Time and Space

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   Erudite Scholarposted 5 years ago

   Does time really exist?

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      lovetherainposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I think that time does exist for created beings.

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         Erudite Scholarposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         What about gods?

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            lovetherainposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            probably not. but I don't know

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   wildernessposted 5 years ago

   Define "time".  You must have a different concept than most people, so before one can comment on it's existence we must understand what YOU mean by "time".

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      lovetherainposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      why do you say that?

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         wildernessposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         We all have an innate grasp of what time is.  To question that would seem to mean that something else besides that grasp.  Or perhaps the cosmological/physics answer, but that would likely take years of study and cannot reasonably be answered here. 
         
         I DO like the answer of motion, but at the same time that kind of begs the question and doesn't really answer anything.

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            lovetherainposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Maybe we have some innate grasp of what time is....in normal situations. But what about dreams, or crisis situations where time seems to slow down or stop altogether? How objective is time, really?

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               wildernessposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               From a personal standpoint?  100%.  From a physics standpoint, 0% - the rate of radioactivity does not change, the speed of light does not change, the passage of the moon across the sky does not change, etc.

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                  Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  Great point.
                  
                  Imagine that you were to write a formula on a chalkboard. It could represent any of the things you listed above. Now, imagine that the whole earth explodes. The chalkboard is gone, conscious observers are gone, but the abstractions are still true. No?

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            Erudite Scholarposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            time is not objective at all.It is rather subjective.

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      Erudite Scholarposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      What is time to you @wilderness?

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      Jomine Joseposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Define time..

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   Live to Learnposted 5 years ago

   Time exists as long as things are observed in motion. I think the more interesting question for me is, has time always been constant. And, does the movement of time affect every aspect of reality equally.

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      lovetherainposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      "Time exists as long as things are observed in motion"
      
      Yep

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         Jomine Joseposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         No, time doesn't "exist". It is a measured relative motion.

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      wildernessposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Now that's an interesting thought - has time always passed at the same rate. 
      
      Would it make any difference, practically or philosophically, if it didn't?  I assume that all measurement devices, from speed of light to your wall clock change right along with it...

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         Live to Learnposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         I've wondered if that were true, that every pieceof our reality is tied to the same time measurements, as we understand them. Also, does time pass at the same rate, universally? We really can't know until we get out there.
         
         Think of it this way. If time passed at a much greater speed in the first, by our understanding, 10 billion years....are our estimations correct. Not really. We'd have to determine how much time passed, by our understanding and measurements of current conditions.

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            wildernessposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Time does NOT pass at the same rate universally; that's a part of relativity that has been proven.
            
            But if time passed more rapidly in the beginning, AND everything happened at the same increase, isn't the end result the same?  For instance; a radioactive active substance emits 1 particle every two seconds.  But 2 seconds actually took only one second by today's measurement, then the particle rate is 1 per second.  So the difference in time rate had no effect; the same amount of particles were emitted.  If I'm making any sense, anyway!

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               Live to Learnposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Of course you make sense. I have to say yes, and no, on the comment about the difference having no effect. Because it could, feasibly, explain our difficulty in finding intelligent life, among other things.
               
               Think about what we believe about the way time works in proximity to a black hole. Time slows down, or so we believe. What if you lived in such an environment. How would you, using similar standards of time calculation, not knowing you lived within what those outside could only view from a distance, perceive the age of the universe? Would your calculations be right? I can't see that they would match ours. I would think all traces of our civilization would disappear before they could even evolve to put forth the question of life outside of their world.
               
               I don't think we can know much, without finding more. Everything we know, everything we postulate, is predicated under the assumption that most things,where time and life is involved, are relatively equal.

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                  wildernessposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  If you lived near a black hole your observation would be that things happen so FAST everywhere else.  Stars come and go in just a few years rather than billions of years.  That people living in orbit around that star thinks you are living so slowly does not impact you. That's the result of two people in two time frames observing the other.
                  
                  I've seen stories (movies?) where a people are trying to communicate with a people in an area where time has accelerated enormously and things happen very quickly.  It's an interesting concept - watching a people go from hunter gatherers to steam engines in a few weeks and to space satellites in a few more.
                  
                  But I was thinking about ALL people in one time zone that is changing.  In that case, from their viewpoint, everything continues to happen at the same rate.  Everything continues at the same rate it always did from their viewpoint.  It is only an observer outside the change that would detect anything amiss.

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                     Live to Learnposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     I agree, but take exception to ' something amiss'. It's just different and possibly more indicative of a greater understanding of reality. And that is the position where we all want to be.

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         Jomine Joseposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Not at the same rate, it always depended on the rotation and revolution of earth.

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   Kathryn L Hillposted 5 years ago

   No, time is a construct.

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      lovetherainposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      What does that mean

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      Erudite Scholarposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      I agree with you Kathryn, time is just a concept.

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      Jomine Joseposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      Exactly, a concept.

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   Mindnautposted 5 years ago

   Time only exists in the minds of the ignorant people on earth

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      Erudite Scholarposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      @Mindnaut you are very funny.

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   Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years ago

   The experience of time and time as discussed in physics lectures are two different things. One is definitely a real feature of physical reality. It's something like acceleration times distance. Things get weirder the faster your accelerate which was Einsteins big thing. Imagine that you are traveling at the speed of light in one direction. Now imagine that someone else is traveling at the speed of light from some other remote point in the universe. The moment you and the other person cross paths, it will appear as if they are frozen in time (or very slow-mo) -  because they are. At least according to Einstein.
   
   The other part of it is how consciousness perceives the passage of time. There are many unconscious biological processes that are governed by a "clock", so-to-speak. Metabolism, hormones, circadian rhythm, sleep patterns, etc. All of which can be reducible to tiny little mechanical operations at the cellular level.
   
   The last aspect appears to be an emergent property of certain mental states. We feel the most alive when we are engaged in activities that are challenging enough to arouse us but not too difficult that we become stressed or too easy that we become bored. This was famously coined as “Flow” by positive psychologist Dr. Csíkszentmihályi.
   
   Full immersion in things that are meaningful and engaging seems to be the most effective devourer of time - if that's your goal. You'll see just how relative time is depending on your mood. Conversely, feeling down or having to spend time somewhere you don't want to be can never end soon enough.
   
   In conclusion, time is like gravity in that we cannot detect it accurately either intuitively or with our a priori senses but it can be measured using the proper formulas and experiments...
   
   From your POV, strictly speaking, as the observer, time might as well be your reflection in a house of warped mirrors.

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      wildernessposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      "In conclusion, time is like gravity in that we cannot detect it accurately either intuitively or with our a priori senses but it can be measured using the proper formulas..."
      
      Not sure about that; I can count days until the winter solstice, for instance.  The passage of time, measured in days.
      
      What I cannot do is accurately count the passage of smaller segments - seconds or minutes.

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         lovetherainposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         it can be done pretty accurately with  pendulum i think

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         Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Let's just say time is real enough that we can reliably predict that the future is going to behave like the past- practically speaking. That's how we can accept empirical research as having a certain level of validity if we can successfully recreate the past.
         
         What we experience as time can certainly be thought of as illusory. Most of what the brain constructs for us is a very crude representation of the objective landscape. We often perceive time retrospectively, if you wanna get down to the minute or second - because there is a lot of work for the brain to do before it presents you with reality.
         
         A single moment, gone in the instant of becoming...

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         Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         wilderness,
         
         You can count the days, weeks and months but only when you accept that those "blocks" of time are on a continuum and only exist insofar as they are represented by our planets relative position and movement around the sun. But there is no "day" outside our own biological programmed patterns. A day on Jupiter lasts ~10 hours. If Jupiter were habitable, we would become very ill.
         
         So, what you're talking about, I think, is that there is no way for us to perceive such large or small passages of time by virtue of our own limitations and because it wouldn't really be useful to us. However, an atomic clock can peg time down to some ridiculous decimal point and there are uses for that. Nothing that the average person would need in their phones, I wager - at least not yet.

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            wildernessposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            You might be surprised; GPS systems depend on measuring exceedingly small amounts of time.

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               Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               True. Except my GPS is known for being a few seconds behind an exit haha

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               Jomine Joseposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               Exceedingly small amount of synchronised corrected vibrations..

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         Erudite Scholarposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         @wilderness our bodies can not perceive the passage of time.Our minds on the other hand can perceive time at a subliminal level.

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            lovetherainposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Where do you think the mind gets it's information about the passage fo time? The body.

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            wildernessposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            And yet our bodies operate on various circadian rhythms. Both daily and monthly cycles are common.

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      Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      It might also be worth noting that people who suffer in extreme isolation (e.g. solitary confinement) will not be able to predict how much time has passed, the longer time goes on. Without cues from the natural world, our minds can't make sense of time. 1 day will begin to feel like 3.

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   PhoenixVposted 5 years ago

   Time is a concept of sequence of concepts, the product of the beginning/end.

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      lovetherainposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      What do you mean by that?

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         PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         Was kind of shooting from the hip. Does my notion of time seem more subjective than others?

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            lovetherainposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Not really subjective, just not clear.

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               PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               You have ideas of time I assume, and others have ideas of time,  I have ideas of time. As they offer their ideas here, them, you and I : we experience the intervals of ideas. A succession of ideas. For me hardly any times felt passed, but I suspect it may have felt like a lifetime to you.

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                  lovetherainposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  I think of it more as a succession of events

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                     PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     Any particular events come to mind?

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                        lovetherainposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                        I wouldn't know how to divide events really. Maybe it would start with the first thing that happened in the Big Bang(although I don't really believe in that, but that for another thread I guess).

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                           PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                           Oh. I was just making conversation. I am resting from mowing the jungle aka my front yard. I ran out of sun, or time.  Events, I was thinking Birthday or party. Events have an intergral or component "feel" to them that I am not too sure of. As I bounce the concept of "one thing or another" around in my mind, the "whole thing" gives me a headache. Of course I could be dehydrated. I predict aspirin in "my future"..

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                  Erudite Scholarposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  We can not feel time passing, we can only perceive it externally.

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      Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      PhoenixV,
      
      What I imagine from your statement is an "unfolding" or "transformation" of objects from one state to another. Each state or "concept" - if you will - is characterized either by the orientation and behavior of those objects OR simply the patterns of those behaviors. Whatever seems to be pushing all this along is what time is...fundamentally.
      
      We still might run into the following philosophical problem:
      
      What if the universe from its birth to whatever end (entropic heat death) happens simultaneously and the experience of our lives is "calibrated" to a particular speed.
      
      A fly is so elusive because when you go to swat at it, it saw your hand coming like... a week ago. A fly only lives about day, give or take. I'm not sure lifespan has anything to do with how quickly organisms process time. It might have to do with their vision because they can visually parse up the world into a zillion different frames per second. (like the hottest new cameras on the market.)
      
      Another example is that movie films will only run as realistically fast as we are "attuned" to seeing the images being projected. In other words, the frames must move at a rate that matches our internal factory settings. A fly might be able to watch Black Panther if you speed it up by a thousand.
      
      More and more questions arise the deeper we look.  But the subjective aspects are just as real to us in some sense - if not more relevant -  because we have to live in it.
      
      When we "see" the world, we don't see the objects then infer some sort of meaning. We see the meaning first then infer what the objects are. It's a perceptual mechanism that evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. It makes sense if you think about it because we have to know "what to do" when we encounter certain things. When you look at a chair, you don't see the physical structures holding it together, what you're actually seeing is a "thing to sit on". As you look at it, your entire nervous system is preparing for the sitting motion.
      
      If the chair suddenly reached out to bite you, you would recoil not from thinking deeply about it for a minute or two but because you have these unconscious perceptual systems that lay the foundation of your reality and its corresponding motor functions before you can even begin to talk about it.
      
      So, to describe time as part of an abstract deluge of concepts is actually pretty accurate. Because these concepts aren't just billiard balls bouncing around. By definition, "concepts" are things in need of categorization and practical use. Why else have concepts? And, each concept has its own unique time signature based on how information-rich they are and the time it takes for the brain to apprehend them.
      
      Thanks for sharing

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         PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         It is apparent to me that we perceive conceptually. These objects, you say, in motion perhaps and any sequencing thereof, seem to me, to be an assumption based ; a posteriori. We take these objects in motion and sequence of,  for granted. What remains self evident to me, for me anyway, is that object, motion, time are concepts projected , then perceived.

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            Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

            Apt. Couldn't have said it better.

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               PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

               It could all be a simulation. Whats the difference. It gets tricky running all the simulations to perceive the simulation and all the other perceiving simulations in the simulation.

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                  Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                  I'm not sure. There's no way to either prove nor disprove simulation theory. I've always wondered if that's compatible with the idea that reality can only exist insofar as a conscious observer is there to witness it. From simulation to simulation, consciousness goes unchanged. The only thing that changes is what fills that space
                  
                  More to your point earlier - we are not just passive recipients of sense-data. These projections you talk about arise out of the built-in architecture that we use to seek and detect certain patterns or archetypes - if you will.  (again, consciousness remains unchanged lest it cease to be the thing that recognizes those patterns)
                  
                  It's a bald jab at the notion that we are a tabula rasa. Rightly so because we are so much more than that.

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                     PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     Whether reality exists without an observer. Reality appears to be there waiting to be perceived conceptually. I can go to the bank knowing the only example of anything that produces concepts is a mind. I conclude reality is a concept of mind.

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                        Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                        I recommend reading work by Martin Heidegger if you haven't already. Piaget as well.

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                           PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                           Thanks I will check them out.

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                     PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                     Any patterns in particular?

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                        Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                        Snakes, cats, predators, fear, elation, birth, death, character transformation, art, music, cosmology, war - to name a few. That which makes us human. A shared humanity.

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                           PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                           Oh, I was thinking geometry for some reason. Very fun topic. The whole thing. Enjoying the conversation.

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                              Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                              Agreed. That's why I show up from time to time.
                              
                              Speaking of geometry, watch this video about an acquired savant who, after a severe brain injury, began to see the geometric relationships of the world around him. Quite an astounding story.
                              
                              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H6doOmS-eM
                              
                              Cases like these are especially interesting because our brains have what's called a "default mode network" which is just a fancy term for how the brain filters out so much irrelevant information from the environment. Some psychologists have theorized that people who suffer from schizophrenia may have a misregulated default mode network that results in everything they perceive becoming super-relevant. It's evident in their speech.
                              
                              Aldous Huxley in his book 'Doors of Perception' cites something similar as he describes unorthodox textures of a lamp after ingesting LSD. He alludes to the idea that there is perhaps so much more to what's "out there" but our brains only allow us to capture but a fraction of what is actually taking place while these strange substances act as gate-keepers to this realm.
                              
                              [ Note: It's a common myth that the experience of hallucinogens and symptoms associated with schizophrenia are the same thing. Give someone with schizophrenia LSD and they have no problem making a clear distinction between the "trip" and their day-to-day delusions. We know hardly anything about any of it. Research continues...]

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                                 PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                                 Cool video. I operate from a cheap phone so am limited. I am glad it turned into a positive experience. I worried that he would lose his humanity in the math. Math can be a grind to me personally. I am old and rely on a calculator on my phone. While it occupies itself with that.
                                 
                                 I wonder about potential fundamental patterns that might exist that could insight into the  architecture. I wonder if psychiatric conditions could or might be tuning into the realms our savant is /was, but since its unlike most of humanity it has a connotation.

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                                 PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

                                 Math is like reducing a painting to pixels to rgb. The style is lost. The brush strokes. The personal use of Light and shade etc. Lost. The aesthetics of it all. What I can get for the painting at a pawnshop and how much beer that will buy served by a pretty waitress.

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      Erudite Scholarposted 5 years agoin reply to this

      @Phoenix kindly elucidate.

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         PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

         The more details, the more chance for errors.
         
         Conceptualization of correlation or relationship of conceptualized time frames.

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   poppyrposted 5 years ago

   Time is a concept of human perception to help us make sense of night and day and to measure the amount of days something is or takes. It’s not man made, but our perception of it is.

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   Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years ago

   "Men go abroad to marvel at the heights of the mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet forget to marvel at themselves."
   
   -St. Augustine

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    sparksterposted 5 years ago

    No, time does not exist. When you go out of body there is no such thing as time. Past,  present and future are all one. Time is a dimension created by consciousness in order to measure change created by energy in motion (emotion).

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       Jessie L Watsonposted 5 years agoin reply to this

       I think time can still be real while consciousness does all of those things...
       
       Look, folks, I'm not sure how you define real but we can certainly measure speed which is half the picture. We know that a car going 60 mph is going to travel as fast as every other car in the universe that is going 60 mph. (Kind of like how a 1lb bag of rocks versus 1lb bag of marshmallow falls at the same speed on earth - if you remove air friction and all that)
       
       Cars may appear differently going the same speed but it doesn't make the 60 mph a mental construct. We can measure it, confirm it, extract a time signature that tells us how much time has passed as it went from point A to point B - and reliably so across every conceivable point in space.
       
       The truth is certainly stranger than fiction which should make the reality of time that much more intriguing.
       
       Someone in orbit above the earth is aging more slowly (~0.007 seconds) than people down here through sheer acceleration and the invisible influence of earth's gravity. It's not make-believe - it's science.
       
       Just because reality looks different from place to place, or person to person doesn't make stuff less real. The only true constant we can actually know for sure is change.
       
       Further, it depends on which level of analysis we're talking about. Did we discard Newtonian physics when we discovered quantum particles? No, we just found a new layer of a much larger body of laws.
       
       In other words, we wouldn't use quantum theory to predict the movement of large celestial bodies. Nor would we use what we know about large objects to predict where an electron might sprout up in any given point in space. But we have no problem regarding both sub-atomic particles and planets as real even though they follow a different set of rules.
       
       Also, every tool, technology, or invention that we've ever benefited from was built upon the belief that time is reducible to a set of universal principles. (which happen to work spectacularly in the process of creation of many other real things)

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          PhoenixVposted 5 years agoin reply to this

          ..."Does not make a mental construct..." measure, confirm extract.."
          
          But if it all was a construct, including everything : object space motion time etc, would not things like non local interaction; quantum entanglement make more sense. Constructs have no barriers to overcome such as distance. Is there distance or an experience of distance.

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    Oztinatoposted 5 years ago

    I haven't got time to discuss time at this time. I've got to buy some more time before time runs out. Time is real as I just bought some. Wait, that was thyme not time.

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       Erudite Scholarposted 5 years agoin reply to this

       I really  love your witty comments Oz.

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    Tejprakaashposted 4 years ago

    Time it exists in the mind.
    
    As long as there is mind there will be time. In fact the two cannot be separated. And not just time, even our mind is also a construct made up of various beliefs, thought patterns and reaction patterns.
    
    So there are instances when each one of us feels time dilation or time running too fast hence it may be concluded that time is a product of mind and mind is nothing but various thoughts of variable intensities.
    
    The idea behind all kinds of spiritual practices (not beliefs) is to experience consciously the expansion or contraction of time very Objectively.
    
    So the one who shall object the time shall also erode the turf of mind and vice versa.

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       Erudite Scholarposted 4 years agoin reply to this

       @Tej I really like your reasoning. Do you think different people perceive time differently?

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       wildernessposted 4 years agoin reply to this

       Disagree, for without time there can be no movement, yet movement such as orbits of planets, photons streaming from stars, etc. will occur with or without a mind to observe them. 
       
       Nor does the perception of time passing by a mind change the actual time; it only reflects the perception which is in turn a reflection of how fast that mind is thinking - how many thoughts are occurring during the passage of time.

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    theraggededgeposted 4 years ago

    I read something the other day which attempted to explain why older people feel that time passes much faster than in their youth.
    
    Basically when a child in 1 year old, that year is 100% of their life. 2 years old, it's 50%. By the time they reach 50, a year is one 50th of their life. When they are 100, it is a 100th. So when you perceive a year during old age, it is but a small fraction of your life.
    
    Doesn't Christmas come around fast these days?

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       Erudite Scholarposted 4 years agoin reply to this

       I think that time is relative and absolute at the same time. It is relative from an individual perspective and absolute in its essence. In space time moves slower than on earth. Astronauts age less in space relative to the people on earth.

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