does time exist?

[© tweed]

"the present is just an imaginary line drawn between two things that do not exist"

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Funny you should ask that. Earlier this year in philosophy we read a Borges essay where he argued against the existence as anything more than a construct created by people to help them organize the world.

[dead0man]

Of course...if not in the "physical" sense then in the same way a "mile" exists.

[© tweed]

Of course...if not in the "physical" sense then in the same way a "mile" exists.

simultaneity is relative

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Matter_of_Minutes

[Earth]

No, not independently of us.

[© tweed]

place two of your fingers apart from one another on a tabletop.


no matter what distance you choose, that distance can be divided into an infinite number of infinitesimally smaller spatial gradients.  and, no matter how small the infinitesimal gradients are, an infinite number of them will comprise an infinite distance.

paradoxically, you are easily able to unite your fingers in an instant.  you have reduced the infinite number of spatial gradients to zero.  infinity has turned into nothing.

therefore, nothing is everything.  transitively, everything is nothing.  space/distance/etc. is an illusion.


using time for this exercise is just as easy - same continuum, after all

[bgwah]

That's deep, man. Deep.

[John Dibble]

place two of your fingers apart from one another on a tabletop.


no matter what distance you choose, that distance can be divided into an infinite number of infinitesimally smaller spatial gradients.  and, no matter how small the infinitesimal gradients are, an infinite number of them will comprise an infinite distance.

paradoxically, you are easily able to unite your fingers in an instant.  you have reduced the infinite number of spatial gradients to zero.  infinity has turned into nothing.

therefore, nothing is everything.  transitively, everything is nothing.  space/distance/etc. is an illusion.


using time for this exercise is just as easy - same continuum, after all

Just gotta throw out a counter to this - is it really an infinitely divisible amount of space? I'm going to go into a bit of quantum physics here, which is by no means my specialty, I'm just repeating what I read on the interweb as best I can.

The smallest size that has any meaning to anyone is the Planck length, or 1.616252(81)×10^−35 . Why is this size the only size that has any meaning? That's because nothing can be known about anything smaller, which effectively to us means that nothing exists in a space smaller than that. Therefore there may not be much point in dividing the space between your fingers into units smaller than the Planck length, meaning that saying you can divide it infinitely may not hold true.

There's also Planck time, or 5.39124(27)×10^−44 seconds. Similarly we can't reason anything out of a smaller time than this, so we may very well not even be able to consider a smaller unit of time than this as being time!

Does your head hurt? Mine does. I'm going to go bang my head on a wall for a while.

[ilikeverin]

These sorts of mumbo-jumbo questions are why philosophy is useless.

Who can know?  And if someone can, who cares?  Whether or not it actually exists, we clearly live in a world where we behave as if it exists, and that's all that matters.

[Earth]

So there's no point in questioning any assumptions, just because we behave as though it exists? Man, think of all those sad people trying to find answers, and wasting their time.

[© tweed]

place two of your fingers apart from one another on a tabletop.


no matter what distance you choose, that distance can be divided into an infinite number of infinitesimally smaller spatial gradients.  and, no matter how small the infinitesimal gradients are, an infinite number of them will comprise an infinite distance.

paradoxically, you are easily able to unite your fingers in an instant.  you have reduced the infinite number of spatial gradients to zero.  infinity has turned into nothing.

therefore, nothing is everything.  transitively, everything is nothing.  space/distance/etc. is an illusion.


using time for this exercise is just as easy - same continuum, after all

Just gotta throw out a counter to this - is it really an infinitely divisible amount of space? I'm going to go into a bit of quantum physics here, which is by no means my specialty, I'm just repeating what I read on the interweb as best I can.

The smallest size that has any meaning to anyone is the Planck length, or 1.616252(81)×10^−35 . Why is this size the only size that has any meaning? That's because nothing can be known about anything smaller, which effectively to us means that nothing exists in a space smaller than that. Therefore there may not be much point in dividing the space between your fingers into units smaller than the Planck length, meaning that saying you can divide it infinitely may not hold true.

There's also Planck time, or 5.39124(27)×10^−44 seconds. Similarly we can't reason anything out of a smaller time than this, so we may very well not even be able to consider a smaller unit of time than this as being time!

Does your head hurt? Mine does. I'm going to go bang my head on a wall for a while.

this is an excellent point and may or may not matter.  I've spent most of the day trying to determine whether or not it is a fatal flaw.  because, at least in theory, the Planck length can be divided into two, or four, or an infinite amount of slices.  whether or not this is valid in practice, matters, etc. is a different question and one I don't know the answer to.  I'll probably spend the rest of the night looking for an answer to this pointless question.

[muon2]

Of course...if not in the "physical" sense then in the same way a "mile" exists.

simultaneity is relative

But time itself has meaning. It is meaningful to look at the time rate of change of physical quantities, and these are certainly not the quantities themselves. The direction of time is meaningful as we understand the thermodynamical concept of entropy such that a video of an explosion played backwards is inconsistent with the forward direction of time.

[Citizen James]

place two of your fingers apart from one another on a tabletop.


no matter what distance you choose, that distance can be divided into an infinite number of infinitesimally smaller spatial gradients.  and, no matter how small the infinitesimal gradients are, an infinite number of them will comprise an infinite distance.

paradoxically, you are easily able to unite your fingers in an instant.  you have reduced the infinite number of spatial gradients to zero.  infinity has turned into nothing.

therefore, nothing is everything.  transitively, everything is nothing.  space/distance/etc. is an illusion.


using time for this exercise is just as easy - same continuum, after all

Just gotta throw out a counter to this - is it really an infinitely divisible amount of space? I'm going to go into a bit of quantum physics here, which is by no means my specialty, I'm just repeating what I read on the interweb as best I can.

The smallest size that has any meaning to anyone is the Planck length, or 1.616252(81)×10^−35 . Why is this size the only size that has any meaning? That's because nothing can be known about anything smaller, which effectively to us means that nothing exists in a space smaller than that. Therefore there may not be much point in dividing the space between your fingers into units smaller than the Planck length, meaning that saying you can divide it infinitely may not hold true.

There's also Planck time, or 5.39124(27)×10^−44 seconds. Similarly we can't reason anything out of a smaller time than this, so we may very well not even be able to consider a smaller unit of time than this as being time!

Does your head hurt? Mine does. I'm going to go bang my head on a wall for a while.

So, are time and space discrete or continuous?

It is, of course, relative - depending both on your reference frame and how much fun you are having.

[Countess Anya of the North Parish]

nothing exists except the present.

[Joe Biden 2020]

To God, a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day, so He's not limited by time.  We are, as humans.  So, to answer the question, time exists in the earthly and worldly realm, but not in the heavenly, or supernatural, realm.

[jokerman]

place two of your fingers apart from one another on a tabletop.


no matter what distance you choose, that distance can be divided into an infinite number of infinitesimally smaller spatial gradients.  and, no matter how small the infinitesimal gradients are, an infinite number of them will comprise an infinite distance.

paradoxically, you are easily able to unite your fingers in an instant.  you have reduced the infinite number of spatial gradients to zero.  infinity has turned into nothing.

therefore, nothing is everything.  transitively, everything is nothing.  space/distance/etc. is an illusion.


using time for this exercise is just as easy - same continuum, after all

What a load of gibberish.  Zeno pulled off your act better 2000 years ago.  Mathematics and physics have since addressed your paradox.