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pragmatist comments on Why is the A-Theory of Time Attractive? - Less Wrong
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The A-theory and B-theory perspectives are not related by a time translation.
B-theory says that the only objective temporal facts about events in space-time are relative facts. Given two points X and Y, you can ask questions like "Is X in the future relative to Y?" and "What is the space-time interval separating X and Y?" But B-theorists say that it makes no sense to ask questions like "Is point X in the future?" without at least implicitly relativizing the question to some other space-time point or region.
The A-theorist says that there is an absolute answer to the latter sort of question, and it does not depend on any implicit relativization. It is an objective fact about point X whether it is in the future or not. Not whether it is in the future of point Y, not whether it is in the future of the space-time region in which the question is being asked, but simply and non-relatively whether it is in the future. B-theory recognizes no such absolute property of future-ness or past-ness.
I don't see how this difference can be interpreted as a mere change of basis. I think you are attributing to A-theorists an implicit relativization to the space-time region in which the discussion is taking place; you're assuming that they have simply chosen a reference frame with a zero in that region, and that all their claims about past and future are actually relative to this frame. But A-theorists are explicit that this is not what they mean. They believe that an event is either in the future or not, and that this is a fact that is independent of reference frame, just like whether X is in the causal past of Y is independent of reference frame.
Like I said in another comment, A-theorists propose radically different ontologies for space and time, and it seems you are under-estimating how radically different these ontologies actually are.
That is trueish, but the point of introducing a distinction between relative facts (before and after) and absolute facts (past and future) is to get a handle in change/becoming,
Note also that presentism is not exactly equivalent to A series.
This is the stated motivation, although I must confess I have no idea how the A-theory is supposed to be even a partial explanation of becoming.
This is true, but I don't think I conflated the two in my post. I didn't say anything about the existence/non-existence of past and future entities or space-time locations. I was talking about the A-theory, not about presentism, although the two are regularly treated as a package deal in contemporary metaphysics.
I actually think the presentism/eternalism distinction is more likely susceptible to shminux's charge of vacuity than the A-theory/B-theory distinction.
I don't think it's supposed to be an explanation of becoming, I think it's supposed to be a model of time that takes becoming into account. Explanations have to ground out somewhere.
The opinion has born put forward a number of times, but I am still waiting for someone to substantiate it by putting forward an explanation of how change is equivalent to stasis.
I can see how "time is passing through me" is equivalent to "I am passing through time" ....but those are two dynamic theories.
Do these differnt ontologys have consequences for how we understand physics? For example, suppose society generated a quantum random bit and if it was 1 we allocated all future social resources to pushing Mercury into the sun. If under B theory the future allready exists, then there is a fact of the matter as to whether Mercury is still there. Which then implies that there is a determic result that will happen we we generate the quantum random bit used to make this decision.
I'm no expert on quantum mechanics, but whether or not the result of quantum randomness is in fact determined based on a variable allready in the universe but hidden from us seems like something physics may say something about