3 ms·

What does the idea of time not being real have to do with thinking about a system across different points in times in its evolution?

motohagiography 8y ago
The idea of time being real or not raises the question of whether it's, a) always necessary to consider, and b) whether viewing a problem in the scope of a time domain always necessarily adds more information than it removes from scope. It's just interesting to consider whether assuming time as a necessary variable can create an artificial constraint on reasoning. The specific example I was thinking of is in an ontology, where you have all these types of information, related in different ways, that are all factors in each others behavior, but you can't model the whole thing as a function or transaction. That is, adding time (a transaction order) reduces the scope of what you can include in your model. From a writerly laymans perspective, asking whether time is a real and universal property of all systems or an artifact of how we interpret them, is analogous to imagining we were studying physics with a heuristically useful, but generally limiting presupposition. One which would be like presuming all algorithms were in P, all graphs had hamiltonian cycles, all consistent theorems were true, etc. Then considering the consequences of the alternative. It's all very meta and fun to think about, but I suppose that's what this topic is about.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  > The idea of time being real or not raises the question of whether it's, a) always necessary to consider... Not really. Time could be real, and still not necessary to consider in all situations. I think this argument applies to your b) as well, but I'm less sure of that...
  - motohagiography 8y ago
    So to clarify, we can choose to use time whether it's real or not. The question is, given it isn't always applicable, and it may not always be necessary where it is partially so, are there situations where it causes paradoxes where it is a source of noise instead of information, and how can we know when applying it whether it causes one or the other? Godel as a logician would have approached it as just another formalism. If reconciling models of physical phenomena with models of time produces inconsistency and paradoxes, he'd ask whether we were first sure that was time intrinsic to those physical phenomena, or does our model of time impose an arbitrary constraint on our ability to reason more abstractly about them. My point is that it's a reasonable question with related applications. Not sure there is a wrong to be here.
    - gowld 8y ago
      > Not sure there is a wrong to be here. "Not even wrong" isn't a mark in favor of a model...
    - PinkMilkshake 8y ago
      I think your explanation is quite good. Assuming I understood you correctly, a shallow example might be a basic electronic circuit - a bulb, battery and switch connected in series. You could model the whole circuit without any concept of time even though the flow of electricity is not instantaneous.

motohagiography 8y ago

The idea of time being real or not raises the question of whether it's, a) always necessary to consider, and b) whether viewing a problem in the scope of a time domain always necessarily adds more information than it removes from scope. It's just interesting to consider whether assuming time as a necessary variable can create an artificial constraint on reasoning. The specific example I was thinking of is in an ontology, where you have all these types of information, related in different ways, that are all factors in each others behavior, but you can't model the whole thing as a function or transaction. That is, adding time (a transaction order) reduces the scope of what you can include in your model. From a writerly laymans perspective, asking whether time is a real and universal property of all systems or an artifact of how we interpret them, is analogous to imagining we were studying physics with a heuristically useful, but generally limiting presupposition. One which would be like presuming all algorithms were in P, all graphs had hamiltonian cycles, all consistent theorems were true, etc. Then considering the consequences of the alternative. It's all very meta and fun to think about, but I suppose that's what this topic is about.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
> The idea of time being real or not raises the question of whether it's, a) always necessary to consider... Not really. Time could be real, and still not necessary to consider in all situations. I think this argument applies to your b) as well, but I'm less sure of that...
- motohagiography 8y ago
  So to clarify, we can choose to use time whether it's real or not. The question is, given it isn't always applicable, and it may not always be necessary where it is partially so, are there situations where it causes paradoxes where it is a source of noise instead of information, and how can we know when applying it whether it causes one or the other? Godel as a logician would have approached it as just another formalism. If reconciling models of physical phenomena with models of time produces inconsistency and paradoxes, he'd ask whether we were first sure that was time intrinsic to those physical phenomena, or does our model of time impose an arbitrary constraint on our ability to reason more abstractly about them. My point is that it's a reasonable question with related applications. Not sure there is a wrong to be here.
  - gowld 8y ago
    > Not sure there is a wrong to be here. "Not even wrong" isn't a mark in favor of a model...
  - PinkMilkshake 8y ago
    I think your explanation is quite good. Assuming I understood you correctly, a shallow example might be a basic electronic circuit - a bulb, battery and switch connected in series. You could model the whole circuit without any concept of time even though the flow of electricity is not instantaneous.