Abstract
We argue that in Universes where future and past differ only by the entropy content a psychological arrow of time pointing in the direction of entropy increase can arise from natural selection in biological evolution. We show that this effect can be demonstrated in very simple toy computer simulations of evolution in an entropy increasing or decreasing environment.
Highlights
While the laws of classical physics are perfectly time-symmetric, i.e. causality works well forward and backward in time both daily life and the microcosm governed by quantum laws are time-asymmetric
We chose to adopt in our simulation what may be called a psychological perspective, as it corresponds to the subjective perception of the pre-membering population
This results in an advantage of the pre-membering population which competes with the disadvantage of the minor predictive power of the “rediction” process
Summary
While the laws of classical physics are perfectly time-symmetric, i.e. causality works well forward and backward in time both daily life and the microcosm governed by quantum laws are time-asymmetric (excellent monographs on the nature of time include [1]-[3] and the collections of essays [4] [5]). This asymmetry manifests itself in various arrows of time: The thermodynamical arrow of time, as provided by the second law of thermodynamics: the entropy in a closed system always increases or remains constant and never decreases.
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