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Originally Posted by hardkraft
I don't really remember what Hawking said about the directionality of time but if it was that we are being carried by the torrent of the 4-th dimmension and we as 3-d creatures can't do anything about it because that's how the time works then it's not much of an explanation, it's more like a description.
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Well, I just mentioned the description, I'll have to look it up, but no it is indeed a "why it does it." But of course you're right to dismiss it out of hand: Yah, Stephen is *such* a simpleton!
Quote:
Originally Posted by hardkraft
With the introduction of time slices you can picture that "time" doesn't have a direction however each slice still looks different and you can track a progression.
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I see you don't like the idea that it just goes in one direction. Some people still have a problem with Einstein's speed of light speed limit too, and there have been endless proposals for why Uncle Albert was "wrong." Many of these are facinating of course as exercises, but until they start showing some sort of superior explanatory power, they're still just more complicated ways of explaining reality to *allow* the possibility of physical light speed, which seems to be the only goal...
Quote:
Originally Posted by hardkraft
These differences can only be accounted for by laws, whatever they might be.
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<gilbert_and_sullivan>Whatever they might be! </gilbert_and_sullivan>
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Originally Posted by hardkraft
Let's say we start with a uniform universe and introduce a law that forcess all the matter to go to the "left" and settle there...
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Settle where? Time doesn't settle! It keeps moving! Its a freight train of love! No seriously, this line portrays the usual misunderstanding of time as *something that moves* which it does not. It does not "move" any more than the length dimension of a 2x4 "moves along that dimension." *We move* through time, unidirectionally and at a fixed speed (unless we accellerate our reference frame of course!), but time is just the meter stick!
Quote:
Originally Posted by hardkraft
So if nothing else the idea of time slices at least seems to make it easier to understand why the laws work the way they do and why whe can have memories of the past and therefore perceive time.
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Maybe for you, but to me its just added a layer of complexity to the idea that its a dimension and I move along it.
We don't need no steeenking time slices,
Buffy
