I am pleased to answer. As I said, a good conversation has never hurt anyone (even if we disagree).
I agree, but we can only do science insofar as we can conceive of experiments whose results we can perceive.
Yes, but there is a missing step. Between the perception and the comparison with data, we need a mathematical description of perception, that could be used for predictions and the actual comparison with data. Without this, ideas only stay ideas, and cannot be promoted to being theories.
How we experience time seems the reason that the Arrow of Time exists theoretically, since it seems irrelevant to a unitary spacetime continuum.
What about thermodynamics, or the expansion of the universe. To me, these are more than just ideas. And this is the starting point that shakes all the rest of the reasoning in your reply. Why would the arrow of time be reversible as we have data showing us that it is not.
This is why I have quit using the word hypothesis and now use speculation regarding my understanding, because without that framework it cannot be tested. I really should never have quit learning math.
That’s a pity as this missing step is really needed to go further. Otherwise, I can only provide observations that could put the speculation into troubles, but there is no way to have a final conclusive (quantitative) statement on this.
I am sure it is only nearly Godlike patience that enables you to suffer this discussion with a math illiterate.
Don’t worry. If I would have been bored, I would have stopped answering ^^
Math, or statements in any language, can be open ended, wrong, or incomplete. Physical reality cannot.
I don’t understand this. Physics uses math to express itself. Am I missing anything?
causality not necessarily limited to our perception of time as directional
This is another item I don’t get fully. We observe events and we can order them, can’t we? Therefore, we definitely 'make use' of the arrow of time.
The statement '...light can go back in time.' confuses me. Do you mean that light from distant, ancient events only reaches us long after such events, or is there a Nobel in your future?
No, nothing can go back in time. This is in fact how I understood your next-to-last reply. If events from the future can influence us, this means that light could go back in time. One step further, this means that we are in big troubles relative to existing data, at least at macroscopic scales.
We owe everything to France, or it's all your fault, depending on your viewpoint ;).
As I am not French, this is definitely not my fault. I hope you enjoyed your fourth of July! :)
Cheers!