The anthropic arrow of time and realistic world models: On Price and atemporal universe

Abstract

In recent attempts at building an atemporal ('tenseless') picture of the physical world, insufficient attention is devoted to processes giving rise to the cosmological arrow of time. Having regard to the new empirical findings and particularly to the epochal discovery of large effective vacuum energy density, the existing discussions of the topic need to be reassessed. In particular, the necessity of a new treatment of asymmetric temporal boundary conditions in an open universe is hereby put forward. Some errors and uncertainties implicit in the recent treatment of the problem of the cosmological arrow of time in the brilliant recent monograph of Prof. Price are briefly discussed. In addition, we discuss relevancy of the high level of complexity observable in living and intelligent beings in the universe for the question of time-reversal symmetry.