By “science illiteracy” I mean something like ‘having relatively little familiarity with or interest in scientific knowledge and the scientific style of thinking’, not ‘happens to not be familiar with special relativity’. E.g., I don’t dock anyone points for saying they’re agnostic about A-theory—no one can be an expert on every topic. But you can at least avoid voting in favor of A-theory, without first doing enough basic research to run into the special relativity issue.
Some versions of the A-theory might technically be compatible with special relativity. E.g., maybe you received a divine revelation to the effect of ‘there’s a secret Correct Frame of Reference, and you alone among humans (not, e.g., your brother Fred who lives on Mars) live your life in that Frame’. The concern is less ‘these two claims are literally inconsistent’, more ‘reasonable mentally stable people should not think they have Bayesian evidence that their Present Moment is metaphysically special and unique’.
(Or, if they’ve literally just never heard of relativity in spite of being a faculty member at a university, they should refrain from weighing in on the A-theory vs. B-theory debate until they’ve done some googling.)
(Or, if they’ve literally just never heard of relativity in spite of being a faculty member at a university, they should refrain from weighing in on the A-theory vs. B-theory debate until they’ve done some googling.)
But if they’ve never heard of relativity (or, more likely, have essentially no idea of the content of the theory of relativity), how the heck should they know that relativity has any connection to the “A-theory vs. B-theory” debate, and that they therefore should refrain from weighing in, on the basis of that specific bit of ignorance?
Maybe there are all sorts of “unknown unknowns”—domains of knowledge of whose existence or content I am unaware—which materially affect topics on which I might, if asked, feel that I may reasonably express a view (but would not think this if my ignorance of those domains were to be rectified). But I don’t know what they might be, or on what topics they might bear—that’s what makes them unknown unknowns!—and yet any view I currently hold (or might assent to express, if asked) might be affected by them!
Should I therefore refrain from weighing in on anything, ever, until such time as I have familiarized myself with literally all human knowledge?
I do not think that this is a reasonable standard to which we should hold anyone…
I think that’s a very fair point, and after thinking about it more I’m guessing I’d want to exclude the people who voted ‘lean A-theory’ and ‘lean B-theory’, and just include the people who strongly endorsed one or the other (since the survey distinguishes those options).
I think it’s a very useful signal either way, even the ‘unfair’ version. And I think it really does take very little googling (or very little physics background knowledge) to run into the basic issues; e.g., SEP is a standard resource I’d expect a lot of philosophers to make a beeline to if they wanted a primer. But regardless, saying it’s as an unambiguous or extreme a sign as theism is too harsh.
(Though in some ways it’s a more extreme sign than theism, because theism is a thing a lot of people were raised in and have strong emotional attachments—it’s epistemic ‘easy mode’ in the sense that it’s an especially outrageous belief, but it can be ‘hard mode’ emotionally. I wanted something like a-theory added to the mix partly because it’s a lot harder to end up ‘a-theorist by default’ than to end up ‘theist by default’.)
Ehh, I think I want to walk back my ‘go easy on a-theorists’ update a bit. Even if I give someone a pass on the physics-illiteracy issue, I feel like I should still dock a lot of points for Bayes-illiteracy. What evidence does someone think they’ve computed that allows them to update toward A-theory? How did the ‘mysterious Nowness of Now’ causally impact your brain so as to allow you to detect its existence, relative to the hypothetical version of you in a block universe?
Crux: If there’s a reasonable argument out there for having a higher prior on A-theory, in a universe that looks remotely like our universe, then I’ll update.
Heck, thinking in terms of information theory and physical Bayesian updates at all is already most of what I’m asking for here. What I’m expecting instead is ‘well, A-theory felt more intuitive to me, and the less intuitive-to-me view gets the burden of proof’.
Counterpoint: how much of the literature on the philosophical presentism vs. eternalism debate have you acquainted yourself with?
For example, you linked to the SEP entry on time, so surely you noticed the philosophers’ extant counterarguments to the “relativity entails B-theory” argument? What is your opinion on papers like this one or this one?
Now, if your response is “I have not read these papers”, then are you not in the same situation as the philosopher who is unfamiliar with relativity?
(But in fact a quick survey of the literature on the “nature of time” debate—including, by the way, the SEP entry you linked!—shows that philosophers involved in this debate are familiar with relativity’s implications in this context… perhaps more familiar, on average, than are physicists—or rationalists—with the philosophical positions in question.)
I haven’t read those papers, and am not very familiar with the presentism debate, though I’m not 0% familiar. Nor have I read the papers you link. If there’s a specific argument that you think is a good argument for the A-theory view (e.g., if you endorse one of the papers), I’m happy to check it out and see if it updates me.
But the mere fact that “papers exist”, “people who disagree with me exist”, and “people publishing papers in favor of A-theory nowadays are all familiar with special relativity (at least to some degree)” doesn’t move me, no—I was taking all of those things for granted when I wrote the OP.
Having interacted with a decent number of analytic-philosophy metaphysics papers and arguments at college, I think I already know the rough base rate of ‘crazy and poorly-justified views on reality’ in this area, and I think it’s very high by LW standards (though I think metaphysics is unusually healthy for a philosophy field).
Since I’m not a domain expert, it might turn out that I’m missing something crucial and the A-theory has some subtle important argument favoring it; but I don’t treat this as nontrivially likely merely because professional metaphysicians who have heard of special relativity disagree with me, no. (If I’m wrong, most of my probability mass would be on ‘I’m defining the A-theory wrong, actually A-theorists are totally fine with there being no unique special Present Moment.’ Though then I’d wonder what the content of the theory is!)
If there’s a specific argument that you think is a good argument for the A-theory view (e.g., if you endorse one of the papers), I’m happy to check it out and see if it updates me.
No, not particularly. Actually, I do not have an opinion on the matter one way or the other!
As for the rest of your comment… it is understandable, as far as it goes; but note that a philosopher could say just the same thing, but in reverse.
He might say: “The mere fact that ‘a physics theory exists’, ‘physicists think that their theory has some bearing on this philosophical argument’, and ‘physicists have some familiarity with the state of the philosophical debate on the matter’ doesn’t move me.”
Our philosopher might say, further: “I think I already know the rough base rate of ‘physical scientists with delusions of philosophy’; I have interacted with many such folks, who think that they do not need to study philosophy in order to have an opinion on philosophers’ debates.”
And he might add, in all humility: “Since I’m not a domain expert, it might turn out that I’m missing something crucial, and the theory of relativity has some important consequence that bears on the argument; but I don’t treat this as nontrivially likely merely because professional physicists who have heard of the ‘eternalism vs. presentism’ debate disagree with me.”
Now, suppose I am a curious, though reasonably well-informed, layman—neither professionally a philosopher nor yet a physicist—and I observe this back-and-forth. What should I conclude from this exchange, about which one of you is right?
… and that would be the argument that I would make, if it were the case that you dismissed the philosophers’ arguments without reading them, while the philosophers dismissed your arguments (and/or those of the physicists) without reading them. But that’s not the case! Instead, what we have is a situation where you dismiss their arguments without reading them, while they have read your arguments, and are disagreeing with them on that, informed, basis.
Now what should I (the hypothetical well-informed layman) conclude?
Of course, the matter is more complicated than even that, because philosophers hardly agree with each other on this matter. But let’s not lose sight of the point of this discussion thread, which is: should a philosopher who endorses A-theory be docked “rationality points” (on the reasoning that any such philosopher must surely be suffering from “science illiteracy”—because if they had done any “basic research” [i.e., five minutes of web-searching], they would have learned about the special relativity issue, and would—we are meant to assume—immediately and reliably conclude that they had no business having an opinion about the nature of time, at least not without gaining a thorough technical understanding of special relativity)?
I think the answer to that question is “no, definitely not”. It’s obvious from a casual literature search that philosophers who are familiar with the “eternalism vs. presentism” debate at all, are also familiar with the question of special relativity’s implications for that debate. Whatever is causing some of them to still favor A-theory, it ain’t “science illiteracy”, inability to use Google, or any other such simple foolishness.
it is understandable, as far as it goes; but note that a philosopher could say just the same thing, but in reverse.
Sure! And similarly, if you were an agnostic, and I were an atheist making all the same statements about theism, you could say ‘philosophers of religion could say just the same thing, but in reverse’.
Yet this symmetry wouldn’t be a good reason for me to doubt atheism or put more time into reading theology articles.
I think the specific symmetry you’re pointing at doesn’t quite work (special relativity doesn’t have the same standing as A-theory arguments, either in fact or in philosophers’ or physicists’ eyes), but it’s not cruxy in any case.
Instead, what we have is a situation where you dismiss their arguments without reading them, while they have read your arguments, and are disagreeing with them on that, informed, basis.
At a minimum, you should say that I’m making a bizarrely bold prediction (at least from an outside-view perspective that thinks philosophers have systematically accurate beliefs about their subject matter). If I turn out to be right, after having put so little work in, it suggests I have surprisingly ‘efficient’ heuristics—ones that can figure out truth on at least certain classes of question, without putting in a ton of legwork first. (Cf. skills like ‘being able to tell whether certain papers are shit based on the abstract’.)
You’re free to update toward the hypothesis that I’m overconfident; the point of my sharing my views is to let you consider hypotheses like that, rather than hiding any arrogant-sounding beliefs of mine from view. I’m deliberately stating my views in a bold, stick-my-neck-out way because those are my actual views—I think we do for-real live in the world where A-theory is obviously false.
I’m not saying any of this to shut down discussion, or say I’m unwilling to hear arguments for A-theory. But I do think there’s value in combating underconfidence just as much as overconfidence, and in trying to reach conclusions efficiently rather than going through ritualistic doubts.
If you think I’m going too fast, then that’s a testable claim, since we can look at the best A-theory arguments and see if they change my mind, the minds of people we both agree are very sane, etc. But I’d probably want to delegate that search for ‘best arguments’ to someone who’s more optimistic that it will change anything.
Whatever is causing some of them to still favor A-theory, it ain’t “science illiteracy”, inability to use Google, or any other such simple foolishness.
Depending on how much we’re talking about ‘philosophers who don’t work on the metaphysics of time professionally, but have a view on this debate’ (the main group I discussed in the OP) vs. ‘A-theorists who write on the topic professionally’, I’d say it’s mostly a mix of (a) not using google / not having basic familiarity with the special relativity argument; (b) misunderstanding the force of the special relativity argument; and (c) misunderstanding/rejecting the basic Bayesian idea of how evidence, burdens of proof, updating, priors, and thermodynamic-work-that-makes-a-map-reflect-a-territory work, in favor of epistemologies that put more weight on ‘metaphysical intuitions that don’t make Bayesian sense but feel really compelling when I think them’.
I’d say much the same thing about professional theologians who argue that God must be real (in order for us to know stuff at all) because there’s no reason for evolution to give humans accurate cognition; or, for that matter, about theologians who argue that God must be real because speciation isn’t real. There are huge industries of theist scholars who have spent their whole lives arguing such things. Can they really be so wrong, when the counter-argument is so obvious, so strong, and so googlable?
To put it in simpler terms: is a physicist who believes an invisible, undetectable dragon lives in their garage ‘science-illiterate’?
I’d say that they’re at best science-illiterate, if not outright unhinged. If you want to say that it’s impossible to be science-illiterate while knowing a bunch of physics facts or while being able to do certain forms of physics lab work, then I assume we’re defining the word ‘science-illiterate’ differently. But hopefully this example clarifies in what basic sense I’m using the term.
If the arguments I have against theism don’t count as ‘knock-down arguments’… so much the worse for knock-down arguments, I suppose? The practical implication (‘this deserves the same level of intellectual respect and attention as leprechauns’) holds regardless.
Or B theory just isn’t that good. If physical reductionism is the correct theory of mind, so that the mind is just another part of the block, it’s difficult to see where so much as an illusion of temporal flow comes from.
Some versions of the A-theory might technically be compatible with special relativity.
Well, Copenhagen is compatible with SR (collapse is nonlocal, but cannot be used for nonlocal signaling), and it allows you to identify a moving present moment as where collapse is occurring.
If physical reductionism is the correct theory of mind, so that the mind is just another part of the block, it’s difficult to see where so much as an illusion of temporal flow comes from.
No? Seems trivially easy to see, and I don’t think reductionism matters here. If I were an immaterial Cartesian soul plugged in to the Matrix, and the Matrix ran on block-universe physics, the same arguments for ‘it feels like there’s an objective Now but really this is just an implication of my being where I am in the block universe’ would hold. The argument is about your relationship to other spatial and temporal slices of the Matrix, not about the nature of your brain or mind.
Well, Copenhagen is compatible with SR (collapse is nonlocal, but cannot be used for nonlocal signaling), and it allows you to identify a moving present moment as where collapse is occurring.
On the (false) collapse interpretation of QM, I can cause collapses; but so can my brother Fred who lives on Mars. Which of our experiences coincide with ‘the present’, if there is a single unique reference-frame-independent Present Moment?
Reductionism is critical to understanding block universe theory , because if you allow a nonohysycal soul or wotnot the implications can be prevented from following.
‘it feels like there’s an objective Now but really this is just an implication of my being where I am in the block universe’ would hold.
If the immaterial soul had the property of being wholly located at one 4D point in the block at a time then you could recover the notion of a distinguished and moving Now..but that isn’t block universe theory, it’s some sort of hybrid. In actual block universe theory, you’re just a 4D section of a 4D block, and your entire history exists at once.
You don’t believe in souls and you do believe in reductionism, so you can’t use souls to rescue block universe theory.
On the (false) collapse interpretation of QM, I can cause collapses; but so can my brother Fred who lives on Mars. Which of our experiences coincide with ‘the present’, if there is a single unique reference-frame-independent Present Moment?
Basically, though with two wrinkles:
By “science illiteracy” I mean something like ‘having relatively little familiarity with or interest in scientific knowledge and the scientific style of thinking’, not ‘happens to not be familiar with special relativity’. E.g., I don’t dock anyone points for saying they’re agnostic about A-theory—no one can be an expert on every topic. But you can at least avoid voting in favor of A-theory, without first doing enough basic research to run into the special relativity issue.
Some versions of the A-theory might technically be compatible with special relativity. E.g., maybe you received a divine revelation to the effect of ‘there’s a secret Correct Frame of Reference, and you alone among humans (not, e.g., your brother Fred who lives on Mars) live your life in that Frame’. The concern is less ‘these two claims are literally inconsistent’, more ‘reasonable mentally stable people should not think they have Bayesian evidence that their Present Moment is metaphysically special and unique’.
(Or, if they’ve literally just never heard of relativity in spite of being a faculty member at a university, they should refrain from weighing in on the A-theory vs. B-theory debate until they’ve done some googling.)
But if they’ve never heard of relativity (or, more likely, have essentially no idea of the content of the theory of relativity), how the heck should they know that relativity has any connection to the “A-theory vs. B-theory” debate, and that they therefore should refrain from weighing in, on the basis of that specific bit of ignorance?
Maybe there are all sorts of “unknown unknowns”—domains of knowledge of whose existence or content I am unaware—which materially affect topics on which I might, if asked, feel that I may reasonably express a view (but would not think this if my ignorance of those domains were to be rectified). But I don’t know what they might be, or on what topics they might bear—that’s what makes them unknown unknowns!—and yet any view I currently hold (or might assent to express, if asked) might be affected by them!
Should I therefore refrain from weighing in on anything, ever, until such time as I have familiarized myself with literally all human knowledge?
I do not think that this is a reasonable standard to which we should hold anyone…
I think that’s a very fair point, and after thinking about it more I’m guessing I’d want to exclude the people who voted ‘lean A-theory’ and ‘lean B-theory’, and just include the people who strongly endorsed one or the other (since the survey distinguishes those options).
I think it’s a very useful signal either way, even the ‘unfair’ version. And I think it really does take very little googling (or very little physics background knowledge) to run into the basic issues; e.g., SEP is a standard resource I’d expect a lot of philosophers to make a beeline to if they wanted a primer. But regardless, saying it’s as an unambiguous or extreme a sign as theism is too harsh.
(Though in some ways it’s a more extreme sign than theism, because theism is a thing a lot of people were raised in and have strong emotional attachments—it’s epistemic ‘easy mode’ in the sense that it’s an especially outrageous belief, but it can be ‘hard mode’ emotionally. I wanted something like a-theory added to the mix partly because it’s a lot harder to end up ‘a-theorist by default’ than to end up ‘theist by default’.)
Ehh, I think I want to walk back my ‘go easy on a-theorists’ update a bit. Even if I give someone a pass on the physics-illiteracy issue, I feel like I should still dock a lot of points for Bayes-illiteracy. What evidence does someone think they’ve computed that allows them to update toward A-theory? How did the ‘mysterious Nowness of Now’ causally impact your brain so as to allow you to detect its existence, relative to the hypothetical version of you in a block universe?
Crux: If there’s a reasonable argument out there for having a higher prior on A-theory, in a universe that looks remotely like our universe, then I’ll update.
Heck, thinking in terms of information theory and physical Bayesian updates at all is already most of what I’m asking for here. What I’m expecting instead is ‘well, A-theory felt more intuitive to me, and the less intuitive-to-me view gets the burden of proof’.
Counterpoint: how much of the literature on the philosophical presentism vs. eternalism debate have you acquainted yourself with?
For example, you linked to the SEP entry on time, so surely you noticed the philosophers’ extant counterarguments to the “relativity entails B-theory” argument? What is your opinion on papers like this one or this one?
Now, if your response is “I have not read these papers”, then are you not in the same situation as the philosopher who is unfamiliar with relativity?
(But in fact a quick survey of the literature on the “nature of time” debate—including, by the way, the SEP entry you linked!—shows that philosophers involved in this debate are familiar with relativity’s implications in this context… perhaps more familiar, on average, than are physicists—or rationalists—with the philosophical positions in question.)
I haven’t read those papers, and am not very familiar with the presentism debate, though I’m not 0% familiar. Nor have I read the papers you link. If there’s a specific argument that you think is a good argument for the A-theory view (e.g., if you endorse one of the papers), I’m happy to check it out and see if it updates me.
But the mere fact that “papers exist”, “people who disagree with me exist”, and “people publishing papers in favor of A-theory nowadays are all familiar with special relativity (at least to some degree)” doesn’t move me, no—I was taking all of those things for granted when I wrote the OP.
Having interacted with a decent number of analytic-philosophy metaphysics papers and arguments at college, I think I already know the rough base rate of ‘crazy and poorly-justified views on reality’ in this area, and I think it’s very high by LW standards (though I think metaphysics is unusually healthy for a philosophy field).
Since I’m not a domain expert, it might turn out that I’m missing something crucial and the A-theory has some subtle important argument favoring it; but I don’t treat this as nontrivially likely merely because professional metaphysicians who have heard of special relativity disagree with me, no. (If I’m wrong, most of my probability mass would be on ‘I’m defining the A-theory wrong, actually A-theorists are totally fine with there being no unique special Present Moment.’ Though then I’d wonder what the content of the theory is!)
No, not particularly. Actually, I do not have an opinion on the matter one way or the other!
As for the rest of your comment… it is understandable, as far as it goes; but note that a philosopher could say just the same thing, but in reverse.
He might say: “The mere fact that ‘a physics theory exists’, ‘physicists think that their theory has some bearing on this philosophical argument’, and ‘physicists have some familiarity with the state of the philosophical debate on the matter’ doesn’t move me.”
Our philosopher might say, further: “I think I already know the rough base rate of ‘physical scientists with delusions of philosophy’; I have interacted with many such folks, who think that they do not need to study philosophy in order to have an opinion on philosophers’ debates.”
And he might add, in all humility: “Since I’m not a domain expert, it might turn out that I’m missing something crucial, and the theory of relativity has some important consequence that bears on the argument; but I don’t treat this as nontrivially likely merely because professional physicists who have heard of the ‘eternalism vs. presentism’ debate disagree with me.”
Now, suppose I am a curious, though reasonably well-informed, layman—neither professionally a philosopher nor yet a physicist—and I observe this back-and-forth. What should I conclude from this exchange, about which one of you is right?
… and that would be the argument that I would make, if it were the case that you dismissed the philosophers’ arguments without reading them, while the philosophers dismissed your arguments (and/or those of the physicists) without reading them. But that’s not the case! Instead, what we have is a situation where you dismiss their arguments without reading them, while they have read your arguments, and are disagreeing with them on that, informed, basis.
Now what should I (the hypothetical well-informed layman) conclude?
Of course, the matter is more complicated than even that, because philosophers hardly agree with each other on this matter. But let’s not lose sight of the point of this discussion thread, which is: should a philosopher who endorses A-theory be docked “rationality points” (on the reasoning that any such philosopher must surely be suffering from “science illiteracy”—because if they had done any “basic research” [i.e., five minutes of web-searching], they would have learned about the special relativity issue, and would—we are meant to assume—immediately and reliably conclude that they had no business having an opinion about the nature of time, at least not without gaining a thorough technical understanding of special relativity)?
I think the answer to that question is “no, definitely not”. It’s obvious from a casual literature search that philosophers who are familiar with the “eternalism vs. presentism” debate at all, are also familiar with the question of special relativity’s implications for that debate. Whatever is causing some of them to still favor A-theory, it ain’t “science illiteracy”, inability to use Google, or any other such simple foolishness.
Sure! And similarly, if you were an agnostic, and I were an atheist making all the same statements about theism, you could say ‘philosophers of religion could say just the same thing, but in reverse’.
Yet this symmetry wouldn’t be a good reason for me to doubt atheism or put more time into reading theology articles.
I think the specific symmetry you’re pointing at doesn’t quite work (special relativity doesn’t have the same standing as A-theory arguments, either in fact or in philosophers’ or physicists’ eyes), but it’s not cruxy in any case.
At a minimum, you should say that I’m making a bizarrely bold prediction (at least from an outside-view perspective that thinks philosophers have systematically accurate beliefs about their subject matter). If I turn out to be right, after having put so little work in, it suggests I have surprisingly ‘efficient’ heuristics—ones that can figure out truth on at least certain classes of question, without putting in a ton of legwork first. (Cf. skills like ‘being able to tell whether certain papers are shit based on the abstract’.)
You’re free to update toward the hypothesis that I’m overconfident; the point of my sharing my views is to let you consider hypotheses like that, rather than hiding any arrogant-sounding beliefs of mine from view. I’m deliberately stating my views in a bold, stick-my-neck-out way because those are my actual views—I think we do for-real live in the world where A-theory is obviously false.
I’m not saying any of this to shut down discussion, or say I’m unwilling to hear arguments for A-theory. But I do think there’s value in combating underconfidence just as much as overconfidence, and in trying to reach conclusions efficiently rather than going through ritualistic doubts.
If you think I’m going too fast, then that’s a testable claim, since we can look at the best A-theory arguments and see if they change my mind, the minds of people we both agree are very sane, etc. But I’d probably want to delegate that search for ‘best arguments’ to someone who’s more optimistic that it will change anything.
Depending on how much we’re talking about ‘philosophers who don’t work on the metaphysics of time professionally, but have a view on this debate’ (the main group I discussed in the OP) vs. ‘A-theorists who write on the topic professionally’, I’d say it’s mostly a mix of (a) not using google / not having basic familiarity with the special relativity argument; (b) misunderstanding the force of the special relativity argument; and (c) misunderstanding/rejecting the basic Bayesian idea of how evidence, burdens of proof, updating, priors, and thermodynamic-work-that-makes-a-map-reflect-a-territory work, in favor of epistemologies that put more weight on ‘metaphysical intuitions that don’t make Bayesian sense but feel really compelling when I think them’.
I’d say much the same thing about professional theologians who argue that God must be real (in order for us to know stuff at all) because there’s no reason for evolution to give humans accurate cognition; or, for that matter, about theologians who argue that God must be real because speciation isn’t real. There are huge industries of theist scholars who have spent their whole lives arguing such things. Can they really be so wrong, when the counter-argument is so obvious, so strong, and so googlable?
Apparently, they can.
To put it in simpler terms: is a physicist who believes an invisible, undetectable dragon lives in their garage ‘science-illiterate’?
I’d say that they’re at best science-illiterate, if not outright unhinged. If you want to say that it’s impossible to be science-illiterate while knowing a bunch of physics facts or while being able to do certain forms of physics lab work, then I assume we’re defining the word ‘science-illiterate’ differently. But hopefully this example clarifies in what basic sense I’m using the term.
You don’t have the kind of knock down arguments against theism that you can think you have either .
If the arguments I have against theism don’t count as ‘knock-down arguments’… so much the worse for knock-down arguments, I suppose? The practical implication (‘this deserves the same level of intellectual respect and attention as leprechauns’) holds regardless.
Or maybe you could show some curiosity about the flaws instead of digging your heels in.
Or B theory just isn’t that good. If physical reductionism is the correct theory of mind, so that the mind is just another part of the block, it’s difficult to see where so much as an illusion of temporal flow comes from.
Well, Copenhagen is compatible with SR (collapse is nonlocal, but cannot be used for nonlocal signaling), and it allows you to identify a moving present moment as where collapse is occurring.
No? Seems trivially easy to see, and I don’t think reductionism matters here. If I were an immaterial Cartesian soul plugged in to the Matrix, and the Matrix ran on block-universe physics, the same arguments for ‘it feels like there’s an objective Now but really this is just an implication of my being where I am in the block universe’ would hold. The argument is about your relationship to other spatial and temporal slices of the Matrix, not about the nature of your brain or mind.
On the (false) collapse interpretation of QM, I can cause collapses; but so can my brother Fred who lives on Mars. Which of our experiences coincide with ‘the present’, if there is a single unique reference-frame-independent Present Moment?
Reductionism is critical to understanding block universe theory , because if you allow a nonohysycal soul or wotnot the implications can be prevented from following.
If the immaterial soul had the property of being wholly located at one 4D point in the block at a time then you could recover the notion of a distinguished and moving Now..but that isn’t block universe theory, it’s some sort of hybrid. In actual block universe theory, you’re just a 4D section of a 4D block, and your entire history exists at once.
You don’t believe in souls and you do believe in reductionism, so you can’t use souls to rescue block universe theory.
I said that collapse is nonlocal.