Random Thoughts on Time

KlodaX

I wasn't sure if this should belong in After Hours.. so I put it here.

I have come to a conclusion this evening. A random thought. I'm hoping others have random thoughts and will post them here.

But my random thought for this evening is .. I don't believe in time.
I don't think it exists. Honestly. It only exists because I let it exist.

Thats my random thought. Whats yours?

Kappar

I don't think it exists. Honestly. It only exists because I let it exist.

So then it does exist.

My 'random' thought is: Is there such a thing as random?

KlodaX

Is there such a thing as random?

ran·dom ( P ) Pronunciation Key (rndm)
adj.
Having no specific pattern, purpose, or objective:


I'm seeing a pattern here. Maybe there is no such thing as random.

leading on to my second thought ... what is this all leading too?

maybe its like going somewhere... you don't know where you are going untill you get there... otherwise .. how are you to know where you are going?

KlodaX

*what a mad idea for a threa*:ninja:

azezil

I don't think there's no such thing as time i do however think our view of time is far too limited, our perception of time is based on the revolutions of our planet... what if our planets revolution rate wasn't constant, would we have a different perception of time?

flogen

ok, my random thought is related to time:

The idea of the past is something that people always assosiate with years gone by, but what about seconds?? I suddenly started to think deeply about the past, and how this second instantly becomes the past.
Therefore, as we cannot see the past (when we look behind us while walking down the road), then where is it? Does every moment suddenly cease to exist, or, as i believe, does it 'drop off' underneath this time frame into another??

It sounded more profound in my head.....
I wonder what Id think if i ever took acid....

Flogen

KlodaX

Therefore, as we cannot see the past (when we look behind us while walking down the road), then where is it? Does every moment suddenly cease to exist, or, as i believe, does it 'drop off' underneath this time frame into another??

if its only a memory ... how can you be sure it ever happened at all?

thats a great way to calm yourself down ... like counting sheep before you go to sleep .. I sometimes do it if I can't get to sleep... think of the previous second... then once a second is up .. think of the second previous to that ... you are actually thinking of thinkin of the previous second after the first one... your mind kinda locks into nothingness ... its great.

I got a present of a clock today. The day after I stop believing in time .. I get a clock as a present ...honestly.... who gives clocks as presents?? .. its not even my birthday ... was a gift brought back from a journey. Nice clock though.
Just odd timing! :rolleyes: bad pun I know.

That can't be random.

mr_angry

This is the maddest thread ever.

I could go into why time is just a perception caused by the fact that all matter is merely energy reduced in speed to a slow vibration. However, the irony is that it would take too long to explain!

KlodaX

Originally posted by mr_angry
This is the maddest thread ever.

I could go into why time is just a perception caused by the fact that all matter is merely energy reduced in speed to a slow vibration. However, the irony is that it would take too long to explain!

so ... if there was a guy on a train moving very fast taking a picture out the window ... and the photo was a freeze shot of everything moving very fast... would humans be the photo or the guy taking the picture?

Stark

Sometimes when I feel guilt about chopping up kids and hiding them in my basements, I think to myself "why should I feel guilty? They only exist if I let them exist, and I'm no longer letting them exist. Violence on something that doesn't exist isn't wrong".

Sorry went way overboard extreme in my argument But "If I don't believe it exists it doesn't exist" way of thinking is really stupid.

Time does exist, we can take that as a given. The past exists, even though we've moved on from it. What propels us forward is something we need to work out. Whether the future exists and in what form is another thing we need to work out. Relativity would seem to indicate that the future exists. However relativity does not explain the "arrow of time". There is a theory known as causal sets which provides a much more complete explanation of the nature of time, and explains our different experiences of past, present and future. It's fairly complicated though, and I don't fully understand it.

I got a present of a clock today. The day after I stop believing in time .. I get a clock as a present ...honestly.... who gives clocks as presents?? .. its not even my birthday ... was a gift brought back from a journey. Nice clock though.
Just odd timing! bad pun I know.

Time gave you a present to lure you back to the fold? If only God gave me presents every time I stopped believing in him (apart from that ticket to hell which was a pretty ****ty present, it was lucky that the store allowed me to exchange it ).

simu

You're not alone, redRogue!

Today, I saw mention in a footnote of a book about J. McTaggart who also believes that time dosen't exist - here's his explanation!.

Haven't had time to read it all myself yet as it's quite long but I thought it might be of interest to you!










Edited - forgot to put McTaggart's name in my post!

DadaKopf

McTaggart has a mad thought experiment about time that leads him to some nutty conclusions.

If you imagine time not to exist, obviously it stops. Somehow he works out there are something like four realms of time.

To be honest, I didn't bother reading up on it after the lecture but it sounds fun. I'll take a look at this after me exams.

Most work I've put in to understanding anyone's theory of time is St. Augustine's. Our lecturer said that, after 800 years or so, he's still a leading authority on it! You can't measure it, you can't see it, you can't even experience it only by proxy. So, he concludes (similar to McTaggart) it does exist objectively, it's a 'distention' of the mind, a psychological phenomenon. At the same time, the universe is bound by it. To measure it is similar to measuring foots of poetry. It's never uniform, as much as Newton liked to think (and, yes, I know nothing about scientific theories of time), it's fluid and indeterminate.

It's fun thinking about it, but it doesn't really get food to starving people.

DadaKopf

Oh yeah, another dude to check out is Gaston Bachelard. He was a philosopher of science who came to examine aesthetics and developed an intruiging theory of science that was heavily dependent on psychological theories of the construction of space (real and imagined) and memory & time.

simu

Someone posted a new "random question" but I've moved it to another thread here as the discussion that started here on time is getting interested and it would be a pity to block it out by starting a new discussion on something else in the same thread.

It's good asking random questions but it's also good to give people the chance to ponder them and develop their thoughts about the topic at hand!

[DF]Lenny

Sometimes time is a place sometimes a thing but to truly understand the nature of time one must be dead.it is only in the abstract like so many other things..i can speed up time in my thoughts never mind the 4 realms.I have sometimes eaten time like a great black hole but it finds its way to some one else and then becomes their time which no longer interests me and then becomes their time which is of no value to me.

We all have our own time to play with as we must..some waste it, others pass it on but in doing so reduce their own time.It is a precious commodity totally undervalued and used for mundane taks such as life.I for one am keeping mine for when i am dead...

then i can use it as i see fit.

seamus

My recent random thoughts on time have been more simplistic.

Time has speed. There is such thing as the speed of time, and it moves at a constant velocity in all directions. Well, not all directions, but for all intents and purposes....

Take the theory of relativity. The faster, or more you travel, the more time slows down for you, essentially. So time is travelling slower relative to you. Which means that time must have a speed, since all measurements are taken relatively - for example;
Imagine time is a train, and you're standing beside the tracks. The train is flying past you at the speed of time, and for the sake of illustration, every time a cabin window passes you, that's one second that's passed. If you begin to run alongside the train, the train is moving slower, relative to you. If you run alongside the train at the speed of time, then a cabin window never passes you - time is not moving relative to you.

This is all purely out of my head (you'd never guess). So that means that a) You can't travel forward in time - instead you can only slow down time for you, so even though it may seem like you have, it would be a one way trip. The ability to go back in time seems maybe possible, but maybe not - it would involve going faster than the speed of time, and is where the train analogy has to end, as I can't come up with a simple visualisation of how it would work.

I've probably neglected many things I don't know about string theory and other physics theories, and the train analogy has many flaws, but it illustrates to me why I think that time is just another simple part of physics, like velocity, which we will one day be able to manipulate.

Stark

Travelling back in time is theoretically possible, but it would require vast amounts of energy. (one of the possible ways involves 10 large stars arranged in a cylinder and spinning at huge angular velocity so that their gravity pulls spacetime around it providing a path backwards in time).

mr_angry

God bless Horizon!

sausages

time can be veiwed in too ways: 1)the physical way, ie time is the fourth dimension,ya da yada, or 2) the spirual way

Kappar

Travel in time is possible. If one were to travel on a spaceship at high speed time would slow down for you. Upon returning to Earth for the sake of agrument say 1 year has past while for you only 6 months has gone that means you have trveled in time.

This could be appleied on a miniture scale on earth. Imagine someone on a tall building they are traveling faster then someone at ground level because of the rotation of the earth. They are therefore making a tiny tiny time travel.

seamus

Originally posted by Kappar
Travel in time is possible. If one were to travel on a spaceship at high speed time would slow down for you. Upon returning to Earth for the sake of agrument say 1 year has past while for you only 6 months has gone that means you have trveled in time.

This could be appleied on a miniture scale on earth. Imagine someone on a tall building they are traveling faster then someone at ground level because of the rotation of the earth. They are therefore making a tiny tiny time travel.

The only argument I would make is that "travelling" in time would seem to imply that you can move through time without changing your position (whereas you can't - you must move at some velocity to cause the time distortion), and also that you can reverse the effect, i.e. you can return to the time from whence you came. That's a tough one to prove.

rde

Time is a function of our universe; I don't think there can be any doubt it exists. GPS, for example, works by timing to godzillionths of a second; pretty accurate for a figment of the imagination.

There's also no doubt that time travel is possible in theory; but as we all know, in theory there's no difference between theory and practice; in practice that's rarely the case. Relativity is generally (ha!) accepted as an incomplete theory; however, it's pretty accurate as far as it goes (or at least, as far as it's been taken). It doesn't differentiate between forward- and backward-running time; we just haven't identified those aspects of reverse time travel that occur in the universe. I'm confident that some day, quantum mechanics will be seen as an offshoot of relativity, and quantum uncertainty a consequence of particles travelling in time. But I belive dark matter to be the 20th century's phlogiston, so what do I know?

Fysh

Errr....the Special Theory of relativity is accepted as being separate to the General Theory of Relativity, and it's the general theory which is considered incomplete due to our incomplete model of how gravity works. The special theory deals only with spacetime effects due to relative velocities. It can only be considered incomplete in that our understanding of time is not yet complete.

What time *is* cannot be answered easily. There's no physical aspect to it; it's as intangible as "velocity". Yes, we can tell something has velocity because we can interact with it, but time is not like other forces in our universe in that, as far as we know, we have no way of manipulating it outside of crude devices like the one already mentioned (jump on a ship capable of near-light-speed travel and you will not age as much as someone stationary).

It could well turn out that time is no more real than the centrifugal force, that we perceive as time is no more than a natural result of a universe working on purely entropic terms, changing states at infinitesimal intervals, each one closer to a "stable" configuration than the last. It could be that, as some interpretations of string theory (which I know very little about, before someone questions me on it) suggest, the universe randomly hops through these configurations and we somehow manage to ascribe coherence and meaning to them.

Personally, I don't think time travel is possible, however. In quantum physics terms, you're talking about returning along one branch of probability and then choosing a different branch. Depending on the interpretation of quantum you choose, you will have some form of paradox. Either you go for multiverse theory and end up with one universe suddenly losing a bunch of matter and another gaining it (non-trivial violation of conservation of energy), or you have a single universe in which one physical individual has two consciousnesses present at once (which, depending on what phsyiological view you take of thoughts and the workings of the brain, can cause another nontrivial violation of the conservation of energy).,

watty

Einstein didn't at all like quantum mechanics. It is a usefull "cookbook" that gives useful answers to problems, but it raises more philosphical questions.

Einstein's comment on Quantum Mechanics was something like "God doesn't play dice".

I do also suspect that Time is some kind of perceptual artifact like Centrugial force, but not in quite the same sense. It is obviously such an important incredient in so many equations that in some underlying sense there is a property that gives rise to our Time perception.

Entropy and our weak understanding of it is bound up with Time.

It has been said that any percieved conflict between Entropy and Evolution (both time based processes) is due a lack of understanding of both. However *most* observed things appear to decay, deterioate, wear out, run out. The entire Solar system is decaying. Our Sun will die. The Universe will either run done into uniform blackness or collapse to a singlarity.

Yet Biological systems (a mere flash in the Eons of Time of the Universe, or even the Solar System) are said to evolve and get more complex (generally) with passing time. Why should this be? Cockroaches, Rodents and algae are very succesfull. Why shouldn't everything deterioate to a Cockroach and Algae simplicity. Mind you I read that a staggering 82% of all mammals are rodent related group.

Fysh

Originally posted by watty
Einstein didn't at all like quantum mechanics. It is a usefull "cookbook" that gives useful answers to problems, but it raises more philosphical questions.

Einstein's comment on Quantum Mechanics was something like "God doesn't play dice".

Yes, but he also eventually accepted the idea when he could not find any alternative with convincing proof.

Regarding the "dice" comment, Schrodinger replied "Stop telling god what to do". The ability to make a smart comment doesn't confer higher intellectual authority.

I do also suspect that Time is some kind of perceptual artifact like Centrugial force, but not in quite the same sense. It is obviously such an important incredient in so many equations that in some underlying sense there is a property that gives rise to our Time perception.

Yeah, I'll go for that. Time as a shadow of something else happening in the universe that we can't see directly, as it were.

Entropy and our weak understanding of it is bound up with Time.

It has been said that any percieved conflict between Entropy and Evolution (both time based processes) is due a lack of understanding of both. However *most* observed things appear to decay, deterioate, wear out, run out. The entire Solar system is decaying. Our Sun will die. The Universe will either run done into uniform blackness or collapse to a singlarity.

Yet Biological systems (a mere flash in the Eons of Time of the Universe, or even the Solar System) are said to evolve and get more complex (generally) with passing time. Why should this be? Cockroaches, Rodents and algae are very succesfull. Why shouldn't everything deterioate to a Cockroach and Algae simplicity. Mind you I read that a staggering 82% of all mammals are rodent related group.

Entropy only makes sense when viewed over a total closed system. Our planet is cosmically speaking tiny, and when you view even on the scale of the planet or the solar system, "decay" as you call it or "stability" as physicists generally refer to it, is the driving process. It boils down to the energy available for release from given atoms/particles, and while we are currently experiencing behaviour analogous to swimming upstream, overall entropy is still rising. The stars are burning out, available resources are dwindling, and the universe is heading to either heat death or inward collapse. It's not a paradox, just a question of scale.

edited to finish an incomplete sentence

watty

Quantum Mechanics is very useful and fascinating. But definately only *an* answer till we get a better one.

The anology with Evolution is useful. On a Micro scale both seem to contridict what we observe and have good laws and theory for on a Macro scale.

I agree that the paradox isn't real, only apparent. But like Quantum Mechanics, Evolution is just the "best" theory we have for a bunch of stuff and leaves many philosphical questions unanswered.

I find both useful, though being and enginner I find occasional practical use for Quantum Mechanics and none for Evolution. I don't "beleive" in either.

But since much of what was taught to me at Primary and Secondary School turned out to be what Terry Pratchet calls "Lies to Children", there isn't much I "Beleive". Of course I make great practical use of many things I don't beleive. At college the Lecturers were more forthright, in Materials Science, he said "Much of what I teach you is really Fairy Tales" he paused "However it is very useful Fairy Tales till we get something better. Remember no-one has really seen an Electron or individual atom, only the effect on test equipment"


I did think of posting this in "Irish Skeptics" but I see on closer examination it is "Irish Skateparks". I was sure there *used to be* an "Irish Skeptics".

watty

Originally posted by Kappar
Travel in time is possible. If one were to travel on a spaceship at high speed time would slow down for you. <snip>.

We are travelling on a big spaceship at high speed. Perhaps this affects our perception of Time. Oddly many people don't realise this.

(I wish some people would stop messing up the recreational decks and trying to overload the air recycling equipment).


It's a Mk1 Terran "multigeneration" ship with outboard fusion reaction Power unit. (a nasty too high a radiation thing to have inboard).

We need to take care of it as no-one seems to have kept the Warrenty Papers.

Fysh

Originally posted by watty
Quantum Mechanics is very useful and fascinating. But definately only *an* answer till we get a better one.

Well....yes and no. It's by no means set in stone, but on the other hand there's been no convincing evidence of gaping holes in the theory, outside fo the ongoing quest for a unified quantum field theory (doomed from the start IMO, but who am I to argue with Hawking?

As far as "believing" things goes....belief is largely irrelevant. If it works and there's no evidence that it doesn't work, that's enough for me. As soon as "belief" or "faith" starts coming into it, there's a good chance things'll go pearshaped.

ecksor

There is still an Irish Skeptics, under Community -> Public

keu

......

IMO, time is an illusion....

Fysh

...that's a truly staggering addition to the debate about time going on so far.

keu

yea....well..I was planning on writing a big spiel, but I didn't have the time.

joshcork

Time in my opinion doesn't exist exactly but is a consequence of matter and mechanics. Since everything we see is strictly speaking only because the mass has moved. Everything in the universe is energy and energy is unchanging so it has no perception of time in a closed system.

For time travel to the past why not, in theory its just a matter of rearranging energy to particular place and pressing play

For travel to the future just get in a fast plane i suppose

mike65

I find its best to let The Floyd sum up my feelings about time -

Ticking away the moments that make up the dull day

You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way

Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town

Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today

And then one day you find that ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking

And racing around to come up behind you again

The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time

Plans that either come to naught or a half page of scribbled lines

Hanging on in a quiet desperation is the English way

The time is gone the song is over, thought i'd something more to say

Mike.

Fysh

Originally posted by joshcork
Time in my opinion doesn't exist exactly but is a consequence of matter and mechanics. Since everything we see is strictly speaking only because the mass has moved. Everything in the universe is energy and energy is unchanging so it has no perception of time in a closed system.

For time travel to the past why not, in theory its just a matter of rearranging energy to particular place and pressing play

For travel to the future just get in a fast plane i suppose

errr....not exactly. There is a law of conservation of energy but energy can take several forms, some of which are more stable than others. Entropy is the thing that makes me think there is time - a "measure of disorder" as it were. Physical and chemical processes drive towards stability (eg radioactive decay, atoms go from less stable state to more stable state). Entropy never decreases in a closed system - the best that can be hoped is a steady entropic state under which no useful work can be done.

joshcork

We percieve time as the rate of change of stuff. If their were no stuff then you have no refrence to base time on hence it would'nt need to exist.
I know thats a very broad statement and for all intensive purposes time does exist but I just like to think that time is a consequence of matter not the other way round.

keu

thats a little bit like the str joshcork. e=mc2..I tend to agree.

Fysh

There's no point in trying to say that one is the consequence of the other or vice-versa. The currently accepted theories of Special and General Relativity suggest that the universe consists of a Space-Time Continuum. It doesn't say "Space made time so that there would be some way for stuff to happen" or "Time made space so that there was somewhere for things to happen in". Just that the two are inextricably linked. Further discussion of this requires a fairly advanced understanding of astrophysics as well as a lot of very complex mathematical tools.

Not meaning to be rude or anything, but I spent three years getting a Physics degree and "woolly" physics gets on my nerves.

Aside from that, why on earth was the "E=mc2" mentioned? That deals with the conversion of energy and matter, and doesn't involve time at all.

joshcork

I'm doing an applied physics degree at the moment aswell and I take your point I was just trying to be a bit more philisophical about it since if your going to get into the specifics its really cutting edge stuff that only a few people really understand
I certainly don't so instead I'm just taking a different point of view

simu

Yes, instead of getting into the physics side of things, we could discuss how people perceive time.

Here's an article that takes a philosophical appraoch to time perception.

I'm pasting the first two paragraphs to give an idea of what exactly is being discussed:

We see colours, hear sounds and feel textures. Some aspects of the world, it seems, are perceived through a particular sense. Others, like shape, are perceived through more than one sense. But what sense or senses do we use when perceiving time? It is certainly not associated with one particular sense. In fact, it seems odd to say that we see, hear or touch time passing. And indeed, even if all our senses were prevented from functioning for a while, we could still notice the passing of time through the changing pattern of our thought. Perhaps, then, we have a special faculty, distinct from the five senses, for detecting time. Or perhaps, as seems more likely, we notice time through perception of other things. But how?

Time perception raises a number of intriguing puzzles, including what it means to say we perceive time. In this article, we shall explore the various processes through which we are made aware of time, and which influence the way we think time really is. Inevitably, we shall be concerned with the psychology of time perception, but the purpose of the article is to draw out the philosophical issues, and in particular whether and how aspects of our experience can be accommodated within certain metaphysical theories concerning the nature of time and causation.

keu

..this thread is titled random thoughts on time...
if it was titled definitive thoughts on time then maybe I could understand why the physicist gets a bit uptight.
Einstein’s special theory of relativity is his translation of the physics that shaped our “truths” of space and time. That’s pretty definitive.

Energy (mass travelling at the speed of light squared) e=mc2
I used e=mc2 in a relative capacity.. call it artistic license, because this is the philosophy forum, and not the physics forum, think of it like an analogy
The conversion of energy and matter has everthing to do with it, in particular in response to joshcorks post, as he stated that

time does exist but I just like to think that time is a consequence of matter not the other way round.

Is it not possible that time is the result of such a conversion?

To me it suggests that time is the result of physical existence.
in some strange way I equated time as the consequence of mass travelling at the speed of light…. squared
…and this statement sort of concured with the image I had

We percieve time as the rate of change of stuff. If their were no stuff then you have no refrence to base time on hence it would'nt need to exist

just to add
I find that most of the topics on this board are governed by a metaphysical perspective and so they will veer off into the hardened "reality" of physics..but as I've said before, this should add to the subject, not detract from it.

metaphysics:

"Whereas physics is the attempt to discover the laws that govern fundamental concrete objects, metaphysics is the attempt to discover the laws that systematize the fundamental abstract objects presupposed by physical science, such as natural numbers, real numbers, functions, sets and properties, physically possible objects and events, to name just a few. The goal of metaphysics, therefore, is to develop a formal ontology, i.e., a formally precise systematization of these abstract objects. Such a theory will be compatible with the world view of natural science if the abstract objects postulated by the theory are conceived as patterns of the natural world."

more here

..how difficult is it to understand my perception of energy, (and therefore time) the most preliminary scientific fact that we ever learned was that energy cannot be destroyed, but can be changed from one form to another. This is the substance of metaphysics...I am just applying the laws of physics to the self.
Eg:
me=energy
so I just apply e=mc2 to the human condition and I find myself converted from matter to energy ..at some point. Some people consider this energy as the soul.

like my woolley physics?

anyway..Descartes had a similar idea

"I prefer here to attend to the thoughts that sprung up of themselves in my mind, and were inspired by my own nature alone, when I applied myself to the consideration of what I was. In the first place, then, I thought that I possessed a countenance, hands, arms, and all the fabric of members that appears in a corpse, and which I called by the name of body. It further occurred to me that I was nourished, that I walked, perceived, and thought, and all those actions I referred to the soul; but what the soul itself was I either did not stay to consider, or, if I did, I imagined that it was something extremely rare and subtile, like wind, or flame, or ether, spread through my grosser parts."

:rolleyes:

keu

I just wanted to emphasise, this is my perspective, it's not a universal ideaology..it's mine, if you think it's irrelevant, fine, it's just my opinion, I'm not studying for a degree or looking for points, I'm just expressing myself and my philosophy.

Fysh

Originally posted by remote viewer
To me it suggests that time is the result of physical existence.
in some strange way I equated time as the consequence of mass travelling at the speed of light…. squared
…and this statement sort of concured with the image I had

Well, it's not. What you get from that calculation is the total energy that would be unleashed by converting all of that mass into a massless form (which is where the speed of light part comes in - the faster you are going, the harder it is to accelerate, leading to a situation where it is unclear if a particle with a defined and significant mass can in fact be accelerated to the speed of light). Time doesn't come into this equation at all, under its generally accepted form.

Eg:
me=energy
so I just apply e=mc2 to the human condition and I find myself converted from matter to energy ..at some point. Some people consider this energy as the soul.

like my woolley physics?

I have a bit of a better idea of where you're going here, but nonetheless - the fact that you are stating "your own opinion" does not change the fact that you're taking a rigorously defined physical law (in this case, einstein's relation of energy and matter), throwing a very woolly definition into the mix (stating that you are energy), then suggest that this means you undergo a transition that you clearly cannot undergo (there is no such thing as pure energy, merely different material states in which it can exist - and I assure you, if you had transformed from a standard-issue human body into a form consisting entirely of gamma radiation [which, courtesy of Einstein's relation, can be considered either as a collection of particles or a wave pattern, but is not totally described by either interpretation], you would have great difficulty in posting on a message board in the same way as the rest of us, owing to the relative difficulties in such diverse problems as maintaining the chain reactions necessary to sustain life or the construction of a neural network consisting entirely of waveforms), then provide a throwaway reference to how some people consider this to be "the soul" (despite appending no explanation for how this works). Not to mention your lack of explanation of how you apply a physical formula to your again undefined "human condition".

And then you ask if, as a physicist, I like your woolly physics. And I have to confess that I don't. Because the perspective you are presenting does not, from your post, make ANY sense. It looks from where I'm sitting like you've grabbed a formula that everyone old enough to read has heard of at some point, read a bit about the mind-body problem, and then tried to make your post appear to be more deeply thought through than is in fact the case by adding random bits of pseudo science.

There is no hard and fast evidence for the existence, physical or otherwise, of the soul. This does not mean we cannot discuss it, but it does mean that discussing it from a physicist's perspective is, to say the least, misguided. I mean, it's somewhat akin to discussing the relative merits of unicorns for showjumping contests.

Why am I going on about this? Because philosophy is meant to be about coherent and logical thoughts, based on reasoning. A great part of this is having people try their hardes to tear your idea to shreds or find weaknesses in the reasoning. It requires disciplined thought and a lot of attention to detail. Otherwise we end up with a bunch of vague statements, none of which can be compared to each other or evaluated. But it doesn't matter, because everyone's just stating their opinion. :rolleyes:

keu

Originally posted by remote viewer
To me it suggests that time is the result of physical existence.
in some strange way I equated time as the consequence of mass travelling at the speed of light…. squared
…and this statement sort of concured with the image I had

and then I quoted the statement

time does exist but I just like to think that time is a consequence of matter not the other way round.

I was going to edit it, but I decided to wait for you to find the flaws for me.
basically you can't fathom the nature and essence of energy as I am applying it. ?? thats not my problem, it is a way that I can systemize my approach to metaphysics. My philosophy is based on that formula.

throwing a very woolly definition into the mix (stating that you are energy), then suggest that this means you undergo a transition that you clearly cannot undergo (there is no such thing as pure energy, merely different material states in which it can exist - and I assure you, if you had transformed from a standard-issue human body into a form consisting entirely of gamma radiation [which, courtesy of Einstein's relation, can be considered either as a collection of particles or a wave pattern, but is not totally described by either interpretation], you would have great difficulty in posting on a message board in the same way as the rest of us, owing to the relative difficulties in such diverse problems as maintaining the chain reactions necessary to sustain life or the construction of a neural network consisting entirely of waveforms), then provide a throwaway reference to how some people consider this to be "the soul" (despite appending no explanation for how this works). Not to mention your lack of explanation of how you apply a physical formula to your again undefined "human condition".

other than being one very very long scentence, thats as woolley as they come, because you cannot percieve the self as a form of energy. The rest of it is correct, I would have great difficulty posting, because I wouldn't have a body
thats the point I'm making.

suggesting a transition that you clearly cannot undergo

have you never heard of death?

And then you ask if, as a physicist, I like your woolly physics.

now thats just funny.

There is no hard and fast evidence for the existence, physical or otherwise, of the soul. This does not mean we cannot discuss it, but it does mean that discussing it from a physicist's perspective is, to say the least, misguided. I mean, it's somewhat akin to discussing the relative merits of unicorns for showjumping contests.

exactly, there is no fast evidence for the existance of the soul. This is the abstract.
there is no fast evidence to support the beginning of time either, this abstract has been defined through religion, borne of philosophy down through the ages.
Thats also why I posted a definition of metaphysics.

Because the perspective you are presenting does not, from your post, make ANY sense. It looks from where I'm sitting like you've grabbed a formula that everyone old enough to read has heard of at some point, read a bit about the mind-body problem, and then tried to make your post appear to be more deeply thought through than is in fact the case by adding random bits of pseudo science.

thats very mature of you.
maybe all those books you ate have made your brain all square and you just forgot how to be able to think outside the box...you genius you
...if you wish you could just make this a private board, y'know, or put a sign up over the door that requires knowledge of pythagorus theory before entering and all members would have to become vegetarian and celibate. Then as you begin to write your commandments in order to promote an ulterior race you could nominate your desciples in such a fashion as they would represent all the prime numbers, backwards.

...

anyway...as far as I could see, you just do not wish to see from my point of view that me=energy.
otay..lets agree to disagree.

Fysh

Originally posted by remote viewer
and then I quoted the statement...
I was going to edit it, but I decided to wait for you to find the flaws for me.
basically you can't fathom the nature and essence of energy as I am applying it. ?? thats not my problem, it is a way that I can systemize my approach to metaphysics. My philosophy is based on that formula.

Neither I, nor many other people who have undertaken to study physics around the world, are prepared to accept, on face value and with no detailed evidence, the assertion that "you are energy". You can try and pretend that your lack of detail in the definition is my ignorance, but you'll fail to convince anyone with a grounding in physics.

other than being one very very long scentence, thats as woolley as they come, because you cannot percieve the self as a form of energy. The rest of it is correct, I would have great difficulty posting, because I wouldn't have a body
thats the point I'm making.

At this juncture, I'll point out that you have previously defined yourself as energy ("me=energy" was the exact phrase, as I recall).

have you never heard of death?

Yep. Yet to see any evidence that death involves a transition of the self into a waveform, though.

exactly, there is no fast evidence for the existance of the soul. This is the abstract.
there is no fast evidence to support the beginning of time either, this abstract has been defined through religion, borne of philosophy down through the ages.
Thats also why I posted a definition of metaphysics.

Given that currently accepted theories (General Relativity) treat space and time as being related, and the general acceptance (which, by all means, does not imply irrefutable proof - merely that so far we haven't found a better theory) of the Big Bang theory as being the point at which our universe "began", I would say that actually, if you accept any of the evidence that supports the big bang theory, you have evidence for the beginning of time. The soul, being far more intangible than the passage and effects of time, does not fall into the same category.

I'm not entirely sure how time has been "defined through religion", however. They don't have a great deal to do with it, as far as I can tell. Although you might have been referring to the soul in that bit, so I could be wrong.

thats very mature of you.
maybe all those books you ate have made your brain all square and you just forgot how to be able to think outside the box...you genius you
...if you wish you could just make this a private board, y'know, or put a sign up over the door that requires knowledge of pythagorus theory before entering and all members would have to become vegetarian and celibate. Then as you begin to write your commandments in order to promote an ulterior race you could nominate your desciples in such a fashion as they would represent all the prime numbers, backwards.
...
anyway...as far as I could see, you just do not wish to see from my point of view that me=energy.
otay..lets agree to disagree.

Well, I'll thank you not to accuse me of being mature again any time soon (it's a quality I exercise in at best moderate amounts). Aside from that, I will quote the following excerpts from the charter of this forum:

"Try to express your ideas as clearly and unambiguously as possible as this avoids needless confusion arising and clouding the original debate"

"If you don’t understand another person’s post for some reason, ask them to explain what they meant."

"The most important quality for participating in this forum is your willingness to learn!"

Now, I've repeatedly pointed out that the parts of your post that I take umbrage at are those which start or include specific details of certain physical theories, then go off on some vaguely-defined spiritual tangent where no quantifiable statements can really be made, thereby rendering the usage of the original theory meaningless. I've also tried to explain why this does not work. If you don't want to take my comments on board, fine. But don't think that throwing a hissy fit and complaining about my entirely fictional desire to recruit the world into what would be an incredibly inefficient army will get you any sympathy.

Aside from all of the above, this still has very little to do with Time and is therefore offtopic for the thread.

simu

Stay on topic people - this tread is going nowhere fast!

If you want to discuss the soul/energy/how to argue/whatever, start another thread!

keu

If you don't want to take my comments on board, fine. But don't think that throwing a hissy fit and complaining about my entirely fictional desire to recruit the world into what would be an incredibly inefficient army will get you any sympathy.

I do take your comments on board, when they mean something, and so far they have been meaningless.(useless gestures without any meaning) I don't declare that physics isn't correct, but I do question such useage of it.
tbh I question the credibility of someone with a phsyics degree who has never heard of the m-theory (it's just a tad further on than the *big bang* theory) so if you were to suggest any aplication of that equation, I would be entirely glad to hear it.
btw..I'm not looking for sympathy.

Yep. Yet to see any evidence that death involves a transition of the self into a waveform, though.

There is indeed evidence to suggest this.
You just don't want to understand or accept it. (see above)

and just btw, I responded in relation to the thread on time. energy is related to this equation, particularly as einsteins str revolved around the equation of time,
also, you suggest I take the thread off topic, whereas you continually insist on doing so, (in order to deconstruct rather than help construct a clearer perspective) especially where you are not willing to offer an open minded opinion.

I feel I have made myself clear....I'm not here to write a thesis.
therefore you can stick your semantics up your

opening at the lower end of the alimentary canal through which solid waste is eliminated from the body.

the only thing I have learned so far is that physicists are anally retentive people.

I consider this thread locked too.

keu

heh..

ok..Simu, I apologise for the last post, it was out of order..will you try not to ban me
(i was having one of those days)

Fysh

Just quickly:

Yes, special relativity deals with time. the specific relation E=mc squared does not. Thus the conversion of the self into energy through application of m-theory is still off topic (I'm not saying it's not an intriguing idea, mind you).

As for M-theory itself, what I didn't recognize was the name. Having googled it and found out that you're talking about the follow on to superstring theory, I'll have you know that there's no undergraduate physics course I'm aware of which features it as part of the core curriculum, most likely because of the kind of maths involved in describing and manipulating an 11-dimensional universe. As a matter of fact, General Relativity isn't always included in the core curriculum either, although Special Relativity is.

Now, I know relatively little about M-theory, so if you want to start another thread to discuss m-theory and the self I'd be quite interested - however, some links on the stuff you've read would be handy.

So...getting back to time - I found this article an interesting read on the different perspectives that exist regarding the perception of time, the last section ("Metaphysics of time") in particular.

ecksor

Originally posted by remote viewer
heh..

ok..Simu, I apologise for the last post, it was out of order..will you try not to ban me
(i was having one of those days)

She might look upon your apology with more sympathy if you edited the post?

simu

Two things:

Firstly, I don't want to see any more insults, whether directed at individuals or groups, on this board. Anyone who engages in this type of behaviour from now on will get a week-long ban.

Secondly, if you want to address me, do so by PM rather than in the middle of a thread.