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Special Relativity. Lifetime.
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'Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.' - Ford Prefect
(I know bugger all about physics, in case no one could tell) Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
RE: Special Relativity. Lifetime.
December 5, 2019 at 2:43 pm
(This post was last modified: December 5, 2019 at 3:09 pm by John 6IX Breezy.)
I agree that time is an illusion, but perhaps not in such absolute words. As such, theres no such thing as "time" that can be affected by the event horizon. What does exist are conscious being that perceive a slowing down of motion at the event horizon and attribute it to a slowing down of time, or rather don't perceive it if they are in it themselves and their own mental processes are slowed down as well.
If time does exist independent of our minds, we are not in a position to observe it. So the illusion comes when we perceive changes in motion as if they were changes in time.
I must admit as to not grokking your point of view in the above post.
So, Mr (Or Mrs etc) John 6IX Breezy, what happens to 'Time' when you taddle off to the land of Nod? What becomes of 'Time' when your consiousness fades into sleep? Cheers. Not at work. RE: Special Relativity. Lifetime.
December 5, 2019 at 5:13 pm
(This post was last modified: December 5, 2019 at 5:25 pm by John 6IX Breezy.)
Hmm so my premise is that there isn't a thing called "time" to which things happen to in the first place; much less one that gets affected by our sleep.
Time is an abstraction produced by the mind when motion is perceived. I'm borrowing the term abstraction from computer science; it refers to (as far as I know) the process of presenting to the user 0's and 1's in a more digestible form, like icons and letters. There is somewhat of a general agreement that the mind abstracts reality to maximize fitness, not truth. I'm of the opinion that "time" is one such abstraction. We abstract it from the perception of motion and change, thus why we need moving clocks or decaying particles to keep time. We can't keep time with a clock that doesn't move; if the universe stood perfectly still we would perhaps perceive it as being timeless even though that shouldn't be the case. I think our notion of time emerged from the way sensations are transcribed into memory. It is our ability to move through such memories that gives us the impression that there is a "time" to navigate through. Our brains also have the ability to simulate events, something which seems unique to our species. We can simulate "what could have been" scenarios in which we envision the past differently. We can also simulate future events, something that has been termed episodic future thought. Our simulations can contemplate entirely fictional scenarios as well, we are not bound by reality, but all of these simulations sort of emerge out of our memory systems. If we didn't have such a system we would perhaps only perceive the present moment in which things are occurring, not time in which things already occurred or will occur . So in conclusion, time is a byproduct of our brains. When your consciousness falls into sleep, waking up feels as if you've traveled through time despite knowing that you didn't. (December 5, 2019 at 5:13 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: Hmm so my premise is that there isn't a thing called "time" to which things happen to in the first place; much less one that gets affected by our sleep. I think that you're conflating the perception of time with time itself. A little over a century ago an eccentric Swiss patent clerk won a couple of Nobel Prizes for demonstrating the existence and very peculiar behaviour of spacetime. Time is one facet of the spacetime that is the foundation of all reality. Time isn't just the clock ticking it's where the universe lives. RE: Special Relativity. Lifetime.
December 5, 2019 at 7:23 pm
(This post was last modified: December 5, 2019 at 8:22 pm by John 6IX Breezy.)
(December 5, 2019 at 6:58 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: I think that you're conflating the perception of time with time itself. A little over a century ago an eccentric Swiss patent clerk won a couple of Nobel Prizes for demonstrating the existence and very peculiar behaviour of spacetime. Time is one facet of the spacetime that is the foundation of all reality. Time isn't just the clock ticking it's where the universe lives. Hmm a couple decades ago Moniz won the Nobel Prize for lobotomies. Before that Golgi and Cajal both won the prize despite having opposing theories of the nervous system. The prize doesn't bring you any closer to truth, or to good ideas. We don't have receptors for perceiving time, unfortunately. What we do have are neurons specialized for the perception of motion. So no, time is not a thing to be perceived, it is an abstraction. (December 5, 2019 at 7:23 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:(December 5, 2019 at 6:58 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: I think that you're conflating the perception of time with time itself. A little over a century ago an eccentric Swiss patent clerk won a couple of Nobel Prizes for demonstrating the existence and very peculiar behaviour of spacetime. Time is one facet of the spacetime that is the foundation of all reality. Time isn't just the clock ticking it's where the universe lives. A century later and they haven't proven Einstein wrong yet. Time isn't an abstraction. It's where you live. RE: Special Relativity. Lifetime.
December 5, 2019 at 11:06 pm
(This post was last modified: December 5, 2019 at 11:15 pm by John 6IX Breezy.)
(December 5, 2019 at 9:47 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: A century later and they haven't proven Einstein wrong yet. Time isn't an abstraction. It's where you live. There's no need to prove Einstein wrong; if his theory makes use of the notion of time, and it can successfully make predictions with it, then the model is useful. However, Einstein's ideas predate the cognitive revolution in psychology and any imaging technology implemented by cognitive neuroscience. I'm not necessarily an expert on the psychological literature of time, but we can at least begin by understanding that we don't have a perception of time, only a perception of motion, change, events, and other movements (Gibson, 1975). References: Gibson, J. J. (1975). Events are perceivable but time is not. In J. T. Fraser, & N. Lawrence, The study of time II (pp. 295-301). New York: Springer-Verlag. (December 5, 2019 at 11:06 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:(December 5, 2019 at 9:47 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: A century later and they haven't proven Einstein wrong yet. Time isn't an abstraction. It's where you live. A quick look at the literature listed on Google Scholar suggests that Gibson was wrong. At best, you've managed to demonstrate that the human brain is pretty limited. We also don't perceive infrasound, ionizing radiation, or dark matter. Space-time is one of the two paradigms by which we understand the universe, the other being quantum mechanics. If you want to maintain that time doesn't really exist then I suggest you take it up with the chaps over at LIGO. |
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