Events Calendar

On the relation between the psychological and thermodynamic arrows of time

Speaker: Todd A. Brun, USC, Associate Professor

Talk Title: On the relation between the psychological and thermodynamic arrows of time

Series: AISeminar

Abstract: Why do we remember the past, and not the future? Why do we perceive time as flowing, with a fixed past separated from an indefinite future by an instantaneous moment known as `now?' This perception is the psychological arrow of time. In this talk I will lay out an argument that generically the psychological arrow of time should align with the thermodynamic arrow of time where that arrow is well defined. This argument applies to any physical system that can act as a memory, in the sense of preserving a record of the state of some other system. This result follows from two principles: the robustness of the thermodynamic arrow of time to small perturbations in the state, and the principle that a memory should not have to be fine-tuned to match the state of the system being recorded. This argument applies even if the memory system itself is completely reversible and nondissipative. I make the argument using a paradigmatic system, and then formulate it more broadly for any system that can be considered a memory, illustrating it with a few examples.

Biography: Todd A. Brun received his Ph.D. in Physics from Caltech in 1994, and then held a variety of postdoctoral positions at the University of London, the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, working on various aspects of quantum theory. Since 2003, he has been a faculty member in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Southern California, where he works on quantum computers and quantum information science. As a hobby, he thinks about the nature of time.

Host: Greg Ver Steeg

Webcast: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=bf95b30ee6b34399ad74d741535fa5a71d

Location: 1135

WebCast Link: http://webcasterms1.isi.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=bf95b30ee6b34399ad74d741535fa5a71d

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Alma Nava / Information Sciences Institute