haon14
Greenlighter
Concretely(sp?) speaking, now is meeting of time and space. A point at which the two collide. Every "now" is different and unique. And in reality as we view it, there is an infinite number, none of them being equal.
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What is "now"
- Thread starter Lost Ego
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Bluelight Crew
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Lost Ego
Bluelighter
Your guys' posts are still making me gravitate towards the idea that time and space are one in the same or closely linked. ^what you said... Every now is uniquely different [in our position in the universe], i can't believe i haven't realized this before! I mean with the earth traveling as fast as it is, there will never be a person who's been in the same exact place at the same exact time as i have... o.o i suppose that's a pretty obvious assertion but that certainly makes me unique which is comforting.
haon14
Greenlighter
^ Exactly. I myself just had that realization whilst reading this thread.
vegan
Bluelighter
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there is not even such a concept as "the same place"
for that, you'd need to have an objective spatial referent
good luck with that. we don't even know what shape space has and it's expanding faster than the speed of light
as for time. it could be cyclic
rangrz
Bluelighter
YES! EXACTLY! That is what I was trying to say...That is one of the MAJOR implications of relativity. They are completely entangled. The only way to quantify space is by the velocity over time. You can just as easily reverse that and have time=velocity over distance and velocity= time over distance. You can not really have any of those concepts stand on their on their own in a meaningful way.
haon14
Greenlighter
That just made so much sense.... mind blown.
Lost Ego
Bluelighter
Okay cool, now we've quantified what now is... +1 to everyone that helped me come to my conclusion. I suppose i'm ready to ask another question... And i think i'll start another thread on it. If mods don't like it feel free to merge it with this one
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DeathDomokun
Ex-Bluelighter
I'm going to preface this by saying I'm going on the assumption the things said by rangrz are true
Is every now/moment permanent? Like in this moment I'm hitting these buttons, but in another moment I'm taking a shit. Do all moments (past, present, future) always exist, and will they always exist?
I mean one moment doesn't follow another like beads on a string, right? There is still a progression of time but that progression does not undermine/devalue the time that has been experienced, does it?
If a building is demolished now, it's not really gone is it? It's still there in another moment, and that other moment can't be taken away.
OT if we could time travel, would altering what happened in an earlier moment (the past) affect peoples recollection of that moment (their past) in this moment (their present)? Because if time is all connected and shit, is it instantaneous? Would the traveler have to wait for a totally different progression of time? If so, would that not create 2 separate 'paths' of time? If there were 2 'paths' of time, would there need to be more of the other dimensions to compensate for this? Would it create an alternative universe?
Is every now/moment permanent? Like in this moment I'm hitting these buttons, but in another moment I'm taking a shit. Do all moments (past, present, future) always exist, and will they always exist?
I mean one moment doesn't follow another like beads on a string, right? There is still a progression of time but that progression does not undermine/devalue the time that has been experienced, does it?
If a building is demolished now, it's not really gone is it? It's still there in another moment, and that other moment can't be taken away.
OT if we could time travel, would altering what happened in an earlier moment (the past) affect peoples recollection of that moment (their past) in this moment (their present)? Because if time is all connected and shit, is it instantaneous? Would the traveler have to wait for a totally different progression of time? If so, would that not create 2 separate 'paths' of time? If there were 2 'paths' of time, would there need to be more of the other dimensions to compensate for this? Would it create an alternative universe?
Lost Ego
Bluelighter
This is essentially what i'm trying to figure out in the 'What seperates us from the now' thread. The way i see it is it's all relative to perspective. From a tree's point of view time isn't experienced and from a tree's point of view time does not exist, there is day and there is night but it holds no memories of previous days. So they only live in the now, there would be no building anymore and that moment mean nothing to a tree. We however can collect and process information and store it within neurons and decipher patterns to decide what will happen in the future. The collection of memories from the past are only there as a reference for learning purposes. I can't decide whether or not time happens simultaneously or if one moment is stacked upon another like taking 100 pictures per second and creating a video, i don't think anybody can decide that. Sure we can account for moments separately but in the grand scheme of things does the past really exist? I do not know. I do know that time travel is impossible and i believe it would be possible if in reality each moment were stacked upon one another as if we were progressing through time like passing through different planes (math reference). So no i think each moment is simultaneously connected to one another (no bead necklace, no 100 pictures, just one ever changing piece of play-dough)
panic in paradise
Bluelighter
you are now, for you there can never be another point of view.
accepting your position amongst your POV is making tangible your vision ?
_________
vogue/vōg/
Noun:
The prevailing fashion or style at a particular time: "the vogue is realism".
DeathDomokun
Ex-Bluelighter
Well everything you've ever done has lead you to this very moment. This moment will affect/mould the future moments, and join the other moments you've experienced.
The thing is, every moment is relative and dependant on those variables. This moment right now is the only real one, the past and future live in this moment. If we weren't in this moment, we wouldn't relate to the past/future in the same way as the former moment. At the same time, we are in this moment so the other moments still exist, you've still experienced them, they're yours. Irrespective of memory, they exit.
I mean then comes into play how much affect previous moments have. Let's say there's a guy with short term memory loss eating a sandwich. He's watching all these people walk through this door and dying. He walks through this door because he doesn't have the memory needed for sufficient awareness. He dies.
I don't know where I'm going with that haha
BUT, everyone has a different now as just discussed. And all of these 'nows', every moment, is connected. On a very strong level, right now I'm directly manipulating your consciousness and awareness, and I will have a direct impact on your thoughts. We all interact, and all of our moments are connected.
Lost Ego
Bluelighter
I'm not going to disagree with what you just said but what i was getting at is that moments in a sequence make up time right? In the course of 100 years there are not 3,024,000,000 moments, there is exactly one moment. In an infinity of years there will only be one moment, one now.
such is philosophy
panic in paradise
Bluelighter
lol
awesome, i think we are all coming to the same point, as always.
in my own words, i see "now" as the only reality which subjectively exists according to the perception of whom ever observing with no interruption, and life as we know it is the active change amongst that.
"in my own words" though, coming to the same point there is bound to be conflict amongst Egos.
rangrz
Bluelighter
What I've said is as correct as I can make it in such a short amount of text and without bring very complex concepts and a lot of math into it. For the nature of this discussion, its a valid approximation.
Do all these moments exist? Yes, in a way. In the same that if you toss a baseball, each location in space that it passes thru as it moves are real, so any given point in time.
One moment does follow the next like a bead on a string . Just like the previously mentioned baseball progresses thru space, so do things moving thru time. But that does not devalue the previous location or previous time. But what inherent value do they have in the first place?
This idea is problematic and no clear answer exists.
Again, there is no clear or generally agreed upon answer, but many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is probably close to what you are asking I think. It suggests that each time ANYTHING undergoes wavefunction collapse (actually it rejects the reality of a universal wavefunction and works with decoherance instead) another bunch of universes are created, one for each possible result of that event. The theory is an elagent way to unite the randomness of quantum mechanics with the deterministic world of classical mechanics. It's again, far too complex to explain in a short text blurb without the person having all the background and without frighteningly complex mathematics, but I think it might be what you are trying to get at. It is by no means universally accepted among physicists, but it is accepted by a significant number of them. But there subtler issues to it that can not be dealt with without, well, you know, having a lot of background and a lot of math.
Comrade Kane
Ex-Bluelighter
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Time is a function of the expansion of the universe. As the universe expands time runs forward, when/if the universe contracts time will run backwards. That's all time is, the stretching out of space.
The universe is both infinite and bounded at the same time. The three spatial dimensions are infinite as they wrap around a fourth dimension and back on itself. This is just like the circumference of a circle, the one dimension circumference is infinite, you can go around it forever, but that's because it wraps around two dimensional space which is the area of the circle. So two the surface of a ball/globe is infinite in two dimensions because it wraps around three, the volume of the sphere.
Three dimensional space is infinite and wraps around a fourth spatial dimension and the expansion of this dimension is what gives the property of time.
The universe is both infinite and bounded at the same time. The three spatial dimensions are infinite as they wrap around a fourth dimension and back on itself. This is just like the circumference of a circle, the one dimension circumference is infinite, you can go around it forever, but that's because it wraps around two dimensional space which is the area of the circle. So two the surface of a ball/globe is infinite in two dimensions because it wraps around three, the volume of the sphere.
Three dimensional space is infinite and wraps around a fourth spatial dimension and the expansion of this dimension is what gives the property of time.
Comrade Kane
Ex-Bluelighter
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The "now" this moment, is purely subjective and has no real meaning or existence outside someones brain.
Lost Ego
Bluelighter
Sorry but i hate how you try to make the logic behind physics sound like it's hard to grasp, as if there is any basis behind your logic besides numbers. You see... numbers do not equal logic. Your argument is invalid. I'll accept that time and space are tied but that's it. There are alot of inconsistencies in your arguement. For instance: time has to exist because physics says so., why is physics right?, numbers. Numbers do not exist. Try to imagine the universe as a single point in space and all of the universe is just an an extension of this one point, this one point's "frame" is no longer relative to anything because nothing else actually exists, everything else is part of this point in space. I'm not saying this is the case but i'm just trying to get you to think outside of the box, to doubt what you already think you know
P A
Bluelighter
I've refrained from posting in this thread until now for fear of having 1) Nothing particularly fresh nor insightful to offer to this subject (viz. the philosophy of space and time); and 2) Less time/patience/pithiness than rangrz, who has admirably summarized the key points re. the relevance of abstract mathematical objects (e.g., spaces) to the 'real' world that they purport to describe.
But, as a mathematician-in-training, I'm going to have to differ strongly with you on this one, LE. Your implication here is that mathematics as a discipline is not, by definition, a formal system composed of nothing other than abstract objects, logical operations, and the behavior of said objects when manipulated by said operations. In saying such a patently silly thing, you betray a profound ignorance of math, science, and formal logic.
Time doesn't exist because 'physics says so,' and, to my knowledge, such a foolish contention hasn't been made by rangrz - nor by anyone else - in this thread. All rangrz was trying to do was offer a coherent summary of how contemporary physics addresses the concept of time, whilst perhaps debunking a few pillow-headed would-be metaphysicians in the process. For my money, time does not 'exist' any more or less than my level of self-esteem, the number 2, or a computer program. Many different answers have been offered in response to the inquiry, "Why/how does time exist (if it exists at all), and how could its existence possibly be proven?" One of my favorite responses was that of Immanuel Kant, who, being the philosophical juggernaut that he was, elegantly sidestepped the question by suggesting that the human capacity for experiencing events bounded by such elementary perceptual conditions as 'time,' 'space,' and 'causation' actually constituted the necessary (but not sufficient) precondition for all meaningful thought and coherent (i.e., non-delirious) observation. Presto! The issue of whether such things as 'causation' and 'time' exist, was, according to Kant, simply not up for coherent metaphysical discussion, as such things lay outside our purview as sentient, rational beings capable only of discerning certain patterns inherent in the phenomena (an emotion, a keyboard, the temperature of a liquid) that we can directly perceive/experience, as opposed to the noumena (e.g., infinity) that we cannot.