Time isnt real, say Physicists

[Likely Guy]

14 hours ago, RabidMongoose said:

To put it quite simply how can you have a thought without time? And how can you have a sequence of thoughts without a time flow? The very act of having a thought NOW defines a past, present and future. And the very act of having a sequence of thoughts defines each as occupying a point along a timeline.

I disagree with the original article saying everything exists at once and instead go for the nothing exists at all stance. That is, until you have a thought or thoughts. And it is the act of thinking that not only creates time but space and matter too. From a personal perspective I have noticed with Zen Buddhism and Mindfulness that I can reach a point where I no longer struggle to stop my mind being caught up by the thoughts that arise in it. It goes the other way instead, where I struggle to have any thoughts at all. When in such a state of mind how can I even prove that space, matter and time still exist?

Isn't that just your personal view though? Isn't the theory, "that time, in it's entirety, is equal for everyone."?

Crap, I did it again... a little more grey matter I have to wipe off the monitor.

[Likely Guy]

On 12/3/2016 at 4:35 PM, White Unicorn said:

I only exist because I interact with other observers.

"I think. Therefore I am." - Descartes

"I am I, and that is the only thing that I can truly believe in."  - Me

"I am, I said..." - N. Diamond

 

Edited December 5, 2016 by Likely Guy

[Frank Merton]

3 minutes ago, Likely Guy said:

"I think. Therefore I am." - Descartes

"I am I, and that is the only thing that I can truly believe in."  - Me

This famous statement of Descartes has been debunked, I would guess, at least a dozen times since.  The fact that we think we exist requires us to think we think, and we don't know what that might possibly be.  The same argument for doubting everything else that Descartes uses (that for all we know there is a demon in us bent on preserving the illusion of existence) applies no less to the illusion that we think than to any of the others Descartes was able to doubt.  In short, there is no certainty, much as Descartes wanted otherwise, and his argument is not persuasive.  We just have to live with this.

[Likely Guy]

3 minutes ago, Frank Merton said:

This famous statement of Descartes has been debunked, I would guess, at least a dozen times since.  The fact that we think we exist requires us to think we think, and we don't know what that might possibly be.  The same argument for doubting everything else that Descartes uses (that for all we know there is a demon in us bent on preserving the illusion of existence) applies no less to the illusion that we think than to any of the others Descartes was able to doubt.  In short, there is no certainty, much as Descartes wanted otherwise, and his argument is not persuasive.  We just have to live with this.

Sure, but go up and read the edited version.

[Vorg]

I think, therefore I am.  Even if I am a figment of someone Else's imagination, I am.

(Which personally I believe is an illogical fallacy  -  The argument of whether I am)

[+and-then]

What would you call an intelligence that understood all the ramifications of this idea and could "see" past, present and future at the same time?  Could that entity send a message to humanity explaining, however cryptically, what their "future" holds in store?  If it chose to moderate our destructive natures with such information, would that be so bad a thing?  Sounds almost like God...

[XenoFish]

47 minutes ago, and then said:

What would you call an intelligence that understood all the ramifications of this idea and could "see" past, present and future at the same time?  Could that entity send a message to humanity explaining, however cryptically, what their "future" holds in store?  If it chose to moderate our destructive natures with such information, would that be so bad a thing?  Sounds almost like God... or a time lord.

 

[Susanc241]

All I know is that in 1999 when my mother was dying and I was sitting by her bed for a long period of 'time', not really thinking of anything, I suddenly had an experience where I saw stuff I can no longer explain and KNEW that everything that ever had been, everything that was and everything to come all existed in a single moment.  I knew I was witnessing my own death!  I knew how it all worked.  I am not religious, and very pragmatic and not prone to fancies and I have never been able to explain any of it.  Of course I did not remember how it all worked after the experience ended (which probably only lasted a few seconds).  But I can accept this idea of everything existing at the same time after this 1999 event, even though my brain can't quite get it!

[bmk1245]

48 minutes ago, Susanc241 said:

All I know is that in 1999 when my mother was dying and I was sitting by her bed for a long period of 'time', not really thinking of anything, I suddenly had an experience where I saw stuff I can no longer explain and KNEW that everything that ever had been, everything that was and everything to come all existed in a single moment.  I knew I was witnessing my own death!  I knew how it all worked.  I am not religious, and very pragmatic and not prone to fancies and I have never been able to explain any of it.  Of course I did not remember how it all worked after the experience ended (which probably only lasted a few seconds).  But I can accept this idea of everything existing at the same time after this 1999 event, even though my brain can't quite get it!

Your personal grief has nothing to do with the subject in discussion. Does me seeing long dead father means "everything happens at the same time"? Hell, no.

[White Unicorn]

1 hour ago, Susanc241 said:

All I know is that in 1999 when my mother was dying and I was sitting by her bed for a long period of 'time', not really thinking of anything, I suddenly had an experience where I saw stuff I can no longer explain and KNEW that everything that ever had been, everything that was and everything to come all existed in a single moment.  I knew I was witnessing my own death!  I knew how it all worked.  I am not religious, and very pragmatic and not prone to fancies and I have never been able to explain any of it.  Of course I did not remember how it all worked after the experience ended (which probably only lasted a few seconds).  But I can accept this idea of everything existing at the same time after this 1999 event, even though my brain can't quite get it!

I know what you're saying  You're mind tapped that all but nothingness state of everything.  People don't have to be experiencing a death to experience it though. They can do it through learned meditation.

Your thoughts were on death and life changes prior to experiencing having totally no thoughts of your own to interfere. You tapped the essence hidden within all of us and it revealed itself. After  letting go of all your own thoughts of anything,  the emptiness of thought connected you to a resolution of what your thoughts were about prior to the experience. 

Once one has connected to that it can last longer than you experienced. But once your own self interferes with thinking about the mundane it leaves you. Your conscious brain doesn't record it as a memory except for the most important parts of an awareness to you. The most important part to you at the time of the experience was to remember the connection itself and the chain of life and death in our world and that it all fits in. So that is what you remembered, with no details. 

I'm going into the woo woo now,  but it's somewhat like you are a computer connected to an internet. It is possible to download to your physical unconscious brain type of memory and bring it back through a symbol for you to remember it's messages in the fleeting connection to the all essence.

I had a NDE and came out still  connected to that essence. No one who hasn't experienced that state of connection will ever be able to believe there is more in the universe than we perceive in our ordinary daily lives.  It changes your views on everything. That part never leaves you

[Parsec]

On 12/4/2016 at 7:26 AM, Kismit said:

 

My problem with this view of time is a little something  that has bugged me for ages. My question is where does animation fit into it all? I mean the whole universe existing in the moment thing could happen without the changes that take place like movement/aging/growth. If it potentially happens all at once, what makes us see or witness change in a proper chronological order? 

What facilitates change? These things bug me.

 

On 12/4/2016 at 0:02 PM, RabidMongoose said:

To put it quite simply how can you have a thought without time? And how can you have a sequence of thoughts without a time flow? The very act of having a thought NOW defines a past, present and future. And the very act of having a sequence of thoughts defines each as occupying a point along a timeline.

I disagree with the original article saying everything exists at once and instead go for the nothing exists at all stance. That is, until you have a thought or thoughts. And it is the act of thinking that not only creates time but space and matter too. From a personal perspective I have noticed with Zen Buddhism and Mindfulness that I can reach a point where I no longer struggle to stop my mind being caught up by the thoughts that arise in it. It goes the other way instead, where I struggle to have any thoughts at all. When in such a state of mind how can I even prove that space, matter and time still exist?

 

23 hours ago, XenoFish said:

It is a confusing idea that time doesn't exist. We measure time, but what is time exactly? Maybe on the quantum level time does not exist?

 

I find this explanation, especially considering that's aimed at the average Joe, quite descriptive (it starts at 01:04):

 

 

[XenoFish]

Thinking about it, if we imagine time as a sphere completely filled with water and there are tiny invisible bubbles. These bubbles do and do not exist. And we're standing at the center of this sphere, when we take action, make choices, or think about something those bubble become a segment of time they become a reality. Time doesn't exist till me make it happen. 

I had a dream once about time, it was like a web. With each path connecting to another node, going on and on. And there were other path and nodes but they were faded or fading, past choices, past events, possible events, possible choices, all existing. It was as if I could see the short results of choice. How it would create a moment in time. I didn't move through time, I was time. I was an event in time, spontaneously created to observe itself. It was a strange dream.

[White Unicorn]

20 hours ago, South Alabam said:

I think, therefore I am.  Even if I am a figment of someone Else's imagination, I am.

You bring up a good point to consider. Say a delusional person  has a figment of the imagination of a demon. He goes out and kills people because of a demon lying to him. Does the demon exist? When it existed to him he changed the course of others lives, so even they were effected by it. The story is brought to the attention of other delusional people and it starts to appear as real to them as well. In a way that demon does exist even though it doesn't.

Events in time can be changed by things that don't exist to us. Even if it's only a delusion of  others who are real to us.

[Tatetopa]

How about a more literal sense of things.  Physicists call it space-time; three orthogonal geometric dimensions plus time in the same array.  I don't think he was saying that time and by extension spatial dimensions are nonexistent but that our perception of time is somewhat flawed.  We seem to be able to move through three dimensions largely at will, they all exist stretching out to infinity before and behind us.  When we are at one spot in space, all other points do not cease to exist.  It would be disconcerting to walk down a corridor, turn around and see nothing behind you.  We do not seem to have a voluntary capacity to control our speed and direction in the time dimension, yet I believe Max is saying it is equivalent in many ways to the spatial dimensions.  Somewhere along that time dimension behind you is the birth of your son  and maybe somewhere further on in the direction you are moving is the birth of your great granddaughter. Time is all here at once the same way X,Y, and Z axes are here all of the time.

What frustrates me anyway is that inability to control my direction and speed.  That brings up some philosophical questions as well.  Is the universe deterministic; the future written as firmly as the past?  If space can be distorted by gravitation and perhaps other effects, does time experience similar distortion?  If Max is on track, then what force is moving us through time in one direction?

[Kismit]

^^^^this^^^ 

[psyche101]

Seems a rather large co-incidence that this subject hits the news headlines just after "Arrival" hits the big screens. 

 

But ..... what about Entropy? 

[FTWind]

I always thought time was a variable ,dictated by the awareness and cognitive abilities of the individuals perception of events around. No awareness of events equals a lose of time.

[spartan max2]

If time does all exsist at once then I expect time travel 

[Habitat]

An interesting insight into time is the "life review" phenomenon......

"A life review is a phenomenon widely reported as occurring during near-death experiences, in which a person rapidly sees much or the totality of their life history in chronological sequence and in extreme detail. "

How does that happen ? It is like a life's experiences rewound, and played in super fast-forward, but with all detail apprehended.

[P.Nomenon]

Time doesn't really exist! Its an exclusive construct derived from the primitive human mind....(Im telling myself as I set my alarm for 6am. )

[psyche101]

On 12/4/2016 at 5:20 PM, seeder said:

Time....a con trick invented by the Swiss to sell watches..

 

[psyche101]

48 minutes ago, spartan max2 said:

If time does all exsist at once then I expect time travel 

Backward time travel makes complete sense if you set it up first.

We know if we get close to the speed of light that dilation will happen, and we will time travel. 

A Wormhole is a tunnel through spacetime.

So, if we made a wormhole, took one end of it, and put it on a spaceship, went around the earth at just below the speed of light for a good 5 years or so, and landed, then when we got the wormhole out, the other end would be back 50 years ago where we left it (according to special relativity), and we could step through it back in time. 

Some men have time traveled using dilation. Granted only like one twentieth of a second, but verified by atomic clocks all the same. 

[Likely Guy]

I love time.

It seems like progression.

[bmk1245]

2 hours ago, psyche101 said:

[...]

But ..... what about Entropy? 

Exactly.

Seems to me, Tegmark went on wild speculation spree, just one step from dragging Santa Claus into cosmology...

[psyche101]

5 minutes ago, bmk1245 said:

Exactly.

Seems to me, Tegmark went on wild speculation spree, just one step from dragging Santa Claus into cosmology...

LOL, I guess someone has to bring Astronauts presents at Christmas!! LOL.

The funny picture that sentence put in my head!! Whew!!