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Humanities Section => History General Discussion => Topic started by: Unbeliever on October 06, 2018, 08:34:16 PM

Title: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Unbeliever on October 06, 2018, 08:34:16 PM
I've only just heard about this, and it's interesting. Have any of you ever heard of it before? Should we give it any credence?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Baruch on October 06, 2018, 11:13:32 PM
Interesting.  Never heard of this before.  I think the "tell" is that he is a Velikovsky fan.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Cavebear on October 06, 2018, 11:30:39 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on October 06, 2018, 08:34:16 PM
I've only just heard about this, and it's interesting. Have any of you ever heard of it before? Should we give it any credence?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis

Never heard of it, but that is probably because I'm not a crazed conspiracy lunatic.  It seems totally nuts though.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Draconic Aiur on October 06, 2018, 11:43:01 PM
loony toon
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Unbeliever on October 07, 2018, 05:48:48 PM
Yeah, that's what I thought, too, but didn't have time yesterday to pursue it. Even if it were true I doubt it would have any practical implications.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Sal1981 on October 07, 2018, 07:26:30 PM
Ridiculous historical revisionism.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Baruch on October 07, 2018, 07:45:43 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on October 07, 2018, 05:48:48 PM
Yeah, that's what I thought, too, but didn't have time yesterday to pursue it. Even if it were true I doubt it would have any practical implications.

Perhaps a reworking of the oft told tale (and in a new movie) ... of the airplane that disappeared from the sky and reappeared years later.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Hakurei Reimu on October 08, 2018, 05:41:24 PM
The only practical use PT would have is making conspiritards think they have something on us "rubes."
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: SGOS on October 09, 2018, 06:35:15 AM
Quote from: Unbeliever on October 07, 2018, 05:48:48 PM
Yeah, that's what I thought, too, but didn't have time yesterday to pursue it. Even if it were true I doubt it would have any practical implications.
That's was my first thought.  Frankly, I don't care if time began with the birth of Christ, or the invention of the atom bomb.  The basis of our present calendar is completely arbitrary, and serves no purpose beyond keeping track of current events.  For people 3000 years ago.  It must have seemed awkward with each new year marking a backwards march through time.  But the more important question to me rather than if this really happened is, "Why would it make a difference?"
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Mr.Obvious on October 09, 2018, 06:55:11 AM
Quote from: SGOS on October 09, 2018, 06:35:15 AM
That's was my first thought.  Frankly, I don't care if time began with the birth of Christ, or the invention of the atom bomb.  The basis of our present calendar is completely arbitrary, and serves no purpose beyond keeping track of current events.  For people 3000 years ago.  It must have seemed awkward with each new year marking a backwards march through time.  But the more important question to me rather than if this really happened is, "Why would it make a difference?"

Don't you see?!

It means we were wrong for laughing at Christians when Jesus failed to show up in the year 2000.
He'll be here in 2297!
Repent!
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Baruch on October 09, 2018, 07:16:52 AM
Quote from: SGOS on October 09, 2018, 06:35:15 AM
That's was my first thought.  Frankly, I don't care if time began with the birth of Christ, or the invention of the atom bomb.  The basis of our present calendar is completely arbitrary, and serves no purpose beyond keeping track of current events.  For people 3000 years ago.  It must have seemed awkward with each new year marking a backwards march through time.  But the more important question to me rather than if this really happened is, "Why would it make a difference?"

People "looked" to the past ... not the future in conceptual terms.  With most Romans, it was by "which two patricians were consult that year".  It was unusual to count from AUC (from the founding of the city) which was arbitrary too and unclear, since early records were gone.  In Biblical terms, counting by generations was equally poor.  It was Christians who started to take year counts seriously, because of dating Easter and the Papacy.

And it was the Englishman, the Venerable Bede, who incorrectly setup the present system (nobody knew exactly what the year count was when he was trying to calculate it (from about 732 CE or AD)  That is why King Herod died in about 4 BCE.  And there is no "year zero" in that system either.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: SGOS on October 09, 2018, 07:40:12 AM
For what it's worth, according to Wiki (which doesn't even include the Mayan calendar, although I don't know anything about the Mayan calendar), there is a shit pot full of calendars out there.  The important thing doesn't seem to be the year in which the calendar originated, but how accurately it measures the Earth's solar orbit.  Most any calendar can include a leap year to fix the discrepancy between one full turn on the Earth's axis and one complete orbit around the Sun.  I prefer Star Trek's Dewey Decimal Star Date Calendar: 20.4.603  Whatever that is, I'm sure it's a more useful measure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_calendars
QuoteThe history of calendars, that is, of people creating and using methods for keeping track of days and larger divisions of time, covers a practice with very ancient roots.

Archeologists have reconstructed methods of timekeeping that go back to prehistoric times at least as old as the Neolithic. The natural units for timekeeping used by most historical societies are the day, the solar year and the lunation. Calendars are explicit schemes used for timekeeping. The first historically attested and formulised calendars date to the Bronze Age, dependent on the development of writing in the Ancient Near East. The Sumerian calendar was the earliest, followed by the Egyptian, Assyrian and Elamite calendars.

A larger number of calendar systems of the ancient Near East appear in the Iron Age archaeological record, based on the Assyrian and Babylonian calendars. This includes the calendar of the Persian Empire, which in turn gave rise to the Zoroastrian calendar as well as the Hebrew calendar.

Calendars in antiquity were usually lunisolar, depending on the introduction of intercalary months to align the solar and the lunar years. This was mostly based on observation, but there may have been early attempts to model the pattern of intercalation algorithmically, as evidenced in the fragmentary 2nd-century Coligny calendar. Nevertheless, the Roman calendar contained very ancient remnants of a pre-Etruscan 10-month solar year.[1]

The Roman calendar was reformed by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE. The Julian calendar was no longer dependent on the observation of the new moon but simply followed an algorithm of introducing a leap day every four years. This created a dissociation of the calendar month from the lunation.

In the 11th century in Persia, a calendar reform led by Khayyam was announced in 1079, when the length of the year was measured as 365.24219858156 days.[2] Given that the length of the year is changing in the sixth decimal place over a person's lifetime, this is outstandingly accurate. For comparison the length of the year at the end of the 19th century was 365.242196 days, while today it is 365.242190 days.[2]

The Gregorian calendar was introduced as a refinement of the Julian calendar in 1582, and is today in worldwide use as the de facto calendar for secular purposes.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: SGOS on October 09, 2018, 07:55:27 AM
I propose a new calendar where the current moment remains "year zero" at all times.  Today, tomorrow, next week is year zero, day zero, and zero seconds.  Historical dates that measure how long ago would change daily, so we would always know exactly how long ago that date was.  This might possibly resolve the Theory of Relativity's conflict with Quantum Mechanics, because a light year would be relative and distances would change relative to something else.  I'm getting confused.  I no longer know if I'm thinking outside the box or coloring outside the lines, but I think I may be onto something.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Gawdzilla Sama on October 09, 2018, 08:02:56 AM
Quote from: Unbeliever on October 06, 2018, 08:34:16 PM
I've only just heard about this, and it's interesting. Have any of you ever heard of it before? Should we give it any credence?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis
The proposal has been universally rejected by mainstream historians.

Burden of proof is on the claimants. Doesn't appear they've met that burden.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Gawdzilla Sama on October 09, 2018, 08:03:49 AM
Quote from: SGOS on October 09, 2018, 07:55:27 AM
I propose a new calendar where the current moment remains "year zero" at all times.  Today, tomorrow, next week is year zero, day zero, and zero seconds.  Historical dates that measure how long ago would change daily, so we would always know exactly how long ago that date was.  This might possibly resolve the Theory of Relativity's conflict with Quantum Mechanics, because a light year would be relative and distances would change relative to something else.  I'm getting confused.  I no longer know if I'm thinking outside the box or coloring outside the lines, but I think I may be onto something.
Constant math required. Fuck that shit.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: trdsf on October 09, 2018, 11:35:22 AM
Stephen Fry mentioned this idea on Series J of QI; it's bollocks, of course (as is Anatoly Fomenko's New Chronology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_%28Fomenko%29), which posits that written history only goes back to the year 800CE and the classical Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations rose and fell during the Middle Ages), although it does at least get one thinking about the nature of how we relate to the passage of time socially.

I have long been of the opinion that we should mark a new Year Zero.  In my more pessimistic moods I would restart counting at July 16, 1945 (detonation of the Trinity device).  In my more optimistic ones October 4, 1957 (launch of Sputnik I); April 12, 1961 (flight of Yuri Gagarin); or July 21, 1969 (Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the moon).  Other alternatives include the start of the Industrial Revolution (and there are plenty of options for setting that date), or whatever's finally settled on as the start of the Anthropocene epoch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene).

Frequent resetting of the base year is not uncommon, really.  Japanese coins are dated not with the common year of issue, but with the regnal year of the emperor, and coins of the Vatican (pre-Euro, at least) sometimes were also dated by the regnal year of the pontiff.  Iranian coins changed their dating four times last century -- the standard Islamic Lunar calendar (AH - Anno Hegira) until 1925, Solar Hegira (S.H.) dating from 1925-1976, Monarchial System (M.S.) setting 0 as the year of Cyrus the Great's accession (559BCE) from 1977-1978, and then back to A.H. in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Unbeliever on October 09, 2018, 01:16:21 PM
Quote from: Mr.Obvious on October 09, 2018, 06:55:11 AM
Don't you see?!

It means we were wrong for laughing at Christians when Jesus failed to show up in the year 2000.
He'll be here in 2297!
Repent!
Are we going to have to put up with another damned Y2K!?

;-)
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Unbeliever on October 09, 2018, 01:19:23 PM
Quote from: SGOS on October 09, 2018, 07:55:27 AM
I propose a new calendar where the current moment remains "year zero" at all times.  Today, tomorrow, next week is year zero, day zero, and zero seconds.  Historical dates that measure how long ago would change daily, so we would always know exactly how long ago that date was.  This might possibly resolve the Theory of Relativity's conflict with Quantum Mechanics, because a light year would be relative and distances would change relative to something else.  I'm getting confused.  I no longer know if I'm thinking outside the box or coloring outside the lines, but I think I may be onto something.
Yeah, you may be on something, alright!

;-)
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Cavebear on October 10, 2018, 02:01:23 AM
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on October 09, 2018, 08:03:49 AM
Constant math required. Fuck that shit.

There is some logic to "years ago" as a measurement.  We have so many references to  things like "40,000 Years ago" and eventually those dates will, well, get "out of date".

Besides, measuring our years from the various dates of birth of just one particular (alleged) religious figure seems like supporting that particular theism.  We could do better.  The difficulty would be deciding on a 0 year.  At least, though, having a 0 year would simplify the century-ending argument.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Unbeliever on October 10, 2018, 01:38:00 PM
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on October 09, 2018, 08:03:49 AM
Constant math required. Fuck that shit.
Nah, I'm sure someone would develop an app for that.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Cavebear on October 10, 2018, 01:42:09 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on October 10, 2018, 01:38:00 PM
Nah, I'm sure someone would develop an app for that.

Develope that app!
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Sal1981 on October 11, 2018, 11:41:05 AM
Quote from: trdsf on October 09, 2018, 11:35:22 AM
Stephen Fry mentioned this idea on Series J of QI; it's bollocks, of course (as is Anatoly Fomenko's New Chronology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_%28Fomenko%29), which posits that written history only goes back to the year 800CE and the classical Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations rose and fell during the Middle Ages), although it does at least get one thinking about the nature of how we relate to the passage of time socially.

I have long been of the opinion that we should mark a new Year Zero.  In my more pessimistic moods I would restart counting at July 16, 1945 (detonation of the Trinity device).  In my more optimistic ones October 4, 1957 (launch of Sputnik I); April 12, 1961 (flight of Yuri Gagarin); or July 21, 1969 (Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the moon).  Other alternatives include the start of the Industrial Revolution (and there are plenty of options for setting that date), or whatever's finally settled on as the start of the Anthropocene epoch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene).

Frequent resetting of the base year is not uncommon, really.  Japanese coins are dated not with the common year of issue, but with the regnal year of the emperor, and coins of the Vatican (pre-Euro, at least) sometimes were also dated by the regnal year of the pontiff.  Iranian coins changed their dating four times last century -- the standard Islamic Lunar calendar (AH - Anno Hegira) until 1925, Solar Hegira (S.H.) dating from 1925-1976, Monarchial System (M.S.) setting 0 as the year of Cyrus the Great's accession (559BCE) from 1977-1978, and then back to A.H. in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czgOWmtGVGs
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: trdsf on October 11, 2018, 12:52:32 PM
Quote from: Sal1981 on October 11, 2018, 11:41:05 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czgOWmtGVGs
I've seen that proposal before.  I don't have a problem with it, in principle.  The problem is there's no real-world deadline (at least not for another 7981 years) like the Y2K issue to force all systems be updated to handle more than a four-digit year field.

Of course, using 64-bit Unix time takes us all the way out to the year 2,147,485,547 and that's enough for any reasonable purposes.  Statistically by that time there will have been several extinction-level asteroid impacts on Earth, and even if that doesn't happen, the sun will be 10% more luminous after just another billion years and that's enough to evaporate the oceans.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Unbeliever on October 11, 2018, 01:35:24 PM
Yeah, that's when the real global warming will happen! By then we'll either be already extinct or we'll be living elsewhere.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Baruch on October 11, 2018, 07:42:03 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on October 11, 2018, 01:35:24 PM
Yeah, that's when the real global warming will happen! By then we'll either be already extinct or we'll be living elsewhere.

No afterlife for atheists.  So definitely extinct.  Y'all aren't going anywhere, the rate Elon Musk is disintegrating.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: trdsf on October 11, 2018, 09:18:49 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on October 11, 2018, 01:35:24 PM
Yeah, that's when the real global warming will happen! By then we'll either be already extinct or we'll be living elsewhere.
I would like to hope that both -- we ought to have evolved into something definitely not homo sapiens by then.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Baruch on October 12, 2018, 02:41:11 AM
Quote from: trdsf on October 11, 2018, 09:18:49 PM
I would like to hope that both -- we ought to have evolved into something definitely not homo sapiens by then.

Not everything is progress.  There is also regress.  Planet of the Apes style ... even a cave man can do it.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Gawdzilla Sama on October 12, 2018, 07:27:21 AM
 Nobody could write a history of anything.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: SGOS on October 12, 2018, 10:35:01 AM
Quote from: trdsf on October 11, 2018, 09:18:49 PM
I would like to hope that both -- we ought to have evolved into something definitely not homo sapiens by then.
I read someplace, and I can't remember the percentage, but it's mind bogglingly high.  Something like 99.9% of all species that ever existed have gone extinct.  Animals too bizarre to imagine are kaput.  What the thing didn't say is that all species are constantly evolving.  It's just that for all practical purposes, nothing evolves out of the species stage.  If you look at it statistically, our chances for survival are nothing short of dismal, even if we don't turn out to be the engineers of our own extinction.

Depending on when you arbitrarily set the beginning of mankind, we could say that hundreds of thousands of years of evolution led to something so specifically well adapted to our current environment.  And it was just all a waste of perfectly good DNA.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Baruch on October 12, 2018, 01:04:19 PM
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on October 12, 2018, 07:27:21 AM
Nobody could write a history of anything.

"anything" = too broad a topic
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: trdsf on October 12, 2018, 03:13:30 PM
Quote from: SGOS on October 12, 2018, 10:35:01 AM
I read someplace, and I can't remember the percentage, but it's mind bogglingly high.  Something like 99.9% of all species that ever existed have gone extinct.  Animals too bizarre to imagine are kaput.  What the thing didn't say is that all species are constantly evolving.  It's just that for all practical purposes, nothing evolves out of the species stage.  If you look at it statistically, our chances for survival are nothing short of dismal, even if we don't turn out to be the engineers of our own extinction.

Depending on when you arbitrarily set the beginning of mankind, we could say that hundreds of thousands of years of evolution led to something so specifically well adapted to our current environment.  And it was just all a waste of perfectly good DNA.
The open question right now is whether (or how much) our ability to create localized environments with artificial heat and cooling in otherwise hostile environments impacts our evolution -- we no longer have to evolve to fit a niche, we can create our own suitable niche wherever we like.

Also, the technology is not far off for being able to edit human genes prior to in vitro fertilization.  We could -- by accident or by design -- create our own successor species.  I think it's going to be a long time before embryonic human genetic editing is approved, however.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Unbeliever on October 12, 2018, 04:04:33 PM
Quote from: trdsf on October 12, 2018, 03:13:30 PM
I think it's going to be a long time before embryonic human genetic editing is approved, however.

That may be the case here in the U.S.A., but there's a big scary world out there where people don't give a crap what the U.S.A. likes or doesn't like. If it's possible, I expect someone, somewhere, will do it.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Baruch on October 12, 2018, 07:04:49 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on October 12, 2018, 04:04:33 PM
That may be the case here in the U.S.A., but there's a big scary world out there where people don't give a crap what the U.S.A. likes or doesn't like. If it's possible, I expect someone, somewhere, will do it.

Korea claims they already do it.  England already combines human DNA with other target animals (including sheep).
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Cavebear on October 14, 2018, 06:01:57 AM
Quote from: trdsf on October 11, 2018, 09:18:49 PM
I would like to hope that both -- we ought to have evolved into something definitely not homo sapiens by then.

We will probably be homo sapiens for a very long time.  Our evolution in the standard sense is likely over.  We are the only Homo left and not likely to speciate.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: trdsf on October 14, 2018, 02:35:47 PM
Quote from: Cavebear on October 14, 2018, 06:01:57 AM
We will probably be homo sapiens for a very long time.  Our evolution in the standard sense is likely over.  We are the only Homo left and not likely to speciate.
Not until we permanently occupy the Moon and Mars and have permanent space settlements, no.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Cavebear on October 14, 2018, 02:46:04 PM
Quote from: trdsf on October 14, 2018, 02:35:47 PM
Not until we permanently occupy the Moon and Mars and have permanent space settlements, no.

Thinking of "Belters"?  I bet we don't live that long (its going to take longer than we think to get "out there" routinely.  I hope I'm wrong, but I won't be around to know.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Jason78 on October 14, 2018, 05:35:36 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on October 06, 2018, 08:34:16 PM
Should we give it any credence?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Jason78 on October 14, 2018, 05:36:08 PM
Quote from: Baruch on October 12, 2018, 07:04:49 PM
England already combines human DNA with other target animals (including sheep).

Wtf is this nonsense?
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: trdsf on October 14, 2018, 11:05:44 PM
Quote from: Cavebear on October 14, 2018, 02:46:04 PM
Thinking of "Belters"?  I bet we don't live that long (its going to take longer than we think to get "out there" routinely.  I hope I'm wrong, but I won't be around to know.
I didn't say anything about when... I don't expect to live to see permanent settlements anywhere other than maybe on the Moon, and that'll be a Chinese base because we can't get our shit together.

But once humans are living off Earth permanently, that's by definition a new environment that they will evolve to better suit, even if it's only the gravity -- or lack thereof.
Title: Re: The Phantom Time Hypothesis
Post by: Baruch on October 21, 2018, 06:56:01 PM
Quote from: Jason78 on October 14, 2018, 05:36:08 PM
Wtf is this nonsense?

For almost a generation now ... DNA splicing different from chimeras ....

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2000/jul/02/genetics.theobserver

Current chimeras ...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/human-animal-hybrids-chimeras-us-science-a6806516.html

I am sure Dr Moreau or Dr Mengele would approve ... as will scifi fans and fans of monster movies ... enter Dr Frankenstein stage Left ...

It is silly to deny, what Google can easily find, yes?