Theorys on Purpose and Creation

[ararat]

I don't think time exists, as in something outside of our heads. there is change and motion, but time, I don't know. I think time is just an idea, created to be able to operate more effectively in this world. a clock is just very constant and regular motion.

but what does it matter after all.

 

[maxfreakout]

agreed, i slipped, causing me to drop my coffee, gravity took over, the cup hit the floor, the coffee spilled and it took about ~2 seconds for entropy to assert itself in the direction of time's arrow

what you experience, is a series of separate events, cup drops, cup smashes, coffee spills, etc.

But you do not experience the actual connection between these events, and in that sense time doesnt exist

 

[IJesusChrist]

If you cannot imagine time not existing, you haven't seen the end yet.

 

[st.bot.32]

But you do not experience the actual connection between these events, and in that sense time doesnt exist

Actually, I do experience it as a single 'event', enough that I can predict the outcome the instant I realize the cup is slipping from my hand. 'Oh shit, hot coffee is going to spill all over the floor.' Then--Kersplat!

Change, motion, entropy and chemical reactions all are time-based phenomenon, as are experience, human perception and structures (like narrative). The experience of time is incredibly malleable, time flies when you are having fun, time bends when you practice meditation or take ~250mics of LSD (it may even seem to stop entirely). It becomes almost meaningless when you think you are going to die.

'At the same time' experience is one of those things that is so difficult to share. Experience seems almost like it can exist somewhere outside of time (although it still takes some time to remember something)

But I work with time-based media on a day-to-day fashion, so I spend a fair amount of... time... dealing with the perception of time. For me, time is impossible to ignore. I can't say what it actually is, I can only imagine... perhaps it's an illusion, but it's a very persistent and useful one nonetheless

-
Calmly we walk through this April's day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
In the park sit pauper and rentier,
The screaming children, the motor-car
Fugitive about us, running away,
Between the worker and the millionaire
Number provides all distances,
It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,
Many great dears are taken away,
What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn...)
Besides the photo and the memory?
(...that time is the fire in which we burn.)

(This is the school in which we learn...)
What is the self amid this blaze?
What am I now that I was then
Which I shall suffer and act again,
The theodicy I wrote in my high school days
Restored all life from infancy,
The children shouting are bright as they run
(This is the school in which they learn . . .)
Ravished entirely in their passing play!
(...that time is the fire in which they burn.)

Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!
Where is my father and Eleanor?
Not where are they now, dead seven years,
But what they were then?
No more? No more?
From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day,
Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume
Not where they are now (where are they now?)
But what they were then, both beautiful;

Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.

-Delmore Schwartz

 

[restin]

Nothing is more constant than change.

 

[st.bot.32]

without change nothing could exist. nothing is static. change is subject to, even seemingly guided by, quantifiable, measurable and hence predictive guidelines we call 'laws'.

-
anyway, hopefully I'm verbalizing my perspective clearly, because I feel that in discussing the nature of reality once again we become the proverbial blind men discussing the elephant, it's nice to know exactly where others are coming from, the less assumptions the better

 

[restin]

hm these laws are only predictable if you are in the position of "God" - in an omniscient position, assuming that it exists. This position must know everything that happened in a) the past b) the present. I am now unsure if it really needs to know the past...

 

[st.bot.32]

hm these laws are only predictable if you are in the position of "God"

Omnipotence isn't necessarily required (as handy as it would be!). Laws seem to be consistent enough that they can be measured on a small, local scale and then be re-tested and re-observed by someone else somewhere else--hence they have some predictive power. I guess to be fair you could say at best we have a bit of an idea as to how some things behave.. in our observable corner of reality at least. Enough that for example, my computer with it's 3 billion cycles-per-second processor works here, and will probably still work if I travel to Australia, or to the moon.

What's interesting about laws of course is that they can only be discovered and their effects perceived and understood by the changes they seemingly produce.

 

[restin]

nonono. It all depends on the scale. You let a cup of coffee go, it will fall down, you know it. But do you know where each drop will fall? In how many pieces the cup will break? Or we can go even deeper - how will the different atoms be positioned? How much energy will be set free? etc. etc.

So even if you can predict some things, this does neither mean that they are really true resp. precise (what does falling down mean?) nor that you really know what will happen (how many pieces will result?). These laws are indeed very artificial - at least in our imperfect minds.

That's why I said omniscient. You need to know every process to really really predict what will happen.

Now we also mostly calculate with probabilities. Does a physicist know how a dice will fall?

 

[st.bot.32]

OK, I see. Well of course, laws are just human constructs we use to understand and categorize our perceptions of the changes that occur in the universe. Hence I used the term "observable reality". And the laws we use change depending on the circumstances and scale you are measuring.

But even without understanding everything in complete detail our incomplete picture of the universe still has some predictive power, and practical everyday use. I predict when I hit the send button this information will be posted to the internet. I have no idea about the exact details, like exactly which particles will carry the information..

 

[restin]

I'd be a fool were I to deny that. It does not make sense disputing such things for practical reasons. It's rather a philosophical topic which is only thought about in boredom :wink:

 

[st.bot.32]

haha, well it's a boring day at the office so why not

Philozophy... I started reading Alfred North Whitehead recently (Process and Reality) it's a doozy, takes 10 minutes to process a page but sure worth reading, the man had some interesting ideas. his thoughts on natural science are really interesting

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

the link sucks, i was hoping to find a sample of it online, some of it was kind of relevant to what we were talking about.. but can't find any. oh wells!

 

[maxfreakout]

i had to give up reading process and reality i found it just too complicated, but your post has inspired me to dig it out and try again

 

[Forkbender]

^ it is still on my to read list, I imagine it to be a mix of Bergson and Russell, although these two are far more readable.