A quantum metaphysical conundrum:

[Autonomy]

If subatomic particles can go backwards in time -- and they can -- and if we are entirely composed of subatomic particles -- and we are -- then aren't we simultaneously going forward and backwards in time?

[evlbstrd]

1. I know I am.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. The physicist John Wheeler thought so.

He posited that there is only one electron in the universe, constantly moving backwards and forwards in time.

[Autonomy]

4. Now I know why time goes faster

after I hit the snooze button on my alarm clock!

[bemildred]

3. So, what's the conundrum? nt

[roguevalley]

5. so, they seem to pose a theory that we exist in more than

one place at one time.

[bemildred]

6. Right, what's wrong with that?

What I usually think of as "I" occupies a considerable
volume, that is it's not really in one place to start with,
although it is compact at least, contiguous for the most
part. But there is stuff entering and leaving "me" all the
time too, food, air, poop, energy from the sun, it's not really
clear that we are things in the first place. And we're composed
of all sorts of complicated stuff, processes and structures both,
and the fact that my particulate quantum states are bleeding
all over the universe doesn't really add much to the messiness
of it all.

The universe isn't tidy, that's why it's interesting.
The whole Newtonian clockwork idea got blown out of the
water some time ago.

[Autonomy]

8. I'm trying to stay away from the ontological stuff

the organs with which we perceive time are not "us" or "me", but are composed of the particles that move bidirectionally in time, yet we don't perceive it as such.

[bemildred]

11. I think our sense organs are just not up to the job.

Bad design.

[Autonomy]

12. IOW, Not-So-Intelligent Design? : P

[bemildred]

16. Exactly, completely inadequate to the job.

Someone dropped the ball, that's clear.

[greyl]

14. "Bad design"?

How do you mean that?

[greyl]

13. Don't you mean Cartesian?

I'm not aware of any laws that Newton formulated that have been found to be useless from their intended frame of reference.
Descartes was more of the anti-systems approach philosopher you seem to want to refer to.

I agree with you that the definition of "Self" needs to be firm before the question can be asked.

[Autonomy]

15. I'll bet my cogitus ergo that sum doesn't matter.

We have the objective evidence in the original post, but as some theorists have posited, time may be an illusion, a series of unconnected events, and the continuity of those events may be a by-product of some other process. Our linguistic categories would be bad, or undeveloped, but could advance almost as quickly as our science. If we simply lack the hardware to understand time at this level, then our scientific progress has seemingly hit an upper bound, at least until we achieve some sort of quantum evolutionary leap.

As always, some puns intended. :7

[bemildred]

17. No, Newton.

The issues with Descartes are different, he begs the question
that he claims to answer. "I think, therefore I am" assumes "I"
exists in the premise, then concludes that "I" exists in the
conclusion.

I am not disrespecting Newton, but in the period that followed his
work there was a strong tendency to think that the world is entirely
amenable to closed form mathematical descriptions, the clockwork
universe. This is false. There are times when closed form mathematical
descriptions work really well,and times when they do not. The world
is not a machine and it is not a computer, those are merely sometimes
useful metaphors, and we do well to remember the limits of our methods
of understanding.

Bacisally, I am criticizing all statements of the form: "the world is
just an X", where "X" is any handy simplified way of talking about
reality. Reality is not "just" anything, it is the primary ground of
experience, and all of our theories are abstract shadows of that
experience.

[greyl]

21. Fair enough. Otoh, search "descartes clockwork universe"

You may see what I mean. :)

[bemildred]

22. Your point is well taken.

One could drag M. Descartes in, among a number of others,
in place of Newton, and keep much the same sense, and there
are good arguments to do so. The argument goes on to this day.

[greyl]

24. Have you seen "Mindwalk" ?

It's worth checking out, if you can find it.

Some interesting reviews of it here, to get the flavor of it:
http://www.ed.psu.edu/INSYS/ESD/systems/Mindwalk/menu.html

Mindwalk is loosely based on Fritjof Capra's The Turning Point, and he contributed to the screenplay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritjof_Capra

[bemildred]

26. Never heard of it before.

I may have to look it up now. I am familiar with what is
called "systems thinking", Mr. Capra, and other proponents of
that point of view, acknowledged and inadvertent, now and in
the past. It is a subject that I poke around in a good deal,
in an amateur sort of way.

I suspect that "the next big leap" for humans is just to admit
that all this talk is just talk, entertaining, sometimes useful,
but having no particular compelling effect on the experienced
world. If you want to know what is going on in the real world,
then you have to pay attention, you have to watch. You can't
just sit around like Plato and think about your "ideals", like
that was anything but a pale shadow of the world of phenomena,
a crude substitute.

[Autonomy]

7. Exactly! We may never know.

But seriously, the unidirectional nature of time is integral to our sense of reality. I wonder if perception of time as unidirectional is not a trick of sensory organization, but rather a perception of something else, like entropy.

[lindisfarne]

9. Our whole idea of time has got to be wrong. Time implies a beginning

and an end. What preceded the beginning?

[Autonomy]

10. Divine fiat.

Or if you prefer the Hindu epistemology, the Brahma who came before Brahma.

Fritjof Capra's "The Tao of Physics" is a good synthesis of science and mysticism on this topic.

[SteppingRazor]

18. You can't apply quantum mechanics to the large world.

The laws of quantum mechanics only apply to descriptions of subatomic particles.
That alone makes the question moot.

[Autonomy]

20. And everything is made of subatomic particles...

that's the point!

But seriously, a "moot question" means it's debatable, so that's what we're doing (there is no such thing as a moot question in the same sense as "moot point"). Your answer is true, and was the sort of answer I had in mind, but the others were no less correct.

[trotsky]

27. Subatomic particles show an interference pattern

in the double-slit experiment.

I, being made up of subatomic particles, will always go through one of two doors in front of me, and will always emerge from that door directly on the other side, and not shifted 10 meters down.

Just to help illustrate how you can't apply subatomic principles to classical bodies.

[mainegreen]

19. Isn't that sort of irrelevant?

I mean, if a particle is going forward in time, and then it traveled back in time a bit, wouldn't it re-trace where in was previously, in location and speed, or at least the same probability of location and speed as it had in the 'past' when it was moving for wards? Wouldn't that mean that looking at a particle at a moment in time, if there is such a thing, you would be unable to determine its direction in time? Thus making any time wobbling totally irrelevant?

I never understood why flow of time mattered. If the universe ran back wards for a bit, wouldn't you go back wards right along with it? Its not like you would notice.

Heck, how do you even determine which direction time is flowing, if it flows at all? Other than our perception of it? Is there a test that determines this for sure?

Is there a theoretical physicist in the house?

[electron_blue]

25. I think what steppingrazor meant was

that Q.M. only apply to the subatomic realm, and Classical mechanics apply to matter larger than subatomic scale.

Still and all... have you seen "What the bleep do we know?" It raises the same question. Unfortuantely I think the video implies that the Q.M. world totally applies to the large-scale world. As far as I know - q.m. hasn't made that jump. It was a fun video just for the "what if" thinking you get to do.

[Pepperbelly]

23. Perhaps our tools are too blunt and dull to be useful in such small

increments. The whole thing is fudged by the fact that our entire interaction with the universe is processed through perception and the organs of perception because of the way we are wired. No direct interaction allowed, thank you.

Thus, every experience, whether looking at a tree, observing phenomenon, feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin, hearing music or birds, or smelling fresh-baked bread, are actually your experience of it rather than the actual interaction. Therefore, even under the best of circumstances, we are two steps removed from the actual event.

[rman]

28. it's a matter of probability

there's a greater probability to move forward in time then there is to move backwards.