by: Carlo Rovelli 2018

14 "Aniximander [:...] Things are transformed one into another according to necessity, and render justice to one another according to the order of time."
34 "[E]ntropy, as Boltzmann fully understood, is nothing other than the number of microscopic states that our blurred vision of the world fails to distinguish." IMHO the keyword in this description is 'our'.
219 ""The notion of 'now' is nothing more than a certain relation between a certain observer and the rest of the universe."" – Kurt Gödel
48 "The relation of "temporal precedence" is a partial order made of cones."
49 Simple and clear diagrams showing how the past, present, and future as they are usually conceived should be replaced with cones for each of several different events. Each event has a unique present but with intersecting and overlapping past and future cones.
53 "But there is no logical contradiction entailed by the existence of closed temporal lines or journeys to the past; we are the ones who complicate things with our confused fantasies about the supposed freedom of the future."
219 "Both [Lee Smolin and George Ellis] insist that there must exist a privileged time and a real present, even if these are not captured by current physics." I agree with them and probably should read their books.
56 "If the present has no meaning, then what "exists" in the universe? Is not what "exists" precisely what is here "in the present"? The whole idea that the universe exists now in a certain configuration and changes together with the passage of time simply doesn't stack up anymore." My answer is that it is Stylus Guy weaving reality in that extra dimension (or dimensions) of hypertime.
61 "...people are attached to local time. In 1883, a compromise is reached with the idea of dividing the world into time zones..."
62 "...only a few years passed between the moment at which we agreed to synchronize clocks and the moment at which Einstein realized that it was impossible to do so exactly."
68 "Legend has it that Leibniz, whose name is still occasionally spelled with a "t" (Leibnitz), had deliberately dropped the letter from his name in accordance with his belief in the nonexistence of the absolute Newtonian time t."
221 "Aristotle's definition is more precise: the place of a thing is the inner boundary of that which surrounds the thing, an elegant and rigorous definition." In other words, a manifold.
221 "Reality is not what it seems, trans. Simon Carnell and Erica Segre" Buy this book??
84 "The "quantization" of time implies that almost all values of time t do not exist." Sounds like my practical numbers.
96 "...nothing is: things happen."
224 "An accessible account of loop quantum gravity can be found in Rovelli, Reality is not what it seems" Buy this book.
123 "[John Wheeler and Bryce DeWitt] discovered the extremely simple structure of the equation that describes the dynamics of the world. It describes possible events and the correlations between them, and nothing else."
139 "Connes...has shown that a kind of temporal flow is implicitly defined by the noncommutativity of the physical variables. Due to this noncommutativity the set of physical variables in a system defines a mathematical structure called "noncommutative von Neumann algebra," and Connes has shown that these structures have within themselves an implicitly defined flow."
225 "The theorem of Tomita-Takesaki shows that a state on a von Neumann algebra defines a flow (a one-parameter family of modular automorphisms). Connes has shown that the flows defined by different states are equivalent up to internal automorphisms. and therefore define an abstract flow determined only by the noncommutative structure of algebra." This suggests a possible "track" followed by Stylus Guy.
140 "Both the sources of blurring—quantum indeterminacy, and the fact that physical systems are composed of zillions of molecules—are at the heart of time. Temporality is profoundly linked to blurring." I respectfully suggest that there is more to "the heart of time" than that. Temporality is indeed "profoundly linked to blurring" but I think something more is needed: Stylus Guy. Consider a CD. At our normal level of acuity the tracks are invisible, but there is a beautiful emergent sheen. Even though they are related, the experience of the qualia of the sheen patterns is a far cry from the experience of the qualia of hearing the music when the CD is played. The difference is in the action of Stylus Guy, following the established track and serially transducing information from the track and presenting it to a sentient experiencer which is outside the manifold of the CD system.
142 "We have not yet reached the time of our own experience." Yes, that's what I was trying to say in note 140.
176 "Cogito ergo sum is not the first step in the Cartesian reconstruction, it is the second. The first is Dubito ergo cogito."
177 "The experience of thinking of oneself as a subject is not a primary experience: it is a complex cultural deduction, made on the basis of many other thoughts. My primary experience—if we grant that this means anything—is to see the world around me, not myself. I believe that we each have a concept of "my self" only because at a certain point we learn to project onto ourselves the idea of being human as an additional feature that evolution has led us to develop during the course of millennia in order to engage with other members of our group: we are the reflection of the idea of ourselves that we receive back from our kind." This is not what I experienced at the petrified stump. True, my "primary experience" was to perceive the world around me, but almost immediately thereafter, I discovered my ability to freely direct and change the focus of my attention. I had a sense of free will. And immediately after that, I realized I had access to a memory of some past events, that I could freely recall some, and that I could choose to consign some present events to be memorized and then recalled later. The idea of "myself" was of the driver, or controller, or owner of this free will capability.
187 "This brain is part of that reality that consequently depends on the interaction between an external world and the structures with which the mind operates." I agree. But we make a huge unwarranted assumption by insisting that "the structures with which the mind operates" are wholly within the brain and body.
187 "What (little) we are beginning to understand of this functioning is that our entire brain operates on the basis of a collection of traces of the past left in the synapses that connect neurons." Unsubstantiated assumption. Consider a Mars rover.
187 "Synapses are continually formed in their thousands and then erased—especially during sleep..." A Mars rover probably purges old already-uploaded images during its inactive time.
199 "...the mystery of time intersects with the mystery of our personal identity, with the mystery of consciousness." Yes! I call this intersection Stylus Guy.