Forever?

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by TheFrogger, Jun 18, 2017.

  1. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Dear Sciforumers,

    As a time-traveller I sometimes get lonely. My wife is also a time-traveller but she has only traversed twice. Me? Three times.

    I am writing to cordially invite you to travel with us.

    To travel time must I build a case or argument myself? In my mind? Would that be me doing it?

    It is impossible to travel back in time, but may we travel into the future, and Forever? Does time extend forever? Can we match this foreverness?

    Example: "steak dinner."

    When finished, there is "a plate."

    The plate is washed and placed on a draining board. "A plate."

    Should the plate be dropped, and broken, you may argue it is not a plate anymore. To this I say, "Earthquake." Tectonic "plate."

    If I may pursue this argument forever, opposing every counter claim, does this preclude travel?
     
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  3. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    I have no idea where you are going with this thread

    I hope there is a Dr somewhere along the journey

    I don't mean Dr Who

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  5. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    I'm going into the future negating time, so it doesn't exist.
     
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  7. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Please get help.
     
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  8. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Before getting to "plate"...

    "Time" suggests a framework or an organization of co-existing units. Collections of which everyday language might categorize as past or future depending on relationship to a potentially subjective, elusive / specious, special unit called "now". However, sometimes there may be no framework at all (only the "now" alone, but that's for later).

    Travel implies an already existing place or location to undergo a journey to. That is, when there is no domain beyond a stone path itself, then conjuring a new segment to the stone path may be contended to just be the path "growing" rather than the path or a component of it traveling.

    In the presentism view of time, no thing qualifies for travel because only a magical process featuring a conceptual state or slot called "now" is in effect, whose concrete content (the universe) is successively annihilated and replaced by a slightly altered version of itself (changes). Each new version of the cosmos is still stuck in that slot of a global "present". Past and future don't exist.

    In the eternalism view of time (wherein all moments co-exist, wherein labels like past / future have correlates) no thing qualifies for travel anymore than a ball rolling in a short animation strip is actually moving. In that analogy, each change or temporal part of the ball is confined to its particular celluloid frame, duration or coordinates.

    In the possibilism view of time, temporal parts of the world which we conceive of as the "past" co-exist, but not those collectively referred to as the "future". New moments are added but even then become the "past" rather than a future. The "travel" problem that plagues possibilism is introduced in the second paragraph above. [Or third if counting the opening line.]

    Finally, back to the plate.

    The general idea or concept of a plate, just by being so universal or already distributed hither and thither in space and time as an item of human thoughts, conversations, and plans -- yet seems to suffer the problem of the concrete object when it comes to travel.

    With regard to a particular plate, even if broken into pieces, the enduring "stuff" which once constituted the plate seems to lack motivity as well. Whatever arrangement the stuff is in as it changes, each change is confined to its particular moment or location in a time or or generic space / time framework.

    Apparently only a thing possessing consciousness (and arguably requiring the extrospective venue) can experience a representation of an object in space changing through time. Plates and the arrangement of "stuff" composing them are thereby absent to even themselves, much less having awareness of their surrounding environment. A function of consciousness, if not the core foundation of it, is to discriminate a whole into discrete entities and events, and relate them with each other (systemise them). Memory and a degree of intellect have to be included to fully accomplish that.

    So it shouldn't be surprising that the consciousness of a brain / body (the latter's stretch of living from fetal era to death) discriminates said brain / body into temporal parts. Consciousness of one's lifetime just is each temporal part[*] cognitively declaring itself in isolation from the others, but seeming to "take its turn" because of their relational connections to each other.

    Thus it produces the illusion of "something flowing" from moment to moment along a generic time / space framework, as if the immaterial spirit of folklore oozing down a matter pipeline. A mere appearance of travel taking place, and it being futureward. (Life spreads and explodes in diversity in that direction, whereas it dwindles to non-existence in the other direction. A case might or might not also be made that human language is largely only meaningful in the future direction, that it has a biased orientation for that. Even whatever substitutes for thought in turkey brains could only make sense slash be loaded for bear if facing tomorrow.)

    - - - - -

    [*] The consciousness of each milliseconds-long, temporal part of a dimensionally extended brain/body is taken for granted to correspond internally to a short, accumulated series of neural states treated as its cause.

    - - -
     
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2017
  9. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Hello.

    My argument precisely. Due to the human travel through time, anything proposed in the now, should it be eternal, will exist infinitely.

    "But you've already decided to explode yourself haven't you Fessel?"-Barry, Four Lions.
     
  10. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Having just a few moments ago posted in another thread dealing with the question Does time exist?

    it might help if I add some of the same post in that thread here

    Time does not exist
    Time does not flow
    Time does not have any direction
    Only NOW exist
    The PAST does not exist
    The FUTURE does not exist

    Following from those pronouncements it follows time travel is impossible simply because there are no destinations

    no past

    no future

    The whole of the Universe exist ONLY in a permanent state of NOW

    If you would like to play

    "Let's be god"

    for a moment

    Imagine as god you have a viewpoint outside of the Universe such as you can see the complete 3D view encompassing the spherical shape with approximately a 14 billion light years radius in every direction

    Everything your view encompasses is operating under a single NOW

    Puny humans WITHIN the Universe on Earth can only experience a local Earth NOW

    but can gaze at a vanished distant past

    as light from that NOW part of the

    Universe finally makes it to Earth

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  11. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Except the past DID exist, and thus the past DOES exist, as it has shaped our present.
     
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  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    So am I! Good to meet another fellow time traveler.
     
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  13. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    There - see right there? I just traveled 30 seconds into the future. Hello future!
     
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  14. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    The operative words in your statement are DID EXIST

    When it becomes our NOW it ceased to exist

    Sorry to rain on your parade mates

    NOBODY has EVER traveled into the future

    EVERYBODY is stuck in a never ending NOW

    Hard luck fellow NOW travellers you almost thought you made it

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    And billvon you don't even get recognition for adding 30 seconds to your age

    EVERYBODY who stayed alive for those 30 seconds of NOW did exactly the same as yourself

    It would be just to much to hand out a participation award 7 billion fellow NOW travellers

    IF IF IF and its a big IF you do ever do make it

    even 1 SECOND into the future

    have you considered that even such a

    monumental feat would never even get you

    recognition or a award?

    You see YOU would be out of touch with us plebs stuck here 1 second in your past

    Hope you like solitude

    Really really awesome solitude

    NOTHING in your current NOW will be there with you

    Still again good luck and bon voyage if you do make it

    Don't bother trying to send a postcard

    Apart from not having a postcard to send it wouldn't matter if you did as the postcard would be out of us plebs reach 1 second in the future

    Well enough rabbiting on its 2:15am at my NOW here in Darwin Australia so is back to sleep until 6:15am NOW

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  15. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    HA! I just traveled over 2 HOURS into the future! I am leaving your measly post behind an hour at a time!
     
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  16. TheFrogger Banned Valued Senior Member

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    ...and what of our ancestors Michael? The Mother's and Father's who made us? Are you stating they did not exist?
     
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  17. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    So it would seem
     
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  18. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    What so hard to understand that the

    PAST DID EXIST but in our current

    NOW

    no longer EXIST

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  19. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    It sounds as though you are lacking object permanence...
     
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  20. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Because you haven't supported it; you have merely asserted it.

    I grant that we humans only experience now, but that simply does not lead to the conclusion that time doesn't exist.
    How can something age, without the passage of time?
     
  21. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Which means?

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  22. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Yes

    Do you dispute the past existed?

    Do you dispute it does not exist now?

    What assertions would you make in response? or evidence offer? to indicate time does exist?

    The whole of the Universe experiences only NOW

    And that is NOT the basis for the conclusion of the non existence of time

    Has anybody
    • Seen time?
    • Sensed time with ANY of the body senses?
    • Knows what substance time is composed of?
    AGE is not time

    AGE is the arbitrary name (number) given to anything which exist between two arbitrary NOW moments

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  23. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    I make no assertions in response.
    You have made an assertion, and the onus is on you to defend it.


    Ah. you have inserted an important word: experience.

    Is that your definition of 'existing'? Something or someone must experience it?

    Does that mean there are no stars in galaxies that we have not imaged yet? Because no one has seen, heard or touched them? They literally come come into existence when we observe them?



    Relevance? Are these the criteria by which you decide that something doesn't exist?

    Gravity can't be sensed either. We can only feel its effects on mass.
    but to say it doesn't exist is folly - and possibly lethal.


    I think you need to revisit your definition of 'exist'.

    Indeed!

    Not only have you
    a] defined age in terms of time (something you assert doesn't exist),
    but you have also
    b] shown that two points in time can be compared (after having just said that the past (or future) doesn't exist, and that there is only the ever-present now),
    as well as
    c] asserted that there can be more than one NOW moment. Since I only experience now, and your claim is that there are multiple nows (simultaneously, since there's no time), the inescapable conclusion is that I am experiencing multiple events simultaneously. This is no true, showing that your claim is not true.



    finally, since you need time to describe events and processes in the world, just like the rest of us do, what does it mean to say this thing you need to have does not exist?

    A difference that makes no difference is not a difference.
     
    Last edited: Jun 20, 2017

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