...Time...

Time. Do you hear it? The clock is ticking. The day will soon draw to a close and the years will pass by one by one as we slowly draw nearer to our eventual demise?.

But does time really exist? Or is it an illusion?

I think time is an illusion, personally, a way to make us feel more secure that we are in control of our environment. Can we really place a measure on a moment, or on a day for that matter?

Five minuets may seem to take forever, while an hour will melt away in a moment?

Is it determined upon perspective? Possibly? I seem to perceive time differently than most people?

I see time as a lake in the midst of a forest. There is the reflection, which is the past, the shoreline, which is the future, and the water, which is the present. Odd how the ripples of the present can distort the reflection? as one might rewrite history in a tough time? One might sit and look upon the shore, waiting for something important to pass by? another might stare at the reflection, caught upon its gaze to never look away? and yet one more might be lazily boating upon its surface, loving the water for where it takes them? I try not to look at just one, but all three at once, therefore time is not the same to me as most people? I'll give an example:

In the abortion thread when we have discussed how a fetus is not a human yet I still profess that it is because to me it is a human, it is a child, because it is going to be? Something like that cannot be changed by a slight breeze upon the water? It can be killed, however, but that is still killing a person in my opinion?

No, I am not here to discuss abortion so don?t start. This is about time, and the passage of time?

I want to discuss the conundrums of time-travel as well. What are your views?

While I think it is possible to change the past, however, to do that I think you must make the past the present? On the other hand, I believe that once something is altered in the past that the timeline that once existed cancels itself out and becomes something totally new. Therefore if you went back in time and changed something you, yourself would not be aware of it, nor would anyone else? Would you have to go back again and alter it once the future came again? Possibly, but the past in its past form cannot be changed; you would have to make it the present? So if you had to go back again wouldn?t you just run into an echo of yourself from an old timeline that no longer exists because you changed it? That would be an odd one to see? I don?t think that?s been used in the media?

Then again, is it not safe to surmise that once you step foot into the past timeline to make it present that you?ve changed something already, merely by being there. Therefore the old timeline would cancel itself out immediately after traveling to the past and send you right back to where you belong with no memory of the journey you made?

I will admit, I know little about quantum theory but I find it fascinating. I want to learn more about it. I liked Michael Crighton?s Timeline because of the theories he presents in there (old theories but still fascinating) as well as the plot.

*EVIL GRIN*

Oh the headaches the thought of time-travel has caused. Ready for a migraine?

 

I'll be brief with my defenition of time, but I have thought about it for a while this summer. I think time is the measurment of an amount of change. It is real, just not what we think it is.

 

Time? What is it besides a Pink Floyd song? (Sorry).

Time is a very interesting thing that I don't think we can really understand. Why does it go so fast at times, then so slowly at others, then in the end seem so fast again.

Why do things that happened ages ago feel like they happened ages ago, but still we feel as if they just happened yesterday?

It's just another of the universes unfathomable mysteries.

I've always found the subject of time travel facinating. I almost wish I could turn back the clock, to change a number of things.

 

In Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse, a river is used as a metaphor for time. At any given time, you are somewhere in the river. There is water behind you and before you and all around you. But it's still all water. One part of the river is no different from any other part of the river. The beginning is the same as the end and every other point within the river. There can be rocks or tides within the river, but it's still all the same thing at all times.

Therefore, time could be thought of as a medium in which action takes place. It's no different now than it was then or will be soon. It's meaningless to contemplate time as a thing. It's like space; it's indefinable. In the drama of life, time is the stage on which we all perform.

~ DS5

 

"Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so." - Ford Prefect

From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

Kimball Kinnison

 

Which really messes with your mind when it comes to religion, and your own death.

Because technically, you're already dead

But nope, time doesn't exist without memory and referencing to that memory. Memory is created by changing the structure of the brain much like you'd change the matter on a HD to store information. Unless you actually think the universe is being archived infinitely inbetween an infinite set of points in another dimension?

So basically, this dimension is like a potter's wheel, constantly spinning, the clay just changes forms as it does so. Same potter wheel.
-GAT

 

One thing that's hard to dispute is that time is unidirectional. It only moves forwards...

 

Maybe. But maybe other universes could have bidirectional time. Maybe this universe had it or will have it at some other point in time or space when there were more dimensions unfurled than there are now.

 

When you change the past, I don't think the timeline you lived is lost. I think it becomes a parallel universe, an alternate reality. Because if the timeline you lived in is lost by changing the past then you could not go into the past to change the past because that timeline you went into the past is now lost.

Now with the new timeline, you would not need to go into the past to change that one thing that was changed to create the new timeline because the AU will change it for you so your Reality can exist.

I love alternate universes. So many possiblities. So many roads not taken.


Btw, does anyone know the name of that movie that will come out soon that involves time travel and the travelers get stuck in medieval times because the time machine is broken in the future?

 

Time is a dimension, just like the 3 spacial demensions that we're all used to thinking of. I think we all have a position in time just like we all have an x,y,z postion and hence we don't exist in two moments of time at once. There is now and nothing else. You cannot travel back in time nor forward.

"Nothing exists outside the moment."

That's what I think anyway.

 

Sith Chick, your sig is hilarious!

One's true notion of time cannot be expressed/understood in words, because words are in time...that is, our understanding also happens in time, making our comprehension of it impossible.

Has anyone here ever heard of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. It states, simply, that:

It is impossible, using the terms within a system to describe the system... one must then resort to 'meta'terms, and to describe the system of 'meta'terms there must then be used a system of metameta-terms


...ad nauseum...

 

Btw, does anyone know the name of that movie that will come out soon that involves time travel and the travelers get stuck in medieval times because the time machine is broken in the future?

Timeline

I am so going to see that movie November 26th!

 

Time is a valuable thing
Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings-"In the End" Linkin Park

 

Lady Viskor: I think time is an illusion

I agree.

Grand Admiral Thran But nope, time doesn't exist without memory and referencing to that memory.

And I would add to this (the concept of memory being a very personal phenomenon), something like the passage of night into day, or the changes of the seasons. These things -- we think -- exist as evidence of the passage of time, but are they really? Isn't it possible that these things take place on their own, quite independant of the passage of time?

Yes, I think time is something we humans invented to give ourselves the sense that we can comprehend (and, in some cases, even predict) the changes that take place both directly to us (the effects of aging for example), as well as around us (the afore-mentioned seasonal changes).

 

Space-man: What exactly do you mean when you say that we as humans invented time?

I think that there is time and then there is the perception of time. We have no influence on time, it excist regardless of whether or not someone is there to perceive it.

 

sith_chick: We have no influence on time, it excist regardless of whether or not someone is there to perceive it.

Bear with me -- rather then answering your question first, I'm going to ask you about your statement: Explain how you think time exists, regardless of whether or not we perceive it?

 

My feeling is that space-time works the way it's supposed to, and is very dependable in its day-to-day operation. But the mind plays tricks on us. A lot of what we experience is garbled by our big clunky brains. Brains are riddled with perceptual flaws, memory sinkholes, inconsistent approaches to cognitive problems and all sorts of little tics that can alter our understanding of the way time flows around us or the way we flow through time, whichever it is.

 

Jabbadabbado: ...time flows around us or [do] we flow through time?

You raise a good question here....

 

Time is no illusion. You can't use illusional concepts in mathematical and physics equations.

 

Say more, Uruk-hai. I am admittedly math/physics illiterate, so I would genuinely like to have you explain some of the basic concepts to me. Is the existance of the passage of time something that is objectively provable in some way? If so, then someone really needs to tell me, so I can shut-up with all of my ill-informed, philosophical ramblings!!