Does 'time' exist?

Joseph E. Smith · Post by **Joseph E. Smith** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 9:42 am

avanutria wrote:Don't you come from that place where everyone makes watches and clocks? Questioning the existence of time could cripple your whole economy...!

MarkB · Post by **MarkB** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 12:16 pm

Joseph E. Smith wrote:
avanutria wrote:Don't you come from that place where everyone makes watches and clocks? Questioning the existence of time could cripple your whole economy...!

That's the problem, Amar's twenty year old Timex died, the tock and tick are gone.

MarkB

Walden · Post by **Walden** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 12:35 pm

To my thinking, time is a frame of reference, whereby we organize thoughts, memories, and such. Its existence is more as an abstract concept.

Denny · Post by **Denny** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 12:38 pm

Well!

It is rather difficult to do music without it, eh?

amar · Post by **amar** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 12:40 pm

Walden wrote:To my thinking, time is a frame of reference, whereby we organize thoughts, memories, and such. Its existence is more as an abstract concept.

that's how I sort of think too. So, you have countless physical formulas and equations that contain time as well, does that mean they are nothing but abstract concepts as well..?

SteveK · Post by **SteveK** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 12:44 pm

Denny wrote: It is rather difficult to do music without it, eh?

I know some people who give it a pretty good try.

Denny · Post by **Denny** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 12:48 pm

SteveK wrote:
Denny wrote: It is rather difficult to do music without it, eh?
I know some people who give it a pretty good try.

Bad drummers are a plage in any genre.

dfernandez77 · Post by **dfernandez77** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 1:26 pm

Blackout_Entertainment wrote:Your logic is flawed in this manner:

Time can be manipulated. If it did not exist, it could not be manipulated.

No no no!

Your philosophical rumination is entertaining. But your perspective is flawed.

Time is static and immutable. Your perception sits atop time as if time was a barstool bolted to the floor. It's reality rushing past the barstool which you have labeled time.

Therefore, I believe it's time for another two fingers of Redbreast Pure Potstill Irish Whiskey. Nary a better libation can be found to accompany one sitting atop a barstool.

Post by **Dale** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 2:04 pm

Here's a thing I shared with amar early:

Think about tossing a ball straight up in the air. It rises, slows, reaches its maximum altitude, drops, speeding up, and you catch it.

The question is, when the ball reaches the top of its flight, does it stop at the moment it changes direction? One might say, yes, it must stop in order to completely reverse its direction. So: How much time does it hang in the air, if any, before it starts to fall instead of rise?

If you plot the altitude of the ball against time, you get something like this:

There is only one point on that parabola that represents when the ball is at rest, at the highest point of its flight. That point is represented on the parabola at the apex.

One geometic point on any line, including a parabola, has no dimension. That single point has no width and so casts no shadow on the x axis.

So, the amount of time that point occupies on the "time line" is zero.

But, the point IS on that line.

So, one might say: The ball stops for zero time, and yet the point at which it does stop does exist in time.

It stops, but for no time.

And Ray Charles is God.

But, anyway, I guess this is just a variation on all of those things that get at the continuity of time and/or space of the lumpiness of it. Like the Zeno's Arrow deal.

dfernandez77 · Post by **dfernandez77** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 2:29 pm

But the ball is only stopping in relation to your perception of reference point in space at the given time, and then only possibly on one of the commonly agreed to x,y,z axes of space. Put time into the illustration as a fourth axis, pause the illustration using any one point on any one axis as your reference, and the remaining axes will be rushing (or gliding, or massaging, or whathaveyou) around it.

Therefore, I, propounding from atop my immutable barstool labeled "time", do declare. Stopping the ball infinitely on any one of these four axes is possible by simply changing your point of reference (perspective). The more relevant question seems to be "On which axis is your barstool currently bolted?"

Then again, the relevance of the bolted barstool question is probably swimming in this tumbler of Redbreast that I don't actually have before me.

Even better question. Why is Wombat asleep? He'd be all over this time thing (and my fluid response) with fangs and teeth a gnashing.

MarkB · Post by **MarkB** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 2:31 pm

Does time exist? Yes I have this week's issue on my desk right now.

MarkB

Denny · Post by **Denny** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 3:25 pm

dfernandez77 wrote:Therefore, I, propounding from atop my immutable barstool labeled "time", do declare. Stopping the ball infinitely on any one of these four axes is possible by simply changing your point of reference (perspective). The more relevant question seems to be "On which axis is your barstool currently bolted?"

Daniel...

Dale = undisputed

Do you really want to be messing with his ball?

Dude, are you still on the barstool?

dfernandez77 · Post by **dfernandez77** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 3:50 pm

Denny wrote: Daniel...

Dale = undisputed

Do you really want to be messing with his ball?

Dude, are you still on the barstool?

Oh! I never disputed Dale, and wouldn't aspire to do so. I merely proposed a different perspective and an additional axis.

Today my barstool is a figment of my imagination. Because tonight I go to a collection of one-act plays put on at my son's high school. I don't drink in near temporal proximity to driving.

SteveShaw · Post by **SteveShaw** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:48 pm

amar wrote:The Swiss are a cunning people..

Yes, but what do you mean by "are?" The Swiss may be cunning, but only for an infinitesimal time...there! It's gone! They were cunning but are not now because this is the future relative to a minute ago when they were cunning...hang on! They're still cunning! So they were cunning continuously from the time I first noticed they were cunning, which was then, to now, which is a bit later than then...actually, even now as defined there is now then...so what does that make then then? Do/did you see what I mean(t)? And what was between then and now? Aarrgh! Whatever it was it's getting longer!

But seriously - I have nothing better to do at the moment - I'm just killing time actually...

Jack · Post by **Jack** » Sat Apr 29, 2006 7:33 pm

Time is one of those things (like the distance between of planets, the nature of God, and love) which always seems to be "just out of reach" of the human mind. We can understand it up to a point. And that point is enough for us to have a general idea. But we cannot, by our flawed, fallen design, ever fully comprehend the magnificence and span that time (or planets, or God, or love) stretches. It's simply too big for the human mind.

I have a quote to share.

"There is nothing I know better than now. It is more real than any other time. Yet when I reflect upon it, it doesn't exist at all."

I sadly did not write down where I read this. It was in a book. The author was a theologian and/or a philosopher of some sort, I think...