it nor does it expand. Again you may see an anomaly similar in action to a black hole; nonetheless you cannot witness the event itself.

There is something from one’s own creation that must always remain hidden, it is our own uncertainty principle and it forces us to behave in a relative fashion.

Anyway; the place where the anomaly is observed from must be separate to the dimensions of space and time, it must also be separate to the dimensions of quantum mechanics, this is because the Big Bang did not occur in the dimensions of space and time. It created them.

So to nearly observe the Big Bang we must be outside the ten dimensions of our universe. We must be in the 11th dimension of M Theory.

You look all around and see nothing but anomalies, the only force worth mentioning that exists in this dimension is gravity; or at least we think it’s a force and gravity’s just a label.

You realise that you are looking at the whole picture that you are a part of. This dimension too must then be a part of the picture also, as well as being the backdrop when viewed from a relativistic standpoint. From this it is but a small step to realise that the universe we exist in can also be used as a backdrop to view the 11th dimension. This in itself is a unification of the eleven dimensions, and it answers Einstein’s anomaly. The mind is a part and product of the universe, that is so, but it is much more than just that, it is a part and product of all eleven dimensions and being this it is capable of self realisation.

Are the mind and the multiverse the same thing?

I don’t know. But they are very similar.

There is a very good theoretical base on which it is established that the mind is a quantum process.

I would suggest that because the mind of man can grasp quantum theory, that it is not a child of quantum mechanics, it is at least a brother or a sister. I admit the mechanical function of the brain could be based on quantum processes I’ll even admit that the brain’s processing and storage may follow a quantum nature. However the driving force of this “machinery”, the will, is at least on a par with quantum mechanics. It can behave in a quantum fashion, in that the mind can be thinking one thing one moment, and can be completely elsewhere the next without having to travel through space or logic. The mind can function as a wave; if one has a problem and is in search of a solution, a single thought can come as a wave and interfere with itself and leave a pattern that is a possible solution, without the thinker having to analyse individual components of the solution, this comes later as the thinker processes it for possible problems.

Unlike quantum mechanics the mind can also behave in a very relative fashion. The mind can worry about time. The mind can predict with a high degree of accuracy the immediate future and can respond and react accordingly.

The defining feature of the mind is intent. Intent habitually makes order out of chaos. It seems that most things have opposites to balance them. I think the mind is the partner of entropy.

Let’s examine a thought. Imagine a tree. That particular thought is the same backwards or forwards through time. Entropy increases in neither direction. The imagined sensation of pain is also the same reversed in time. Of course we can remember our past and we may only have at times a hazy recollection of it, but we have something else, we have hindsight. If we had it to do over we’d probably do a better job of it. This shows that the efficiency of the will increases over time.

Now for the ultimate in “chicken and egg” questions: Which came first, order or disorder? Being a universal law, that over time entropy increases, it follows that chaos must follow order. All order must be potential chaos. But wait a minute! That means chaos is the actuality in this equation and must therefore pre-exist order. This becomes a gigantic paradox unless order and chaos are the same thing. To see a difference we must label it thus.

Look at the actions of man. Every conscious action can potentially determine the immediate future; however the action that the will produces is subject to the law of entropy and the chaos in the universe increases. In this case order drives chaos.

Everywhere we look we make pattern out of chaos, from recognising your friends in a large crowd to making shapes out of the stars. It is an inherent need within us to put meaning to stuff.

One of the best counter arguments to all of this is that overall the state of chaos in the universe increases and that this chaos allows for pockets of pattern and order.

Imagine the universe at maximum entropy; heat death. The mind can imagine maximum entropy. Now think about having imagined maximum entropy. When this state is imagined the complexity of the imagined state and the thinker are greater than the complexity of the final state itself. Entropy will therefore decrease as the universe gets older.

If the universe knew what it was doing then entropy would not increase, heat death would not be the result of maximum chaos but of planning. Somehow I get the picture that it is a very fine line indeed that seperates the definitions of “mind” and “entropy.”

We know quantum mechanics obeys the law of entropy, but that the will does not. It might respond to it but even the response itself is the sole property of the will.

The mind therefore has more degrees of freedom than the laws of quantum mechanics provides for. This to me says that the will exists in a higher dimensional space than quantum mechanics allows for.

We still have not answered as to whether the mind and the multiverse are the same thing. I’m just as clueless as when I first asked it I’m afraid, but it is fair to say that if my reasoning is sound then the mind and the multiverse occupy the same space and we will never be able to differentiate between them. Also it is suggestive that yet another dimension exists, one which M theory hasn’t accounted for, a 12th dimension, the hidden dimension. It would be that place that would forever remain hidden to us. It would be a place where time would not exist in a linear fashion. It would be the sum of all possibilities.

M theory in my opinion cannot be the sum of all possibilities. The reason for this being that it is a process. Being a process it requires time to pre-exist it and to facilitate its occurrence. Fair enough it may not be the same sphere of time that we experience in this universe. But a Theory of everything must show the creation of time and be able to do so without reference to it.

We need a Theory of Nothing. We need a theory that contradicts entropy. We need to understand how a static system becomes dynamic when its entropy is at a maximum (whatever this maximum is). I see maximum entropy as a violation of the law of entropy itself. Thermal equilibrium violates the resonant nature of our multiverse and presumes that like Relativity entropy must contain seeds of its own destruction. I think that rather than destruction that maximum entropy contains the seed of creation.

A theory must exist that will not lead to its own destruction.

Thermal Equilibrium is absolute chaos and is at the very same time absolute order. Therefore relative disorder is relative order.

In a constant and static system, the state of entropy must also be constant and it is only through consciousness can it seem to be dynamic.

To compare and contrast equals relativity plus action at a spooky distance plus the area they occupy and it predicts entropy.

The sum of all possibilities is a dimension that is locked somewhere in the space of the mind which in turn is locked in the space of our universe which in turn is locked in the space of the multiverse whose underlying and hidden depths are hidden in the locked space of the mind.

Remember Bob.

Imagine freezing Bob in time. Anywhere you freeze him on his timeline Bob remains the sum of all possibilities. Everything in the multiverse focuses itself to be represented by or as Bob at any given time and does so irrelevant to time’s arrow.

It is by self examination that we understand the universe. Even scientists do it this way. All perception is a product of the mind. The mind examines itself and unlocks secrets of the universe. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is not our comprehension of it but comprehension itself.

What if; if my will (and everyone else’s collectively or individually) created time and everything else that I could potentially observe or comprehend. This act of creation would unfreeze a static perception and at the same instant set laws as to how this now dynamic perception could happen. The introduction of laws bring about by definition a state of cause and effect, the parts of the perception that are as yet not understood are spooky action at a distance.

There will probably be many intelligent people who will laugh at all this and put it down to being the product of a vivid imagination. And rightly so as this is what it sets out to prove to begin with. Nonetheless a potential Theory of Everything will still have to account for it.

Finally let’s have one more look at Bob in perpetration of his backwards life. All the light that Bob perceives to be the universe (and the multiverse et al) has been shot out of his eyes to do what he imagined it would do. The light of the universe does not originate from the universe when perceived backwards through time it originates from the mind.

The mind is just as responsible as entropy for putting an arrow that points a direction in time if indeed it isn't moreso.