Time is an illusion

hypericin

Time itself has no speed.

What we subjectively perceive as the "speed" of time is simply the speed of our cerebral metabolism verses the speed of everything else in the world. Our brains can process only so much during the span of a clock tick. We regularly have the experience of "time" speeding up or slowing down. But this is not time itself speeding up or slowing down, only our brains.

What if time itself were to somehow speed up, or to slow down? Then, everything in our universe would speed up or slow down with it. If time were to suddenly increase it's speed by a factor of a million, then everything, our brains and the world surrounding them, would be moving and developing a million times more quickly. From our personal perspective, from the whole universe's perspective, nothing would have changed, everything would be moving and developing at exactly the same relative rates. Such a radical change in the speed of time would be both irrelevant and undetectable.

Saying something is both irrelevant to and undetectable by our entire universe, is the same thing as saying it doesn't exist. Time has no speed.

If time has no speed, it cannot move.
If time has no speed, it cannot be a process in motion.
If time cannot move or be a process in motion, it must be static.
But, we perceive time as being dynamic, as being the essence of change itself.
Therefore, time, as we intuitively perceive and understand it, is an illusion.

Barry Etheridge

Lunchtime doubly so!

Barry Etheridge

What if time itself were to somehow speed up, or to slow down? Then, everything in our universe would speed up or slow down with it — hypericin

Er ... no ... ever heard of relativity?

wuliheron

Time is the greater context and its contents transforming into one another with quantum mechanics providing the best example. The Quantum Zeno Effect ensures that a watched pot never boils while, normally, quanta won't stop moving. Quantum mechanics are formulated in infinite Hilbert spaces or dimensions, while their mathematics show no preference whatsoever for the arrow of time. The implication is that even if time is running backwards and forwards simultaneously we only see it moving forward because our minds don't work backwards. Space and time are conflating their identities which explains why we have nonlinear temporal effects like this and those of Relativity.

We perceive everything changing because a static universe is inconceivable, but we also see hints of one such as Mach's Conjecture because the only thing we can ultimately know is that we know nothing. Mother nature's sense of humor is every bit as wicked as she can be beautiful. This also explains things such as why its impossible to achieve a perfect vacuum, the speed of light, etc. as all merely the fact a context without any significant content and vice versa is simply a contradiction.

Terrapin Station

Time is simply (the ontological process(es) of) change or motion.

Its "speed" is simply a measurement of one change or motion against another change or motion.

Barry Etheridge

↪curious

The first man to make an appointment invented timekeeping. All the ancient civilisations had some kind of timekeeping. As those civilisations became more sophisticated in terms of needing meetings, arranging events, and travelling, timekeeping became more accurate. The monastic orders that arose from Christianity, in Europe particularly, increased the demand for yet more exact timekeeping leading to the first clocks.

wuliheron

Time is the fire within which we burn, while memory is the ice within which we freeze. One without the other is simply impossible like having an up without a down or back without a front. We dance round in a ring and suppose, while the secret sits in the middle and knows.

Metaphysician Undercover

The first man to make an appointment invented timekeeping. — Barry Etheridge

Time keeping was needed by farmers to know when to plant crops. It was a matter of keeping track of the days with astrological charts, monuments on the ground, and things like that. The day was divided by morning, noon, and evening. Then the day was divided into hours with the sundial.

Cavacava

↪Metaphysician Undercover

But I wonder if they thought that each new day is a new day or as the same day restarting all over, same chores, (milk the cow, pitch the hay, plant, hoe...) with nothing new....time as the cycle/rhythm of life, and the monuments marking the return of something already started rather than the forward progression of time? Maybe it became progressive once trading with others became normalized.

wuliheron

But I wonder if they thought that each new day is a new day or as the same day restarting all over, same chores, (milk the cow, pitch the hay, plant, hoe...) with nothing new....time as the cycle/rhythm of life, and the monuments marking the return of something already started rather than the forward progression of time? Maybe it became progressive once trading with others became normalized. — Cavacava

Over half the world doesn't perceive time as linear as westerners do. It is more organic and there are times when time behaves more like it has a life of its own. This is something tribal hippies experience frequently, but few other westerners. It is the greater context determining its own content or what can appear to be synergy normalizing itself. The future can be viewed as both static juxtapositions and flow dynamics or bandwidth capacity that increases and decreases in different ways including metamorphic effects.

Constructal Theory by Adrian Bejan is closer to the issue by western philosophical standards and has been proposed as an amendment to the second law of thermodynamics.

Metaphysician Undercover

↪wuliheron

"Tribal hippies"?

Barry Etheridge

↪Cavacava

Seasons and other variations such as the position of stars and phases of the moon make that extremely unlikely, I would have thought.

wuliheron

↪Metaphysician Undercover

Some hippies like the Rainbow Family Tribe are anarchists that embrace some tribal traditions and often see the world from a much more tribal viewpoint in general. In the Rainbow Family's tradition many are Socratic-Taoists because both the wisdom of Socrates and Taoism came from tribal traditions. We can sit around in the same room and all casually note that time is passing in a more organic fashion than usual. For us it is merely mother nature or yin-yang dynamics expressing themselves in a somewhat more unusual manner like seeing a double rainbow or whatever. Time is not what westerners think, but much more complex as even quantum mechanics has established and Asians in general will often testify to. We understand the western ideas about time, and know from everyday experience its just their personal bullshit about everything having to make metaphysical sense.

Terrapin Station

Far out, man.

Barry Etheridge

↪Terrapin Station

Though possibly not far out enough!

Barry Etheridge

↪wuliheron

Any chance we could get a moratorium on you invoking quantum mechanics (which you clearly don't understand) in ways that make no sense and do not advance your argument a jot?

wuliheron

↪Barry Etheridge

Richard Feynman said the minute you think you understand quantum mechanics you are wrong! The corollary joke being if you believe you don't understand then you do understand, because it never made any sense to begin with! Hence, for you to get a moratorium on me talking about quantum mechanics you would first have to prove that I am talking about something intelligible. :)

hypericin

↪Barry Etheridge

Er ... no ... ever heard of relativity?

Yes... and if one is foolishly brazen enough to issue grand pronouncements on the nature of time, he should at least mention relativity!

So yes, time does have a speed, when measured against other frames of reference. And of course, these relative speeds are incredibly minute, at least as far as the everyday world is concerned.

But I am arguing that time has no absolute speed. We can easily accept that motion can have only a relative speed, this accords more or less well with our intuitive understanding of motion. But with time, it is much more difficult. It clashes with the intuitive notion that time is plodding forward at a constant rate.

So the problem remains: there are at most minute measurable differences, in most cases, in the relative speeds of time. But there is no such thing as an absolute speed of time. And without a speed, how can time, as we understand it, operate at all?

m-theory

↪hypericin

What an odd idea.
You suggest that in reality time is static.
Then you claim that we can defy reality and conjure the illusion that time is dynamic.

Yet it seems to me that if it is not fundamentally possible in reality for time to be dynamic then how is it possible in abstraction for time to be dynamic?

You introduce a problem, how can a thing which is static be converted into an abstraction which is dynamic?

And what does it mean for there to exist an abstraction of time which is dynamic but a reality of time which is static?

Does this mean time is made of two distinct substances one abstract and one real?

m-theory

So the problem remains: there are at most minute measurable differences, in most cases, in the relative speeds of time. But there is no such thing as an absolute speed of time. And without a speed, how can time, as we understand it, operate at all? — hypericin

Time does not have a "speed."
Time is treated as a dimension in modern physics.

Speed is a measure of how many spatial units are translated in a given period of temporal units.

Speed is figured by using both time and distance, that is to say that speed is how far something travels in a given amount of time.

hypericin

↪m-theory

Reality is not colorful, but it is colorful as we perceive it, or in the abstract, as you put it. According to you, this should be impossible. Or is there a difference between these two cases?

Yes, time is a dimension. But saying that is not enough, time also keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future. We seem to be moving through this dimension, at a constant speed.

Barry Etheridge

↪hypericin

Yes, we are. Time isn't. So, if you insist on using the term speed, it is we that have it, not time.

m-theory

↪hypericin

The reason life is colorful is because light has different wave lengths.

Time does not have a speed.
Speed is a measure of distance traveled in an amount of time.
It does not make any sense to say time has a speed.

m-theory

↪hypericin

You did not answer my questions.

You introduce a problem, how can a thing which is static be converted into an abstraction which is dynamic?

And what does it mean for there to exist an abstraction of time which is dynamic but a reality of time which is static?

Barry Etheridge

The reason life is colorful is because light has different wave lengths. — m-theory

Er .. no .. it's because we have the ability to detect electromagnetic waves of varying wavelengths in a particular band and discriminate between them (albeit somewhat inconsistently!) The colour is not inherent to the light or a property of its wavelength. Colour is simply the way that the varying wavelengths are registered by our brains. It has no independent existence.

m-theory

↪Barry Etheridge

If light did not have different wave lengths then color perception would not be possible.

Barry Etheridge

↪m-theory

Color perception is impossible! >:)

hypericin

↪Barry Etheridge

Time does not have a speed.
Speed is a measure of distance traveled in an amount of time.
It does not make any sense to say time has a speed.

Any dynamic process, a chemical reaction for example, has a speed. "Rate", if you prefer.
Time, as you point out, cannot have a speed/rate.
Therefore, time cannot be a dynamic process.

You introduce a problem, how can a thing which is static be converted into an abstraction which is dynamic?

Perhaps the entirety of time exists all at once, no one moment is more privileged than the next. What we perceive as a dynamic 3-dimensional system is really a static 4-dimensional one. The extra dimension gives "room" to project a 4-d static reality as a dynamic 3-d abstraction, just as the different chemical properties of different wavelengths of light allow for their projection as colors.

m-theory

Time, as you point out, cannot have a speed/rate.
Therefore, time cannot be a dynamic process. — hypericin

Not having speed is not the logical equivalent to is not dynamic.

Perhaps the entirety of time exists all at once, no one moment is more privileged than the next. What we perceive as a dynamic 3-dimensional system is really a static 4-dimensional one. The extra dimension gives "room" to project a 4-d static reality as a dynamic 3-d abstraction, just as the different chemical properties of different wavelengths of light allow for their projection as colors. — hypericin

In modern physics time is not a separate dimension.
All spatial and temporal dimensions are considered one continuum

In general relativity spacetime must be dynamic otherwise gravity would not cause it to curve.
For this reason I disagree with you that time is not dynamic.

What you describe sounds similar to .block universe theory of time also called eternalism.
This was also Einsteins view of time.

It is not clear whether etermalism or presentism is the case with regards to time.
I personally suspect that it is probably a bit of both that is the case.

At any rate time is not an illusion as it is defined by physics, it is a real measurable effect upon systems in experiments.

hypericin

↪m-theory

Not having speed is not the logical equivalent to is not dynamic.

Explain then, or provide an example.

Benjamin Dovano

Is time is a movement in knowledge and in measurement?
Are It's dimensions physical (chronological) and psychological ( past, present, future ) ?
Considering the topic " time is an illusion" - I would go even further and say Time is a clown and likes to play mind games on us. Relativity being the first game... :)

Time is an illusion

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