so what is time?

[milefile]

Originally posted by Timmotheus
I take meaningless to mean inconsequential. Even if time does not affect life, it still affects something.

Inconsequential to what? Or whom? I have a fern leaf in a book at home. I picked it while on a hike with my wife way back when we just met. It is one of the most meaningful things I have. When I come accross it I get butterflies and remember why things are important, or, consequential. But it's just a dead leaf. Pretty in-conseqential. That's how I arrive at whether time is meaningful or not. To some it isn't. To them time == clock. But you know that is just a way to measure time, and on some level, inconsequential, especially to cosmic/universal time. But we still measure that time with the same system, and this system of minutes and machines renders itself just as inconsequential in that context. When we hear 15 billion years, we have no clue what that means. I can't even begin to imagine such a monumental period the way I can conceive of five years or even 25 years.

There are also physchological conceptions of time... the weird way something that happend five years ago may seem like it was "just yesterday" while something that happened this morning may seem like a long time ago.

Time is the place where relativity reigns supreme, and "meaning" has no special exemption from it. It's paradoxical nature is probably why we can't stop asking about it.

The time where there is no "late" or "early", no defined begining or end, and no clear separation from space (and all that exists in it) is the interesting stuff, to me. And as much as that means to me, the fact that it happened (happens (will happen)) is "meaningless" without people caring about it.

 

[Timmotheus]

Originally posted by milefile
Inconsequential to what? Or whom? I have a fern leaf in a book at home. I picked it while on a hike with my wife way back when we just met. It is one of the most meaningful things I have. When I come accross it I get butterflies and remember why things are important, or, consequential. But it's just a dead leaf. Pretty in-conseqential. That's how I arrive at whether time is meaningful or not. To some it isn't. To them time == clock. But you know that is just a way to measure time, and on some level, inconsequential, especially to cosmic/universal time. But we still measure that time with the same system, and this system of minutes and machines renders itself just as inconsequential in that context. When we hear 15 billion years, we have no clue what that means. I can't even begin to imagine such a monumental period the way I can conceive of five years or even 25 years.

There are also physchological conceptions of time... the weird way something that happend five years ago may seem like it was "just yesterday" while something that happened this morning may seem like a long time ago.

Time is the place where relativity reigns supreme, and "meaning" has no special exemption from it. It's paradoxical nature is probably why we can't stop asking about it.

The time where there is no "late" or "early", no defined begining or end, and no clear separation from space (and all that exists in it) is the interesting stuff, to me. And as much as that means to me, the fact that it happened (happens (will happen)) is "meaningless" without people caring about it.

I agree with almost every word of that. However, I disagree on the definition of meaningless. I prefer to believe meaningless is something that affects nothing at all. If that leaf affects you, it is not meaningless. Even if it does not, it, during its lifetime, contributed to the growing entropy in the universe. That makes it significant. Anything that affects anything else in even the smallest way is significant, and, by that logic, everything in the universe is meaningful in some way. The word meaningless is always used in a poetic sense, because the action it is describing always affects something. To consider something meaningful if it only affects some form of life seems to limit the scope of the word far too much.

You really should read the Hitchhiker's Series. It contains the deepest books ever written. They are also the most shallow books ever written. Quite interesting, as a matter of fact...

 

[milefile]

42

 

[Timmotheus]

Originally posted by milefile
42

Toldly!
So you have read it. Good! A man (or woman) is not complete until they do.
As Douglas Adams so eloquently states, Time travel is a bad idea, because the English language, and others as well, of course, (would become)/(will become)/(is) impossibly complicated. So, if anybody (should attempt)/(is attempting)/(attempted) to turn the conversation in that direction, remember how difficult life would be if time travel were possible.
If you can't figure out why, think about it. It'll come to you eventually. I hinted, so it shouldn't be hard.

 

[regulate]

Originally posted by milefile
Not just your spelling. What the hell are you talking about?

ok lets say you took a bath this morining.
your present concesness is sees it as the past, but just take this into consideration, what if each monent has its own little place in space-time or whatever you want to call it.
so it could be possibel for your conciense to go back or forward to an instance and experiance that monent, or something.

 

[Timmotheus]

Originally posted by regulate
ok lets say you took a bath this morining.
your present concesness is sees it as the past, but just take this into consideration, what if each monent has its own little place in space-time or whatever you want to call it.
so it could be possibel for your conciense to go back or forward to an instance and experiance that monent, or something.

When somebody challenges your opinion, you are supposed to defend it, otherwise nearly all credibility is lost. Just a piece of advice.

 

[regulate]

Originally posted by Timmotheus
When somebody challenges your opinion, you are supposed to defend it, otherwise nearly all credibility is lost. Just a piece of advice.

well this turned into what exactly time is, and if you read my first post i think it went somewhat in a different direction.

 

[milefile]

Originally posted by regulate
ok lets say you took a bath this morining.
your present concesness is sees it as the past, but just take this into consideration, what if each monent has its own little place in space-time or whatever you want to call it.
so it could be possibel for your conciense to go back or forward to an instance and experiance that monent, or something.

It's called memory.

 

[regulate]

memory is involved in it but you cant have a memory of something that your gonna do or can you?

 

[milefile]

Originally posted by regulate
memory is involved in it but you cant have a memory of something that your gonna do or can you?

It's called planning.

 

[DGB454]

IMO ...Time is linear. Everything has a beggining and an ending.Everything in the physical world amyway.

 

[regulate]

finally an answer to my question!
was that so hard people?

 

[Talentless]

It's crime fighting time!

 

[Timmotheus]

Originally posted by regulate
finally an answer to my question!
was that so hard people?

I answered your question. Like I said before, there is no archaetypical view of time. All of them have their flaws. It really depends on your point of view.

 

[slip2rock]

Originally posted by vat_man
It's something that stops everything happening at once.

Ahhh a Terry Pratchet fan


The answer was there all the time.....

 

[Talentless]

it's morphing time

time is on my side

if i could save time in a bottle

timex takes a licking and keeps on ticking

 

[regulate]

well then....

 

[milefile]

Well when?

 

[regulate]

Well was?

 

[Sage]

Originally posted by regulate
Well was?

Are you going to sour up your own (good) thread?

 

[Jugend]

Time is a concept you can never grasp as a human... Don't ever bother to try, you'll never get the essence of time. Trust me. I don't get it you don't get it. That's it. Period.

 

[regulate]

Originally posted by Sage
Are you going to sour up your own (good) thread?

no im jus tryin to have some fun man, but since you think its ggod, if time travel was possivbel what event would you change, and dont worry about the repercussions or paradoxes created, just what would you change and why.

 

[Sage]

Originally posted by GTJugend
Time is a concept you can never grasp as a human... Don't ever bother to try, you'll never get the essence of time. Trust me. I don't get it you don't get it. That's it. Period.

Well, that's a sad way to look at it... I know this is oft-too-used, but what if everyone thought like that? The people who find new things and change the world are often the people who believe in doing "the impossible".

200 years ago, I doubt many people could possibly imagine traveling to the moon. Now we can do it, and have done it on more than several occasions. Someday, someone will find out how time works.

Originally posted by regulate
no im jus tryin to have some fun man, but since you think its ggod, if time travel was possivbel what event would you change, and dont worry about the repercussions or paradoxes created, just what would you change and why.

Well, I do have a few definitive events/things in mind, but in all sincerity it'd piss off a number of people, so I'll refrain.

 

[Jugend]

Sage: Well, that's a sad way to look at it... I know this is oft-too-used, but what if everyone thought like that? The people who find new things and change the world are often the people who believe in doing "the impossible".

Yeah, you're right in a way. 1.0 Humanity is not going to find out about what time really is. Mabye we do it in 1.1 or 1.2? In a cosmic wiev I think Humanity is still a retarded speices.

 

[regulate]

Originally posted by Sage


Well, I do have a few definitive events/things in mind, but in all sincerity it'd piss off a number of people, so I'll refrain.

go ahead, its all in fun and speculation. if anyone gets offended, they can deal with it, besides its not like its gonna happen, or is it.......NAH!

 

[regulate]

Whatch out!
gotta get back, back to the past, samurai jack (jack jack jack)
gotta get back, back to the past, samurai jack (jack jack jack)
gotta get back, back to the past, samurai jack (jack jack jack)

 

[Danoff]

Time is a human concept to describe the fact that events do not take place on top of each other.

This question is like asking the question, what is space?

There are 4 dimensions people perceive easlily - x, y, z and t (time).

Asking what t is is like asking what x is. It's arbitrarily defined but necessary for reality as we know it. As far as I know, time like space (as we have defined them) has no slope in the absence of gravity. So I guess you could call that linear. In the presence of gravity the space-time field has a non-linear surface.

Time is a consequence of the universe's existance - which is a consequence of matter's existance. (or is it the other way around)


You cannot have a reality without objects and space and time. So let me pose this equivalent question to the group. What is space?

 

[milefile]

Originally posted by GTJugend
Yeah, you're right in a way. 1.0 Humanity is not going to find out about what time really is. Mabye we do it in 1.1 or 1.2? In a cosmic wiev I think Humanity is still a retarded speices.

Retarded? Compared to what?

 

[Danoff]

1.0 Humanity is not going to find out about what time really is.

It's easy to sit back and say that humanity is not going to figure something out - physicists, meanwhile, have been tackling that and more complex problems for decades and have some results that might blow your mind.

1.0 Humanity probably would never have figured out that the earth was round, or that the solar system revolves around the sun, or that we were not created by an omnipotent being in 7 days along with all the other animals and plants. Or where lightning comes from. Or how to make fire. Or how to build the computer that I'm typing on. Or how to send spacecraft to other planets...

 

[Jugend]

Milefile: Retarded? Compared to what?

To many other highly evolved speices in the universe.