Three Dimensions of Time: reconciling experienced time with physics

In this episode of the Justin Riddle Podcast, Justin explores a novel conceptualization of time as comprised of three distinct dimensions in an attempt to make sense of our subjective experience. Traditional physics does not account for the experience of always being in the present moment, time flowing from the past into the future, and the openness of the future versus the locked in events from the past. Often times we are told that our subjective experience of time is an illusion: that there is no validity to our experience of time and these are just made-up constructs in biology. We are skeptical of this dismissive approach to thinking about time. First off, there are sparse descriptions of the flow of time in physics with many descriptions viewing time as simply the fourth dimensions and being completely time reversible. The concept of entropy in physics accounts for some change through time because entropy (chaos) is described as always increasing from the past to the future. However, entropy is generated by simple laws of physics and yet when these time-reversible laws are run backwards – systems are seen to magically jump into alignment with each other. In sum, the description of time from simple physics forces does not provide a satisfactory explanation of our experience of time. Our solution to the problem of time is to propose additional “dimensions” of time that go beyond physicalist framing. The dimensions are objective time, subjective time, and alternative time. We describe how subjective time is derived from our biological systems and represents the rate of information processing of the brain. Alternative time provides the various different options that a system could evolve into. Finally, objective time provides a universal frame for synchronizing all the various biological and physical clocks. Note, that there is a “three dimensions of time” theory from physics that emerged coincidentally around the same time that this video was posted. This theory differs in that our three dimensions of time are not akin to physical dimensions and possess qualitative differences from each other. Finally, we discuss how the fundamentals of quantum physics and quantum computation provide a novel framing of time in that the measurement (or collapse of the wave function) produces a time-irreversible change that progresses the system into the future. We can conceptualize the evolution of the wave function of a quantum system as an exploration of the alternative time dimension and the rate of collapse of this system as some description of its subjective time dimensions. Objective time might correspond to Roger Penrose’s description of a Platonic realm where mathematical objects enter into the quantum computation and produce an objective progression via tapping into a universal frame of reference.