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Humanities Section => Philosophy & Rhetoric General Discussion => Topic started by: SGOS on February 09, 2020, 07:37:20 AM

Title: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: SGOS on February 09, 2020, 07:37:20 AM
Here is another supposedly intellectual discussion of time.  I put it in the philosophy folder of the forum, where bullshit outside of the usual theist bullshit belongs.  OK, I don't know (OR CARE) if it's bullshit or not, but I started reading and then decided it was just another way of saying something of little practical value.  Maybe it has practical value, or will someday that will add to our understanding.  Hey, I love time travel movies, and the way they introduce the what ifs and paradoxes, and it's great fun.  It taxes the mind in interesting ways, and I guess that's good, but it always seems to carry the theoretical to an absurd extreme:

Quotehttps://getpocket.com/explore/item/a-new-refutation-of-time-borges-on-the-most-paradoxical-dimension-of-existence?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Returning to Hume’s notion of the illusory self â€" an idea advanced by Eastern philosophy millennia earlier â€" Borges considers how this dismantles the very notion of time as we know it:

    Behind our faces there is no secret self which governs our acts and receives our impressions; we are, solely, the series of these imaginary acts and these errant impressions.

But even the notion of a “series” of acts and impressions, Borges suggest, is misleading because time is inseparable from matter, spirit, and space:

    Once matter and spirit â€" which are continuities â€" are negated, once space too is negated, I do not know with what right we retain that continuity which is time. Outside each perception (real or conjectural) matter does not exist; outside each mental state spirit does not exist; neither does time exist outside the present moment.

Read it all if you want.  I didn't, but I included the excerpt because it was the point where I threw up my hands, and said to myself, "Not this shit again!"  It was interesting the first time I read the old saws about "time does not exist if we are not here to conceptualize it," or, "There is no progression of time.  Everything is all happening at once!"  Oh really?  You can puzzle over this until the cows come home, and if you find some deep philosophical point to your musing, then good for you.  But is it really that mysterious, and not what it seems?  The excellent movie "Arrival" capitalized on this conundrum and was widely acclaimed.  I loved it, but my stretching the characteristics of time in actual reality doesn't go much past the theory of relativity.  I can handle that and see the practicality in it.

People like to make a big deal out of simple things.  Even some early reporter (I think he was a sportswriter), who was sent to interview Einstein came up with the quote that said the theory of relativity was so incomprehensible that only three people could understand it, and with that, the theory seemed to gain traction on the idea that it was the stuff of genius, when in fact it is actually quite elegant in its simplicity.  Then followed a bunch of wannabes trying to make a name for themselves by coming up with things so non-intuitive as to be actually incomprehensible.  Actually, dabbling in the incomprehensible is part of humanity that probably goes back to the original cave men.  Lets not get too excited about it.

You know, I probably should have put this in the pet peeves folder.  Anyway, I got this out of my system, and am looking forward to the rest of my day.  I have to go to the Post Office at 10:30, and then I'm going for a hike in the woods after lunch, and that's about as much as I need to know about time.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Sal1981 on February 09, 2020, 09:12:42 AM
Time is just our measurement of change.

Time travel as presented in science fiction is impossible.

If it was possible, the very act traveling through time would affect the present in such a way that would negate the traveling backwards through time in the first place, because by traveling to a point in the past you're going towards a different timeline from that point in which you traveling backwards in time changes the future (the moment you traveled from), and any change in the  timeline negates your act of backwards travel through time. It's sort of like a Catch-22. That's how I see it.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: SGOS on February 09, 2020, 10:33:37 AM
Dr. Strange did a depiction of the non existence of time, where the villains tried to create a perfect universe precluded on the concept that time had to be eliminated.  It was a world were nothing happened.  Everything was frozen.  It's only a movie, but I tend to think they nailed one aspect of time: Without it nothing can happen.  Oversimplified?  I'm speculating that time does not need to be anymore complicated than that.  Physicists speculate that time did not exist before the big bang.  Maybe it's possible, assuming that nothing happened before then.  Does time allow things to happen or does something happening allow time to exist, not in a physical sense of course.  I don't think time is a physical property.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 09, 2020, 10:41:19 AM
Quote from: SGOS on February 09, 2020, 10:33:37 AM
Dr. Strange did a depiction of the non existence of time, where the villains tried to create a perfect universe precluded on the concept that time had to be eliminated.  It was a world were nothing happened.  Everything was frozen.  It's only a movie, but I tend to think they nailed one aspect of time: Without it nothing can happen.  Oversimplified?  I'm speculating that time does not need to be anymore complicated than that.  Physicists speculate that time did not exist before the big bang.  Maybe it's possible, assuming that nothing happened before then.  Does time allow things to happen or does something happening allow time to exist, not in a physical sense of course.  I don't think time is a physical property.

Some people are triggered by decay, there can't be decay without time.  Joan of Arc 1999 Milla Jovovich scene, the girl Joan comes upon a dead man.  In time lapse she sees the decay of the body, which results in spring flowers coming from the fertilizer of the man, in his outline ;-)
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 09, 2020, 10:58:07 AM
St Augustine was the first one to think in the West, about time ... "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know."  St Augustine was the first Heisenberg.  This has been a theological question from the start, philosophical/secular explanations being the first step away from that.  In theology space is also explained in theological terms.  It was in the Middle Ages, that the first x vs t diagram was made to understand motion, even before Descartes (x vs y).  This led to the absolute time and absolute space of Newton.  This matched the theology of Newton (sensorium of God) which matched Plato.

But fact is it isn't quite accurate ... "Each observer has their own proper time measured by the clock in their rest frame. However, one man's proper time is not another man's proper time. Time dilation means that each observer will see the other observer's clock running slower (compared to their own proper time measuring clock)." aka Einstein.  Which at the time was considered heresy by most physicists (except Mach).  So already, even before Heisenberg, a person taking a measurement changes "reality".  But "no hidden variables" quantum mechanics shows, that there is no such definite "reality" behind the measurement.  There is only measurement.  Plato was wrong.

Again, with polarizers, in my own room, I can demonstrate that Heisenberg is right.  There is a quantum wave function, before measurement, but we can't know what its value is, unless we measure it.  Much easier than trying to bounce a high energy photon off an electron (the usual example).  This is part of a much more general mathematical problem, which impacts control theory (theory of automatic devices).  In a mechanical system, you can't simultaneously control both position, velocity and acceleration (you can control any two).  Because that would violate the definition of those variables.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: aitm on February 09, 2020, 04:37:36 PM
I’m against it.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: aitm on February 09, 2020, 04:57:58 PM
Baruch will correct me of course, but it seems to me in my limited study of philosophers that most, especially during and after the “enlightenment” come from families that are adequately wealthy that they never really needed to work, but spent their time inventing new words to explain things to each other in a battle for supremacy of word entanglement. When crowds used to gather to listen to them, this eventually, due to mass confusion, simply walked away shaking their heads while the philosophers continued their battle of enlightening each other while the public lost interest. This explains why today philosophy classes are attended by people who have no noticeable talent other than pontificating on thoughts nobody else gives a shit about. They assure us they know something but work very hard to make it so we could not understand what they are saying, thus they can claim multiple versions depending on whom they are talking to and each one is different but no one would know.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on February 09, 2020, 05:51:34 PM
I'm definitely going to finish reading the link when I have time. Borges is one of my favorite authors.

Lately I've been thinking about what it might be like to combine interstellar travel with time travel. For example, if you were in orbit around a distant star when you traveled to the past you would never have to worry about causing any paradox back on Earth.

Maybe you could travel to another star, then, before returning to Earth, you could travel to the past in such a way that when you finally did return to Earth it would only be shortly after you left, from the perspective of those who remained on Earth while you went galavanting off into space. Since the journey there and back would be made at relativistic velocities, more time would pass for those on Earth than for the travelers, so the return would have to be "timed" in just such a way as to never arrive back at Earth before leaving.

Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on February 09, 2020, 06:02:07 PM
Since time seems to be only change, there may come a future during which no more change can occur. A time when anything that could act as a clock will be gone. This is the idea of Roger Penrose, and depends on the continued expansion of the universe. I read somewhere that once the universe reaches a temperature of 10^-29 degree K (I think this is called the Baker-Hawking temperature) all oscillations will cease.

Anyway, Penrose thinks that when all clocks are gone the universe will lose track of size, and so a re-scaling will occur that will amount to a new big bang. That's it in a nutshell, but it probably isn't quite that simple.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Hijiri Byakuren on February 09, 2020, 06:05:37 PM
Quote from: Sal1981 on February 09, 2020, 09:12:42 AM
Time is just our measurement of change.

Time travel as presented in science fiction is impossible.

If it was possible, the very act traveling through time would affect the present in such a way that would negate the traveling backwards through time in the first place, because by traveling to a point in the past you're going towards a different timeline from that point in which you traveling backwards in time changes the future (the moment you traveled from), and any change in the  timeline negates your act of backwards travel through time. It's sort of like a Catch-22. That's how I see it.
The only way it could ever work is if it were like Twilight Histories where you're just punching a hole in spacetime leading to a parallel timeline.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: SGOS on February 09, 2020, 08:07:01 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on February 09, 2020, 05:51:34 PM
I'm definitely going to finish reading the link when I have time. Borges is one of my favorite authors.
I didn't mean to disrespect Borges.  I'm sure he's quite bright and knowledgeable.  I was feeling in a nuts and bolts mood when I started this thread, and had one of those "not this shit again" moments.  I actually enjoyed philosophy classes in college, but at the same time, I saw little practical purpose for at least the writings we studied.  At the same, time science and logic are branches of philosophy that have had the greatest impact on the lives of modern man.  But I suspect science and logic were founded by renegade philosophers rebelling against their peers.

Quote from: Unbeliever on February 09, 2020, 05:51:34 PM
Lately I've been thinking about what it might be like to combine interstellar travel with time travel. For example, if you were in orbit around a distant star when you traveled to the past you would never have to worry about causing any paradox back on Earth.
Not necessarily a given.  I'm not sure why great distances would prevent paradoxes.  I read once that quantum particles can affect the behavior of other quantum particles instantaneously, even light years away.  Again, I don't know how this can be tested, so take it with a grain of salt. But when just one quantum particle pops into existence and disappears a second or two before or after it should, then off goes the butterfly effect wrecking havoc, and the whole Roman Empire never happens.

But I think a good rule of thumb would be to stay out of the past.  On the other hand, I'm not sure what so good about what happens after a paradox is created that we need to preserve.  Consider the grandfather paradox.  This is the big one on a personal level.  So you travel back in time and kill your grandfather, and you were never born.  You would never miss a thing or experience any loss.

Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on February 09, 2020, 08:11:58 PM
Well, I'm pretty sure conservation laws rule out backward time travel, so we'll never have to worry about it.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: SGOS on February 09, 2020, 08:18:46 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on February 09, 2020, 06:02:07 PM
Anyway, Penrose thinks that when all clocks are gone the universe will lose track of size, and so a re-scaling will occur that will amount to a new big bang. That's it in a nutshell, but it probably isn't quite that simple.
Whether it's true or not, I find it quite satisfying.  If a big bang happens once, it can happen any number of times.  All the time in the universe is just a piddly 14 billion years.  That's just a flash in the pan in the uberuniverse that exists in the uberinfinity, which I've decided exists in the uberbeyond.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on February 09, 2020, 08:23:19 PM
It's a never ending story.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 09, 2020, 08:46:48 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on February 09, 2020, 06:02:07 PM
Since time seems to be only change, there may come a future during which no more change can occur. A time when anything that could act as a clock will be gone. This is the idea of Roger Penrose, and depends on the continued expansion of the universe. I read somewhere that once the universe reaches a temperature of 10^-29 degree K (I think this is called the Baker-Hawking temperature) all oscillations will cease.

Anyway, Penrose thinks that when all clocks are gone the universe will lose track of size, and so a re-scaling will occur that will amount to a new big bang. That's it in a nutshell, but it probably isn't quite that simple.

When things get cold, then molecule/atom wise, things move very slowly and even strangely (Helium 4).  Penrose is always a creative thinker.  Got quasi-crystals?
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 09, 2020, 08:47:50 PM
Quote from: Hijiri Byakuren on February 09, 2020, 06:05:37 PM
The only way it could ever work is if it were like Twilight Histories where you're just punching a hole in spacetime leading to a parallel timeline.

Per multiverse theory, there are infinite parallel universes.  And per Nietzsche, there is infinite recurrence of one universe.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 09, 2020, 08:53:48 PM
Quote from: aitm on February 09, 2020, 04:57:58 PM
Baruch will correct me of course, but it seems to me in my limited study of philosophers that most, especially during and after the “enlightenment” come from families that are adequately wealthy that they never really needed to work, but spent their time inventing new words to explain things to each other in a battle for supremacy of word entanglement. When crowds used to gather to listen to them, this eventually, due to mass confusion, simply walked away shaking their heads while the philosophers continued their battle of enlightening each other while the public lost interest. This explains why today philosophy classes are attended by people who have no noticeable talent other than pontificating on thoughts nobody else gives a shit about. They assure us they know something but work very hard to make it so we could not understand what they are saying, thus they can claim multiple versions depending on whom they are talking to and each one is different but no one would know.

I bet you write good fan-fiction (nothing wrong with that).  "Newton's Law" by Anderson etc ... was an alternative Newtonian biography.  Can't seem to get to the URL directly, but here is a web review ...

https://webcomicoverlook.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/one-punch-reviews-36-newtons-law/
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 09, 2020, 08:58:40 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on February 09, 2020, 08:11:58 PM
Well, I'm pretty sure conservation laws rule out backward time travel, so we'll never have to worry about it.

?taht touba erus uoy erA
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on February 10, 2020, 01:48:09 PM
Now they have something called time crystals:

https://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-time-crystals-are-a-new-crazy-state-of-matter-and-now-we-can-create-them


https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-theoretical-type-time-crystal-could-run-without-outside-help

Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 10, 2020, 02:12:06 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on February 10, 2020, 01:48:09 PM
Now they have something called time crystals:

https://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-time-crystals-are-a-new-crazy-state-of-matter-and-now-we-can-create-them


https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-theoretical-type-time-crystal-could-run-without-outside-help

Yeah, read 5 years ago, about German experiments with doped diamonds, for quantum computing.  In crystalline arrays, all sorts of weird stuff happens, that does't happen in all the non-crystalline states (glass, liquid, gas, plasma).  Didn't read back then, this additional application.  Not just continuity, but accurate repetition is very desired.  A 10x greater stability in an oscillation is ultimately transformative from metrology out to the rest of science and technology.  Because of existing stabile oscillation technology, we can accurately see jumps in the rotation of the Earth due to core motions and earthquakes.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: SGOS on February 10, 2020, 04:15:47 PM
Well it didn't take long for me to not understand what that report said.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on February 10, 2020, 04:24:03 PM
You'e not alone in that...
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 10, 2020, 09:00:58 PM
Quote from: SGOS on February 10, 2020, 04:15:47 PM
Well it didn't take long for me to not understand what that report said.

Auto-generated-vibration.  Usually, we take a man made quartz crystal (called a "crystal" in radio) to ensure that the primary frequency of a radio transmitter is stable.  It has to be stimulated from the outside.  Guess this new thing doesn't require outside stimulation.  You still have to deal with entropy either way.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: SvZurich on February 10, 2020, 10:41:45 PM
I am at the mercy of time.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 10, 2020, 11:09:58 PM
Quote from: SvZurich on February 10, 2020, 10:41:45 PM
I am at the mercy of time.

One of those things that even good ideas or material goods won't change.  When your time comes ...
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: SGOS on February 11, 2020, 09:52:26 AM
Quote from: SvZurich on February 10, 2020, 10:41:45 PM
I am at the mercy of time.
I'll put that down in the "against" column.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on February 11, 2020, 01:33:49 PM
Quote from: SvZurich on February 10, 2020, 10:41:45 PM
I am at the mercy of time.

And time is merciless!
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 11, 2020, 02:26:54 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on February 11, 2020, 01:33:49 PM
And time is merciless!

Ha, you say nature is neutral.  Is that why you have a hard time parking?
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on February 11, 2020, 02:33:48 PM
Nature is a nattering nabob of neutrality.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 11, 2020, 04:18:21 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on February 11, 2020, 02:33:48 PM
Nature is a nattering nabob of neutrality.

Spiro T Agnew is the son of Mother Goose?
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Gregory on February 28, 2020, 08:35:30 PM
"Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'
Into the future"
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on February 28, 2020, 08:40:34 PM
Unless you're a positron...
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Mike Cl on February 28, 2020, 08:43:05 PM
Quote from: SvZurich on February 10, 2020, 10:41:45 PM
I am at the mercy of time.
Time will tell--or not.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 29, 2020, 01:50:02 AM
Quote from: Gregory on February 28, 2020, 08:35:30 PM
"Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'
Into the future"

We approach the future, but never get there.  Tomorrow is the future, but when I wake up tomorrow, it is the present.  We are always present, until we are not.  The past is pride and regret.  The future is hope and fear.  Time is about human emotions.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on February 29, 2020, 01:55:03 PM
Neither the past, present or future exist in any real way. The universe is constantly becoming. What will it become? Only time will tell, its hairdresser surely won't.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: SGOS on February 29, 2020, 02:43:52 PM
 " A world without time; Isn't it beautiful?  -Kaecilius
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 29, 2020, 08:08:15 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on February 29, 2020, 01:55:03 PM
Neither the past, present or future exist in any real way. The universe is constantly becoming. What will it become? Only time will tell, its hairdresser surely won't.

Look up Black Hole No Hair theorem.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on February 29, 2020, 08:09:44 PM
I prefer my black holes to be bald.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on February 29, 2020, 08:15:27 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on February 29, 2020, 08:09:44 PM
I prefer my black holes to be bald.

TMI.  Do you use Nair or a weed whacker? ;-)
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: SvZurich on February 29, 2020, 08:59:37 PM
Quote from: Gregory on February 28, 2020, 08:35:30 PM
"Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'
Into the future"

I want to fly like an eagle.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on March 01, 2020, 05:38:35 PM
Quote from: Baruch on February 29, 2020, 08:15:27 PM
TMI.  Do you use Nair or a weed whacker? ;-)

I don't use a weed whacker, but I use whacky weed.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on March 01, 2020, 06:54:03 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on March 01, 2020, 05:38:35 PM
I don't use a weed whacker, but I use whacky weed.

Lowers the pain while you have Biden pull the hairs out one by one?
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: GSOgymrat on March 01, 2020, 10:32:01 PM
I find the block universe theory interesting. The universe is a giant block of all the things that ever happen at any time and at any place. On this view, the past, present and future all exist â€" and are equally real. Time doesn't pass and "past" and "future" are relative.

In other words, in a block universe, there is no specific present moment, and "past" and "future" moments are relative. Think about the idea of "here". I am here. You, while reading this, can truly say "I am here", even though your "here" is different to mine. On the block universe model, talk about the "present" or "now" works just like talk of "here". Remember last week when you said to your friend, who was late arriving for coffee, "now you're here"; or when, long ago, Caesar said, "I am now crossing the Rubicon"? These claims are both true. That's because all it means to talk about the present, or now, is to talk about the place in time where you happen to be. Since we are always located wherever we are (that's trivially true), everyone is located in the present, just as everyone is located at the place they call "here". According to the block universe view, time or temporal relations of "earlier than" and "later than" exist. These relations hold regardless of where anyone is located.

So, suppose Bert the dinosaur is located earlier than Sally the dog. That relation between Bert and Sally holds, regardless of whether we are located earlier than Bert or later than Sally. Bearing this in mind, it is possible to see how to make sense of the idea of past and future. Just as on this model "now" picks out whatever time I happen to be located at, "past" picks out any time (or events at those times) that are earlier than my location, and "future" picks out any times or events that are later than my location.


It is possible that our perception of time is a neurologic adaptation, a product of stimulus and memory. We experience a stimulus, which we perceive as the present. There are organisms that probably only experience stimulus-response and therefore only perceive the present. We evolved memory, which is how we perceive the passage of time. One stimulus is different than the stimulus before, which is different than the one before that. Our brains haven't evolved a process to perceive the future, even though it exists. An analogy of this is walking backward down a road, where we see where we are and where we have been not where we are going even though all of the road exists.

(https://www.abc.net.au/cm/lb/10190936/data/block-universe-diagram-data.jpg)

https://youtu.be/idsw99SSwKc
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on March 02, 2020, 01:38:41 PM
I've read that some cultures see the "future" as "behind" us, and the "past" as in "front."

http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~nunez/web/articles/Taipei%20Times%20-%20archives.pdf


It's an interesting concept, this block time idea:

https://turingchurch.net/time-travel-through-extra-dimensions-in-the-bulk-98a09bb98393


I wonder, though, how a quantum object can have a "world line" when it has no definite location.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on March 02, 2020, 04:33:39 PM
Quote from: Unbeliever on March 02, 2020, 01:38:41 PM
I've read that some cultures see the "future" as "behind" us, and the "past" as in "front."

http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~nunez/web/articles/Taipei%20Times%20-%20archives.pdf


It's an interesting concept, this block time idea:

https://turingchurch.net/time-travel-through-extra-dimensions-in-the-bulk-98a09bb98393


I wonder, though, how a quantum object can have a "world line" when it has no definite location.

Correct.  The idea of seeing the future as positive (I am just getting older) in a society where nothing ever changes, made no sense.  People were oriented toward tradition.  So you look forward into the past, to learn how to be more of the same.  500 years ago that all changed, for some people.  The world and universe expanded in a giant way, and change became the norm, not the exception.  And with the expectation (particularly among the enterpreneurs) that the change will be more positive than negative, people had something to look forward to, and tradition seemed to be counter-productive.  Then came Future Shock …

All ideas about quantum mechanics, are analogies, only the math is exact.  Any visualization of the math is misleading.  So no world-line.  Until you measure it, the electron has no definite position or momentum.  This is the death of "realism".  That Plato said, that the real world is different from the observed world, and is a more perfect, more rational world.  It simply isn't true.  The real story of
Schroedinger's Cat is that until you open the box, you don't even know if there is a cat in there or not!

Handedness in other societies is different.  You have a cardinal direction, usually East.  Not North, which became more important when the compass became universal.  In Easting culture, your right hand is slang for South, and your left hand is slang for North.
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Gregory on March 08, 2020, 09:38:28 PM
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
- Philip K. Dick
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on March 08, 2020, 09:39:52 PM
Quote from: Gregory on March 08, 2020, 09:38:28 PM
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
- Philip K. Dick

Everything goes away - Time
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Gregory on March 08, 2020, 09:45:43 PM
Quote from: Baruch on March 08, 2020, 09:39:52 PM
Everything goes away - Time

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
- Robert Frost
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on March 08, 2020, 09:52:07 PM
Quote from: Gregory on March 08, 2020, 09:45:43 PM
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
- Robert Frost

Robert Frost had a cold heart ;-)
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Gregory on March 08, 2020, 09:55:55 PM
Quote from: Baruch on March 08, 2020, 09:52:07 PM
Robert Frost had a cold heart ;-)

Now, who is being flippant?
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Baruch on March 09, 2020, 08:32:34 AM
Quote from: Gregory on March 08, 2020, 09:55:55 PM
Now, who is being flippant?

I can do nearly 38,000 backflips like a gymnast ... look at my stats ;-))

Flippant was a joke, you take life too seriously.  You need to get out ... and cough on someone ;-)
Title: Re: Time: Are You For or Against?
Post by: Unbeliever on March 09, 2020, 02:17:51 PM
Quote from: Gregory on March 08, 2020, 09:45:43 PM
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
- Robert Frost


Yeah, until it no longer does.