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Time is an illusion, but by the same token so are space and coffee. So maybe that's not a useful way to use the word "illusion"....
by Certhas 9y ago
Time is an illusion, but by the same token so are space and coffee. So maybe that's not a useful way to use the word "illusion"....
- joslin01 9y agoNo not by the same token. Coffee is a physical manifestation. Time is a perspective or measurement.
- Certhas 9y agoI'd like to see you try to define these terms.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- joslin01 9y agoCoffee is sitting there as a bunch of molecules. Can you point at time as a bunch of molecules sitting there? If not, it's not by the same token.
- Certhas 9y agoI take your bunch of molecules ("physical manifestation") and squash them into a black hole. Now they have been turned into an aspect of the structure of space and time ("a measurement or perspective"). So no, space and time are not "measurements/perspectives" that are fundamentally distinct from "a bunch of molecules".
- joslin01 9y agoOk so you change the situation drastically by squashing them into a black hole, something nobody really understands, and tell me coffee and time are interchangeable. Right. Also I never said space was measurement/perspective, I said time was. You believe what you want to believe, but maybe stick to a single scenario in the future. I'll say it again, a cup of coffee just sitting there is distinct from time.
- ben_w 9y agoWhile I agree that was a poor example for much the same reasons, I think I have a much better comparison: Duration is as much a measurement/perspective as displacement, this is an observation which led to Special Relatively. If time can be called an illusion, so can position.
- SiempreViernes 9y agoIf duration is a simple displacement between two points in another direction of space then you are right, the two are equivalent: you have then also accepted that time does not flow and lacks intrinsic direction for it is precisely these properties that separates "time" from "space". Time flows and is irreversible, this is what makes it special, and it is the denying that the flow and irreversibility are inherent properties of time that constitutes "dispelling the illusion". In other words, saying that "time is an illusion" is saying "time is just like space".
- ben_w 9y ago> Time flows In what sense? Normally people use that word in a sentence such as “time flows like water”, but water is made of discrete molecules and has momentum, which doesn’t generally ever sound like the subsequent sentence, whatever that happened to be at the — ah ha — time. > and is irreversible The funny thing is, thermodynamics is the only law of physics which say that and last I checked nobody knew (or agreed) why, as thermodynamics is inevitable from the other laws but the other laws don’t imply a direction for time. Of course, there’s also the difference of it acting like imaginary (sqrt(-1)) space…
- SiempreViernes 9y agoLook, I'm just listing the properties ascribed to time that sets it apart from distance, not taking a position as to their correctness or how accurate the similes are. If you are ready to accept the timeless unchanging universe that's fine by me, just acknowledge that is what you argue for.
- SiempreViernes 9y agoUh, so you have a reliable theory for the insides of a black hole? Or how do you know what happened inside the black hole? In any case, the cup distorted spacetime even when it wasn't big enough to form a event horizon, so that it still does it after being squashed proves nothing for the issue at hand.
- Certhas 9y agoYeah. I do. It's called general relativity. It doesn't tell me what happens at the singularity, but it's valid for the vast majority of the interior of a large black hole.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Senderman 9y ago"Pointing" is the part of the picture time is in. If you take out time, you can't point to the coffee: you'd be stuck not-pointing!
- jackstraw14 9y agoTime as a measurement is an abstraction.
- TuringTest 9y agoThe molecules in the coffee are constantly changing and rearranging themselves. That change is a physical manifestation itself. So time is a perspective in the same way that thinking of a cup of coffee as an object is a perspective. Both exist as something that can be observed in reality, and you're the one that clumps several billions of observed phenomena (changing molecules) into something observed (either a cup, or a second, depending on what you fixate upon).
- Certhas 9y agoNicely said.
- 0xFFFE 9y agoPlease don't say coffee is an illusion, I basically run on coffee. :)
- agumonkey 9y agoit's one cheap and common enough illusion
- jerf 9y agoFortunately, you are an illusion too, so it all works out. I, too, think the word "illusion" is grotesquely overused in this area. It's a sophomoric equivocation between the denotation of illusion as being something that isn't there in the sense that it appears to be and the connotation of illusion as something that doesn't exist, and then getting high and going "whoooaaaaa" as you try to straddle the two things. Time clearly exists. Less clearly, but very well established, is that physics has already told us that our common sense ideas about time are already special cases, so we already know it isn't what we think it is. Equally well established is that we're not done understanding time yet. So the idea that time may not be what we thought it was is not so much "whooooaaa" as "duuuuhhhhh". Personally I find thinking about it and learning about it to be plenty interesting enough without the "illusion" word getting stuck in there, and indeed, if anything, spraying the word "illusion" around like rockets in a Quake deathmatch just makes it harder to understand what is being said.
- ende 9y agoIt’s not the coffee that is the illusion, it is the sense that you are running.