Although I still have not tried to decipher what “Timeless Decision Theory” or “Updateless Decision Theory” is actually about, I would like to observe that it is very unlikely that the “timeless” aspect, in the sense of an ontology which denies the reality of time, change, or process, is in any way essential to how it works.
If you have a Julian-Barbour-style timeless wavefunction of the universe, which associates an amplitude with every point in a configuration space of spacelike states of the universe, you can always construct histories using Bohm’s formula of following the configuration-space gradient of the complex phase of the wavefunction.
I don’t actually advocate Bohmian mechanics, I’d prefer something more like “quantum causal histories” a la Fotini Markopoulou, but looking even more like a background-independent cellular automaton. However, the ever-present Bohmian option should demonstrate that there is no particular intrinsic necessity to the abandonment of time. And basic subjective experience, phenomenology if you will, shows that change is real and about as basic as existence itself. The denial of time is a classic case of people denying what’s right in front of them because of absorption in a theory or belief that there is no alternative. I’d basically attribute it to love of the power of objectifying thought to explain things: I can map the events of reality onto a mathematical structure which is static at least in my mind, that structure has enormous clarifying and predictive power, so therefore reality must be static, i.e. there is no time.
So I think the fashion hereabouts for denying the reality of time is a basic error. But it’s a hard one to argue against because it requires some detachment from the intellectual drive to formalize and objectify everything which is just about synonymous with rationality and truthseeking in the local worldview, and requires instead that one spend a bit of time being a phenomenologist, reflecting on the nature of experience without preconceptions, and noticing that, yes, it’s there and it flows, and maybe it’s a mistake to call the flow an illusion just because your basic intellectual method is about mapping the world onto static ideal forms.
However, my real point here is not to argue against the ontology of timelessness. It is to suggest that the basic features of Timeless Decision Theory, whatever they may be, may actually be logically independent of the assumption of a timeless reality; and that it might be worth someone’s time to re-express the theory in a language which does not presuppose timelessness. It would be a shame to see a basic innovation in decision theory unnecessarily bound to a particular wrong ontology.
AFAIK, Timeless Decision Theory doesn’t have anything to say about the reality of time, only that decisions shouldn’t vary depending on the time when they are considered.
Although I still have not tried to decipher what “Timeless Decision Theory” or “Updateless Decision Theory” is actually about, I would like to observe that it is very unlikely that the “timeless” aspect, in the sense of an ontology which denies the reality of time, change, or process, is in any way essential to how it works.
If you have a Julian-Barbour-style timeless wavefunction of the universe, which associates an amplitude with every point in a configuration space of spacelike states of the universe, you can always construct histories using Bohm’s formula of following the configuration-space gradient of the complex phase of the wavefunction.
I don’t actually advocate Bohmian mechanics, I’d prefer something more like “quantum causal histories” a la Fotini Markopoulou, but looking even more like a background-independent cellular automaton. However, the ever-present Bohmian option should demonstrate that there is no particular intrinsic necessity to the abandonment of time. And basic subjective experience, phenomenology if you will, shows that change is real and about as basic as existence itself. The denial of time is a classic case of people denying what’s right in front of them because of absorption in a theory or belief that there is no alternative. I’d basically attribute it to love of the power of objectifying thought to explain things: I can map the events of reality onto a mathematical structure which is static at least in my mind, that structure has enormous clarifying and predictive power, so therefore reality must be static, i.e. there is no time.
So I think the fashion hereabouts for denying the reality of time is a basic error. But it’s a hard one to argue against because it requires some detachment from the intellectual drive to formalize and objectify everything which is just about synonymous with rationality and truthseeking in the local worldview, and requires instead that one spend a bit of time being a phenomenologist, reflecting on the nature of experience without preconceptions, and noticing that, yes, it’s there and it flows, and maybe it’s a mistake to call the flow an illusion just because your basic intellectual method is about mapping the world onto static ideal forms.
However, my real point here is not to argue against the ontology of timelessness. It is to suggest that the basic features of Timeless Decision Theory, whatever they may be, may actually be logically independent of the assumption of a timeless reality; and that it might be worth someone’s time to re-express the theory in a language which does not presuppose timelessness. It would be a shame to see a basic innovation in decision theory unnecessarily bound to a particular wrong ontology.
AFAIK, Timeless Decision Theory doesn’t have anything to say about the reality of time, only that decisions shouldn’t vary depending on the time when they are considered.