Random Thoughts on Time

KlodaX

I wasn't sure if this should belong in After Hours.. so I put it here.

I have come to a conclusion this evening. A random thought. I'm hoping others have random thoughts and will post them here.

But my random thought for this evening is .. I don't believe in time.
I don't think it exists. Honestly. It only exists because I let it exist.

Thats my random thought. Whats yours?

Kappar

I don't think it exists. Honestly. It only exists because I let it exist.

So then it does exist.

My 'random' thought is: Is there such a thing as random?

KlodaX

Is there such a thing as random?

ran·dom ( P ) Pronunciation Key (rndm)
adj.
Having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective:


I'm seeing a pattern here. Maybe there is no such thing as random.

leading on to my second thought ... what is this all leading too?

maybe its like going somewhere... you don't know where you are going untill you get there... otherwise .. how are you to know where you are going?

KlodaX

*what a mad idea for a threa*:ninja:

azezil

I don't think there's no such thing as time i do however think our view of time is far too limited, our perception of time is based on the revolutions of our planet... what if our planets revolution rate wasn't constant, would we have a different perception of time?

flogen

ok, my random thought is related to time:

The idea of the past is something that people always assosiate with years gone by, but what about seconds?? I suddenly started to think deeply about the past, and how this second instantly becomes the past.
Therefore, as we cannot see the past (when we look behind us while walking down the road), then where is it? Does every moment suddenly cease to exist, or, as i believe, does it 'drop off' underneath this time frame into another??

It sounded more profound in my head.....
I wonder what Id think if i ever took acid....

Flogen

KlodaX

Therefore, as we cannot see the past (when we look behind us while walking down the road), then where is it? Does every moment suddenly cease to exist, or, as i believe, does it 'drop off' underneath this time frame into another??

if its only a memory ... how can you be sure it ever happened at all?

thats a great way to calm yourself down ... like counting sheep before you go to sleep .. I sometimes do it if I can't get to sleep... think of the previous second... then once a second is up .. think of the second previous to that ... you are actually thinking of thinkin of the previous second after the first one... your mind kinda locks into nothingness ... its great.

I got a present of a clock today. The day after I stop believing in time .. I get a clock as a present ...honestly.... who gives clocks as presents?? .. its not even my birthday ... was a gift brought back from a journey. Nice clock though.
Just odd timing! :rolleyes: bad pun I know.

That can't be random.

mr_angry

This is the maddest thread ever.

I could go into why time is just a perception caused by the fact that all matter is merely energy reduced in speed to a slow vibration. However, the irony is that it would take too long to explain!

KlodaX

Originally posted by mr_angry
This is the maddest thread ever.

I could go into why time is just a perception caused by the fact that all matter is merely energy reduced in speed to a slow vibration. However, the irony is that it would take too long to explain!

so ... if there was a guy on a train moving very fast taking a picture out the window ... and the photo was a freeze shot of everything moving very fast... would humans be the photo or the guy taking the picture?

Stark

Sometimes when I feel guilt about chopping up kids and hiding them in my basements, I think to myself "why should I feel guilty? They only exist if I let them exist, and I'm no longer letting them exist. Violence on something that doesn't exist isn't wrong".

Sorry went way overboard extreme in my argument But "If I don't believe it exists it doesn't exist" way of thinking is really stupid.

Time does exist, we can take that as a given. The past exists, even though we've moved on from it. What propels us forward is something we need to work out. Whether the future exists and in what form is another thing we need to work out. Relativity would seem to indicate that the future exists. However relativity does not explain the "arrow of time". There is a theory known as causal sets which provides a much more complete explanation of the nature of time, and explains our different experiences of past, present and future. It's fairly complicated though, and I don't fully understand it.

I got a present of a clock today. The day after I stop believing in time .. I get a clock as a present ...honestly.... who gives clocks as presents?? .. its not even my birthday ... was a gift brought back from a journey. Nice clock though.
Just odd timing! bad pun I know.

Time gave you a present to lure you back to the fold? If only God gave me presents every time I stopped believing in him (apart from that ticket to hell which was a pretty ****ty present, it was lucky that the store allowed me to exchange it ).

simu

You're not alone, redRogue!

Today, I saw mention in a footnote of a book about J. McTaggart who also believes that time dosen't exist - here's his explanation!.

Haven't had time to read it all myself yet as it's quite long but I thought it might be of interest to you!










Edited - forgot to put McTaggart's name in my post!

DadaKopf

McTaggart has a mad thought experiment about time that leads him to some nutty conclusions.

If you imagine time not to exist, obviously it stops. Somehow he works out there are something like four realms of time.

To be honest, I didn't bother reading up on it after the lecture but it sounds fun. I'll take a look at this after me exams.

Most work I've put in to understanding anyone's theory of time is St. Augustine's. Our lecturer said that, after 800 years or so, he's still a leading authority on it! You can't measure it, you can't see it, you can't even experience it only by proxy. So, he concludes (similar to McTaggart) it does exist objectively, it's a 'distention' of the mind, a psychological phenomenon. At the same time, the universe is bound by it. To measure it is similar to measuring foots of poetry. It's never uniform, as much as Newton liked to think (and, yes, I know nothing about scientific theories of time), it's fluid and indeterminate.

It's fun thinking about it, but it doesn't really get food to starving people.

DadaKopf

Oh yeah, another dude to check out is Gaston Bachelard. He was a philosopher of science who came to examine aesthetics and developed an intruiging theory of science that was heavily dependent on psychological theories of the construction of space (real and imagined) and memory & time.

simu

Someone posted a new "random question" but I've moved it to another thread here as the discussion that started here on time is getting interested and it would be a pity to block it out by starting a new discussion on something else in the same thread.

It's good asking random questions but it's also good to give people the chance to ponder them and develop their thoughts about the topic at hand!

[DF]Lenny

Sometimes time is a place sometimes a thing but to truly understand the nature of time one must be dead.it is only in the abstract like so many other things..i can speed up time in my thoughts never mind the 4 realms.I have sometimes eaten time like a great black hole but it finds its way to some one else and then becomes their time which no longer interests me and then becomes their time which is of no value to me.

We all have our own time to play with as we must..some waste it, others pass it on but in doing so reduce their own time.It is a precious commodity totally undervalued and used for mundane taks such as life.I for one am keeping mine for when i am dead...

then i can use it as i see fit.

seamus

My recent random thoughts on time have been more simplistic.

Time has speed. There is such thing as the speed of time, and it moves at a constant velocity in all directions. Well, not all directions, but for all intents and purposes....

Take the theory of relativity. The faster, or more you travel, the more time slows down for you, essentially. So time is travelling slower relative to you. Which means that time must have a speed, since all measurements are taken relatively - for example;
Imagine time is a train, and you're standing beside the tracks. The train is flying past you at the speed of time, and for the sake of illustration, every time a cabin window passes you, that's one second that's passed. If you begin to run alongside the train, the train is moving slower, relative to you. If you run alongside the train at the speed of time, then a cabin window never passes you - time is not moving relative to you.

This is all purely out of my head (you'd never guess). So that means that a) You can't travel forward in time - instead you can only slow down time for you, so even though it may seem like you have, it would be a one way trip. The ability to go back in time seems maybe possible, but maybe not - it would involve going faster than the speed of time, and is where the train analogy has to end, as I can't come up with a simple visualisation of how it would work.

I've probably neglected many things I don't know about string theory and other physics theories, and the train analogy has many flaws, but it illustrates to me why I think that time is just another simple part of physics, like velocity, which we will one day be able to manipulate.

Stark

Travelling back in time is theoretically possible, but it would require vast amounts of energy. (one of the possible ways involves 10 large stars arranged in a cylinder and spinning at huge angular velocity so that their gravity pulls spacetime around it providing a path backwards in time).

mr_angry

God bless Horizon!

sausages

time can be veiwed in too ways: 1)the physical way, ie time is the fourth dimension,ya da yada, or 2) the spirual way

Kappar

Travel in time is possible. If one were to travel on a spaceship at high speed time would slow down for you. Upon returning to Earth for the sake of agrument say 1 year has past while for you only 6 months has gone that means you have trveled in time.

This could be appleied on a miniture scale on earth. Imagine someone on a tall building they are traveling faster then someone at ground level because of the rotation of the earth. They are therefore making a tiny tiny time travel.

seamus

Originally posted by Kappar
Travel in time is possible. If one were to travel on a spaceship at high speed time would slow down for you. Upon returning to Earth for the sake of agrument say 1 year has past while for you only 6 months has gone that means you have trveled in time.

This could be appleied on a miniture scale on earth. Imagine someone on a tall building they are traveling faster then someone at ground level because of the rotation of the earth. They are therefore making a tiny tiny time travel.

The only argument I would make is that "travelling" in time would seem to imply that you can move through time without changing your position (whereas you can't - you must move at some velocity to cause the time distortion), and also that you can reverse the effect, i.e. you can return to the time from whence you came. That's a tough one to prove.

rde

Time is a function of our universe; I don't think there can be any doubt it exists. GPS, for example, works by timing to godzillionths of a second; pretty accurate for a figment of the imagination.

There's also no doubt that time travel is possible in theory; but as we all know, in theory there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice that's rarely the case. Relativity is generally (ha!) accepted as an incomplete theory; however, it's pretty accurate as far as it goes (or at least, as far as it's been taken). It doesn't differentiate between forward- and backward-running time; we just haven't identified those aspects of reverse time travel that occur in the universe. I'm confident that some day, quantum mechanics will be seen as an offshoot of relativity, and quantum uncertainty a consequence of particles travelling in time. But I belive dark matter to be the 20th century's phlogiston, so what do I know?

Fysh

Errr....the Special Theory of relativity is accepted as being separate to the General Theory of Relativity, and it's the general theory which is considered incomplete due to our incomplete model of how gravity works. The special theory deals only with spacetime effects due to relative velocities. It can only be considered incomplete in that our understanding of time is not yet complete.

What time *is* cannot be answered easily. There's no physical aspect to it; it's as intangible as "velocity". Yes, we can tell something has velocity because we can interact with it, but time is not like other forces in our universe in that, as far as we know, we have no way of manipulating it outside of crude devices like the one already mentioned (jump on a ship capable of near-light-speed travel and you will not age as much as someone stationary).

It could well turn out that time is no more real than the centrifugal force, that we perceive as time is no more than a natural result of a universe working on purely entropic terms, changing states at infinitesimal intervals, each one closer to a "stable" configuration than the last. It could be that, as some interpretations of string theory (which I know very little about, before someone questions me on it) suggest, the universe randomly hops through these configurations and we somehow manage to ascribe coherence and meaning to them.

Personally, I don't think time travel is possible, however. In quantum physics terms, you're talking about returning along one branch of probability and then choosing a different branch. Depending on the interpretation of quantum you choose, you will have some form of paradox. Either you go for multiverse theory and end up with one universe suddenly losing a bunch of matter and another gaining it (non-trivial violation of conservation of energy), or you have a single universe in which one physical individual has two consciousnesses present at once (which, depending on what phsyiological view you take of thoughts and the workings of the brain, can cause another nontrivial violation of the conservation of energy).,

watty

Einstein didn't at all like quantum mechanics. It is a usefull "cookbook" that gives useful answers to problems, but it raises more philosphical questions.

Einstein's comment on Quantum Mechanics was something like "God doesn't play dice".

I do also suspect that Time is some kind of perceptual artifact like Centrugial force, but not in quite the same sense. It is obviously such an important incredient in so many equations that in some underlying sense there is a property that gives rise to our Time perception.

Entropy and our weak understanding of it is bound up with Time.

It has been said that any percieved conflict between Entropy and Evolution (both time based processes) is due a lack of understanding of both. However *most* observed things appear to decay, deterioate, wear out, run out. The entire Solar system is decaying. Our Sun will die. The Universe will either run done into uniform blackness or collapse to a singlarity.

Yet Biological systems (a mere flash in the Eons of Time of the Universe, or even the Solar System) are said to evolve and get more complex (generally) with passing time. Why should this be? Cockroaches, Rodents and algae are very succesfull. Why shouldn't everything deterioate to a Cockroach and Algae simplicity. Mind you I read that a staggering 82% of all mammals are rodent related group.

Fysh

Originally posted by watty
Einstein didn't at all like quantum mechanics. It is a usefull "cookbook" that gives useful answers to problems, but it raises more philosphical questions.

Einstein's comment on Quantum Mechanics was something like "God doesn't play dice".

Yes, but he also eventually accepted the idea when he could not find any alternative with convincing proof.

Regarding the "dice" comment, Schrodinger replied "Stop telling god what to do". The ability to make a smart comment doesn't confer higher intellectual authority.

I do also suspect that Time is some kind of perceptual artifact like Centrugial force, but not in quite the same sense. It is obviously such an important incredient in so many equations that in some underlying sense there is a property that gives rise to our Time perception.

Yeah, I'll go for that. Time as a shadow of something else happening in the universe that we can't see directly, as it were.

Entropy and our weak understanding of it is bound up with Time.

It has been said that any percieved conflict between Entropy and Evolution (both time based processes) is due a lack of understanding of both. However *most* observed things appear to decay, deterioate, wear out, run out. The entire Solar system is decaying. Our Sun will die. The Universe will either run done into uniform blackness or collapse to a singlarity.

Yet Biological systems (a mere flash in the Eons of Time of the Universe, or even the Solar System) are said to evolve and get more complex (generally) with passing time. Why should this be? Cockroaches, Rodents and algae are very succesfull. Why shouldn't everything deterioate to a Cockroach and Algae simplicity. Mind you I read that a staggering 82% of all mammals are rodent related group.

Entropy only makes sense when viewed over a total closed system. Our planet is cosmically speaking tiny, and when you view even on the scale of the planet or the solar system, "decay" as you call it or "stability" as physicists generally refer to it, is the driving process. It boils down to the energy available for release from given atoms/particles, and while we are currently experiencing behaviour analogous to swimming upstream, overall entropy is still rising. The stars are burning out, available resources are dwindling, and the universe is heading to either heat death or inward collapse. It's not a paradox, just a question of scale.

edited to finish an incomplete sentence

watty

Quantum Mechanics is very useful and fascinating. But definately only *an* answer till we get a better one.

The anology with Evolution is useful. On a Micro scale both seem to contridict what we observe and have good laws and theory for on a Macro scale.

I agree that the paradox isn't real, only apparent. But like Quantum Mechanics, Evolution is just the "best" theory we have for a bunch of stuff and leaves many philosphical questions unanswered.

I find both useful, though being and enginner I find occasional practical use for Quantum Mechanics and none for Evolution. I don't "beleive" in either.

But since much of what was taught to me at Primary and Secondary School turned out to be what Terry Pratchet calls "Lies to Children", there isn't much I "Beleive". Of course I make great practical use of many things I don't beleive. At college the Lecturers were more forthright, in Materials Science, he said "Much of what I teach you is really Fairy Tales" he paused "However it is very useful Fairy Tales till we get something better. Remember no-one has really seen an Electron or individual atom, only the effect on test equipment"


I did think of posting this in "Irish Skeptics" but I see on closer examination it is "Irish Skateparks". I was sure there *used to be* an "Irish Skeptics".

watty

Originally posted by Kappar
Travel in time is possible. If one were to travel on a spaceship at high speed time would slow down for you. <snip>.

We are travelling on a big spaceship at high speed. Perhaps this affects our perception of Time. Oddly many people don't realise this.

(I wish some people would stop messing up the recreational decks and trying to overload the air recycling equipment).


It's a Mk1 Terran "multigeneration" ship with outboard fusion reaction Power unit. (a nasty too high a radiation thing to have inboard).

We need to take care of it as no-one seems to have kept the Warrenty Papers.

Fysh

Originally posted by watty
Quantum Mechanics is very useful and fascinating. But definately only *an* answer till we get a better one.

Well....yes and no. It's by no means set in stone, but on the other hand there's been no convincing evidence of gaping holes in the theory, outside fo the ongoing quest for a unified quantum field theory (doomed from the start IMO, but who am I to argue with Hawking?

As far as "believing" things goes....belief is largely irrelevant. If it works and there's no evidence that it doesn't work, that's enough for me. As soon as "belief" or "faith" starts coming into it, there's a good chance things'll go pearshaped.

ecksor

There is still an Irish Skeptics, under Community -> Public

keu

......

IMO, time is an illusion....

Fysh

...that's a truly staggering addition to the debate about time going on so far.