Time; do you believe in it?

[DracoSuave]

The OP's post confuses the measurement of time with time itself.

A similar argument would state that temperature does not exists simply because the units can be changed. Let me tell you something, it don't matter if you use Celcius, Kelvin, or Fehrenheit. Shit gets hot, shit burns your skin. It doesn't matter what you use to measure time, you're gonna age, things that burn will not be unburned, and so on.

The existence of entropy proves the existence of time. The question is 'what IS time?' and that is a much deeper and interesting question.

Here's a counter counter argument: if aliens landed, with a completely alternate set of languages and cultural contexts to ours, how would you communicate time to them? You could communicate distance simply by drawing a line in the sand. But how would you describe stretches of time?

They would probably have a better understanding of the relativistic effects on time than we would, and whatever we tried to tell them, our notions would come off as quaint and provincial.

 

[Deacon Cole]

You are confusing the unit of measurement with the thing itself. You mistake inches for length.

You should probably organize your thoughts better.

 

[DEAD34345]

You are confusing the unit of measurement with the thing itself. You are mistake inches for length.

You should probably organize your thoughts better.

Actually I'm pretty sure he's trying to explain a number of scientific theories that claim time is basically just another dimension, like the spatial dimensions. What he is saying isn't that the dimension of time is man-made, but that our perception of it as a separate dimension that automatically travels forward is.

Of course this kind of stuff is hard to explain, so I may be wrong (or I may be right and still not be explaining it very clearly).

Basically I think of time as another dimension the same as the 3 dimensions of space. However, events that happen in time seem to affect other events that happen in time along 1 direction only (in most cases). When something happens, it doesn't seem to effect the stuff that has happened "before" it, but it does effect the stuff that happens "after" it. Therefore humans (and presumably any living creature) has to organise events according to time in order to make any sense of it at all.

 

[Sean951]

Yeah, that crossed my mind about an hour after I posted that. Before I start I just want to say: Fucking Hell I hate Berkeley.

Ok, then I have this counter argument. It is an interactive thought experiment. Hold your hands apart; it doesn't matter how far apart. Now, that distance is the same if we call it a meter, an inch, a gracie, tits, etc. It will remain that distance. Now lets do the same with the "distance" between the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Toy Story's theatrical release. That "distance" in time is the same. Sure it the difference is 32 years on Earth, ~96 years for Mercury, ~.13 years for Pluto, etc. However, it is the same distance (in the fourth dimension) no matter what time scale you use.

The problem is that where my hands and the space between them exist firmly in the empirical, observable world, the space between JFK's assassination and Toy Story's theatrical release is entirely theoretical. It is a point in the social conscious of our people.

Here's a counter counter argument: if aliens landed, with a completely alternate set of languages and cultural contexts to ours, how would you communicate time to them? You could communicate distance simply by drawing a line in the sand. But how would you describe stretches of time? Additionally, if they wiped out all life on earth (and all our history books, etc.), my line in the sand would still exist. But if there was no empirical, observable record of JFK having been assassinated, would that still exist? No scientist would ever be able to prove that happened, or even have any notion that there was anything to prove. Nobody would ever mention or think about it again. How could you say, in that case, that it exists? Isn't the definition of something that exists is that it has an observable effect on the universe?

you have left physics and gone into philosophy, so it's kind of pointless to try and argue a point. But for the record, the "information" of JFKs assassination would still exist in the Universe, it would just be horribly scrambled. Information is never destroyed based on what we know of physics.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

Yeah, that crossed my mind about an hour after I posted that. Before I start I just want to say: Fucking Hell I hate Berkeley.

Ok, then I have this counter argument. It is an interactive thought experiment. Hold your hands apart; it doesn't matter how far apart. Now, that distance is the same if we call it a meter, an inch, a gracie, tits, etc. It will remain that distance. Now lets do the same with the "distance" between the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Toy Story's theatrical release. That "distance" in time is the same. Sure it the difference is 32 years on Earth, ~96 years for Mercury, ~.13 years for Pluto, etc. However, it is the same distance (in the fourth dimension) no matter what time scale you use.

The problem is that where my hands and the space between them exist firmly in the empirical, observable world, the space between JFK's assassination and Toy Story's theatrical release is entirely theoretical. It is a point in the social conscious of our people.

Here's a counter counter argument: if aliens landed, with a completely alternate set of languages and cultural contexts to ours, how would you communicate time to them? You could communicate distance simply by drawing a line in the sand. But how would you describe stretches of time? Additionally, if they wiped out all life on earth (and all our history books, etc.), my line in the sand would still exist. But if there was no empirical, observable record of JFK having been assassinated, would that still exist? No scientist would ever be able to prove that happened, or even have any notion that there was anything to prove. Nobody would ever mention or think about it again. How could you say, in that case, that it exists? Isn't the definition of something that exists is that it has an observable effect on the universe?

you have left physics and gone into philosophy, so it's kind of pointless to try and argue a point. But for the record, the "information" of JFKs assassination would still exist in the Universe, it would just be horribly scrambled. Information is never destroyed based on what we know of physics.

My original point is that I don't think this thread was ever about physics.

However, you've piqued my interest. What exactly do you mean by "information is never destroyed"?
I mean, if I write something on a piece of paper, I suppose you could say I'm arranging carbon molecules in a way that conveys meaning (and thus storing information physically), and that if I then burn the piece of paper, the carbon molecules are still physically present, but "just horribly scrambled".
But then again, information seems like it would be solely contingent on the arrangement of particles, and not necessarily linked to the particles themselves. So if you scramble the pattern, you've destroyed the information present and it ceases to exist. Otherwise you could argue that within a pencil exists all the information in the universe scrambled up randomly.

 

[YawningAngel]

This is absurd. Time as a concept exists irrespective of our existence. If anything can have multiple states and can transition between them, then it must be possible to distinguish between the two states, and since (at a macroscopic level) they cannot coincide they must ipso facto have occurred at different times. While we wouldn't have "time" as a concept with humans to define it, time itself would be entirely unchanged if we weren't around to observe its passing.

 

[crudus]

Here's a counter counter argument: if aliens landed, with a completely alternate set of languages and cultural contexts to ours, how would you communicate time to them? You could communicate distance simply by drawing a line in the sand. But how would you describe stretches of time? Additionally, if they wiped out all life on earth (and all our history books, etc.), my line in the sand would still exist. But if there was no empirical, observable record of JFK having been assassinated, would that still exist? No scientist would ever be able to prove that happened, or even have any notion that there was anything to prove. Nobody would ever mention or think about it again. How could you say, in that case, that it exists? Isn't the definition of something that exists is that it has an observable effect on the universe?

If Aliens did land and were interested in talking I probably wouldn't start with time or space (they probably would be ahead of me in that area anyway). Probably better to start with names and work our way from there. Actually Dictionary.com just defines existence as "being" or "the state of existing". In 1.45×1027 to 1.74 × 1027 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom the sun will become a red giant, consume the Earth, and turn into a white dwarf. After this happens it is unlikely any life would know we happened or of our history. Does that mean we didn't exist? After looking around my room I notice stuff exists. Just because written and oral data of something doesn't exist, doesn't mean something didn't happen.

Actually it will surprise you to know a scientist can prove events of the past even if an alien race destroyed Earth. It is called conservation of information. Small scale: imagine a sink full of water. Now lets get some red dye into an eye dropper and drip the dye into the water, but let's do it in such a way that the drops hitting the water make "SOS" in Morse code. Wait a while, and the dye will disperse throughout the sink. If we had the time, we could get that original message of "SOS" back. The same concept works everywhere. Everything still affects the universe after it is long gone.

My original point is that I don't think this thread was ever about physics.

A thread is automatically about physics when you can physically prove something exists when the claim is that it does not.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

Actually it will surprise you to know a scientist can prove events of the past even if an alien race destroyed Earth. It is called conservation of information. Small scale: imagine a sink full of water. Now lets get some red dye into an eye dropper and drip the dye into the water, but let's do it in such a way that the drops hitting the water make "SOS" in Morse code. Wait a while, and the dye will disperse throughout the sink. If we had the time, we could get that original message of "SOS" back. The same concept works everywhere. Everything still affects the universe after it is long gone.

But that makes no sense. You would have to know the original message of SOS in order to recreate SOS. Just because you can recreate the information doesn't mean it always existed there. If you take that same red dye and make a message out of it that says ASS in morse code, you're creating new information. The particles are the same, yes, but the information they originally stored within their pattern of arrangement has been destroyed.

In other words, if I smash a one-of-a-kind vase, the physical pieces of the vase still exist, but it would be virtually impossible to put back together again without intricate knowledge of how the vase originally looked. In this analogy, the design of the vase is the information which is now lost. Even if you randomly recreated the vase perfectly, you would never really know if it's exactly the way it used to be. So how can you say the information still exists?

 

[crudus]

So how can you say the information still exists?

I am not saying just tap out the code again. Imagine a pool table. If I hit the cue ball into other balls, they all go flying into different directions. If I know their speed, mass, and the friction of the table, I can predict with great accuracy where they will stop. If I choose I can do it the other way too, and find out where they came from. The same is true for a pool of atoms/molecules; it is just a much larger scale.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

So how can you say the information still exists?

I am not saying just tap out the code again. Imagine a pool table. If I hit the cue ball into other balls, they all go flying into different directions. If I know their speed, mass, and the friction of the table, I can predict with great accuracy where they will stop. If I choose I can do it the other way too, and find out where they came from. The same is true for a pool of atoms/molecules; it is just a much larger scale.

A little bit of reading on Google/Wiki makes this theory look even more dubious. Did you know it was posited by a guy trying to prove intelligent design [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specified_complexity#Law_of_conservation_of_information]?

Most of the other stuff I've turned up is pretty much a bunch of people [http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-251215.html] shredding the theory to ribbons [http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CI/CI010.html] with technical stuff I don't quite understand. Entropy and crap.


I think the point is that the universe is waaay too complex to reliably manipulate on a quantum level (i.e. predicting how particles move). And that if you ever found a way to, using your metaphor, put the pool balls back the way they were, you would have almost godlike powers that transcend time and space.

 

[Johnny Impact]

Time is a physical process that continues regardless of our presence. Human systems for measuring time could be changed but doing so would have no effect on time itself. To put it another way, the universe doesn't give two shits what we humans say to one another.

 

[Darth IB]

McTaggart [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/#McTArg] made a rather compelling argument against the existence of time, though I personally think his findings are semantic rather than metaphysical.
Does time exist? I like to think so.
Can we claim to know that it does? I'm not so sure.

 

[Sean951]

This [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information] is the specific theory that we are talking about. It was used to disprove Hawking on his theory of black holes, and he conceded defeat on the subject, so I would assume it is widely accepted as true.

Here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information#As_a_property_in_physics] is another way to define information in the way it is used in the above.

 

[sir.rutthed]

Time as we know it is an abstract representation. There is no physical thing that you can hold in your hand called "time", no more than you can hold an idea. Outside of consciousness, it has no meaning and can be said not to exist. But, since we're here and are able to measure and quantify it, time as a concept does exist.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

This [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information] is the specific theory that we are talking about. It was used to disprove Hawking on his theory of black holes, and he conceded defeat on the subject, so I would assume it is widely accepted as true.

Here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information#As_a_property_in_physics] is another way to define information in the way it is used in the above.

Nowhere in either of those articles does it say that information cannot be destroyed.
In fact, it specifically states "it is impossible to destroy information without increasing the entropy of a system". In other words, when information is destroyed, the system it is apart of increases in entropy, making it an irreversible process [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy#Thermodynamical_and_statistical_descriptions]. So, the information would completely cease to exist.

 

[Navvan]

Snip.

I've never heard of any theory of time not being real and everything you stated does nothing to support that argument. There are certainly things we don't exactly grasp about time such as how it is non-linear and not constant since our frame of reference is based on time. That doesn't mean it certainly exists. Changing the hours in a day and such is equivalent to changing how many centimeters are in a meter. You can certainly do it but that doesn't change the fact distance exists.

 

[Sean951]

This [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information] is the specific theory that we are talking about. It was used to disprove Hawking on his theory of black holes, and he conceded defeat on the subject, so I would assume it is widely accepted as true.

Here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information#As_a_property_in_physics] is another way to define information in the way it is used in the above.

Nowhere in either of those articles does it say that information cannot be destroyed.
In fact, it specifically states "it is impossible to destroy information without increasing the entropy of a system". In other words, when information is destroyed, the system it is apart of increases in entropy, making it an irreversible process [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy#Thermodynamical_and_statistical_descriptions]. So, the information would completely cease to exist.

The fact that Hawking's "Hawking Radiation" could not exist without destroying information causing a "war" to be declared by Susskind doesn't imply that? Susskind attempted to explain information in The History Channels "The Universe" with the red dye example provided above. It may be impossible for us to decipher it, but the information is still there.

This guy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Susskind] is the one who proved Hawking wrong.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

This [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information] is the specific theory that we are talking about. It was used to disprove Hawking on his theory of black holes, and he conceded defeat on the subject, so I would assume it is widely accepted as true.

Here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information#As_a_property_in_physics] is another way to define information in the way it is used in the above.

Nowhere in either of those articles does it say that information cannot be destroyed.
In fact, it specifically states "it is impossible to destroy information without increasing the entropy of a system". In other words, when information is destroyed, the system it is apart of increases in entropy, making it an irreversible process [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy#Thermodynamical_and_statistical_descriptions]. So, the information would completely cease to exist.

The fact that Hawking's "Hawking Radiation" could not exist without destroying information causing a "war" to be declared by Susskind doesn't imply that? Susskind attempted to explain information in The History Channels "The Universe" with the red dye example provided above. It may be impossible for us to decipher it, but the information is still there.

I'm way out of my element when it comes to discussing quantum mechanics, I'll admit.
But how can you possibly call something "information", if it is virtually impossible for anyone to actually make any sort of sense out of it? If information is "scrambled", and you didn't specifically witness its scrambling, the only way of obtaining that information in its original form is by reversing time. Simply put, how can you call that information?

Additionally, if you have a sink with red dye in it, you could rearrange those molecules into a virtually infinite number of permutations to encode almost any message. Does that mean the sink contains an infinite amount of information, scrambled up?

 

[NastoK]

Time is a man made concept, it is not a natural phenomenon. Time was created to allow us to have a grasp of how long something will take to complete, how long ago an event happened or how long it will be until an events happenes. Time is something that can be very easily changed, if i wanted to change the number of hours in a day to 10 and change how long a minute was, with the right knowledge of how a clock worked, i could do it.

First off, I really don't feel like reading all of the posts, so if this was already mentioned, forgive me.

You speak of time as a man made concept, and as far as the word goes, you are correct. One could call it a jelly bean, but it wouldn't change it's effect on the universe around us. Hours, minutes, seconds, these are man made concepts that help us mesure time, to tell us when something will happen, or when something happened. It is this that we can change, not time.

From what I've heared, time doesn't flow the same everywhere. It can be affected by gravity, and in this sense time travel is, I guess, possible. But, my point of view is this: What happened happened, and cannot be changed. By this I mean, if man figures a way to travel through time, it will probably be only forward, not backwards. On the other hand, if we, somehow, could travel backwards in time, I still believe we couldn't change the present. Were we to travel back in time and do something, than in the present that would have already been done. Example: if a man was to travel back in time and throw an apple at Isaac Newton, he wouldn't change the present. In fact, it would most likely be that this act caused the discovery of gravity in the first place. But this causes a paradox: what happened the very first time, before the man traveled back threw an apple?

Time is a mistery, and I'll pretend not that I know the whats and hows of it.