Time; do you believe in it?

[James Joseph Emerald]

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.

...

Our conscept of time revolves around the length of time it takes for our planet to do a full rotation, and the length of time it takes to orbit our sun once. This would be different for every other planet in the universe, including those in our solar system.

By the logic in the first paragraph we could do the same thing with a meter stick. I could get a longer/shorter piece of wood and call it a meter. It really doesn't do anything for me though. What you did what change the way to measure something, not the something itself. It really doesn't change anything. The same amount of time will still pass and the same speed. If you want to change time just go really, really fast or go near something truly massive.

I think this guy is making an existential argument, rather than a physics one.
Like, if nobody measures time, can it really exist? It's the old "tree falling in the woods" thing.
It's not something you can really use logic to refute, because it's challenging the entire foundation upon which logical thought is based.

 

[King Toasty]

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.

*slow clap*

Unfortunately, ot's logically impossible to view time non-subjectively.

 

[darth gditch]

A couple of months ago i was watching a documentary on time travel and i couldn't help but dissagree with the theories being talked about, but it got me to thinking about time and the nature of it.

Now this might be quite a farfetched concept to a lot of you as i can't imagine you have seen many theories that say time isn't real, so bare with me and ill try explain this the best i can.


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.


My personal opinion is that, as far as the past, the future and the possibility of time travel go, time doesn't exist. There is no past and future, everything that happened happened in the prescent as the precent is the evolution of everything that used to be.

Our conscept of time revolves around the length of time it takes for our planet to do a full rotation, and the length of time it takes to orbit our sun once. This would be different for every other planet in the universe, including those in our solar system.


So that's roughly what i think of the concept of time. I want to know what you guys think about time and whether you agree of dissagree with my idea to whatever extent.

Time is arbitrary, duration and entropy are not.

Generally speaking, the only real way we know "time" exists is because the universe is more disordered now then it was 20,000 years ago. We can measure radioactive decay, radioactivity, and the subsequent increase in entropy. What we choose to label this duration as is irrelevant. Also, interestingly enough, if certain theorist are correct, time is another spatial dimension that does indeed loop back on itself in a concept called "universe bubbling."

 

[King Toasty]

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.

...

Our conscept of time revolves around the length of time it takes for our planet to do a full rotation, and the length of time it takes to orbit our sun once. This would be different for every other planet in the universe, including those in our solar system.

By the logic in the first paragraph we could do the same thing with a meter stick. I could get a longer/shorter piece of wood and call it a meter. It really doesn't do anything for me though. What you did what change the way to measure something, not the something itself. It really doesn't change anything. The same amount of time will still pass and the same speed. If you want to change time just go really, really fast or go near something truly massive.

I think this guy is making an existential argument, rather than a physics one.
Like, if nobody measures time, can it really exist? It's the old "tree falling in the woods" thing.
It's not something you can really use logic to refute, because it's challenging the entire foundation upon which logical thought is based.

Wait, yes we measure time. Our clocks, our perception. Both are influenced by time and measure them- maybe not very accurately, and it's subjected a lot of wibbly-wobbly time perspective stuff, but it's measured.

 

[Dyme]

Time is nothing to believe or not believe in. It is there. Obviously.

No matter if you say a day is 24 hours long or 100 weirdohours. A day will still be equally long. In the same way that a thing that weighs 1 kilogram weighs 2 pounds. It is just as heavy. Just a different name.

Time is relative though. If you move faster, time goes slower. But I don't understand that. It's fucking crazy.

 

[Snowy Rainbow]

Time moves in one direction, is measurable, and can be altered around points of gravity. Yes, it exists.

Have any proof to offer? Or is that conjecture?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Time's actually a man-made concept used to measure a man-made concept. Neither the divisions or the measurement they're dividing have any real use, except to themselves.

Believe in it? No. Use it? Sure.

Have a huge laugh when people disprove Time Travel while accepting Time as REAL? Equally sure.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

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.

...

Our conscept of time revolves around the length of time it takes for our planet to do a full rotation, and the length of time it takes to orbit our sun once. This would be different for every other planet in the universe, including those in our solar system.

By the logic in the first paragraph we could do the same thing with a meter stick. I could get a longer/shorter piece of wood and call it a meter. It really doesn't do anything for me though. What you did what change the way to measure something, not the something itself. It really doesn't change anything. The same amount of time will still pass and the same speed. If you want to change time just go really, really fast or go near something truly massive.

I think this guy is making an existential argument, rather than a physics one.
Like, if nobody measures time, can it really exist? It's the old "tree falling in the woods" thing.
It's not something you can really use logic to refute, because it's challenging the entire foundation upon which logical thought is based.

Wait, yes we measure time. Our clocks, our perception. Both are influenced by time and measure them- maybe not very accurately, and it's subjected a lot of wibbly-wobbly time perspective stuff, but it's measured.

Er, right. But the point is, if time wasn't measured, would it exist? Just like, if a tree falls in the woods, and nobody hears it, did it make a sound? Scientifically, you can say "yes, of course. Kinetic energy from the tree falling would convert into sound waves, regardless of whether there's anyone around to have their eardrums vibrated by it", but you can't ever be 100% totally positively sure the unobserved world really exists.

Seriously, you can win virtually any argument with a physicist just by saying "NO, what if dark matter randomly comes along and fucks shit up?"

 

[ShakyFt Slasher]

Time was created by man using mathematical concepts but I know that I ate breakfast before I typed this response so therefore time exists.

 

[RandallJohn]

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.

I'm glad someone quoted it before I did.

 

[OliverTwist72]

Hours, days, years, etc... are inventions of man yes. But they are just measurements of the passage of time. While you can argue about the philosophical nature of time, time is a fundamental physical property. Yet it is also relative. It is a truly interesting topic if you want to delve into it.

To put it simply: if there is motion, there is time. Because that motion has to take place over a certain interval.

Ray Cummings wrote an interesting quote back in 1922 about time: "Time...is what keeps everything from happening at once"

 

[Thespian]

In my eyes, Time is the word given to something highly complex that we only partly understand.

 

[FuktLogik]

Well, your theory is wrong. The past is made up of events that have occurred. The present is made up of events that are occurring. The future will be made up of events that will occur.

Time exists despite our futile attempts to rewind, freeze, fast forward or otherwise control it. The only reason we as a species care so much about time is because it is synonymous with decay.

 

[King Toasty]

Time moves in one direction, is measurable, and can be altered around points of gravity. Yes, it exists.

Have any proof to offer? Or is that conjecture?

We know that time moves in one direction, (at least not on the quantum-mindfuckery level) because we see that atoms decay in one way- downwards. They degrade, always, all the time, instead of every getting stronger (or the reverse of decay). If we ever saw an atom that reverse-decayed, our notion of time would be challenged. But we haven't; we've only seen them get weaker.

Time is measurable in much the same way, for really exact time, but humans generally use perspective time- our brain erases, speeds up or slows down memory according to a situation, so in retrospect time seems to have gone faster or slower.

Time being "bent," or more of fluctuated, around extremely heavy objects is fairly common knowledge. Think of putting a ball of a taunt linen sheet: it curves and bends the sheet. I can find stuff on it, I guess, if you really need it.

 

[shadowsandwich]

This is how time works... in my opinion and quite a few other people's

 

[Snowy Rainbow]

We know that time moves in one direction, (at least not on the quantum-mindfuckery level) because we see that atoms decay in one way- downwards. They degrade, always, all the time, instead of every getting stronger (or the reverse of decay).

But that's our idea of time -- that progression is a forward moving force. If time exists outside our need for it, how do you know decay is not caused by time moving sideways? How do you know time moves at all? Or even within our understanding of direction? Perhaps the entire concept of time being movement is wrong.

My point isn't that time doesn't exist (fuck knows if it does), but rather who's to say our man-made view of it is right? It all just seems so... arrogant (not you - the concept). As if the way we understand time is truth. I dunno.

Everyone should go buy Chronoclast (Selected Essays on Time-Reckoning and Auto-Cannibalism). An album more or less about humanity's obsession with the need for time (to the point of life seeming impossible to operate without it) and the different areas in which it rules our lives and is used by others to control us. I've always been something of an armchair philosopher and I found this band's concept of time and its use as a tool very interesting. Some cool stuff. Made me rethink a lot.

1. Introduction
2. Time as Ideology
3. Time as Methodology
4. Time as Surrogate Religion
5. Time as Imperialism
6. Reintroduction
7. Time as Abjection
8. Time as Automation
9. Time as Commodity
10. Time as Resistance​

Let loose the clockwork dogs
Pathological believers, faithful servants
Reduced to servomechanisms with lock-step discipline and knee-jerk obedience
Reduced to time-reckoners with Newtonian mechanics and a Promethean mandate
Polishing and decorating each ideological cage
Notch by notch, hammer by hammer, escape from freedom
Prognosis: ideologies are habits of thought that defy thought and enable people to avoid thought
Airborne contagions, communicable plagues, towing the weary down river like rudderless wrecks And we are all sick with them.​

Hell-bent on standardization
On Cartesian deliverance
Time is the primary socializing tool
Indelibly imprinted and structurally biased
We are domesticated creatures of technical abstraction
If reductionism is our religion, then time keeping is our benediction
Reified and ratified in fixed ideas and solid state circuitry
This baptism took place on the hinges of history
By the faithful who made repression a cardinal requisite
By the faithful who made the timepiece as holy as the cross
Hell-bent on standardization
The wheel keeps turning and we all turn with it.
​

 

[DaMullet]

*snip*

Um... wtf?

So time doesn't exist if clocks were never invented?

Time is just 1 dimention of this 11 dimentional universe that we live in.

Wow... I just ... I ... I don't have anything nice to say.

 

[King Toasty]

We know that time moves in one direction, (at least not on the quantum-mindfuckery level) because we see that atoms decay in one way- downwards. They degrade, always, all the time, instead of every getting stronger (or the reverse of decay).

But that's our idea of time -- that progression is a forward moving force. If time exists outside our need for it, how do you know decay is not caused by time moving sideways? How do you know time moves at all? Or even within our understanding of direction? Perhaps the entire concept of time being movement is wrong.

My point isn't that time doesn't exist (fuck knows if it does), but rather who's to say our man-made view of it is right? It all just seems so... arrogant (not you - the concept). As if the way we understand time is truth. I dunno.


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I didn't say it moved forward, I just said it moved in one direction. We always think of it moving "forward". But even if it DID illogically move "backwards", I'd still be right, because time would still exist.

 

[Innegativeion]

You can renumber a clock to give it different intervals, but time still exists independently of your labels. It is most defiantly not manmade. Just man labeled for your convenience. It existed before there was mans after all.

Yup, it is a function of energy, like space and matter.


To put it simply, time exists because everything else exists, It does not exists independently of the universe. If all matter ceased, time would cease.

It is a natural phenomena like matter.

 

[rokkolpo]

What we call time is merely a documentation of our perception.
And for that, time is true.