Comments on: The Arrow of Time and the Multiverse on Philosophy TV

By: Merci

Merci — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 23:40:19 +0000

Dear Sean,
who can seat and watch 2 heads talking for an hour, merci.
In 30 minutes, the most, anybody can communicate the point of his/her ideas. After that it gets tiring.

By: paul valletta

paul valletta — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 23:06:48 +0000

I also pondered what Craig described,”phase space reduction”? It does open up some aspects of if Entropy is factored greatly by dimension number, the less dimensions the lower the Entropy, 2-Dimensional space is more Quantum than 3-Dimensional space when viewed from 4-D spacetime, thus it could be we are viewing Entropy in a dimensional backwards frame of ref?

There is also the factor of multi dimensionality, could have extra Entropic values (entropy shifts), based on actual dimension number, some extra dimensions will have entropy variations, because they are not standard 3-D, a simple Hydrogen Atom (3-D stable) will not exist in 5-Dimensional space, thus will not contribute to the keeping tidy of student rooms!..simplistically you do not need cleaners in extra dimensional space, entropy cannot function chaotically.

If students rooms had just 2 extra dimensions, then there would be more space to hide all the clutter, the 3-D room would look tidy, while the extra dimensions absorb the clutter!

A Thermal Fluctuation in 3-Dimensional space does not have equality in 5-Dimensional space.

By: JohnD

JohnD — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 05:18:49 +0000

The smallness of initial entropy is described by Sean as 1/10^(10^120).
Craig described a natural reduction in entropy as resulting from 6 dimensions in phase space reduced to 5, due to conservation of energy.
I wonder how these smallnesses compare? e.g. If some other condition reduced the phase space to 4 dimensions, would that change be larger or smaller than Sean’s factor?

By: DaveH

DaveH — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 20:59:45 +0000

I really enjoyed one side of the conversation. I got the impression that the philosophy prof was trying to avoid an overly technical discussion so let everything slide, but the video served me as a nice companion piece to Sean’s book.

By: Michael T.

Michael T. — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 20:50:33 +0000

I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion and although it was difficult to follow Prof. Callendar at times, his thoughtfulness was much appreciated. It was apparent that he carefully considered his words and the logic leading up to them.

If I understand correctly (big caveat here), I found two thoughts most interesting. That the so-called fine-tuning of the constants may not be so remarkable absent any real understanding of underlying principles and was somewhat perplexed at Sean’s statement that the mulitverse is not a theory but a prediction based upon the “hope” that one day the physical laws will be understood. Reaching on that one I think. Thanks again, good stuff.

By: spyder

spyder — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:47:04 +0000

Floating heads tv is more like it. Big and bigger floating heads.

By: greg

greg — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 13:33:55 +0000

I would love to see you chat up John Carroll, a philosophy prof at NCSU. He taught a metaphysics course when I was there that dealt with metaphysical problems related to time travel.

By: Timon of Athens

Timon of Athens — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 02:56:47 +0000

I tried to listen to this, hoping against hope that Callendar would eventually get around to saying something, but I just couldn’t stand it any more after 20 minutes or so. Can anyone direct me to a point in the recording where he actually has something substantive to say?

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Thu, 07 Oct 2010 21:53:45 +0000

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