What is 'time'?

[Irwell]

Really interesting.

If everything is pre-determined who or what has pre-determined it?

And why would they / it pre-determine in the way they do?

I find this fascinating but ultimately frightening and disillusioning because ultimately it would place us as 'toys' in a 'game'.

Why does something have to have created or determined anything? If every combination of physical constants exists in a universe somewhere within the multiverse it just so happens that we are as we are because we happen to be in a universe where we are what we are, not for any higher reason or purpose. There is no 'creation', no 'determination', there just is what is. The idea of us being 'toys' in a 'game' would mean that someone was playing, which I don't believe to be the case.

Also, as far as I'm concerned the concept of 'creation' is a man made one.

 

[Stoned Rose]

Who created hours minutes and seconds? And how did it become accepted by everyone on the planet?

This was one of my next questions and yes it's a complete head wrecker.

It feels completely impossible that when 'creating' the 24 hour clock we use today, that anyone could've 'known' how long a second or minute was. Also, how the fuck did they convince everyone on the planet of it's importance or it's need to be implemented?

You have to think, this was years and years ago.

If someone came up with such a concept today, even with our global communications capacity, there would be, in my opinion, no chance of getting it to 'stick'.

Mind boggling.

This confuses time and timekeeping. We set arbitary units about time but they aren't time no more than our units like an inch is relevant to space.

They are our measurements of time rather than actual time itself which exists whether or not we choose to measure it. Think of it this way - we might never choose to measure how tall you are but this doesn't mean that your height has changed. You still exist in the "up" axis.

For the record I seem to think the 60 minutes thing came from the Sumerians and was due to divisibility and their numbering system or something. There was a good BBC4 documentary on it a few months back.

I understand how time exists regardless of our 'system' of managing / measuring it. What I was asking was why/how this system came about and how it 'stuck' with the human race?

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

all I'll contribute from personal experience & my hard scientific background is that we don't know anything like as much as we think we do.. we're all pretty arrogant (if we think otherwise) and 'science' is as much a 'religion' if you ask me, and Richard Dawkins is one of its high priests.

we're very puny when it comes to scientifically explaining things & having everything fit within our conceptual frameworks, and I've seen & experienced things that make a mockery of those offering up rigid hard scientific explanations or 'truths'.

with regards to time, it's a hypothetical construct that exists in each of us (which is one way of looking at things) and in another it isn't what we collectively perceive & understand it to be; much of which is illusory & far too complex for us to comprehend.

in conclusion, I know enough to know that I don't know, and the more I know the more I realise how much I don't know

(and I've seen numerous events over the past three decades that make a mockery of our modern thinking and defy all manner of existing scientific explanation, as have others I've shared such with)

Science is an evolving body of ever-improving and revolutionising evidentially supported theories which are our best explanation for what we see around us. There is no such thing as a scientific truth. That's an inherently dogmatic concept which is contrary to the very definition of science. There is no science that cannot be undone with bodies of opposing evidence.

You say these events you've seen have 'made a mockery' of our existing scientific explanations. You do realise that if you can evidentially support those claims then they would become science? That is how science works and so as a result your entire post makes very little sense to me. If you think science is wrong on these things then... prove it... and your explanation (or disproof) will become science. There's no 'agenda' in science, it's just a method of filtering out what works as an explanation from what doesn't work.

You say we know next to nothing about the universe. Every single scientist you speak to (and I'd include myself in that bracket) would agree with you, yet you seem to paint them as being arrogant and under the belief they know everything. Dark matter and dark energy being a case in point... 95%+ of the universe is made of stuff we currently have next to zero understanding of.

 

[MCFCinUSA]

all I'll contribute from personal experience & my hard scientific background is that we don't know anything like as much as we think we do.. we're all pretty arrogant (if we think otherwise) and 'science' is as much a 'religion' if you ask me, and Richard Dawkins is one of its high priests.

we're very puny when it comes to scientifically explaining things & having everything fit within our conceptual frameworks, and I've seen & experienced things that make a mockery of those offering up rigid hard scientific explanations or 'truths'.

with regards to time, it's a hypothetical construct that exists in each of us (which is one way of looking at things) and in another it isn't what we collectively perceive & understand it to be; much of which is illusory & far too complex for us to comprehend.

in conclusion, I know enough to know that I don't know, and the more I know the more I realise how much I don't know

(and I've seen numerous events over the past three decades that make a mockery of our modern thinking and defy all manner of existing scientific explanation, as have others I've shared such with)

Top post.

Could you elaborate? give some examples of the situations you allude to above mate?

how kind and polite of you..

(and so I'll indulge this one time where normally I might keep my own counsel & not embarrass others on this thread who are so deeply ingrained in their own dogma and sophistry, yet who I respect)

we have MRI machines that can image what's going on inside our bodies Stoned, yet my kung-fu master can determine what's going on inside of mine by simply holding my wrist (and that includes but isn't limited to determining my blood cell counts & if I've got kidney stones - that were later detected by Sonogram when I returned to the USA); I've also known other people, and I can't elaborate, who with regards to 'future' events have shown as others have postulated within this thread - that things are not always what they seem and are (for want of a better word) a singularity.

I don't claim to know, but I've been told & have experienced enough to more fully appreciate the limits of our understanding and knowledge - that indeed we don't really know very much at all.

'time' is therefore whatever you think it is (or can make sense of) - but if you're talking about future events, they may not be as random as you believe they are, which is something pretty heavy to try and bend your head around, as are a lot of other things about the nature of our existence and the limits of our perception.

 

[manimanc]

de ja vu?
you say to yourself "this has happened before"...but how?
something predetermined?
your life already mapped out in front of you?
sliding doors moment,choose the right/wrong path...
I`m dying to say there must be a slightly small link to life after death but I`ll pass on that one...
I`m very interested in the pre-determined comment though.....

 

[Stoned Rose]

Really interesting.

If everything is pre-determined who or what has pre-determined it?

And why would they / it pre-determine in the way they do?

I find this fascinating but ultimately frightening and disillusioning because ultimately it would place us as 'toys' in a 'game'.

Why does something have to have created or determined anything? If every combination of physical constants exists in a universe somewhere within the multiverse it just so happens that we are as we are because we happen to be in a universe where we are what we are, not for any higher reason or purpose. There is no 'creation', no 'determination', there just is what is. The idea of us being 'toys' in a 'game' would mean that someone was playing, which I don't believe to be the case.

Also, as far as I'm concerned the concept of 'creation' is a man made one.

Intriguing stuff.

But this implies that things 'just are' or 'just were'. That things have 'always been'.

We know that many things in our world can't just 'exist'. They have to be created, whether that be creating a baby or creating a house. They don't just 'be'.

How do you explain how these 'physical constants' happened to exist in the first place?

Surely something as infinitely complicated as what we are discussing wasn't 'just there'?

 

[Stoned Rose]

all I'll contribute from personal experience & my hard scientific background is that we don't know anything like as much as we think we do.. we're all pretty arrogant (if we think otherwise) and 'science' is as much a 'religion' if you ask me, and Richard Dawkins is one of its high priests.

we're very puny when it comes to scientifically explaining things & having everything fit within our conceptual frameworks, and I've seen & experienced things that make a mockery of those offering up rigid hard scientific explanations or 'truths'.

with regards to time, it's a hypothetical construct that exists in each of us (which is one way of looking at things) and in another it isn't what we collectively perceive & understand it to be; much of which is illusory & far too complex for us to comprehend.

in conclusion, I know enough to know that I don't know, and the more I know the more I realise how much I don't know

(and I've seen numerous events over the past three decades that make a mockery of our modern thinking and defy all manner of existing scientific explanation, as have others I've shared such with)

Top post.

Could you elaborate? give some examples of the situations you allude to above mate?

how kind and polite of you..

(and so I'll indulge this one time where normally I might keep my own counsel & not embarrass others on this thread who are so deeply ingrained in their own dogma and sophistry, yet who I respect)

we have MRI machines that can image what's going on inside our bodies Stoned, yet my kung-fu master can determine what's going on inside of mine by simply holding my wrist (and that includes but isn't limited to determining my blood cell counts & if I've got kidney stones - that were later detected by Sonogram when I returned to the USA); I've also known other people, and I can't elaborate, who with regards to 'future' events have shown as others have postulated within this thread - that things are not always what they seem and are (for want of a better word) a singularity.

I don't claim to know, but I've been told & have experienced enough to more fully appreciate the limits of our understanding and knowledge - that indeed we don't really know very much at all.

'time' is therefore whatever you think it is (or can make sense of) - but if you're talking about future events, they may not be as random as you believe they are, which is something pretty heavy to try and bend your head around, as are a lot of other things about the nature of our existence and the limits of our perception.

I love the fact you have a Kung-Fu master mate :)

 

[SkyBlueFlux]

This was one of my next questions and yes it's a complete head wrecker.

It feels completely impossible that when 'creating' the 24 hour clock we use today, that anyone could've 'known' how long a second or minute was. Also, how the fuck did they convince everyone on the planet of it's importance or it's need to be implemented?

You have to think, this was years and years ago.

If someone came up with such a concept today, even with our global communications capacity, there would be, in my opinion, no chance of getting it to 'stick'.

Mind boggling.

This confuses time and timekeeping. We set arbitary units about time but they aren't time no more than our units like an inch is relevant to space.

They are our measurements of time rather than actual time itself which exists whether or not we choose to measure it. Think of it this way - we might never choose to measure how tall you are but this doesn't mean that your height has changed. You still exist in the "up" axis.

For the record I seem to think the 60 minutes thing came from the Sumerians and was due to divisibility and their numbering system or something. There was a good BBC4 documentary on it a few months back.

I understand how time exists regardless of our 'system' of managing / measuring it. What I was asking was why/how this system came about and how it 'stuck' with the human race?

The concept of days came about through astronomical means (as did months/years and the larger units of time). It was simply the time between the sun being at the same point in the sky on successive cycles.

Seconds are actually a measurement of angle, I think it was the Babylonians or the Sumerians who first used a base 60 number system (which would seem quite strange to us now). They split everything up into 60.

This term 'second' was then migrated westward where it was used to denote 1/3600th [1/(60x60)] of a whole circle of angle. There are 3600 seconds in a whole circle of angle. There are also 3600 seconds in an hour.

To add to the confusion the Egyptians loved base 12 number systems. As a result they split the day into 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night.

Essentially these two base number systems are mashed together into our current timekeeping system.

As you can see it's not like somebody said "Oh there'll be this many minutes in an hour and this many seconds", it's actually a system which has borrowed from different cultures which has spanned centuries. It's sort of evolved as some kind of botched job.

Interesting fact, the French actually attempted to make time-keeping metric once with ten hours in a day one hundred minutes in an hour etc.

It didn't end well and they reverted back to the old system soon after.

 

[MCFCinUSA]

all I'll contribute from personal experience & my hard scientific background is that we don't know anything like as much as we think we do.. we're all pretty arrogant (if we think otherwise) and 'science' is as much a 'religion' if you ask me, and Richard Dawkins is one of its high priests.

we're very puny when it comes to scientifically explaining things & having everything fit within our conceptual frameworks, and I've seen & experienced things that make a mockery of those offering up rigid hard scientific explanations or 'truths'.

with regards to time, it's a hypothetical construct that exists in each of us (which is one way of looking at things) and in another it isn't what we collectively perceive & understand it to be; much of which is illusory & far too complex for us to comprehend.

in conclusion, I know enough to know that I don't know, and the more I know the more I realise how much I don't know

(and I've seen numerous events over the past three decades that make a mockery of our modern thinking and defy all manner of existing scientific explanation, as have others I've shared such with)

Science is an evolving body of ever-improving and revolutionising evidentially supported theories which are our best explanation for what we see around us. There is no such thing as a scientific truth. That's an inherently dogmatic concept which is contrary to the very definition of science. There is no science that cannot be undone with bodies of opposing evidence.

You say these events you've seen have 'made a mockery' of our existing scientific explanations. You do realise that if you can evidentially support those claims then they would become science? That is how science works and so as a result your entire post makes very little sense to me. If you think science is wrong on these things then... prove it... and your explanation (or disproof) will become science. There's no 'agenda' in science, it's just a method of filtering out what works as an explanation from what doesn't work.

You say we know next to nothing about the universe. Every single scientist you speak to (and I'd include myself in that bracket) would agree with you, yet you seem to paint them as being arrogant and under the belief they know everything. Dark matter and dark energy being a case in point... 95%+ of the universe is made of stuff we currently have next to zero understanding of.

you make an excellent argument and I'm in agreement with you (coming from a handful of years spent in a research toxicology laboratory and a family of PhD researchers) but it's people like Dawkins who seek to elevate things beyond what they are who verge on arrogance of things they seemingly have very little experience of.

my statements only arise from phenomenon I've experienced that cannot be explained by modern scientific paradigms, that simply do not make sense, and would have you castigate and ridicule someone else if they came to you and told you things that you can only experience for yourself (shit that is simply too far out of our everyday experiences) before you can accept they are real..

- and before anyone attempts to comment, I'm from a hard scientific background and am naturally a huge cynic; my experiences have been varied and covered numerous unusual people I've been lucky to have my mind & horizons broadened by over several decades.. there is so much that we don't know, and a lot more to most things than first meets the eye, which is all beyond our individual comprehension.

those that know don't talk, those that talk don't know (which is a bit like the transfer forum in here, ehehe)

 

[Damocles]

all I'll contribute from personal experience & my hard scientific background is that we don't know anything like as much as we think we do.. we're all pretty arrogant (if we think otherwise) and 'science' is as much a 'religion' if you ask me, and Richard Dawkins is one of its high priests.

we're very puny when it comes to scientifically explaining things & having everything fit within our conceptual frameworks, and I've seen & experienced things that make a mockery of those offering up rigid hard scientific explanations or 'truths'.

with regards to time, it's a hypothetical construct that exists in each of us (which is one way of looking at things) and in another it isn't what we collectively perceive & understand it to be; much of which is illusory & far too complex for us to comprehend.

in conclusion, I know enough to know that I don't know, and the more I know the more I realise how much I don't know

(and I've seen numerous events over the past three decades that make a mockery of our modern thinking and defy all manner of existing scientific explanation, as have others I've shared such with)

Science is an evolving body of ever-improving and revolutionising evidentially supported theories which are our best explanation for what we see around us. There is no such thing as a scientific truth. That's an inherently dogmatic concept which is contrary to the very definition of science. There is no science that cannot be undone with bodies of opposing evidence.

You say these events you've seen have 'made a mockery' of our existing scientific explanations. You do realise that if you can evidentially support those claims then they would become science? That is how science works and so as a result your entire post makes very little sense to me. If you think science is wrong on these things then... prove it... and your explanation (or disproof) will become science. There's no 'agenda' in science, it's just a method of filtering out what works as an explanation from what doesn't work.

You say we know next to nothing about the universe. Every single scientist you speak to (and I'd include myself in that bracket) would agree with you, yet you seem to paint them as being arrogant and under the belief they know everything. Dark matter and dark energy being a case in point... 95%+ of the universe is made of stuff we currently have next to zero understanding of.

This is what I meant to say. You really are a very good poster SBF. With that said, people saying gravity is a human construct should probably be pointed out as incorrect.

Just another point actually. Saying "hard science background" means nothing. I know next to fuck all about how chemistry works because it's not my subject. Bring a scientist shouldn't guarantee a respected opinion if not speaking in their area of expertise.

I'm done whinging now, I promise.