Sunday, 5 August 2012

The Brick


In the 1950s an avant-garde artist makes his film ‘The Brick’. To make the film, he sets up a brick in artificial light and, with the camera on a static tripod, films it for one hour.
The film is rediscovered and shown in an art cinema. It causes a sensation and runs for a week. The projectionist is bored and sometimes runs the film backwards. Then he makes a still slide of the first frame and shows it for an hour.

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Suppose we take a snapshot of the universe in State A, then another in State B. If A and B are indistinguishable then nothing has happened (or time has not passed – which amounts to same thing).
There are many objections to this thought experiment – eg:
1.   Where is the camera which takes the snapshot? Is it ‘outside the universe’?
2.   If time does not pass between State A and State B, how can we take the second snapshot?

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