Whats up with time? We base our entire lives around it, and judge ourselves by it. Even though it is something created by humankind... I really dont like it, and probably sound like a stoner right now. sorry but what does everyone else think?

"time is on my side,
Yes it is,
Yes it is,
Tiiiiiimmmmmeeee . . . is on my side . . ."

Time is an artificial concept invented to help people better understand the act of certain elements on other elements. So there's nothing up with time, except that it's fake.

Cheers, Translator

Translator:

To your definiton of time:
I'd say.. yes.. and no!

St. Augustine, theologian, philosopher, writer, said in the year AD 400... " There are occasions when I know perfectly well what 'time' is... but in the process of picking up the pen to put to paper, I no longer know..."

In scripture it says there will be ...when 'time' is no more... but events continue.
Things as ... a day will be like a thousand years of living, and a thousand years of living, will appear to be as a single day.

If you compartmentalize 'time' in your life, your visit back to those events will be experienced as if no 'time' elasped. Think back something you did last week. The experience of doing that is said to be often 'exactly the same' ...if you were 90 looking back to when you were 10. It seems just last last week.

If it is just certain elements on other elements, then what important juxtapositioning of elements is necessary to produce continuity, especially an essential one that is relative only on a narrow association? That is to say, essential to something not in an event/time reality yet? Well, maybe forseeing the future is possible then? ?

>>"time is on my side,
It's Rolling Stones. I also like 'Time' by Pink Floyd and Alan Parson's Project.

There is brilliant story by Bradbury - 'Frost And Fire'. What do you think is the message in it for our lives...?

Ray also wrote "Pillar of Fire," about a semi-immortal vampire-like dude.

Speaking of vampire dudes, it was Dracula who said, "Time is on my side."

yeah yea what about that RB story about the guy going back in time and stepping on a butterfly, that was weird. and i was just thinking....when did time start...thats trippy, theres always something before that time and before that and before that....

I think the "measurement" of time is an artificial creation. But things seem to occur in a kind of linear timeline. I breathe one breath at a time. . . one following another. Time is a name we put on this very real phenomenon. An hour is an artificial label we put on a certain period to make life more functional for us. But the thing we put a label on . . . that seems real enough.

Bradbury has done some interesting stories on time. It's one of those concepts we live with but can't define. That's what I like about the quote Nard shared. To deny something we label "time" is hard; but to deny that the words and labels we use to describe and define it is also hard to defend.

Fascinating stuff.

[This message has been edited by Mr. Dark (edited 06-15-2004).]

Nard
And why should foreseeing the future be not possible? It's done right now, albeit on a much more scaled down level. Every time scientists manage to figure out the major motions of celestial elements, they are able to predict the appearence of certain phenomena. Take the Venus transit. Back in the day nobody had a clue when it will happen - they just took it as a miralce. Now we can calcualte it to the second (assuming the conditions stay the same). As we learn more and more about our surrounding, we can predict more and more things.

Mr Dark,
the only thing time has to do with linearity is the fact that time is based on consequences, and consequences are linear. But this moves us away from the intangible idea of "time" to the very tangible idea of causality. It is in this understanding that (of time being a euphemism for cause-and-effect) that I said time is an artificial construct which attempt to describe, in a one-dimensianal idea, the effects of certain things on other things.

Cheers, Translator

okay then theoretically, if everything stood still for even just a moment, does time also freeze since there is no cause and effect?

Translator,

Then if what you say is true, isn't calculating such things as the transit of Venus really only "predicting" the future and and not really "seeing" the future.

I disagree that time is based on consequences. If it's true that every action has an opposite and equal reaction (a consequence), if there's no action, there's no reaction (no consequence.) But time still passes, doesn't it? I mean, take a point in space. Nothing happens but doesn't time still pass?

Yes, the measurement of time is an artificial construct but time itself is not. Similarly, the measurement of space is an artificial construct but space itself is not.

Best,

Pete

Your close is what I attempted to say, but with less capable articulation. Thanks.

Nothing can ever stay still for a moment; the laws of the universe (gravity, electromagnetic, etc) don't allow it to be so. So your question is interesting, but unimaginable. Our world is based on the transfer of energy (and the eventual motion resultant of that transfer); to think of an instance outside of the transfer of enrgy is impossible. Hence it's pretty hard to answer your question. (one answer is that yes, aside from the impossibility of such a thing occuring, logic dictates that time would not pass). But It's like asking how much does God love the Jews. Not only is the idea of God hypothetical, but the quantification of "love" is impossible, especially in an "omnicient and omnipotent" entity (which is techincally above love and other human emotion. But I digress).

Pterran,
the difference between predicting the future and "seeing" the future is that "seeing" is an absolute version of predicting, a version that encompases all and every concievable part of the universe so that nothing is left unexamined, and no impact of anything, no matter how small or far away, is left uncalculated. Prediction is based on taking into account the (to us, imperfect and short-seeing humans) biggest and most easily understandable factors in a particular event.
So yes, the Venus Transit is ideed a prediction, not true "seeing into the future", as it was based mostly on the factors of gravity, trajectories, friction, and other easily calculable things. We have no clue, however, if Venus isn't going to be smcked my a large meteor in the future (coming, say, from the OOrt cloud), and knocking it out of its known trajectory (and thus making our predictions null and void) because we cannot easily see things coming from the Oort cloud.
After we take in the Oort cloud motions into account (sometime in the future), we then have to take into account, say, the flux of the sun, which might knock venus off its trajectory by some fraction of a milimeter (but still mess up our predictions by a few seconds). When we do that, we'll have to calculate the amount of dust in its way. And so on.
However, with increased knowledge, with increased measuring devices and calculating power, we are able to extend our "vision" further and further, up to a point when, some millions of years from now, we will be able to take into account every single mollecule in the universe, every single particle (both in our bodies, as well as the bodies of our fellow people or of suns billions of light-years away), and we will finally cease to "predict", and begin to "see" the fuure. In the meantime, it will be only our "predictions" that get better; the "seeing" part is the last step.

Back to your post: How can there be no action? The millions of invisible things happening to every thing in the universe are the action. Winds, acids, atomic explosions; all of those things have an impact on everything else.

A point is space is not just a point in space. Space iself is constantly changing; light is speeding forth, space is being "created". Because your point in space is part of this one gigantic system we call the universe, it is not isolated from it by anything. Hence, the 'space' of the space is "aging"; but since it's empty, there is nothing in it that will age. Empty space means that there is absolutley nothing there. Can nothing "age"? I would think not.

Time is an artificial construct by which we measure action and reaction. I stand by my stament. If we find a different scale (as we already have), we will not think of time as "time", but rather as its components.

Cheers, translator

Translator,

Well, as I said, what you describe is not seeing the future but predicting the future. And as for a humans being able to one day take into account all possible factors so that predicting and seeing the future are very close to being the same thing, that's sounds like the premise of a good sci-fi novel but not really likely to ever happen. (He said, boldly. Maybe some day we'll look back at this post and laugh at my short-sightedness.)

As for time being an artificial construct, I'll accept your point that my premise could never happen. (I was using it only as an example to de-construct your argument.) But, yes, if nothing exists, nothing happens, so no time passes. But since nothing can't exist, time does pass. Things are always happening. And there are always reactions to these actions. Thus, time, as a linear progression of events, occurs. Time arises as a result of the action/reaction process and can't be an artificial construct. It is only our measurement of time that is artificial.

Best,

Pete

See, here is where we differ. Time, athough linear, is not going at the same speed all the time (man, it's hard to make that sentance without using the word time). If it is indeed action and reaction, then some things are acting and reacting either quicker or slower, depending on the reactants. Hence age and time is realtive; two things placed in the universe in different circumstances will age differently, and time for these things will flow differently. But the idea behind the word "time" is that it is a uniform "peanut-butter" sort of word which assumes equal apread and equal passage no matter what the circumstances. Hence it's not the "time" that passes, it's the action-reaction-action-reaction sequence. As such, it is wholly dependant on the nature of the reactants.

to recap: My original post:

"Time is an artificial concept invented to help people better understand the act of certain elements on other elements. So there's nothing up with time, except that it's fake."
---the fakeness refered to the idea that the label "time" is artificial.

You just said:

"Things are always happening. And there are always reactions to these actions. Thus, time, as a linear progression of events, occurs. Time arises as a result of the action/reaction process and can't be an artificial construct. It is only our measurement of time that is artificial."

---if you agree that "Time arises as a result of the action/reaction process" then we are in perfect agreement - you agree that time can be divided into its constituents (ie, the reactants). If so, then the concept behind the notion of "time" is artificial, for if it is dependant on things that are not dependant of time itself, it means that time has nothing to do with the workings of the world (or the reactants, if you will), which means that it's an artificial concept.

By the by, never say never. There was a time not long ago when chess programs were laughed at by the world. Grandmasters made outragous bets that chess programs will never beat them. Right now they are 9the computers) among the best players in the world, and some can play a perfect game (ie, the forsee the conclusion of every move) given certain postions on the board (ie 5 chessmen on each side in any position on the board). The same logic can be applied, in millions of years, to the world. You just wait and see.

Cheers, Translator