TIME EXPLAINED (v2.1)

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by Popular

While Julian Barbour says there is no time, he still talks about a "block universe" where everything is static.

Well, he speaks of "time-like" slices, like a photograph, whereby all that is there is a collapse of the wave function .

[Farsight]

And you wou won't find me talking about wave functions.

Where's Boerseun? He's gone a bit quiet. I wonder if he's had an epiphany!

[hardkraft]

I know you don't say there is no motion, just the opossite, you claim that the motion is the the fundamental property, there is no time only a series of nows. You say that because I think you don't take your ideas to their ultimate and logical conclusion. There is no motion in now because now is an infinitely thin slice of time, like a time capsule. There is no time for anything to happen now because there is no time in now. The motion only becomes aparent when you compare two slices or capsules. You toyed with that idea when you tried to give a definition of motion.

[Buffy]

This issue of time being slices of zero length is better understood when put into one of the more familiar dimensions.

Do this and you'll come run into variations of Zeno's Paradox which is well understood, and is based on the simple fallacy surrounding the mathematical equation:

So, try slicing up a 2x4. This little equation can be misused to say that you can create an infinite number of slices with width zero, and the sum of an infinite number of zero's is of course, zero. Therefore you can argue that your 2x4 has a length of zero even if it started out at 36. But the mathematical quantity "epsilon" (defined as "a number as small as you'd like it to be as long as its not zero" in colloquial terms), is still going to define a positive, non-zero width, if you're slicing, because its not possible to have an "infinite number of slices." So, no matter what, epsilon does have a width: You can slice a 2x4 as thin as you want, but the slices still have width. Therefore the logical conclusion is you can never create a short enough "now" for you to justify "there is no time."

This ought to be obvious, but with all things "time" and "infinite," people start getting very mystical.

Infinitely thin,
Buffy

[hardkraft]

I guess infinetly thin wasn't the best choice of words. What I wanted to say is the thinest possible and it doesn't mean you can pack an infinite number of them in one second. Still, different words the same conclusion.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Popular

Turtle: I had a quick look at the Buckminster Fuller stuff. There's a lot there, and no pictures. I saw something on mass and couldn't make much sense of it, but the gravity tension sounded right. My guess is there's wheat in there, but it's weighed down by, I don't know, flab that's got a whiff of Dianetics or something. I'll put it on my favourites and try to look at it properly.

A lot indeed. The pictures are there, albeit mixed with chaff as is the rest you rightly indicate obscurs the wheat. My guess is the work is best read not squarely, but triangularly. (I confess I haven't figured out exactly how that is accomplished, only that Fuller likely wrote it that way whiff intention.) Rest assured however that the geometry is rock-solid. Einstein said to Fuller something to the effect, "I only wish I had done as much useful work as you."
In any case, allow for a considerable chunk of the time you are explaining to 'look at it properly'.

(Here's a link to an index of 'pictures' in Synergetics: SYNERGETICS: FIGURE INDEX )

[Leo]

Interesting thread, it's good to look into the depths of what we think - or don't know we think - or don't think we know... whatever...

If the tiny things that make up the world jump from one place to the next without transition, then maybe we don't need to worry too much about the thinness of the present slice. The concept might even not apply. But then we're left with explaining why the little bugs jump from one place to the next, and how we define the proximity between the places, and whether there is something between the places, and if yes, what it is. And if there isn't anything, not even emptiness, then we've removed smooth distance and replaced it with a weird thing...

[hardkraft]

Like you say Leo, the concept of thinness may not apply since it's impossible to measure it from our reality. We might come up with a number of how many of them fit into our second but that might not be the true picture...
Things don't really jump from one slice to the next. They are present on both simultaneously. Their positions on each slice are still determined by some rules or laws of phisics. I believe Stephen Wolfram of Mathematica fame has similar ideas.

[Leo]

Originally Posted by hardkraft

Like you say Leo, the concept of thinness may not apply since it's impossible to measure it from our reality. We might come up with a number of how many of them fit into our second but that might not be the true picture...
Things don't really jump from one slice to the next. They are present on both simultaneously. Their positions on each slice are still determined by some rules or laws of phisics. I believe Stephen Wolfram of Mathematica fame has similar ideas.

If they are present on both time slices simultaneously, then what does "simultaneously" mean? This is some version of Blockworld, isn't it? If our universe works that way - or rather stands frozen that way - there is a monumental waste of useful resource at the conception. And why would this universe need physical laws? Why not pile up slices of any shapes in any order, or in some esthetically pleasing way, not too mechanical? I look like joking, but I'm dead serious, eh. If there are rules, what are they for?

[hardkraft]

Well, the slices could be in any order but the "logical" order is the only one that we can make sense of.
I am not sure what you mean by the waste of resoures? It's the same with our current view of the universe. All the matter and energy have been already created, all in a single instant during the big bang. It's the same energy, no more no less. Do you mean that it takes resources to create time?
Oh, I think I know what you mean by the resources now. You meanthat each of the slices contains the entire universe, right? Yes, they do but I don't think it's a big problem since each object can experience only one slice at any given moment. Anyway it's better than dealing with all possible universes of all possible physics and all possible times and so on, what string theory is proposing.
The same with physical laws. What's the purpose of having them now? I agree the view I talk about doesn't answer that question but it doesn't make it any more difficult either. Julian Barbour actually thinks it makes some questions easier but some of his physics is a bit over my head.