IsTime’sArrowPerspectival.pdfVIP

Is Time’s Arrow Perspectival? Carlo Rovelli Aix Marseille Universite?, CNRS, CPT, UMR 7332, 13288 Marseille, France Universite? de Toulon, CNRS, CPT, UMR 7332, 83957 La Garde, France. (Dated: May 12, 2015) We observe entropy decrease towards the past. Does this imply that in the past the world was in a non-generic microstate? I point out an alternative. The subsystem to which we belong interacts with the universe via a relatively small number of quantities, which define a coarse graining. Entropy happens to depends on coarse-graining. Therefore the entropy we ascribe to the universe depends on the peculiar coupling between us and the rest of the universe. Low past entropy may be due to the fact that this coupling (rather than microstate of the universe) is non-generic. I argue that for any generic microstate of a sufficiently rich system there are always special subsystems defining a coarse graining for which the entropy of the rest is low in one time direction (the “past”). These are the subsystems allowing creatures that “live in time” —such as those in the biosphere— to exist. I reply to some objections raised to an earlier presentation of this idea, in particular by Bob Wald, David Albert and Jim Hartle. I. INTRODUCTION An imposing aspects of the Cosmos is the mighty daily rotation of Sun, Moon, planets, stars and all galaxies around us. Why does the Cosmos so rotate? Well, it is not really the Cosmos to rotate, it is us. The rotation of the sky is a perspectival phenomenon: we understand it better as due to the peculiarity of our own moving point of view, rather than a global feature of all celestial objects. A vivid feature of the world is its being in color: each dot of each object has one of the colors out of a three- dimensional color-space. Why? Well, it is us that have three kinds of receptors in our eyes, giving the 3d color space. The 3d space of the world’s colors is perspectival : we understand it better as a consequence of the pecu- liarity of our ow