Time reborn

What Hacker News says

1. bisonbearDec 2025
   Yep! Honestly it was just a random rabbit hole - I recently read Lee Smolin's Time Reborn (highly recommend btw, super fascinating read) and was curious as to what his more recent work was about, which lead me to come across The Autodidactic Universe paper. With the AI hype train full steam ahead, the paper felt newly relevant, especially as it seems that we're starting to hit plateaus for model intelligence and looking to other areas (e.g. world models) for further advancement in the field
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2. habitmelonJun 2024
   Lee Smolin wrote a good book defending the idea that time is not emergent: https://www.amazon.com/Time-Reborn-Crisis-Physics-Universe/d...

   He came up with a framework where time is real (assumed), and then the laws of physics evolve with time, and then goes on to develop an evolutionary theory of universes, where universes reproduce by producing black holes, which spawn baby universes, with slightly different laws of physics. He then predicts that it should tend to produce universes that are optimized to produce black holes.

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3. jbotzOct 2023
   Certainly. One of the most fundamental philosophical questions is about the nature of time, precisely because all of our "laws" of physics are time reversible, so from the perspective of physics time doesn't really exist or is just a space-like dimension (no arrow). And so the Universe should be perfectly deterministic and with enough computing power and precise enough knowledge of the initial conditions everything should be perfectly predictable and the future should be "fixed". In some way or another probably most of philosophy is arguing about whether or not this is true and what it means.

   This paper claims that 5% of 3-body systems in the Universe can't be predicted even in principle, because you would need to measure initial conditions to greater precision than the planck length, which is impossible. And of course N-body systems where N > 3 are even more unpredictable, and the whole of the Universe is an N-body system, so if correct it would mean the end of determinism.

   For a good treatment of this topic for a lay audience see Lee Smolin's recent book "Time Reborn".

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4. mindcrimeSep 2022
   You might enjoy Time Reborn[1] by Lee Smolin or About Time[2] by Paul Davies. Note that the latter book is fairly old now (from 1996 or so) and I'm not sure how well it holds up now.

   [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Time-Reborn-Lee-Smolin/dp/0544245598

   [2]: https://www.amazon.com/About-Time-Einsteins-Unfinished-Revol...

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5. mindcrimeSep 2022
   That would be a long list, given that I read a lot of books and would generally say that most of the books I've read were worth investing time in to some extent. But for what it's worth, here's a subset, cribbed from my previous HN comments:

   Something Deeply Hidden - Sean Carroll

   The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets - Graham Farmelo

   The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth - Paul Hoffman

   The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan - Robert Kanigel

   Lost in Math - Sabine Hossenfelder

   The First Three Minutes - Steven Weinberg

   Hyperspace - Michio Kaku

   Not Even Wrong - Peter Woit

   The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin

   About Time - Paul Davies

   Time Reborn - Lee Smolin

   The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene

   The Hidden Reality - Brian Greene

   The Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene

   Quantum Space: Loop Quantum Gravity and the Search for the Structure of Space, Time, and the Universe - Jim Baggott

   The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets - Graham Farmelo

   Three Roads To Quantum Gravity - Lee Smolin

   Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos - Seth Lloyd

   Higgs - The invention and discovery of the 'God Particle' - Jim Baggott

   Analogy Making As Perception - Melanie Mitchell

   Society of Mind - Marvin Minsky

   Engineering General Intelligence, Part 1 - Ben Goertzel

   Engineering General Intelligence, Part 2 - Ben Goertzel

   The AGI Revolution - Ben Goertzel

   Hackers & Painters by our very own Paul "pg" Graham

   Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - Steven Levy

   The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder

   Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier - Katie Hafner & John Markoff

   Artificial Life: A Report from the Frontier Where Computers Meet Biology - Steven Levy

   Ghost In The Wires - Kevin Mitnick

   The Art of Deception - Kevin Mitnick

   The Art of Intrusion - Kevin Mitnick

   Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

   The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

   It's Not About The Bike - Lance Armstrong

   Ultramarathon Man - Dean Karnazes

   Charles Proteus Steinmetz: The Electrical Wizard of Schenectady - Robert Bly

   Report From Engine Co 82 - Dennis Smith

   Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind - Al Ries, Jack Trout and Philip Kotler

   The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! - Al Ries and Jack Trout

   Re-Positioning: Marketing in an Era of Competition, Change and Crisis by Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin

   The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding - Al Ries and Laura Ries

   Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition - Jack Trout and Steve Rivkin

   Marketing High Technology - William H. Davidow

   Marketing Warfare - Al Ries

   The Discipline of Market Leaders - Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema

   Crossing The Chasm - Geoffrey Moore

   How to Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard

   Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

   The Black Swan - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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6. mindcrimeMay 2022
   Something Deeply Hidden - Sean Carroll[1]

   Lost in Math - Sabine Hossenfelder[2]

   The First Three Minutes - Steven Weinberg[3]

   Hyperspace - Michio Kaku[4]

   Not Even Wrong - Peter Woit[5]

   The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin[6]

   About Time - Paul Davies[7]

   Time Reborn - Lee Smolin[8]

   The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene[9]

   The Hidden Reality - Brian Greene[10]

   The Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene[11]

   Quantum Space: Loop Quantum Gravity and the Search for the Structure of Space, Time, and the Universe - Jim Baggott[12]

   The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets - Graham Farmelo[13]

   Three Roads To Quantum Gravity - Lee Smolin[14]

   Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos - Seth Lloyd[15]

   Higgs - The invention and discovery of the 'God Particle' - Jim Baggott[16]

   [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Something-Deeply-Hidden-Emergence-Spa...

   [2]: https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Math-Beauty-Physics-Astray/dp/15...

   [3]: https://www.amazon.com/First-Three-Minutes-Modern-Universe/d...

   [4]: https://www.amazon.com/Hyperspace-Scientific-Parallel-Univer...

   [5]: https://www.amazon.com/Not-Even-Wrong-Failure-Physical/dp/04...

   [6]: https://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Physics-String-Theory-Science...

   [7]: https://www.amazon.com/About-Time-Einsteins-Unfinished-Revol...

   [8]: https://www.amazon.com/Time-Reborn-Lee-Smolin/dp/0544245598/

   [9]: https://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Universe-Superstrings-Dimensi...

   [10]: https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Reality-Parallel-Universes-Cos...

   [11]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375412883/ref=dbs_a_def_r...

   [12]: https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Space-Gravity-Structure-Unive...

   [13]: https://www.amazon.com/Universe-Speaks-Numbers-Reveals-Natur...

   [14]: https://www.amazon.com/Three-Roads-Quantum-Gravity-Smolin/dp...

   [15]: https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Universe-Quantum-Computer...

   [16]: https://www.amazon.com/Higgs-invention-discovery-God-Particl...

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