from the we-decide-which-is-right-and-which-is-an-illusion dept.
Does time exist? The answer to this question may seem obvious: of course it does! Just look at a calendar or a clock. But developments in physics suggest the non-existence of time is an open possibility, and one that we should take seriously. How can that be, and what would it mean? It'll take a little while to explain, but don't worry: even if time doesn't exist, our lives will go on as usual.
[...] In the 1980s and 1990s, many physicists became dissatisfied with string theory and came up with a range of new mathematical approaches to quantum gravity. One of the most prominent of these is loop quantum gravity, which proposes that the fabric of space and time is made of a network of extremely small discrete chunks, or "loops". One of the remarkable aspects of loop quantum gravity is that it appears to eliminate time entirely. Loop quantum gravity is not alone in abolishing time: a number of other approaches also seem to remove time as a fundamental aspect of reality.
So we know we need a new physical theory to explain the universe, and that this theory might not feature time. Suppose such a theory turns out to be correct. Would it follow that time does not exist? Theories of physics don't include any tables, chairs, or people, and yet we still accept that tables, chairs and people exist. Why? Because we assume that such things exist at a higher level than the level described by physics.
But while we have a pretty good sense of how a table might be made out of fundamental particles, we have no idea how time might be "made out of" something more fundamental. So unless we can come up with a good account of how time emerges, it is not clear we can simply assume time exists. Time might not exist at any level.
[...] There is a way out of the mess. While physics might eliminate time, it seems to leave causation intact: the sense in which one thing can bring about another. Perhaps what physics is telling us, then, is that causation and not time is the basic feature of our universe.
[Book Reference]: Out of Time
How does one wrap his head around this conjecture which has no Time and only Causation ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @05:16PM
Deep, Deeper than you can possibly imagine.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Friday April 15 2022, @05:30PM (7 children)
To an armchair Physicist like me, I'm not sure "time" itself has made a ton of sense outside of calendars and clocks.
Everywhere you look, time is variable. As a human, from your head, to the Hz on clocks, to different ways to make a calendar, all different. In space, time is variable depending on gravity and the 'speed' you are traveling. Its all relative baby.
I'm trying to think, what basic physics equations even have t? t comes about only once you start measuring against your current system of time, which is once removed from the basics of physics.
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Friday April 15 2022, @06:38PM (2 children)
I love these kinds of articles because they make you question everything you understood as fundamental. It would be interesting if a new theory of the universe arose that did away with concepts that we struggled to reconcile in the first place. Ever see that movie Arrival where everything goes so slowly until suddenly the speed of the story accelerates (or even reverses) asymptotically? This is that kind of thing.
This is the money quote, in my opinion:
"Both theories work extremely well in their own right, but the two are thought to conflict with one another. Though the exact nature of the conflict is controversial, scientists generally agree both theories need to be replaced with a new, more general theory.
Physicists want to produce a theory of “quantum gravity” that replaces general relativity and quantum mechanics, while capturing the extraordinary success of both. Such a theory would explain how gravity’s big picture works at the miniature scale of particles."
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @09:15PM (1 child)
>> I love these kinds of articles because they make you question everything you understood as fundamental.
Sort of like transgender washrooms.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @11:31PM
I wish we had transgender washrooms! I always feel awkward when I don't join in the orgies in the men's and women's rooms. Finally we could have a dick girl orgy. It would be like an anime convention.
(Score: 1, Informative) by khallow on Friday April 15 2022, @08:59PM
Almost all of it. Keep in mind that derivatives with respect to time are also dependence on time. The biggest exception is near-equilibrium thermodynamics where the system is treated as changing slowly enough that time is indeed once removed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @01:00PM
Nearly all the formulas that you learn during the first couple years of physics involve time in some fashion. I could definitely see things being rewritten in terms of entropy, but that likely would suffer similar issues to using relativity to do most things. Sure, you can, but the difference in result between that and just regular classic mechanics is typically so small as to not be measurable without incredibly sensitive equipment.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday April 17 2022, @08:10PM (1 child)
Time is a measure of entropy. Our brains are terrible at measuring it, but atomic clocks are pretty good at it, and have shown that the faster the clock is traveling, the slower time/entropy goes.
You're a physicist, how do you measure something that doesn't exist?
It is a disgrace that the richest nation in the world has hunger and homelessness.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Monday April 18 2022, @12:56AM
Statistics.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @05:43PM (18 children)
Time-travel you cannot, if there is no Time.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday April 15 2022, @08:40PM (12 children)
Sorry, but that's wrong. You're getting the label confused with the thing.
OTOH, the title is just stupid. Time *may* be an epiphenomenon, but it at least exists in the same sense that centrifugal force exists. And if that didn't exist centrifuges wouldn't work. It may not be basic, but it exists.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Saturday April 16 2022, @12:13AM (11 children)
That doesn't make any sense at all. That's probably the worst comparison I've read in a long time of just about anything.
That said, the idea of time not existing isn't new, and it's something I've believed for a very long ... time.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday April 16 2022, @05:08AM (10 children)
I thought it was a pretty good comparison. The phenomenon of centrifugal force exists because of the rotating frame of reference which gives the appearance of force that doesn't exist in non-rotating frames of reference. And similarly, time could exist because of a time-dependent frame of reference and of course, disappear in non-time-dependent frames of reference.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday April 16 2022, @06:24AM (3 children)
Okay, I'm going to admit up-front that I'm not good at advanced math...maybe this will make look like an idiot...
I skimmed the Wikipedia article on "centrifugal force" a little, but not enough to make me start bleeding from the eyes. Didn't XKCD do a strip about how centrifugal force didn't exist, only centripetal force? Everybody should trust random things they see on the Internet. Although Randall Munroe seems like he tends to do his homework. I digress.
If I'm reading this definition of what centrifugal force is correctly...it's the force drawing a test tube outward when you spin it in a centrifuge? What? Why do we need a separate term for this?! Doesn't this fall under torque or something else already defined?
You spin something and anything attached to it will experience force pushing it outward. Obviously. Anybody who has seen a propeller could tell you this. We really need to delve into quantum mechanics and "rotating forms of reference" to explain this?!
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday April 16 2022, @06:34AM (1 child)
Filing these under "an object in motion tends to stay in motion"...is this not already covered under inertia and velocity and whatall? The stone is prevented from flying off by the force of the string keeping it on. The vehicle is kept on the road by the friction of the tires against the pavement; when this fails is what skids are.
So this is a terminology thing, where due to "equal and opposite", we have to come up with a name for each of these common things we're already acquainted with, only they're rotating? Reminds me of the usual "but on a computer" patent folly...
Alright, I'm definitely not silly enough to pretend that I know anything about orbital mechanics.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @01:09PM
Those all involve different forces, which is why they're different. At some point lumping things that are roughly similar at the high level just makes things worse. A stone on a string is going to have tension on the string, but basically no friction, the car going around the curve will have no tension, but will have a significant amount of friction. Neither of the two have significant amounts of friction, but the Earth has basically no tension or friction and just uses gravity to keep things orbiting around it. As funny as Douglas Adams was, the reality is that orbiting a planet is more or less just falling and failing to hit the ground.
And they can then all be done again using energy based calculations.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday April 16 2022, @12:17PM
If you apply a single force to an object it will accelerate in a straight line and when you stop applying the force, if no other forces act on it, it will continue at a constant speed in that straight line.
If you swing a stone round and round on a string, when you let go of the string, it will fly off in a straight line. That's because the string and the rotating motion of your hand were the only things stopping it going in a straight line.
When you spin something, you keep applying forces in different directions so that the object keeps changing direction rather than moving straight. When I say "in different directions", those directions are always from the object to the center of rotation, so with the stone on a string, it would be from the stone, along the string, to your hand. That's the centripetal force.
Another example is a wheel on a bike spinning. The spokes of the wheel force each bit of the rim of the wheel to keep changing direction as the wheel turns, rather than flying off in a straight line, which is what physics makes them naturally try to do.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Monday April 18 2022, @03:57PM (5 children)
My point was that with centrifugal force, you are measuring the force acting on something.
With time, what are you measuring? A spring? Something else? In any case, you're not measuring time.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 18 2022, @07:57PM (4 children)
A clock, for example. It's as concrete as the force was.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Tuesday April 19 2022, @12:56AM (3 children)
I feel as though you didn't read what I said. A clock is indeed doing something, but it isn't actually doing it because of time acting on it directly.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 19 2022, @01:29AM (2 children)
Except that it is doing it because of time acting on it directly. This is no more an indirect measurement that your above force measurement.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Tuesday April 19 2022, @05:25PM (1 child)
Well, I disagree. I don't think the spring or pendulum in a clock is moving because of time itself.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 19 2022, @06:03PM
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday April 16 2022, @01:18AM (4 children)
Perhaps Billy Pilgrim had it right.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday April 16 2022, @02:28AM (3 children)
"Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."
Douglas Adams also had another fun concept: "Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again. It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though."
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @02:52AM
Lister (via Grant Naylor) addressed interplay of causality and time pretty well, actually:
(Score: 3, Funny) by tangomargarine on Saturday April 16 2022, @06:16AM
wioll haven-been
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Funny) by Joe Desertrat on Monday April 18 2022, @01:14AM
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
Try tying those two together without your head exploding unless you have an Infinite Improbability Drive.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by acid andy on Friday April 15 2022, @06:06PM (16 children)
So many of these kinds of questions are a matter of definition.
If we define time as that which enacts cause and effect, then time still exists.
The same kinds of arguments can be made for concepts like life, consciousness and even God. It's only meaningful to make claims about their existence or non-existence if you state a clear definition.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 5, Interesting) by krishnoid on Friday April 15 2022, @06:13PM (7 children)
Maybe cause and effect both have to exist, but the order in which they happen may be a matter of perspective. So effect could bring about cause, or cause could bring about effect, or they could both be there at the same observed time, depending on your local direction of observation. I mean, *I've* never been anywhere where cause doesn't precede effect, but I haven't travelled much.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @06:35PM
"but I haven't travelled much."
If time doesn't exist then not your fault.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @09:14PM (2 children)
Philosopher David Hume, however, proved that causation does not exist, it just being the habit we get into of expecting certain events to follow certain others, based on previous experience. Causation, time, and the self, are subjective entities with no actual existence. Hume was one of the few rigourous and consistent empiricists. If we can't percieve it with our senses, it does not exist. Ergo, correlation is causation, because that is all there is.
aristarchus
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @11:33PM
Can we get a +1 spam mod for parent comment?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 19 2022, @02:11AM
He just showed that you can't rule out radical doubt.
Unless, of course, they do have existence. If we were to use Hume's lofty standards of proof, we wouldn't be able to prove anything that you've claimed so far.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by loonycyborg on Friday April 15 2022, @09:18PM (1 child)
Reversal of cause and effect contradicts causality principle. Relativity of time applies only to lengths of time intervals that can have different values depending on frame of reference. But no matter what none of current theories will contradict cause being in time before effect since causality principle is an axiom for them all either directly or indirectly.
(Score: 1) by Splodgy Emoji on Monday April 25 2022, @12:44AM
You are assuming that cause must temporally precede effect, but more general concepts of causality do not depend on subjective spatiotemporal order. Many different quantum-experiments have given extraordinary evidence that particles, such as photons traversing pairs of slits, do not necessarily follow the usual ideas of causality. For example, events that are subjectively in the future can effect events that are subjectively in the present, as well as vice versa!
(Score: 4, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 16 2022, @02:23AM
The fact that you are made up of a collection trillions of cause-effect events per second (starting with the chemical reactions in your fluids) probably influences your perspective.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @07:32PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday April 15 2022, @08:42PM (2 children)
Consciousness could also be an illusion. There's all sorts of things that *could* be true. Whether they're reasonable to concern yourself with is something else. E.g. it's impossible to disprove the extreme version of solipsism.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Touché) by acid andy on Friday April 15 2022, @10:00PM (1 child)
Don't forget the part about how if it's an illusion, that illusion is still being experienced. As Thomas Nagel put it, there is still something it is like to experience the illusion.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @06:34AM
You're getting there.
There is always an experiencer getting lost on tangents, having adventures, riding the roller coaster.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @03:16AM (1 child)
Time is the passage of events.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @06:55AM
Time is the passage of yo mom.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @01:12PM
That's certainly valid. I'd also point out that what we refer to as time might well turn out to be something along the lines of entropy. As that mostly just goes one way as well, and most of the things that we view as time are ultimately decay. Things and people get older, they fall apart and eventually break in a way that can't be fixed at all.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday April 18 2022, @11:31AM
I came here to say what you said.
Cause and effect: the very definitions of "cause" and "effect" means that one must precede the other. Time is inherently built in. Perhaps mathematicians or physicists have some other way of looking at this, but then "cause and effect" are poor word choices.
I was recently in class at the university and one thing I noticed is that mathematicians tend to think of functions as something that happen in a timeless fashion. I, as a programmer, cannot separate functions from time. I cannot simply say that this function will run in zero time, although (if I understood correctly) that is how the professor thought. I always have to keep an eye on how much time a particular function takes because my functions are built on real world and not on pure mathematics. Math doesn't always translate to real world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @06:09PM
tl;dw: nothing new has been added to the concept since the 1980s filler popsci articles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @07:55PM
Has a good primer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2suMPiuog4 [youtube.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @08:14PM (3 children)
Loop quantum gravity is not all that promising. Some people have even claimed that it's been falsified, but that claim is overblown. But it's not a theory that says time is an illusion, it's a way to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity without changing either of them very much. It basically just does the obvious thing of saying time and space are quantized at the Planck scale, and then tries to make this work. Essentially, it's conceptual simplicity, mathematical difficulty. Proponents have made a lot of progress toward fixing the math. But because it's a theoretical grab bag, it's somewhat unpopular - basically it reminds physicists of epicycles. Even if it is an accurate description of behavior, it doesn't seem like an accurate description of reality.
The block universe is the modern "time is an illusion" hypothesis. Like most such ideas, it's half physics, half philosophy. Too much to explain here, watch PBS Spacetime.
https://youtu.be/YycAzdtUIko [youtu.be]
https://youtu.be/EagNUvNfsUI [youtu.be]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday April 15 2022, @08:46PM
In the block universe time isn't an illusion, though the passage of time is. Rather time is one of the fundamental dimensions. But the past and future are just as real as the present instant. (Personally I prefer the EWG multiworld, but it's a matter of taste as if you accept the math of quantum physics, it's a legitimate interpretation with no evidence against it. Of course that does some strange things to time, itself.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 16 2022, @02:25AM
At a glance, loop quantum gravity feels like a return of the aether, but with adjustments to play nice with relativity.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @07:01AM
Modern physics is a quest for a simple theory that requires extremely complicated initial conditions to appear how it does.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 15 2022, @11:46PM
it is just a matter of Semantics.
Cause once we all agree on a standard, things get a lot more predictable as in the computer you are reading this on.
Kindof like arguing about if a virus is alive or dead.
Once it is in the right context, it sure as hell is alive...just ask Shanghai.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Saturday April 16 2022, @12:08AM (22 children)
The mental gymnastics needed to posit that time doesn't exist is mind-bogglingly idiotic. Without time, everything that ever was, is, or will be would happen simultaneously. Since they don't all happen simultaneously, time exists. Period. End of story. All these models that propose otherwise are all missing one important factor: reality.
There is still some wiggle room (VERY little) to reserve judgement on the possibility of moving backward through time, but that's extraordinarily unlikely at best.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 16 2022, @02:31AM (14 children)
That's not so different from the 9 or however many dimensions of string theory when the abundance of observation describes three plus time.
To me, time feels different than a dimension. Flatland et.al. describe increasing spatial dimensions, but when I try to similarly add additional time dimensions they collapse into each other in the same stream of causes and effects.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday April 16 2022, @11:44AM (13 children)
If you want different causes and effects across one or more other dimensions of time, does having free will with a choice axis help with that? Where choices are continuous rather than binary, you could see an object's possible histories drawing out a shape. At small scales it might be quite smooth, where slightly different choices don't alter the outcome very much immediately. At bigger scales, the shape might have sharper angles. It would probably look like a fractal.
When more than one person is making choices affecting the object's history, you have to add more axes. These ideas remind me of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics so maybe I'm describing a model that already has a name, or maybe it's nonsense.
You could also add axes for random quantum fluctuations affecting outcomes. Also, varying physical constants and / or physical laws.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday April 16 2022, @09:03PM (12 children)
I have a hard time attributing "choice" to people as units... each choice a person makes is the result of billions of "state variables" influencing the synapses involved. Everything from neurotransmitter levels, available ATP, influences from the millions of bacteria acting on the system, nagging sonic inputs from other humans, etc.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday April 16 2022, @09:32PM (1 child)
Yes I quite agree. To a large extent we're slaves to our inputs, our nature and our nurture.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday April 17 2022, @02:37AM
When you throw all the soup together, maybe our choices still come down to a statistical selection of trillions of quantum indeterminant states deciding on their actual values, but all our layers of nature and nurture atop that would seem to almost always mask the indeterminacy lying beneath.
We have a sort of free will: we make decisions consciously and unconsciously all the time, but the outcome of those decisions - the "will" of our consciousness, is undeniably driven by everything that led up to the decision of the moment, from the base pairs in the gametes that formed our first diploid cell, through every quark that was ever physically a part of our being, or sensed by it in some fashion.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 19 2022, @03:15AM (9 children)
People are easily identifiable as units - as are many choices. The complexity of the intermediate processes don't have any bearing on that. I'll just note that there's a simple case [soylentnews.org] to be made for a non-deterministic mind (which is a necessary and perhaps sufficient requirement for free will, discussed later in this thread), quantum perturbations which we have yet to find a way to predict combined with likely chaotic dynamics (that small perturbations lead to large perturbations in short order) of the human mind that at least would effect timing of decisions.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 19 2022, @11:54AM (8 children)
As are cats, roaches, paramecium, virus particles, and various "living" structures throughout the universe. If we're going for a unified theory of physics, there's nothing more important about a "choice" made by a "person" than the same kind of "choice" made by a blue whale, or an ant, or a virus which could have attached its spike protein at one point or another but "decided" not to based on the attractiveness of the chemical bonds.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 19 2022, @06:18PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 19 2022, @06:19PM (6 children)
The virus didn't make a choice - single action under the scenario. The rest have some degree of choice.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday April 19 2022, @08:17PM (5 children)
So, a paramecium makes a choice to swim away from a stimulus or rest to conserve energy and potentially be eaten? But the virus isn't choosing because it's not complex enough? What's the threshold of complexity where it changes from a collection of electro-chemical reactions to a "choice"?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 19 2022, @10:17PM (4 children)
So right there, not a virus.
Yes, that would be a choice.
Well, yes. But also, you didn't mention a choice for it to make. Does water choose to flow hill, for example?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 20 2022, @03:17PM (3 children)
There ins't really a quantum leap from virus to cellular organism - we have a divide in our current ecosystem, but something more complex than a virus but less complex than a Mycoplasma mycoides [wikipedia.org] has existed at some time and likely still exists in some places.
Amusingly, the random song selector in my computer just selected "Freewill" by Rush. Did it make a choice when the random seed selector sampled the thermal noise to establish the stream of numbers which led to this particular song selection? The rest of the selections leading to that particular song were demonstrably deterministically driven by the data in the system and timing of events which interacted with the random number generation. My music player running on my desktop may not approach the complexity of a simple bacteria interacting with its environment, but certainly there are digital systems in operation that far exceed that level of complexity... are they making choices?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 20 2022, @06:15PM (2 children)
Doesn't have to be. You have yet to mention the choice that the virus makes. The paramecium at least can react to the environment in different ways.
"Selector", "selection". You already acknowledge that a choice was made.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 20 2022, @07:01PM (1 child)
So, the computer, which takes a single environmental input then makes 100% algorithmically pre-determined choices based on that input, is "choosing" but the virus, which is chemically attracted to two nearby cells and ultimately infects one, not the other, based on minute differences environmental conditions that makes one protein group slightly more attractive than the other, has not made a choice?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday April 21 2022, @02:50AM
The pre-determined could be pre-determined some other way. And that thermal input wasn't environmental.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday April 16 2022, @06:09AM (3 children)
Somebody clearly didn't finish reading the summary.
The argument isn't that time somehow doesn't exist; it's that we need a new way to define what time is. Since for awhile now we've been going on about "the time-space continuum", treating time as if it were different than space, "time-like and space-like dimensions", etc., etc.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2022, @07:31AM (1 child)
Stuff within the virtual universe won't know whether the computer is running faster or slower, I could pause the simulation one day and restart it another day and stuff in the universe won't experience any difference. But stuff within that universe will be faster or slower relative to other stuff in the universe.
Then time in that simulated universe would just be a concept used to measure the change of stuff. e.g. a standard unit of time could be based on how many cycles of state changes of a system, while light travels a certain distance and returns within that simulated universe.
Like imaginary numbers, treating time as a dimension can be useful for making some calculations easier but that doesn't prove that time is really a dimension though.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 19 2022, @06:23PM
Your language implicitly forces time to exist. There's no such thing as "happen", "simultaneously", "save the state", etc. The universe has one state, there's no time parameter over which it can change that state.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Sunday April 17 2022, @05:03PM
That's exactly what the article is about. Even the summary posits, "Time might not exist at any level," which is an idiotic thing to say. I've seen all too many scientific theories that say, essentially, "we don't have a good mathematical model for [some obvious real-world thing that we use intuitively as living beings], so it may not exist in the way we think it does."
This is one such bullshit article.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2022, @05:00AM
Or, you have it backwards? Immanuel Kant, in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft [wikipedia.org], sets out to understand what belongs to our perception, and what to reality itself. He came up with der Transzendentalphilosophie which asks what are the necessary preconditions for experience to occur. He starts with time, and space, and asserts that these are necessary preconditions to our experience of an object, for the reason you put forth:
That would make it hard to pick out individual things. Same with space, since if everything was smooshed all together, objects could not stand out for us. But this is the rub: these are Necessary preconditions for our experience of reality, but not necessarily conditions of reality in itself.
Certainly looks like they don't, doesn't it! But we are dealing with phenomenal reality, not the Ding an Sich (thing in itself), so reality as it exists beyond or behind our experience (Kant was no absolute idealist) may or may not accord with our perceptions of it. Real reality might not exist in time.
Nowadays, we don't even refer to time as an entity, it's all about the Space-time, a perceptual matrix that makes phenomena possible.
aristarchus
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2022, @07:21AM (1 child)
It doesn't because the speed of light is finite. It's not because of "time".
Imagine I'm running a simulation of a universe on a computer. Even if say Time exists (the way you imagine) for that computer, it doesn't have to exist within that simulated universe. And yet stuff doesn't have to all happen simultaneously in that simulated universe, and there's no past to travel to unless I save the state of the virtual universe somewhere.
Stuff within the virtual universe won't know whether the computer is running faster or slower, I could pause the simulation one day and restart it another day and stuff in the universe won't experience any difference. But stuff within that universe will be faster or slower relative to other stuff in the universe.
If you claim the universe cannot be simulated on a conventional computer because of stuff like consciousness then I'd agree with you, but that still doesn't mean there's "time" and a past to travel back to. Also many physicists are simulating the universe on conventional computers using known rules, and believing those simulations remain valid. So if those simulations can be valid then my example could be valid too.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 19 2022, @06:24PM
Light and everything else wouldn't have speeds without time.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday April 16 2022, @12:31AM
http://www.platonia.com [platonia.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Barbour [wikipedia.org]
Nothing. Here's your nine pence.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @04:25AM (1 child)
Q) What do "Flat Earthers", "Trumpers" and these new "No Timers" have in common?
A) None were swallowed by their mums.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @01:30AM
The "New Geocentrists" are interesting. Since Relativity means that the center of the universe can be anywhere, why not maintain everything actually does rotate around the earth, and therefore God really does exist. Martians had a slightly different theory.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday April 16 2022, @04:32AM (4 children)
Axioms. Either they're true or they aren't. It would upset a lot of things if an axiom turned out to be false, but it would be even more upsetting if it were somehow true and false at the same time. It's axiomatic that true and false are something different, and gut-wrenchingly insane to think they could be the same. So either time is not composed of anything, and is a component of space-time, or it's something else but it smells like an axiom until it's proven otherwise.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday April 16 2022, @06:07AM (2 children)
Just another average day when you're talking about quantum anything...
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @07:22AM
Yes, go back to bed America. Physicists have it all figured out. You can't understand anything because we say so. Go back to bed.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday April 16 2022, @05:00PM
I don't think quantum physics is that bad. The superposition of "alive and dead" in something like Schroedinger's cat isn't as bad as saying that alive and dead are the same thing. When you open the box, it's either alive or dead. You don't open the box and get a zombie.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @01:32AM
Let me introduce you to Paraconsistent Logic. Or maybe not. It is both true and false that there is no time for that now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @05:30AM (1 child)
I was intending to take a closer look at this conjecture - but there was no time.
QED
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @11:21PM
your intention is just an unrealised effect that was caused not to happen when there was no time.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @05:34AM (3 children)
I could be wrong; but, I think trying to define the smallest unit between the numbers 0 and 1, just isn't going to fly.
Time is probably very much an illusion, the same way sound and light are illusions. You could quantize sound and light both, but, they have no mass, because they speak to phenomena, the actions upon tangible material, not the material itself.
And so, if we come to find that, the tangible material itself, isn't really all that tangible either, just another phenomena, what exactly is the underlying mechanics of _that_?
Science wants causation; but, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Causation, is perfectly fine, in my opinion, within localities; but, what to do with the fact that causation isn't the end all and be all? It's sort of like the fish, desperately trying to make water of that air above, the water that is it's notion of existence, breathable.
I don't think any of that means we aren't capable of exploring space. Perhaps it won't be Star Trek style; but, it does seem a bit of a shame, that a universe should be so large, and most likely harboring life elsewhere, but, never getting to go out there and experience it.
I just think that, coming at the problems we need to over-come, at the angle we are doing so, isn't necessarily going to get us much further (take Moore's law ending, for example). When you hit the ceiling, that's it; you either have to raise the ceiling, or make due with what you have; and the ceiling, may very well be, our current conception of the cosmos and the subatomic.
Many, many, many, many things of the current era, are going to have to go the way of dinosaurs, I believe, if we are to advance as a species, in any meaningful direction. We need more heart, and less greed, more selflessness, and less selfishness, less ego, and wider view of the world. Our current economic system, my god, it must be a running joke, to certain observers. The whole thing is probably slapped together with popsicle sticks, glue, and AI algorithms.
I some times wonder, if the complexity required to go further into the rabbit hole of the universe, will require us to create minds better than ourselves. Perhaps we are but the larval stage of the evolution of earth consciousness.
Who knows. But, a lot of zen practitioners would tell you: "hah, of course time is an illusion, there is only the eternal now!"
I say, causality is fine in it's place; but, between two non-local causal planes of existence, there might be something, orders of magnitude, far stranger, and far less linear, than the human mind could possibly describe in language, much less math.
Pi, infinity, etc., I think speak to that.
All that Jibberrish aside; there is one thing that at least seems true. Many of the most monumental scientific discoveries of the modern world, were arrived at by accident. So, it may very well be that scores of scientists, all scrambling to, 'figure it out,' well be beaten out, by some brilliant mind, to be sure, simply making a mistake, and perhaps struggling to accept the truth of it, their self...
(Score: 2) by nostyle on Saturday April 16 2022, @11:42AM
-Joan Baez, Diamonds & Rust
--
A timeless tune!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @02:37PM (1 child)
I've long thought that if humans have a purpose, it's to create robots that can go out into the universe. Not us. We're adapted for Earth, and it's too difficult to haul around bubbles of Earth to surround us while we move around in space. We can make robots designed for space conditions, and send them out into the universe, as our silicon offspring.
Perhaps we could eventually adapt ourselves to space conditions, but the result sure isn't going to resemble a current biological human.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday April 18 2022, @01:17AM
I think that sort of thinking is where Daleks might come from...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Saturday April 16 2022, @07:35AM
Time might not be a fundamental property, but an emergent phenomenon. But that doesn't mean time doesn't exist.
Nobody would claim that temperature does not exist just because it isn't found in the Hamiltonian of the standard model of particle physics, nor in the field equations of the theory of general relativity.
BTW, humans don't appear in the fundamental equations of physics either. Does that mean humans don't exist?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @09:07AM
Same thing with the "omg universe is just a hologram" shit.
Just because some stupid journalist cannot comprehend what is being discussed does not make it unreal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 16 2022, @04:51PM
time exists because shape (of things) matter.
no time would need to exist if only the thing (as a material, of which there can be many) would matter.
however, not every shape of wood flies ... thus there is "time" :D
(vote: was that philosophical enough? yes/no/more salt please)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Saturday April 16 2022, @05:51PM
Actually, it's space-time that's made out of chunks.
There's no preference given to space or time separately.
I can't see why the summary would pick on time as not existing instead of picking on space as not existing.
The first step in the exposition of loop quantum gravity that I read was to formulate the general relativistic field equations in a form that was independent of space and time. Then to quantize them and finally to solve the result. The solution gave these chunks of space-time.
No, as yet I haven't followed the details of the mathematics, which are probably essential for full understanding. For me that's still a matter for further study.
-- hendrik
(Score: 1) by rickatech on Saturday April 16 2022, @07:26PM
I think this mostly comes down to time is not a dimension. It exists as a useful concept, but time dilation emerges as gravity due to barionic matter deflecting space … so I have heard.