Does time exist?

Does time exist?

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Gretle said:
Dywyddyr?? What makes you so dayum sure they don't exist?
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Because in all the thousands of years of claims of their existence no-one (that's no one ever) has shown solid evidence that they do.
 
superluminal said:
Haven't read the entire thread, but...

Time is like a river. It wanders through... no that's not it.

Certainly the human concept of time exists. Usually as something flowing. It seems to me that we give it a spatial aspect (the corridors of time, for example) which is understandable given our highly spatial existence.

I think this is where the concept of traveling 'through' time comes from. But this, I think, is purely illusion born of our spatially oriented brains.

My real sense is that time is just our way of recognizing and processing the fundamental entropy of the universe. Our 'time' sense is really an 'energy gradient' or 'disorganization' sense.

Just as we know that there really is no such thing as the color 'red', we have sensors that detect and process electromagnetic wavelengths in the 600nm-700nm range as the 'color red'. Same goes for sound. We have visual, auditory, tactile, taste, thermal, olfactory, and 'energy-gradient' qualia.

Therefore, I would say that time exists no more than the color red or the perceived sound of a waterfall. It's a qualitative perception of a fairly mundane phenomenon - entropy.

But we get so damn excited by it!
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#1 Thanks!
 
Longest run-on sentence EVER

Shadow1 said:
just wondering, does time even exist, i mean, things, juts happen, and happen, and what happened is don, we cant go back to it, it means, happened, and finished, and byebye, so, time and clocks were invented by many civilsiation (chinese, egyptian, greek, arab, indian i guess, etc...) humans in general, invented time just to orgenise their lifes, and their buisness, since humans have a memory, then he would say, what he remember of what happened in a certen day, and i think, in the real life, there's no future, and no past, there's only now, but in history you can effcorse say past, and mayeb in teh predeiction like economical predictions, or like, i will fo that something, etc... future, but, time don't actually exists, i know, earth turns around the sun, and the moon, and the day and the night, and the full round around the sun, etc... as for the day and night thing, it happen, and over, etc... but we cant turn teh clock back in the actual life, and go back to 1900 or something, or go to the future, but for some of you, who think that traviling to teh future is real, i think not, but, you live longer, when you be in a ship with at least the speed light, or mayeb more, and stay in it, for a year, in that year, while on earth it's two, you want feel it that it's two, cause even clocks are affected by gravity, and turnign speed etc... and when we use a clock on earth, it doesnt mean that it's right when you are on the moon, also, the time and the speed of time, is not the same when you are in a planet with less gravity than earth, but with teh same size, mass, cycling around the sun distance, how far from it's sun it is, etc... like teh same as eearth, but lesser gravity, the time of teh clock, will be lesser, and not because time exists so the claock act like that, but because the clock is affected by the gavity, and etc...

so, what do you think?
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First of all, Congratulations. I do believe that's the longest run-on sentence I've ever seen. And secondly, yes, time exists. We mark it, measure it, live in it. We live in four dimensions. Three of space and one of time. Everything that happens in space happens at a point in time.
When someone says
"meet me at the café"
you say "When?"
When you say "Meet me at 3:00 pm"
Your friend says "where?"

They exist together. A "Space-time continuum."
 
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Time again

Time is not a something at all.
Like height, weight, length, when.
It is a measure of when.
It is measure against many things.
But it is those things existence that is being measured.
The day i came to play, the day the earth stood still,
when the moon reaches the horizon, Saturday March 15 2010.
(measure against a calendar). A point in time. When.
We can only call a point in time because we have a calendar.
Which is in case a measuring instrument like a ruler or a yard stick.
What are we measuring? Nothing really. If I lay out a measure tape stretching to infinity, I could mark on it my height, your height, the height of my house, the height from my house to Jupiter, from Jupiter to the next galaxy, etc, etc.
But it is the object I am measuring not height itself.
Same with time. Our calendar marks the days, weeks, years; but time is not itself a something.
 
Gretle said:
What are we measuring? Nothing really. If I lay out a measure tape stretching to infinity, I could mark on it my height, your height, the height of my house, the height from my house to Jupiter, from Jupiter to the next galaxy, etc, etc.
But it is the object I am measuring not height itself.
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But what, exactly, are you measuring?
The extent of the object in space, in a specified direction.
As you yourself stated:
Like height, weight, length, when.
It is a measure of when.
It is measure against many things.
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Same with time. Our calendar marks the days, weeks, years; but time is not itself a something.
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So you think we can assign a definite (and independently-verifiable) numerical value to a nothing? To something that doesn't actually exist?
 
Referencing a crank post to support an otherwise untenable position is NOT the way to go about making your point.
Just a little pointer for future reference.
 
Time

OK there are numbers on a yardstick.
Just as there are dates on a calendar.
I guess what I'm trying to say is -
"if a tree falls in the woods and know one is there to hear it,
does it make a sound?"
Similarly- "if there was nothing, would there be time?"
Time has no value without something.
Time is nothing without something.
If nothing existed nor would time.
Time is individual to each event.
As height, weight, when.
Wouldn't it be nice to just be?
With no beginning, no end.
I just am.
Do you suppose God is a circle?
 
Dywyddyr------YES.
A yard stick itself has numerical values on it but is not measuring anything till you put something next to it to measure.
Just like a calendar. only different.
It is when and not length.
 
Gretle said:
OK there are numbers on a yardstick.
Just as there are dates on a calendar.
I guess what I'm trying to say is -
"if a tree falls in the woods and know one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
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Huh?

Time has no value without something.
Time is nothing without something.
If nothing existed nor would time.
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Nor would length, width or height. What's your point?

Do you suppose God is a circle?
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No.
But then again I don't suppose god exists.
On the other hand I've seen a lot of circular arguments trying to "prove" he exists. Maybe that's what you're thinking of.

Gretle said:
Dywyddyr------YES.
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Yes what?

A yard stick itself has numerical values on it but is not measuring anything till you put something next to it to measure.
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Really?
It doesn't tell you how long the measuring stick itself is?
Do you suppose (at all, take a wild guess) that something has length whether it's measured or not? Or do you think a car (for example) has no length until someone puts a tape measure to it?

Just like a calendar. only different.
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Exactly. And just like a carrot. Only different. Or maybe it's more like a donkey. But different. :shrug:

It is when and not length.
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Well if it were length then it wouldn't be time, would it?
 
Time might not exist in any sense as we think it does. Our perspective that 'things change' and that if we track these changes we are measuring time, may be false. It may be that the universe is 'already' complete in time, but our limited consciousness 'travels' through this already complete four dimensional 'thing' and think of this as time and that it is experiencing changes. But these are not changes, we are simply getting to see other portions.

Or it could be that there are simply nows already made - including ones with 'memories'. And no change, no time.
 
Doreen said:
Time might not exist in any sense as we think it does. Our perspective that 'things change' and that if we track these changes we are measuring time, may be false. It may be that the universe is 'already' complete in time, but our limited consciousness 'travels' through this already complete four dimensional 'thing' and think of this as time and that it is experiencing changes. But these are not changes, we are simply getting to see other portions.
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I've come across that before but the thing that struck me... if that is so and our consciousness "simply" moves from one frame to another does that not require time anyway?
Consciousness is here, now and later it's there...

Or it could be that there are simply nows already made - including ones with 'memories'. And no change, no time.
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But there is change: if not of the physical world then it's of our perception switching from one "now" to "another".
 
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Dywyddyr said:
I've come across that before but the ting that struck me... if that is so and our consciousness "simply" moves from one frame to another does that not require time anyway?
Consciousness is here, now and later it's there...


But there is change: if not of the physical world then it's of our perception switching from one "now" to "another".
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Our thoughts may move but it moves from the reality of the now into the abstract illusion called time.(Past/future)
 
brennus said:
Our thoughts may move but it moves from the reality of the now into the abstract illusion called time.(Past/future)
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And?
It still implies that at one "moment" our thoughts are "here" and then they're there.
It still requires time - for the simple reason that we aren't aware of all of these "realities" at once.
 
Only in our thinking can we contruct time, it is not physical,only an illusion. We physically stay in the present moment.
 
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