Local Reality from Time Symmetry and the Emergent Arrow of Time

Sepiashvili, David

This work proposes that time is not a fundamental cause but an emergent consequence of matter’s self-organization. At the deepest level, matter and spacetime possess complete temporal symmetry, allowing bidirectional time. As matter becomes increasingly complex — from particles to macroscopic structures and living systems — this symmetry progressively breaks. The breaking of temporal symmetry gives rise to irreversibility, memory, decoherence, the arrow of time, and the emergence of classical reality. Within this framework, classical matter represents only a tiny, chiral, asymmetrical fraction of a deeper racemic quantum domain existing in dual time. The visible universe arises as a projection — a “shadow” — of this temporally symmetric metastructure. From this perspective, relativity may be interpreted as a special, effectively classical case of quantum mechanics, emerging from higher-order organizational processes. Temporal self-organization thus provides a unified conceptual pathway linking quantum mechanics, relativity, matter–antimatter asymmetry, and the cosmological constant. Although this work does not claim to provide a complete unified theory, it offers a conceptual reorientation: a shift that replaces numerous disconnected explanatory “epicycles” with a simpler underlying principle based on temporal self-organization.Within this perspective, several seemingly independent phenomena — including the arrow of time, matter–antimatter asymmetry, decoherence, and the small positive cosmological constant — may be understood as different manifestations of a single fundamental process: the breaking of an underlying bidirectional temporal symmetry.

H. D. Zeh

Pierre-Marie (common first name: Pierre) Meyer

This paper proposes a three-level ontological framework in which the arrow of time emerges from a pre-temporal layer of quantum processes. At the fundamental level, reality is described as a space of correlations and processes without intrinsic temporal orientation. A regime of projection and stabilization—analogous to a supermap—selects a restricted class of operational descriptions, inducing an effective arrow of time through coarse-graining and decoherence. At the emergent level, this stabilized framework gives rise to the classical-relativistic world, including lived temporality and phenomenal consciousness. The approach is discussed in light of recent experiments on controlled temporal frames and process-matrix formalisms.

H. D. Zeh

Jean Lauro Muller

The macroscopic arrow of time contrasts with the time-reversal symmetry of fundamental laws. The Janus hypothesis proposes that this asymmetry may be perspectival, emerging from a central point of minimal complexity in a globally symmetric universe. We investigate the viability of this emergence in time-reversible quantum many-body chains. We demonstrate that while time-reversal symmetry guarantees S'(0) = 0, it does not spontaneously produce a typical complexity minimum. Instead, we identify that the observational entropy deficit at t = 0 is a kinematic artifact governed by a pairing rule: the coexistence of an antiunitary symmetry and a compatible unitary symmetry forces the amplitude statistics towards the Porter-Thomas beta = 1 ensemble. We quantify this deficit exactly as 1 - ln 2 for single-qubit coarse-grainings, independently of system size. Our results establish that complexity at t = 0 is not an intrinsic property of the state, but strictly relative to the coarse-graining basis, delimiting the conditions for the emergence of perspectival arrows of time in finite-dimensional systems.