Interesting hm, there can be two or more presents.<br />Travelling along a motorway at 70 mph the delay in your recognition of events is about the distance from the net & baseline of a tennis court.<br /> So if you travel closer than that behind a vehicle, & alarmingly many do, you could crash into it & die without ever being aware of the crash.
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<font color="orange"> Time is a human construct.</font><br /><font color="yellow"> No it isn't! </font><br /><br />It's hard to prove a negative and I'm open to the idea that time is not a human construct. So help convince me that it is not.<br /><br />When did time begin? Was there time before the Universe existed? The term "before" implies time so there must have time before the Universe existed. But what did time measure if there was nothing?
<font color="yellow">Interesting hm, there can be two or more presents. </font><br /><br />Let's make it easier. Assume you are a giant, stretching (186,000 miles x 60) from toe to brain and that electrical/chemical implulses travel your nervous system at the speed of light. At 1:00 I cut off your toe, at 1:01 you realize your toe has been cut off. So did your toe get cut off at 1:00 or 1:01?<br /><br />I would claim that the "present" is associated with the instant that the physical event took place in reality. By the time the giant became aware of reality, the event was in the past.<br /><br />Or are you saying that impulses can travel the nervous system at 60 times the speed of light so that the giant is aware of losing his toe as it happens?
Seems we have a granularity in perception.<br />A women will perceive faster than a man for possibly two reasons:<br /><br />1 she is smaller & therefore causing less time delay<br />2 her nervous system is faster than a man's<br /><br />I can't see a way around that as my motorway accident above showed.
What's the false premise and how do the other 4 senses matter, unless one of them can transmit information faster than the speed of light?
<font color="yellow">Events are ordered in the A-series as being past, present, or future, whereas in the B-series they are ordered as being earlier or later than one another.</font><br /><br />Are you saying that "reality" has a memory? <br /><font color="yellow"> Although we perceive time, we can not affect it, interact with it, or change it. It simply "is"!</font><br /><br />But it (time) "is" only because we perceive it. Reality is the thing that simply "is". And reality only exists now. Reality has no memory and no cognition of past, present or future.
"I believe time is forward only"<br /><br />I must agree with this. When we describe the past, present, or future, we describe events occuring in the past, present or future. Events can't be be undone. And just as events require time, they also require space in which to occur. When and where. Space and time are one and the same, and just as space expands, time moves forward.
<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Yes it's information from the past but can only be in the present.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />From your standpoint there is no past or future. Your present has a location and you can be in only one location. What you might call the past is no more no less than your present circumstance. <br />
<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>For example assume that at precisely 1:00 PM a dog bites your leg. It takes a tiny amount of time for the bite to travel the nervous system and register in our brain. So, by the time we become aware of the bite it is after 1:00 PM.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />And the point I'm making is that the dog bite at 1:00 PM does not exist without being in your present. I.E. In the location that happens to be your present. The past and future cannot, will not ever exist outside your present. We can discuss the past and future only to the extent that it is within our present. <br />
Why is it so hard to accept that an event can occur before we perceive it? Does this violate some physical law? It's simple: Bite, lag, perceive bite. Two different events at two different points in time.<br /><br />The implication, my initial claim, is that the reality that we perceive as the present is no longer in the present.
<font color="yellow">The key is how we measure time.</font><br /><br />Or I would say, how we define it. Is there any reason why we couldn't define a time period based on the length of time it takes an apple to rot?<br /><br />I agree that we can define time as the number of some arbitrary units that measure the change in some physical process. However, time is not required for the physical process to exist. It is merely the way humans make sense of change. Reality has no memory.
<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Why is it so hard to accept that an event can occur before we perceive it?<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote> Thats just it - The event does not occur until we percieve it within our present time frame, and we can only be in one time frame. The dog bite and your perception of it are two different events. When we speak of events ... it is a quantized version unfamiliar with that which is unquantized. Time is infinitely divisible and has no possibility to be captured for later identical perception. We don't perceive a past event. It is a present event and by no means to be percieved in any other way.<br /><br />In other words - Your brain may quantize, but your time frame does not.<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Does this violate some physical law? <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />There are no physical laws, but thats another story. Suffice to say ..... we can't be in two places at once, thus we are reserved to the present only (your place is now). Your aguement seems to be that we live only in the past? I'm having a hard time figgering where that might be. In mine or your present?<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p><br />The implication, my initial claim, is that the reality that we perceive as the present is no longer in the present. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote> This would be a misnomer on your part. The present is all you got. It's all yer gonna get. Yer past will never come back to haunt you, although you could be in trouble with the quantized version. 
<br /><br />In our universe there are only ones, one at a time, where time is the nothing ones are composed of. This is to say that one serves as a marker for time of which there are no markers. We simply register the markers up against no registration at all. Time is the sense of nothing at all through the existence of the markers.<br /><br />
<br /><br />In our universe there are only ones, one at a time, where time is the nothing ones are composed of. This is to say that one serves as a marker for time of which there are no markers. We simply register the markers up against no registration at all. Time is the sense of nothing at all through the existence of the markers.<br /><br />Time is an illusion of our animal brains. There is no basic advantage or need in properly perceiving time for what it is. What we experience as our reality are entire quantum histories being interfered out of existence. These histories relect paths not relevent to the ultimate history of transitions from initial and final quantum states of the nacent universe. These two sets of quantum states define the entropy field to which our animal selves are highly atuned. But the entropy field changes as some of the initial wave equations achieve coherence and change our entropy in real time. All of our information is part and parcel of the entropy field. That is why the observer paradoxes are so bewildering to our experiences at first inspection.<br /><br />Since we are fixed in realtime by virtue of our underlying machinery we perceive the change of entropy as invention and decay. Like the needle of a phonograph we faithfully render the recording as our reality, but by quantum trickery we have the potential of changing the song by altering its final notes. QM will insure that the melody history of the song is not discordant to the observers ear. The needle plays what comes and marvels as the song becomes more and more beautiful just as always has been the case.<br /><br />So long as we are mere beasts we will play the music as it is revealed to us. But if we evolve to a level where we are free of the shakles of real time, we can write our own ending to make our history sweeter to our ears. Are we playing our own music right now, or are we merely enjoying the tunes some other civilization has crafted? The only way to know for certain is if an asteroid deletes our thread since it never has mattered. <br /><br />For now, we can only enjoy the moment because we will remember it differently an instant from now. That is time.
<font color="yellow">Events exist. Our perception of them is delayed.</font><br /><br />Finally somebody agrees with me that there is a lag between the time an event occurs in reality and the time that we perceive it.<br /><br />I'm still not sure where my false premise lies that hicup refers to but it doesn't matter now that a respected member of SDC concurs with my conclusion.<br /><br />Hopefully we can all accept the conclusion as fact and move on to the next issue:<br /><br />How might the tiny lag between event and perception effect our ability to deal with reality at Planck scales?<br /><br /><br /><br />
Hicup,<br /><br />Would this be more to your liking?<br /><br />If I hack off a giant's toe then there exists a lag between the time the toe is hacked and the time the giant's brain is able to process the signals transmitted by the nervous system alerting the giant to the fact that his toe has indeed been hacked. Therefore, the giant does not become aware of his damaged toe until after it has been damaged. This is true even if the giant observed the hacking process.<br /><br />I base this conlcusion on the scientifically accepted notion that nerve impulses do not traverse the body at speeds exceeding the speed of light. In addition, external visual stimuli associated with the hacking will not reach the giant's brain until traversing the distance from the giant's toe to his optical system at the speed of light and then traversing the optical nerve and associated components at a speed not exceeding the speed of light.
Thanks for all the insightful posts on this subject. I'm grappling with nonconventional views of time for another project. <br /><br />I agree that for all practical purposes any lag in perception is meaningless.<br /><br />However, I also think that as humans, we are a mere pimple on the butt of reality. If reality could care, it would care little about some watery blobs that scrape along on the surface of planet earth who are incapable of perceiving reality as it occurs. Perhaps there are other intelligent life forms out there that experience reality with an even greater lag. But in the end, reality is reality, it proceeds as it prodeeds and events occur when they occur; not when we perceive they occur.<br /><br />The link to Lynds was great! Thanks! I like his view that time is not a measure of a "precise" instant but rather, time is always expressed as an interval. You cannot associate an "exact" instant of time with a static snapshot of a changing process. If you could, then the process is static and cannot be changing. Something to ponder.
<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Events occur, but that does not mean we have to perceive them for them to exist.<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p> It means they don't exist to you if you don't percieve them. Didn't say that events don't exist seperate from us.<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>The facts are that you are mistaken. We CAN be in two places at the same time. Just not very long distances, on average a meter and a half. It's called our bodies.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote> So you call our bodies as one place. What other place might we be wherein we can be in two places at the same time?<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>But the time intervals are extremely short and for that reason, it's a non issue. <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote> Sure are accepting a plethora of slop ... don't ya think?<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>As far as you saying here are no physical laws, if that states what it appears to be stating, then your position is absurd. Otherwise, tell us what you mean by that apparent absurdity, there are no physical laws, which runs contrary to human observations for the last 2000 years? <br /><br />I suspect your position in this case is profoundly idealistic or phenomenological. And we've been there before. It has no place in the sciences, as the sciences do not support such philosophical beliefs. <br /><br />You may argue all you like about this issue, but to ignore/deny the findings of neurophysiology and the sciences strikes me as a kind of denial of events/facts in existence which will often lead to mistaken & false beliefs and other nonsense.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />This is off topic from the discussion, and I prefer not the hijack the thread. Suffice to say that in a reductionist approach .... all things must be conceptually oriented, wherin physical reality will get tossed. <br /><br /></p></blockquote></p></blockquote>
ok, poor choice of words on my part. By "living" in the past I meant our conscious perception of living. <br /><br />I totally agree, we "exist" in the present.
No apology needed, I wasn't offended nor did I take any criticism as personal.<br /><br />I don't believe it's possible to travel into the future. At least in the sense of humans traveling faster than C. However, I would not rule out the possibility that travel faster than C can occur at the quantum level. However, if C was exceeded, any information that a particle carried and the particle itself would cease to exist in our reality/dimension. Whether the particle would cease to exist in every reality/dimension is another question.<br /><br />I believe that nothing exists beyond our "space-time edge" as you put it. If true, then where would a particle end up if it <i>could</i> travel faster than C?<br /><br />Maybe that's how a universe is born - A particle exeeds the C limit, leaves the bounds of our existence, and creates an entirely new reality. Would it arrive with a bang or would it continue to exceed C in the new "universe"? Would its speed establish a new and higher C in the new universe? If a particle exceeds the new C limit in the new universe would it create another universe with an even higher C? Perhaps there is a progression of realities; an evolution toward some ultimate reality where the transmission of information is instantaneous.<br /><br />Of course, if we progress half way to the instantaneous reality, then progress half of that, then half of that ...
<font color="yellow">... the instant of now is imperceptibly small, and may not really exist as a real entity.</font><br /><br />I agree and its a bizarre thought. Intuitively, there must be an instant of time that we can associate with "now". However, try to measure the instant of time associated with "now" and I don't think it's possible.
I agree, but I think there are implications for those that are working in QM and those trying to understand the "nature" of reality.
well, temperature can indeed vary from one zone to <br />another, and so does time itself,<br />as a matter of fact the speed of time too.<br />near a black hole time speed is slower,clocks literally tick slower (if they tick at all).<br />My question is what year is it right now near the Milky center? <br />(Is it closer to 1950? or closer to the time back when<br /> the center of the galaxy became massive?)<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
well actually forgive my ignorance, but I need to keep asking, because as for what year it is on two locations <br />here on earth I can understand (although the international date-line on the Pacifc ocean does cause a boat on one side to see 2006 while a boat on the other side still claims it's Dec 31 2005) . But even there, time <br />travels at the same speed, because both boats have the same proximity to earth's gravity.<br />When the astronauts took an atomic clock to space, however, they found out that that the twin atomic clock<br />here on earth slowed down, and this is more like the question I was asking, the atomic clock near the Milky way center is literally ticking slower...time there is traveling at a very very small speed if at all.I just wonder if someone knows what year it is over there computed by whatever the conversion formula is.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>
<font color="yellow">well, temperature can indeed vary from one zone to <br />another, and so does time itself, <br />as a matter of fact the speed of time too. <br />near a black hole time speed is slower,clocks literally tick slower (if they tick at all). <br />My question is what year is it right now near the Milky center? <br />(Is it closer to 1950? or closer to the time back when <br />the center of the galaxy became massive?)</font><br /><br />When you compare the time dilation of a star near the center of the galaxy vs. the time dilation of an object on the surface of the earth, the difference in time dilation is only 170 minutes after 2005 years! The clock on earth is actually slower! However, if you had an earth-sized planet orbiting a sun-like star near the center of the galaxy, the time dilation would mutiply in favor of having a slower clock on the surface of that earth-sized planet.<br /><br />http://members.roadfly.org/kmarinas86/dilation.xls<br /><br />I made a excel to cacluate this... It makes it sooo much easier! And it still takes long! Fun to do though.<br /><br />If the galactic center weighs:<br /><br />http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:0gyjgZKUKugJ:www.earthsky.com/shows/showsmore.php%3Ft%3D20010817+"mass+of+the+galactic"+suns&hl=en<br /><br /><font color="yellow">Jeff: The magnitude estimate is based on various sources that put the inner parsec at <b>10^7 solar masses</b>. (Others say inner dozen parsecs). Within the central 500 parsecs, the mass is <b>supposedly</b> about 10^10 solar masses. I selected a nice round 10 million suns and spread them over an area that would translate into a mean apparent diameter of 1 arcminute or so -- like Venus at its largest -- from a distance of 25,000 light yea</font>
Thought I'd drop by for a post.<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>...humans would die as the intense tides pulled them apart.<p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br />Ah yes, "Spaghettifaction."<br /><br />As to the Black Hole at the Shapely Center (I infer you're talking about the Milky Way Galaxy), it depends on the size, e.g. it's mass. <br /><br />If you're talking about something on the order of tens of millions of stellar masses, the gravity gradient on the verge of the event horizon is supposed to be shallower than you're discussing - enough to be able to obtain some serious time-dilatory effects, without severe tidal stress.<br /><br />I recollect that this has been dealt with in some papers. I'll see if I can locate some. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Differential Diagnosis: </em>"<strong><em>I am both amused and annoyed that you think I should be less stubborn than you are</em></strong>."<br /> </p> </div>
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