One of my self-appointed tasks is to beat up on physicists when they play at philosophy and makes fools of themselves. The following is from an interview with Richard Muller in Physics Today:
PT: You mention in your introduction that some physicists have concluded that the flow of time is an illusion. Why do you think that’s not the case?
MULLER: The flow of time does not exist in the usual spacetime diagram of physics. Time is mysterious; in any relativistic coordinate system, it is linked to space. And yet time is different—and I mean much more than simply a sign in the metric. Time flows. Choose any coordinate system and you can stand still in space but not in time. That different behavior breaks the otherwise glorious spacetime symmetry. Moreover, there is a special moment in time we call “now.” No such special location exists in the dimensions of space.
Is this guy serious? His argument boils down to: The flow of time is not an illusion because time flows! There is no spacetime symmetry because there is a special moment in time called 'NOW.' Well thank you very much for resolving this thorny question at long last. The 'diameter' of this circular reasoning is embarrassingly short. Both interviewee and interviewer need a course in Logic 101.
The following entry will give you some idea of the theory that our physicist thinks he has refuted.
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