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Friday, September 11. 2015

Is time a "thing" that exists?


Current thinking is that time is probably a human construct, but a practical concept for daily life: Is there such thing as the beginning and end of time?



Our perception of time and space is arbitrary and inherently meaningless. It’s like the xy-grid we used in school. It’s useful for talking about the information dotted on it, but on its own is meaningless – it's just there. The information dotted on the grid would always be, regardless of the xy-grid. 



This is cool and does not require math:





Posted by Bird Dog in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 15:52 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)

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Current thinking is that time is probably a human construct

Do you have a cite more relevant than an entertainment network? There are solid arguments against that point of view.
#1 chuck on 2015-09-11 15:59 (Reply)
Doesn't matter. Constructs like these are useful if they help us predict the future regarding things we perceive to affect us (i.e. if A, then B, where B is feels good, hurts etc.). For example, if I drop this brick on my toe from ¼ " above it a) will hurt, b) will not hurt. If I drop this brick on my toe from 36" above it will a)hurt, b) not hurt. It's nice stuff to know.
#2 BillH on 2015-09-11 16:30 (Reply)
"Is there such thing as the beginning and end of time?"

Our local source for firewood - a farmer just along our road - surprised us by arriving at the house with our winter order today. He dumped it out on the driveway and so we spent a long day storing and piling it.

Didn't seem like we were ever going to finish...
#3 JJM on 2015-09-11 16:31 (Reply)
Time is a mental construct. Only change in objects is real. we measure that change by noticing the cyclical changes in other objects --sun, moon, quartz oscillations atomic decay etc. so many days, months, years, etc. The past is memory, and the future is imagination -- both mental functions. Today is a present-- enjoy opening it. That's my story and I am sticking to it. Blick
#4 Blick on 2015-09-11 21:15 (Reply)
Time is God's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
#5 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2015-09-11 23:02 (Reply)
Got that kiddies? It's a pretty good warm up for the really weird stuff:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics
#6 Roy Lofquist on 2015-09-12 00:00 (Reply)
Everyone gets a trophy. All opinions are valid. Only Medicine Men can properly present truly worthless and non factual truths. Pink Fred: " The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're getting older."
#7 walt reed on 2015-09-12 06:14 (Reply)
"Whilst the physicist would generally say that the matter of this familiar table is really a curvature of space, and its colour is really electro-magnetic length, I do not think he would say that the familiar moving-on of time is really an entropy-gradient. I am quoting a rather loose way of speaking, but it reveals that there is a distinct difference in our attitude towards the last parallelism. Having convinced ourselves that the two things are connected, we must conclude that there is something yet ungrasped behind the notion of entropy - some mystic interpretation, if you like - which is not apparent in the definition by which we introduced it into physics. In short, we strive to see that entropy may really be the familiar moving on of time."

Wm. Empson, The Structure of Complex Words, p.365
#8 rhhardin (Link) on 2015-09-12 20:13 (Reply)
Had a rather frantic call-out to rescue a family member (spouse off to a seminar and the left-behind coping with two young'uns). Turned out needed one body to help grout the patio blocks, while the other's duty was to keep the youngest grandbrat quiet. This last duty involved several hours or walking around the neighbourhood and environs. Trust the one who walked: time is really, really real.
#9 Frances on 2015-09-12 22:23 (Reply)

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