DanielVarga comments on How would you respond to the Philpapers "What are your Philosophical Positions" Survey? - Less Wrong

9 Post author: InquilineKea 11 April 2011 12:40AM

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Comment author: DanielVarga 13 April 2011 11:15:14AM 1 point [-]

There were many commenters who did not bother to look up what the B-theory of Time is:

B-theorists maintain that the fact that we know much less about the future simply reflects an epistemological difference between the future and the past: the future is no less real than the past; we just know less about it. -- Wikipedia

I think it is good to learn this phrase, because many LWers have strong opinions about this idea without knowing its proper name in philosophy. Personally, I very strongly feel that B-theory is a legitimate and extremely fruitful way of looking at the world. I don't really care whether it is the only proper way of looking at it.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 April 2011 04:01:21PM 1 point [-]

The time-symmetry of (most?) fundamental (non-statistical) laws of nature seems to (weakly) encourage B-theory, as does (much more strongly) the relativity of simultaneity to the observer's velocity in special relativity. I'm not sure how A-theory is even tenable after Einstein.