From: James A. (Andy) Moorer <jamminpower@earthlink.net> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 12:34:03 PM Subject: Re: [math-fun] If We Have Free Will, Then So Do Electrons I thought the free-will issue was done in decades ago by General Relativity. Brian Greene discusses it as follows: Visualize space-time as a loaf of French bread with time as the long axis (forget Z for the moment). "now" is a slice across the loaf. The crucial observation is that a bit of acceleration changes the angle of the slice. It still goes through your "now" point, but "now" on the other side of the universe is suddenly 100 years earlier, or 100 years later (!) - that is, the universe for all time must be extant everywhere - ergo, both free will and the arrow of time are illusory. That notwithstanding, I personally like to cling to the illusion, even though I know it can't be real. I rather prefer to remain plugged into the Matrix . . . James A. (Andy) Moorer www.jamminpower.com ________________________________ An event in space-time can influence only those events that lie within its future light cone, and can be influenced only by those events that lie within its past light cone. Thus the "sphere of influence" expands at the speed of light. If and only if A can influence B is there a unique time ordering of A and B, and then B lies to the future of A. If A and B lie outside each other's light cone, then to different observers A and B can have opposite time order. This is the reason why causality and relativity together imply that influences propagate, not merely to the future, but to that subset of the future within the light cone. All this has been known since the discovery of special relativity. The claim that "the universe for all time must be extant everywhere - ergo, both free will and the arrow of time are illusory." is just excessive grandiosity. -- Gene