Timing & Time Perception (2023) DOI: 10.

1163/22134468-bja10096

Commentary

Spacetime Is Doomed: Time Is an Artifact

Donald D. Hoffman
Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6737-3907
Corresponding author; e-mail:ddhoff@uci.edu
Received 5 May 2023; accepted 25 September 2023

Abstract
It is well known that spacetime has no operational meaning beyond the Planck scale. In conse-
quence, many high-energy theoretical physicists are seeking, and finding, new structures entirely
beyond spacetime. In light of these advances, we propose that time is not fundamental. The arrow
of time is an artifact of projection of a stationary dynamics, entirely beyond spacetime and quantum
theory, whose entropy does not increase.
Keywords
amplituhedron, communicating class, decorated permutation, entropy, Markov chain, scattering
amplitudes, spacetime

1. Introduction
What is time? Physics, neuroscience, and subjective experience offer answers that
appear discrepant. The target articles for this issue admirably canvas the discrep-
ancies and possible resolutions. Here I sketch a different resolution.
Physics tell us that spacetime is ‘doomed’. Space and time fail to have opera-
tional meaning beyond the Planck scale — roughly 10–33 cm and 10–43 s (Gross,
2005; Arkani-Hamed et al., 2016). Spacetime therefore cannot be not fundamen-
tal reality: it is a limited data structure. It is frugal, sporting a mere handful of
dimensions.
33
It is shallow, failing at just 10–33 cm rather than a more impressive, say,
10 −10
cm. Proper time, block universes, and Riemann curvature tensors describe
a useful data structure, not objective reality. Evolution by natural selection

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2 D.D. Hoffman / Timing & Time Perception (2023)

agrees: perceived space and time are data structures that evolved to guide adap-
tive behavior, not to reveal objective reality (Hoffman, 2019; Prakash et al., 2020).
If spacetime is not fundamental reality, then neither are its contents, such as par-
ticles, neurons, and brains. They are useful data structures, nothing more.
Many high-energy theoretical physicists have moved on (see, e.g., Bain, 2020).
In the last decade they have found new structures deeper than spacetime and
quantum theory. Amplituhedra, for instance, are geometric structures that are
logically prior to spacetime and Hilbert spaces. Their volumes are scattering
amplitudes. Their faces encode locality and unitarity, key properties of spacetime
and quantum theory. Amplituhedra reveal a simplicity and symmetry in scattering
amplitudes that cannot be seen within spacetime (Arkani-Hamed et al., 2021). In
this new physics, spacetime and quantum theory emerge, together, as a projection
of amplituhedra.
Physicists find, to their surprise, that much of the invariant physical informa-
tion in amplituhedra is coded by permutations that are ‘decorated’ to distinguish
moves left and right (Arkani-Hamed et al., 2016). But permutations of what, and
why? What dynamics might hide behind amplituhedra?
It turns out that decorated permutations classify dynamical systems called
Markov chains, by compactly describing their ‘communicating classes’ (Hoffman
et al., 2023). In the Twitterverse, for instance, each user in a communicating class
eventually sees every tweet of every user in that class.
It’s easy to construct stationary Markov chains whose entropy does not increase.
For these chains there is no entropic arrow of time. It’s also easy to show that
projecting such a chain, by conditional probability, yields a new chain that has
an entropic arrow of time (Cover & Thomas, 2006). This arrow of time is not an
insight about the original chain. It is merely an artifact of projection.
It should be noted that an entropy-nonincreasing Markovian dynamics can be
one in which entropy (information) is conserved, i.e., one that satisfies the prin-
ciple of unitary. Such processes are not beyond quantum theory but are rather its
subject matter. However, the set of such unitary Markovian dynamics has measure
zero in the set of all entropy-nonincreasing Markovian dynamics. That is, almost
all Markovian dynamics that are entropy-nonincreasing are also not unitary, and
thus are beyond the unitary formalism of quantum theory.
Spacetime is a projection of a deeper reality. In that projection, an arrow of
time can arise as an artifact. Markov chains have a notion of sequence, but need
neither relativistic time nor entropic time.
To specify a Markov chain, we must first write down a probability space describ-
ing all possibilities for its dynamics. This probability space is a timeless structure
prior to any specific dynamics. It is a timeless framework of all possibilities, in
which specific events appear and disappear. Perhaps this is the source of our feel-
ing that it is always now.

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 Timing & Time Perception (2023) DOI: 10.1163/22134468-bja10096 3

So proper time and entropic time are doomed because spacetime is doomed.
Beyond spacetime lurk amplituhedra and decorated permutations. Beyond deco-
rated permutations may be a Markovian dynamic outside of time, on a probability
space perhaps experienced as the now.
The question then arises: A Markovian dynamics of what?

Acknowledgements
I thank Chetan Prakash, Robert Prentner, and Manish Singh for helpful discus-
sions. The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any
commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential con-
flict of interest.

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