Why AI can't solve the mystery of time: training presupposes the very clock it must explain
johnseach · x · 2026-10-03
The mystery of time is a clash between relativity (time as coordinate, no universal now), thermodynamics (entropy arrow from a low-entropy early universe), quantum theory (Wheeler–DeWitt erases time; dynamics depends on chosen internal clock), and experience (physics doesn't explain felt time's flow). AI can help within fixed formalisms — classifiers spotting reversed microscopic movies, symbolic search for compact laws — but the obstacles are structural: training runs on a laboratory clock, presupposing the thing to be explained. Real progress would be a background-independent construction recovering proper time and the thermodynamic arrow from a stated boundary condition, with checkable predictions. AI can search and compress; it cannot supply the criterion of success.
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