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The meaning of Time

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The meaning of Time
vykk_draygo
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Posted 09/05/08 - 01:13 PM:
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#41
Time is a dimension. In the same way that a flatlander sees 3D objects in "slices" as they pass through 2D, we see time in infinitesimally tiny "slices" that we call the present. We cannot physically move forward or backward in time because we can only physically move in 3 dimensions, just as flatlanders can only move in 2.
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yiming
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Posted 09/05/08 - 08:45 PM:
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vykk_draygo wrote:

Time is a dimension. In the same way that a flatlander sees 3D objects in "slices" as they pass through 2D, we see time in infinitesimally tiny "slices" that we call the present. We cannot physically move forward or backward in time because we can only physically move in 3 dimensions, just as flatlanders can only move in 2.


So, is time are part of the 4D world then? What about God? What dimensional world would one have to be to see a slice of the Almighty? shaking head
disjunction
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Posted 09/05/08 - 09:06 PM:
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#43
vykk_draygo wrote:
Time is a dimension. In the same way that a flatlander sees 3D objects in "slices" as they pass through 2D, we see time in infinitesimally tiny "slices" that we call the present. We cannot physically move forward or backward in time because we can only physically move in 3 dimensions, just as flatlanders can only move in 2.


I agree that we can see time as a directional degree of freedom humans use to impose the notion of ordering to events. But we cannot assume that we are actually traversing through time. It is possible to interpret time in a different way, as merely an illusionary effect arising from the way we acquire information.

When we extract information from the universe, we necessarily reduce the information content of the universe (while increasing its entropy and stuff like that). Hence our perception of time follows the direction (of spatialised time) that the universe has a decreasing information content. It may appear that cause and effect is confused here, but since we cannot refer to the conventional concept of time, these terms lose their meaning and we can only talk about causal connection of events.

In this interpretation time could be described as a mere illusion, as we are technically not travelling through it.
vykk_draygo
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Posted 09/05/08 - 09:27 PM:
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yiming wrote:


So, is time are part of the 4D world then? What about God? What dimensional world would one have to be to see a slice of the Almighty?




I think time is the 4th dimension. In any movement we make, we traverse from one point in each of the 3 dimensions to another, and also from one point in time to another, say from this second to the next. This duration necessitates another "axis" of movement.

What about God? What does that have to do with it? How does the existence of a 4th dimension change one's belief in God?

disjunction wrote:


I agree that we can see time as a directional degree of freedom humans use to impose the notion of ordering to events. But we cannot assume that we are actually traversing through time. It is possible to interpret time in a different way, as merely an illusionary effect arising from the way we acquire information.


I suppose we can't assume. But that logic also applies to physical space. How can we assume that we're actually moving our body? We just take it as a given that our flesh is absolute.

I guess I'm just not as much of a skeptic as I used to be.
"But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?"
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throng
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Posted 09/06/08 - 02:05 PM:
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I'm 15 and I've only been living in the united states for a year now, so I'm sorry for any grammar mistakes.

THRONG: HI. I’m 40, Downunder, Thank “_____” for spell-check.


1. Everything that happens in the universe is already bound to happen. Every decision you make or every movements is triggered by something else.

THRONG: As you say motion begets motion etc hence the universe will eventually go where it came from. Beginning and end in life is destiny. It is nature’s way. The universe is made of energy, so it isn’t really solid. The choice of free will is seeing things as we want. SO, energy happened, Beginning and end are predestined, the rest is personal perception of it.

I think that time doesn't really exist. It's just us moving through time.

THRONG: I’ll tell you my thoughts. I woke up recently with action = reaction in my mind. I never did math or philosophy before, but the concept is really mind opening when you expand it. Now I do.

Imagine a single particle moving along in a vast nothing. It’s not moving away from anything or toward anything, so moving and being still looks the same. If you can’t picture that, you won’t understand this.

Then the particle splits, so it’s two halves move forward in nothing and also away from each other. Now we can see movement (but can’t tell which or if both are moving.)

One half splits (three particles). Like an expanding triangle moving along at the original velocity. The area between the three particles is now a two dimensional triangle.

One particle splits again, making four. Now the space between the particles is three dimensional. I hope you can picture this; it’s worth drawing it if you don’t grasp the image.

SO, three dimensional space requires four movements. Length, width, height and time.

If original velocity was at light speed it really gets interesting.

I got kicked off a maths forum for that little jewel, which is a glowing endorsement of it.

It is in motion. In nothing or at light speed all motion and time are still.


SO, there you go.

Edited by throng on 09/06/08 - 02:11 PM
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Posted 09/06/08 - 08:00 PM:
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IdoTsuk wrote:

To sum up, I think that time doesn't really exist. It's just us moving through time.


So time doesn't exist.. but you're moving through it? That would prove its own existence, therefore disproving your logic that time doesn't exist.

Time, as humans know it, is just a measurement or value we give to the expanse of an instance - years, days, hours, seconds etc. they are just given numerical values and applied universally. Since the law of increments of time are universal we accept that a certain duration of movement or events equates to this certain numerical value we accept as law. The fourth dimension:

fourth dimension: the fourth coordinate that is required (along with three spatial dimensions) to specify a physical event.
Realism.
ManiacJack
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Posted 09/07/08 - 08:48 AM:
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I still don't get why we talk about time like it is separate from space; I like what Draygo said: Think of flatland. We are in a 4d Reality, generally speaking [string theory?].

When we talk about time as being one-dimensional/one-directional, we are like the people in flatland talking about 3dimensional objects being one-dimensional [because 3d is their time], so although we cannot see 4d stuff, talking about it like it is 1d as opposed to 3d is of no help. There is no plus and minus to time; we can but move about time.
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Posted 09/07/08 - 09:41 AM:
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Indo Tusk:

First one must define what one means by "time." Currently in physics there is no such thing as time as a universal or ontological quantity. Physics discusses causality and the ordering of events in spacetime. Indeed, the manner in which we seem to experience reality, the laws of thermodynamics are not a requirement of any physical theory. That is there no preferred sense of causality or direction of events. In other words, the entropy of systems can either increase or decrease whereas in actual experience we never see the reverse process in the universe.

There is also the implication of Zeno's paradox and the issue of discreteness vs. the continuum that we see between Quantum mechanics and Relativity and in mathematics as well. In Relativity theory Einstein subscribes as do most physicsts to the Block Universe perspective. In this scenario the universe is an assortment of events in 4d spacetime with no past present future. And it is the path of the observer through this spacetime which defines the ordering of events. All events have "happened already" in that two observes may experience the same events in different regions of their light cones or in a different causal order. This led Einstein and Godel and many others to assert that time in the flowing consciousness sense of a irretrievable past, a present and a "undefined future" as merely a fiction of our sense perception and consciousness. In addition, one observer's sense of duration may be different than another's depending upon the motion of the observers.(twin paradox). But in many of the solutions to Einsteins equations, universes exist where an observer can travel in time that is: "return to his past and have a causal influence in principal."


"...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one." Einstein to colleague M. Besso

Time has no independent existence apart from the order of events by which we measure it.”
—Albert Einstein



In quantum mechanics time has a different meaning altogether. But again the sense that we experience and define time in everyday experience which is essentially old Newtonian Absolute time does not exist in QM. WE have the concept of entanglement and quantum state reduction which are completely alien to any traditional notion of time. The only consistent "time" in physics is merely the derivative of length and velocity. A clock is merely a devise for measuring a change in distance over velocity. But both velocity and length are not objective values in these theories relative to two different observers. So that "t" in standard physics is merely a measurement of two quantities in relation to each other.

And finally, the additional philosophical argument attributed originally to Godel was that once he was able to generate consistent solutions to GR that possessed universes where a hypothetical spacetime observer could possess a worldline that traversed his future light-cone and past light cone then time as a linear ontological concept doesn't exist. In other words once a participant in the universe can causally contact his "so-called" past, which is nonsensical o our normative notion of time, then time as an actual entity like space cannot exist.


Gödel took a more radical view: he believed that time, as it was intuitively understood, did not exist at all. As usual, he was not content with a mere verbal argument. Philosophers ranging from Parmenides, in ancient times, to Immanuel Kant, in the eighteenth century, and on to J. M. E. McTaggart, at the beginning of the twentieth century, had produced such arguments, inconclusively. Gödel wanted a proof that had the rigor and certainty of mathematics. And he saw just what he wanted lurking within relativity theory...

Other physicists marvelled that time travel, previously the stuff of science fiction, was apparently consistent with the laws of physics. (Then they started worrying about what would happen if you went back to a time before you were born and killed your own grandfather.) Gödel himself drew a different moral. If time travel is possible, he submitted, then time itself is impossible. A past that can be revisited has not really passed. And the fact that the actual universe is expanding, rather than rotating, is irrelevant. Time, like God, is either necessary or nothing; if it disappears in one possible universe, it is undermined in every possible universe, including our own.http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/28/050228crat_atlarge?currentPage=5

vykk_draygo
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Posted 09/07/08 - 10:01 AM:
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#49
This is for you, ManiacJack. However, I invite all of you to watch this video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4280922161474483340

It roughly describes the basics of string theory in layman's terms. Pretty interesting stuff.

Edited by vykk_draygo on 09/07/08 - 10:11 AM. Reason: F#&ked up html...
"But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?"
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jorndoe
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Posted 09/07/08 - 11:38 AM:
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IdoTsuk:

There's one class of your deductions that seems incoherent (to me, at least):

* "To sum up, I think that time doesn't really exist. It's just us moving through time."
* "The point on this line [T, time], for some reason, just keeps moving, triggering movements in the universe"
* "let's say the universe sped up 60x the speed it's at right now"

The terms "movement" and "speed", are used alongside with "time" in an odd manner (self-referential perhaps?):
So, now the question is, how can you say that we're "moving through time"?
Simply using the term "moving" already implies time, though, it seems, "a different time" than the subject (real) time?
The same goes for "speed"; what is "speed" through time, when "speed" itself requires time to have meaning in the first place..?
Haven't you already assumed that some kind of time exists, when talking about motion and speed?

A bad example of a somewhat similar nature:
* "I discussed it with my wife yesterday; there is no such thing as marriage, it's just an illusion."
(Sorry, couldn't come up with a better example off hand.)

Guess my question for you is:

How do you think of "movement" and "speed" without already having thought of "time"?
(Similarly, can you have "movement" without "space"?)

I realize that this line of thought hinges on this basic proposition:
* change, motion, process, etc => time (or, time is required for change)
Whereas, from a strictly empirical perspective you could argue that the opposite is actually the case:
* time => change (because I only observe change, not time)
Incidentally, this was just brought up in a different context (see http://forums.philosophyforums.com...outside-of-time-31301.html).

Personally, I subscribe to the notion that time is that which we want clocks to measure, by definition (not derived); subsequently of course we want a common, precise definition of unit.
As such, time is just as real as space, for example.
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