Time; do you believe in it?

[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.

 

[Infernai]

Most people think Time is like a river, flowing swift and sure in one direction. But i have seen the face of time, and i can tell you...they are wrong. Time is like an ocean in the middle of a storm. You may wander who i am, and where i came from: Sit down, and i will tell you a story unlike any you have ever heard before.

 

[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.

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?

We don't have the computational ability to decode information once it gets that scrambled, but we may some day. Who knows, there may be an alien race who already can. But since it can't travel faster than the speed of light, much of our history would never have reached.

 

[A Shadows Age]

wow, deep, and here's me full of beer, chillin' in my back garden and enjoying my birthday!
But yeah time, time has to run and we jump in and out of it (either that or the last 31 years were for nothing!)

Now your getting it. The last part I mean.

 

[Sharpiez]

I guess I agree in that we have no real way of perceiving time. We have to design devices to portray time accurately. Without the sun/moon cycles I don't believe we would perceive it the same way, if you and I were locked in the same empty room, and had to sit in silence for two days, we would come out with totally different ideas on how long we had been stuck in there.

My opinion is:

Time is relative... (ho ho)

To us.

 

[Daggedawg]

"Time" as we perceive it, doesn't exist, is what I believe. It's all because of matter in motion. As long as something is moving, "time" will "pass".

 

[xan_shaw]

Even if humans didn't exist, the Earth would still rotate around the Sun. So yes, hours, minutes and seconds are things that we've come up with in order to mark that passing, but in reality, time does exist. Aliens from Blargon 7 may not measure time in the same way that we do, or at all, but to us there is solid undeniable proof of the passage of time. Mainly the Earth's rotation.

And to question whether or not time would exist without humans is... well... kind rhetorical. I mean, if we weren't around to experiance it or question it, would it matter in any way? Not really.

 

[GraveeKing]

I MENTIONED the possibility that I don't believe in evolution the other day and got a hammering for that, the fact you're disagreeing with time may get you killed xD

Anywho, rofltrolls aside. Time, to me is like a set of pictures, just insanely fast. Without time we'd just be a still picture, I do believe in time as a universal concept, in the fact without it we wouldn't be moving....
Although I can see where you're coming from - since we can't measure planetary time due to the fact the planets orbiting becoming closer to the sun etc. But true time? Yeah we can measure that sure. If I said 10seconds ago it's still 10 seconds ago - no matter whenever or wherever I say it, so Universally there is a time of sorts.

 

[The Geek Lord]

Time is a man made concept, it is not a natural phenomenon.

I stopped reading right there. I hope you're talking about the measurement of time, because if you're not I'll have to pull a Linkara on you, good sir. (I AM A MAN etc)

Time is not "man made." If time was man made, then you would've created a time paradox. Without time man would have never existed, since without time nothing would move. Everything would be at a stand still. Get what I'm saying here?

Let me put it this way. I don't have a degree in physics or any scientific field, or anything at all for that matter, being 16 kind of does that, but I don't think it's that hard to figure out. Move your hand in front of you. Now just sway your hand back and forth. If time was not natural, you wouldn't be doing this, because nothing would be natural, because nothing could be. Nothing would exist. Nothing would happen, nothing could work. And fuck I'm starting to ramble on about this. So I'll just leave you with this.

Good day, sir!​

 

[ScoopMeister]

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.

Props for getting that in there mate. This should be the final word on the matter.