300 | Solo: Does Time Exist?

<p>A new year, and a new centennial -- 300 (regularly-numbered) episodes of Mindscape! Our tradition is to have a solo episode, and what better topic than the nature of time? Physicists and philosophers have so frequently suggested that time is some kind of illusion that it's become almost passé to believe that it might be fundamental. This is an issue where, despite the form of the question, physics has important things to say that most philosophers haven't yet caught up to. I will talk about ideas from quantum mechanics and quantum gravity that bear on the question of whether time is emergent or fundamental, and the implications of each possibility.</p> <p>S<em>upport Mindscape on </em><a href="https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Patreon</em></a><em>.</em></p> <p>Blog post with transcript: <a href="https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/01/06/300-solo-does-time-exist/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025/01/06/300-solo-does-time-exist/</a></p> <p>Some of the papers discussed herein:</p> <ul> <li>Carroll (2008), "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/0811.3772" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">What If Time Really Exists?</a>"</li> <li>Dyson, Kleban, and Susskind (2002), "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0208013" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Disturbing Implications of a Cosmological Constant</a>."</li> <li>Albrecht and Sorbo (2004), "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0405270" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Can the Universe Afford Inflation?</a>"</li> <li>Boddy, Carroll, and Pollack (2014), "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0298" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">De Sitter Space Without Dynamical Quantum Fluctuations</a>."</li> <li>Lloyd (2016), "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.05672" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Decoherent Histories Approach to the Cosmological Measure Problem</a>."</li> <li>Page and Wootters (1983), "<a href="https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.27.2885" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Evolution Without Evolution: Dynamics Described by Stationary Observables</a>."</li> <li>Albrecht (1994), "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9408023" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Theory of Everything vs the Theory of Anything</a>."</li> <li>Albrecht and Iglesias (2007), "<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.2743" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Clock Ambiguity and the Emergence of Physical Laws</a>."</li> </ul> <p><br /></p>