There you go. Incontrovertible. — Banno

Then how long did it take before you came up with this fantastic idea? If you can't tell me the answer you are wrong. Then time is not real.

There have indeed been a string of extraordinarily poor posts on this thread, I quite agree. Posts that glory in the non sequitur and the incoherent. Further examples are not needed.

Indeed, I fully agree. No one has even started to explain what time is before proving it wrong or wright. You seem to be the only one who made an attempt.

Why are these pictures misleading? — Raymond

Implied by

You are completely right. It is wrong to think that ‘geometrization’ is something essential. It is only a kind of crutch (Eselsbrücke) for the finding of numerical laws. Whether one links ‘geometrical’ intuitions with a theory is a … private matter

Einstein, from a translation of a letter to Reichenbach in 1926.

Drop a brick on your foot. No force, huh? :lol:

I don't think it's about metric component values only, if this is what he means by numerical laws. The numbers are not primary but secondary. Associating numbers with it is...an opinion, and E and R are allowed to have opinions...

The ezelsbrug is the reality, the numbers the description of the manifold. In brane theory, a 3d brane, on which matter is constrained, is emerged in a 4d space. When the branes collide, with an incredible precision, a big bang occurs. The branes reside again and matter accelerates away to infinity. Then a new collision and again, bang! Ad inf. A bit like my model. The branes being two 3d closed universes on a 4d substrate space.

In brane theory, a 3d brane, on which matter is constrained, is emerged in a 4d space. When the branes . . . — Raymond

It's intriguing to think these things "exist", an effort to comprehend the physical universe - or simply a devise to create working models.

Yes, it's strange. Very strange. I still wonder from where it all came, why I am me, etc. Even when you think you know the fundamentals, what are they really? We can make models, and space seems the "stuff" between matter. But is that space? Or just a perception necessary for life? The world is a magic place!

Hence we can conclude that whatever else might be said about the "argument" in Agent Smith's OP, it reaches the wrong conclusion. — Banno

My conclusion wrong?

I asked for criticisms on one single issue that I'm in the dark about:

1. Does a "normal" proof P for a proposition q imply the existence of a reductio ad absurdum proof C for q? In other words, does a proposition q being true imply that assuming ~q leads to a contradiction?

Help me out will ya?

As the help stays out and I owe you, let me help. It depends on q. Assume q: "it's 2 o'clock". Does negating this lead to a contradiction? Probably. Between you and your boss. Assume "the wall is 2 meter high". Negating this will not lead to a contradiction but certainly to a confrontation trying to jump over. Assume every particle is neutral. Negating this will contradict the behavior of charged particles. Assume time is real. Negating this doesn't lead to a contradiction but surely justifies you in smashing the clock at town hall. You probably end up in contradiction with the city major.

Isn't denying an assumption already contradicting it? Is denial to contradict?

Sounds like you have a good life and you are enjoying life. All power to that.
I like to think I am having a similar experience. I wish it were so for all people.
I had an early interest in drawing/painting.
Since taking early retirement I have taken up oil painting and I am really enjoying it.
I am also writing a book and intend to self-publish when it's finished.
It's the illustrations that take so long to create.
It's just a novel but you might like the fact that it's about life after death (for some) but has nothing to do with heaven's or hell's of any kind.

Think of time as an umbrella concept for the following notions:

P) Process. (meaning observable change and concurrency).
H) History. (meaning memories, records and archives )
C) Causality (meaning modal logic)

Are these three concepts irreducible, or does one or more reduce to the others?

Consider

C = P + H. This is essentially the Humean notion of causality.

P = C + H. This is equivalent to assuming that laws of physics exist.

H = P + C. This is presentism in which the past is said to not exist.

"Its clearly a concept and not an actual thing or at least in my eyes this is the case. The way I see it people have experienced and viewed change and decided to categorize it as time or at least partly as time but it's an untangible non-real thing I mean hell we can't even naturally keep it we have to make clocks to keep it for us because it's unnatural to know what time it is now you can know that the sun setting or the sun's coming up but that's different than knowing the exact time to the second"

Well love, thought, consciousness, etc they are all concepts and not really 'things' or demonstrate the attribute of physical substance but they are all very important to the human experience.
Time has no physical substance, except in the representational physicality of the moving clock hands but I disagree that 'it's not an actual.....thing.'
The fact that a concept causes difficult comprehension in the human mind in no way diminishes the validity or importance of the concept.
To me and with a little tongue in cheek, you are trivialising or disrespecting the 'wonder' of time.

Strength or a lack of it, physically, morally, economically, etc These are also 'concepts', but perhaps they can be more easily and substantively understood and demonstrated in our everyday experiences compared to time. But the concept of time is no less important than the concepts of love, thought, consciousness or strength
Time is the arena within which events occur. It's not exclusively change-driven.
The coordinates of a point in 3D space for example (x,y,z) does not change but that coordinate still has a substantive reference. In the sense of the actual physical point of the fabric of space, it refers to.
You can state that this 'point in space' can be described as having 'no spatial dimensions' and that's fine but does that mean there is 'NOTHING' at that point. Well, it depends on your definition of nothing.
The best Laurence Krauss can say and most other cosmologists say the same or similar. They use a counterfactual such as 'well it's an absence of something.'
I think words like 'it's an untangible non-real thing' are just defeatist.
Try to enjoy the 'wonder'.
Individual humans can be very impatient and think 'arrrrrrghhhhh my f###### head, this makes no sense!!!!.' I sympathise and feel the exact same way sometimes but then I remind myself, it is very arrogant to assume that as humans, we DESERVE, we have EARNED full disclosure.
WHERE DO WE COME FROM? WHY ARE WE? WHAT IS OUR FATE IN THE ETERNAL SENSE?

It's fun to anthropomorphise the Universe into a small recalcitrant child (always female in my head, might be just a male thing) laughing whilst saying 'am no tellin ye, am no tellin ye' (oh, I forgot to say, she is always Scottish as well).

Btw, the Sun does not rise or set, it is the Earth that turns.

"The consequence to making this stupid concept is it change the way we viewed situations that we experience or hear about and so now we have the wrong understanding in the wrong idea on what history is and what the future is we think of the past as something that we could eventually one day travel to in some stupid machine and or the future as if these are both places that are physically somewhere just not here right now and that we could somehow go there when that's ridiculous and not the case there's only now"

I think referring to time as a 'stupid concept' is just mawkish. You might be right, time travel maybe just a 'flight of fantasy' but it is not ridiculous to conceptualise it and use the scientific method to find out if it's possible and doing both of these things does not stop me enjoying the 'now.' On the contrary it's part of my enjoyment of 'now.' If you think I have the wrong idea of what history is and what the future is then please enlighten me. I joined this forum for that exact purpose, to enhance my level of enlightenment.

Still when compared in different frames time is very real. — Raymond

Right. Time may exist and be real in a lot of different ways. But not as physical.

Time is a material process. An irreversible physical process, entropic time. It can be compared with a reversible periodical process, the clock time. The clock time is imaginary though. A periodical process, as implied in physical formula and relativity, doesn't actually exist. At the big bang the situation was kind of reversed. Only a perfect clock existed, but there was no entropic time yet.

I'm sorry I triggered you.
Remember theirs about 8b people on this planet at the moment and all of them disagree with you on something .

Time is a material process etc. — Raymond

I'm bad in Physics but I think I see what you mean. However, time is not a process. Change is. A process is a series of actions, steps, movements, changes, etc., which may or may not have a start and end. Some cycles of actions or events, e.g. the periodic revolution of Earth around the Sun, have no start or end, except if we arbitrarily set them ourselves. Otherwise, they are continious processes. We called such a revolution a "day" and divided it into "hours", "minutes", etc. "Days", "hours", "minutes", etc., which are time representations, do not actually exist: they are names of measurement units created by us.

The same thing goes with past, present and future. Neither of them exist. They are arbitrary time attributes created by us for description purposes..

Finally, you can also look at the subject on a purely logical basis:
If time really existed, it would be infinite. That is, indefinite and undefinable. That is, it can't exist, at least not for us. So, the statement "time exists" leads to its negation! :smile:

Btw, the Sun does not rise or set, it is the Earth that turns — universeness

As a physicist, I have to jump in here. One can just as well say that the universe, the Sun, the stars, the Moon, the galaxy, etc. rotate around the Earth. I thought it laughable too, but after thinking it through, this is what relativity tells. Acceleration is absolute, but the relation with surrounding is relative. A person accelerated in empty space, can say he finds himself at rest in a g-field, or is accelerated in empty space. Same for rotation. You can consider the Earth at rest in a suitable g-field, in which the Sun, the Moon, and all stars rotate around you. You might think they would rotate faster than light, but this doesn't hold, on closer inspection.

Finally, you can also look at the subject on a purely logical basis:
If time really existed, it would be infinite. That is, indefinite and undefinable. That is, it can't exist, at least not for us. So, the statement "time exists" leads to its negation! :smile: — Alkis Piskas

Time is infinite. An irreversible process is time. It has a past, present, and future. It's the clock time that is unreal. Entropic time is real. Only at the big bang the clock time is real. The state is the perfect clock. Only kicked into entropic time when all matter has irreversibly accelerated away from each other to infinity.

OK

I have already responded to your topic (See https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/643002)

I the meantime, always within this thread, I conceived of another interesting proof about the non-existence of time, based on pure and simple logic:

If time exists (literally, physically), it is infinite, since it has no start and end. That is, it is indefinite and indefinable (it cannot be described exactly). Thus, it does not actually exist, at least for us. So, the statement "Time exists" leads to its negation! :smile:

Of course, the same reasoning applies to whatever we consider as infinite, e.g. God.
It also tells us, as a corollary, that if something exists it cannot be infinite. E.g. the observable Universe, the infinity of which is still an open question in cosmology! (I wonder what they need to "close" it and when this would be done ... I think this is long overdue!)

"I'm sorry I triggered you."

You are welcome to do so, as often as you like.

"Remember theirs about 8b people on this planet at the moment and all of them disagree with you on something."

And your point is?

If there were 50 billion people in the population and on more than one planet it would make no difference. The numbers don't matter. Disagreement is healthy, it can even cause change. It's going to war over disagreement or taking unjustified punitive action against an individual or group due to disagreement that can, in the vast majority of examples, be very destructive to all or at least the vast majority of participants.

"The same thing goes with past, present and future. Neither of them exist. They are arbitrary time attributes created by us for description purposes."

I remember a discussion I had many years ago with a person who at the time was around 30 years older than me. This person was a professional photographer. The conversation turned a little 'cosmological'
I have always remembered the main gist of what they said since and still find it intriguing. It went something like this:

A movie is a series of still photographs. Perhaps our reality can be conceived in the same way. Time is movement from one still image to another, which will continue until the end of the Universe. Each still image is 'recorded' on the physical medium called the 'fabric of space'. The past, therefore, is recorded, in a 'real' physical medium. We just don't know yet, how to access earlier frames in the movie in the sense of physically sending someone back to those moments.

We can only capture a tiny portion/view of the current 'frames of reality' using our own invented camera systems. But, when you look at a photograph you are actually doing time travel in a very real sense.
You can report information to the people who live in this current time, using the 'snapshot of existence' shown in the photograph. Photographs and moving images are more convincing as evidence of actual events, which happened in the past compared to books, manuscripts, scrolls, and info chiseled on stone/clay tablets or monuments because they don't depend as much on the honesty of the authors.
I am not saying that looking at a photograph or old documentary is the equivalent of actually visiting the past as a 'live' event but how far away from that concept is the concept I posit here?
I also do not include recordings of 'film drama' in what I am saying as these are fictitious events, which employ actors.
As a photographer, I produce evidence every day that time travel into the past is real. Pick up a photo album and enjoy the journey.

My use of 'I' in the paragraph above is, of course, just my attempt at representing the old photographer.
I just find this a very interesting viewpoint. It is scientific evidence of the reality of the concept of 'past',
well what do you think? I for one, like it.

So by your reasoning, could you say that what is called 'the centre of the milkyway galaxy' rotates around the Earth?

Again by your reasoning, could you say that the other galaxies rotate around the Earth?

If not then I don't see that your attempt to assign more 'importance' to the position of planet Earth within the Cosmos than it actually merits, in reality, serves any purpose

If time exists (literally, physically), it is infinite, since it has no start and end. That is, it is indefinite and indefinable (it cannot be described exactly). Thus, it does not actually exist, at least for us. So, the statement "Time exists" leads to its negation — Alkis Piskas

I think this makes no sense, or that it is nonsense. Time could have a starting point that is different from the time that is measured by the clock. The clock is non-existent in reality. There simply

does not exist

a perfect clock, the one used by Einstein to put on the time line, pointing to values indicating it's position on the time axis. Every value on the axis is a pointing of the clock's hand to a value. Time "derivatives" can be viewed as the variation of the tictac rate between the clocks in two close nearby points in space. If there is a difference between these rates, meaning the "time gradient" is non zero, an object set free falls down, which is easily understandable if you envision the object in outer space and we accelerate towards it. For you, co-accelerating, the clocks in your frame tictac with varying speed.

Now what does this all mean? It means, though itc requires some imagination, that the clock existed at the singularity, in a literal sense. This clock was the cause for entropic time, present in the universe, from which the truly fundamental clock had departed. The original perfect clock was the cause without needing a cause itself. The actual working of this first a-causal first cause, the actual universe caused depends on the preceding universe. That universe spatially retroactively creates the condition for the potential at the singularity get actual and the virtual to get real.

So by your reasoning, could you say that what is called 'the centre of the milkyway galaxy' rotates around the Earth? — universeness

It's Einstein's reasoning: Acceleration is absolute. If you accelerate in empty space you can equally valid (is there one word for this?) say that all stars fall freely in a globally uniform gravity field (what causes this field is a different question). That's what relativity is about. Likewise, if you are accelerated on a sphere, you can just as well say that you are at rest and the stars "fall freely" in a weirdly curved spacetime. I once had a lengthy discussion about this on a physics site. The acceleration is absolute, but the rotation isn't. The spacetime you see around you on the sphere to which you are fixed is curved just as the linear accelerated guy sees a globally curved spacetime.

So, Galileo and the church were both right. Einstein brought peace!

I know of no documented text, traced to Einstein, where he states or even implies that it is valid to posit that an Earth-centric view has any validity.

"The acceleration is absolute, but the rotation isn't."
Is that not because there is no acceleration involved in Earth's rotation.
Is there any component of Earths motion in space that conforms to acceleration

In my view 'churches' are very rarely correct about anything.

I know of no documented text, traced to Einstein, where he states or even implies that it is valid to posit that an Earth-centric view has any validity. — universeness

It is stated somewhere in your book by Brian Green, about the water bucket (if I remember well). If you find yourself on a rotating sphere and look at the universe it seems as you are rotating. Rotation is a sequence of linear motions, each one a bit different than the others. Linear motion is relative. Acceleration is absolute but if you accelerate through the empty universe you can just as well say you are at rest in a gravity field, Same for rotational acceleration (the acceleration you feel on the sphere, outward).

The acceleration is absolute, but the rotation isn't."
Is that not because there is no acceleration involved in Earth's rotation. — universeness

Well, on a rotating Earth, you feel an extra force, the centrifugal, a tidal non-local force. But, strange as it may sound, you can say just as well that the Earth is at rest and the acceleration is caused by an outside field. If you rotate in empty space your arms tend to move away and this can be caused by a strange form of a gravitation. So you are at rest and then suddenly your arms spread away from you. Of course it depends too on how you get accelerated.

I get what you mean but has it been shown that any gravity is present in intergalactic space in places where there is no mass?
I understand the usefulness of the 'You could also say...' thought process but it becomes a matter of how useful such musings are in offering new valid, important insight.
I don't remember the section of 'The Elegant Universe' you are referring to but that book is on my 'need to read again' list.

Each still image is 'recorded' on the physical medium called the 'fabric of space' — universeness

Yes, I have heard about that expression-term, also a very long time ago. It seems that it has faded away! :grin:

when you look at a photograph you are actually doing time travel in a very real sense
As a photographer, I produce evidence every day that time travel into the past is real. — universeness

Yes, figuratively. And in your mind. In your mind you can do a lot of things, you know! :smile:

Your photographer example is quite interesting. But we don't have to refer necessarily to photographs, picture frames or movies as a recording of the past. Our whole life is recorded into our memory in frames, at a much shorter rate, since we are perceiving images with a duration up to about 400 fps. (New video standards support up to about 300 fps.) So, our whole past is there.

My use of 'I' in the paragraph above is, of course, just my attempt at representing the old photographer. I just find this a very interesting viewpoint. It is scientific evidence of the reality of the concept of 'past', well what do you think? I for one, like it. — universeness

Yes, I like it. I already mentioned it's quite interesting.

BTW, as someone who knows about photography, you most probably have heard about people saying "photography is more real than reality". I think this is based on the fact that photography can capture an instant of infinitesimally small duration, something our human perception is unable to. And I always laugh when I see pictures of persons caught "sleeping" while they are talking, eating, etc. :grin: So, we may be tempted to question the above statement, since persons normally never sleep while eating! :grin: But this is only according to what we can observe. The "sleeping" person is real, though. Reality defeats though!

However, as interesting as all this may be, it doesn't really tell us anything about time. We cannot use a recording of any kind as a proof for the existence of time or even as a result of time. Neither can we attribute to time the decay of matter, e.g. of our bodies, as we grow old. it is the result of aging, a process of life. It is a finite process, with a start (birth) and an end (death), the cycle of life as we call it, wrongly of course, because it's a line and not a circle! :smile:

I think this makes no sense, or that it is nonsense. — Raymond

I can accept "making no sense", althought it is not so appropriate in here. But what I cannot accept is "being noonsense", which is an offence and totally inappropriate in this place, as well as other serious discussions in public. Anyway, I have ignored even this too, to see if and what you really have to say about my reasoning about time and infinity.

Time could have a starting point that is different from the time that is measured by the clock. Etc. — Raymond

I have not mentioned anything about "clocks"!

As I can see, you have just rejected my whole reasoning sequence as a "nonsense" (very bad) and you have not produced any argument on any of my easing steps. Instead you started talking about clocks. This is not how it is done. So,
1) You must learn to be more polite.
2) You must learn your basics, esp. about arguments and counter arguments.