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Is Time's Arrow Perspectival?

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arxiv 1505.01125 v2 pith:WL4OOOPP submitted 2015-05-04 physics.hist-ph gr-qchep-th

classification physics.hist-phgr-qchep-th
keywords entropypastuniversemicrostatetimecoarsecouplingdepends
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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.

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    In the entropy-modified Friedmann framework, sustained growth of the entropy source (ḟ/f > 0) makes the universe converge to an effective de Sitter state with density (ḟ/f)²/K², and current data bound the required sou...

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