Forums > Social Discussion > Temporary Discussion

Posted: 26th Aug 2003
I want to give you some of my time.

here:

*hands simian some time in a glass vial*

now dont drop it.

Posted: 26th Aug 2003
wow, gloopy...

thats nearly as good as when you gave me 'the funk' after you'd been listening to DJ Hype lots.

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."

Posted: 26th Aug 2003
which reminds me...

i have a cd to write for you...


erm..

*scurries round room*

erm,...cant seem to find it at the moment....if i do...you will have a copy tonight.

it might have gaps in it unfotunatly...cos i dont know how to not do that.

what do we discuss here?

Posted: 26th Aug 2003
We discuss time.

Like this:
ooh, isn't there a lot of it!
i wonder what it's for.

Stuff like that.

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."

Posted: 26th Aug 2003
ok then.

where is it?

Posted: 26th Aug 2003
Well its not a thing, its a direction.

Its like asking where left is.

Although left changes depending on where your facing, but i don't think you can rotate relative to time. That'd need another axis.

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."

Posted: 26th Aug 2003
ok...lets create a new axis.

not of evil (bah...Iraq)

it now runs from my top right nearside, to the bottom left farside.

make sense?

Posted: 26th Aug 2003
i span solidly for three hours once...went like 10 minutes.

then again i was stoned.

time is an ilousion as is david copperfield

[ 27. August 2003, 03:48: Message edited by: The United Chains of Fire (Jon) ]

Posted: 26th Aug 2003
Time is a confusing.

When waiting for something good it drags, when waiting for something bad it whizzes by.
When waiting for my bus it goes really really slowly - wait actually thats my bus just being late all the time

Never pick up a duck in a dungeon...

Posted: 26th Aug 2003
Sorry yall but I am stayin out of this one, atleast untill I get some sleep. Yall went way over my head hahaha I have no clue where yall came up with this post

Some Jarhead last night: "this dumb a$$ thinks hes fireproof"

Posted: 26th Aug 2003
Ok...as no-one else has actually tried to help you...here are some answers

1. you can't poke it with a stick.

No, but did you know if it wasn't for time you couldn't poke anything at all? The stick would have to exist in the retracted and extended states simlultaneously...

2. we all seem to be moving along it at the same speed but...

We aren't...it is just that you, as the observer, are observing things within your own personal timescale, so something that has a much slower timescale appears to be "moving fast". you then equate this rapid movement to speed and strength rather than a different perception and actualisation of time. Pretty simple really.

3. when i try to think about how 'fast' we are moving in time, without reference to time to determine speed, my brain stops working and starts thinking about iced buns instead.

Try throwing an iced bun, and then see how fast it is moving relative to a bun you have rolled along the ground. You can use drag factors instead of time factors to determine speed, especially as the icing is likely to come off the rolled one and can be scraped up and measured via weight as 'lost potential'.

4. did i say several reasons? um...

Yes

5. how small does time go till you get to an indivisible elementary particle of time, eh? eh?

Time can continue to be divisible until the system being used to meaure it cannot distinguish between smaller units. Time is a theorectical theory and a human concept, therefore, if we cannot make smaller measurements, there are no smaller units. time doesn't exist of itself, it only exists because we 'perceive it'.

6. if the answer to the last one is 'infinitely small' then what sense does 'now' make, eh? eh?

Infinitely small is a nonsensical phrase. Infinity, in it's very nature, can be measured in time, so the arguement above still relates to your use of infinitley small.

Sorry if I haven't answered the direct question here, but the one above also answers it too so I thought i could be allowed to digress.

7. is the future already there, or does it get made as it happens?

The future doesn't exist, and therefore, cannot be "made as it happens" as that is then the present. Even if the future is set and nothing can change what is going to happen, this does not mean that the future is "already there". It will not happen until it become the present.

Simple...

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Posted: 26th Aug 2003
:whooooosssshhhhhhh:
don't you just love the sound of conversations going straight over your head...
so here goes...
can't remember where I read this, but someone famous said it(aint I soundin bright today!):

Life is a waste of time
and time is a waste of life,
so stay wasted all the time...
and have the time of your life!
hey!
(actually, I added the "hey" part, but I thought it added a certain je ne sais quoi!)

Ben

Your life is ending one minute at a time...
So live it.

Posted: 27th Aug 2003
and why does time seem to move faster as you get older?

and why is time circular, and not linear in it's construction?

Posted: 27th Aug 2003
*mental image of sprinting backwards through a minefield*

"Switching between different kinds of chuu chuu sometimes gives this "urgh wtf?" effect because it's giving people the phi phenomenon."

Posted: 27th Aug 2003

quote:

---

as schrodinger observed the outcome of an event is not determined until it itself has been observed possibly changing the outcome - leading to the postulation that our course through timespace is taken looking backwards, only certain of the past

---

However the past is generally only a subjective construction, based on the observations of the people who were there, and therefore wholly able to be distorted. If both the future and past are uncertain, can we be any more sure of the present?

It was a day for screaming at inanimate objects.

What this calls for is a special mix of psychology and extreme violence...

Posted: 27th Aug 2003
Frostypaw...distance as a measurable quantity is NOT a pure theory put forward by humans such as the whole past-present-future thingee. (In my opinion)

We have a theory of how we measure it, and apply our own numerical systems and so forth to it, but it does have a quantifiable figure on it's own.

You can take an object a nanometre wide and halve it's span to half a nanometre, then halve it again, and again, so on approaching an infinite number of halvings. That next step will always exist, as distance when applied to an object's width, exists in the world, and can be halved, you don't even need a numbering system for this, simply find the midpoint, then the midpoint between one side and the midpoint youn just found and so on...

Time, on the other hand, only really exists in the NOW. Minutes and hours etc don't exist int he same way that the width of a particle exists.

The only thing to do with time that really does exist, is the PRESENT. And you can't halve the PRESENT , for it doesn't have a length or point of existence in the same way as a measurement of a quality (eg width) can have.

It is simply a theorectical point on a theoretical graph of time involving the theoretical PAST and FUTURE, which do not exist.

Sure you can find the halfway point on the object as discussed above, but can you measure the width of that midpoint? The point itself? No, it exists due to it's place in the universe, not because of any other properties it posesses. Because it doesn't possess any other properties...

The 'timeline' that people keep talking about is not and does not and can not exist. We have distancmorphosised our concept of time, with this 'timeline theory', that fools people into thinking that time is something that can be measured the same way by other people.

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Posted: 28th Aug 2003
The problem with time is that you can never get more of it, even skipping ahead in time zones doesnt grant you much more time, it always seem to catch up and then pass you. Kinda sucks really.

Some Jarhead last night: "this dumb a$$ thinks hes fireproof"

Posted: 31st Aug 2003

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ade:
and why does time seem to move faster as you get older?

---

there is a genuine answer to this question and it proceeds thusly...

As a one year old, one year is 1/1 of you life (all of it)

however, as a 90 year old, a year is only 1/90 of your life.

and as 1/90 is smaller than 1/1, it transpires that this is why time seems to go faster as you get older.

*looks smug*

that was the only thing i learnt in year 10 biology.

it still doesnt answer many questions, unlike the number 4 which answers lots and lots of questions.

Posted: 31st Aug 2003
I thought that was the number 42...

It was a day for screaming at inanimate objects.

What this calls for is a special mix of psychology and extreme violence...

Posted: 1st Sep 2003
jet-lag sucks!

Raph

Posted: 1st Sep 2003
Well, that depends on whether you are overtaking the dateline or crossing over it the other way.

if you are crossing over it, jet lag blows!!!



And geez guys, I was hoping for a bit more analytical thought into this than the current responses...Simian would you mind if I moved this into Technical?

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Posted: 2nd Sep 2003
Travelling west seems ok, but going east just kills me!

Raph

Posted: 2nd Sep 2003
And congeniality?


Where are all the badgers?

Posted: 3rd Sep 2003
That's more like it! Ha haaa!

Bender and Frosty...

BENDER FIRST...Congenialty is the DNA state of a person in jail...Badgers are where they always are, in the badge factory making badges...sheesh!

FROSTY...

quote:

---

i can say this object will take 10 seconds to fall to the earth,and i can divide that time into 10ths

---

You can, Frosty, but you are using our concept of distance to do the dividing.

That ten second fall is a progressive realisation of the potential of the object. The fact that, to you, as an observer, it took ten seconds to fall to the earth is completely subjective.

The time (10 seconds) is being treated exactly as the distance that was covered, in being a set figure or amount.

What occurred during those '10 seconds' was not a fall recorded along a time line, but an object passing through various states before it comes to rest on earth.

Those states do not have a mid-phase. It is simply your distancmorphosised concept of the fall that makes you feel there is a timeline involved.

Although you do seem to be starting to grasp it, shown by

quote:

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i just can't go backwards into it - have to go forwards and grasp the moment as it passes

---

This getting closer. You do not go backwards or forwards in time, you simply change states.

Thinking that "forward" is progressing along a timeline is ultimately flawed, as there is no direction as such.

"forward" assumes there are other choices and directions to go in, or that you can choose to stop and not progress any further.

The so-called 'present' does not give us any other these options, therefore forward is an innappropriate word.

In fact, due our distancmorphosised culture, there is no word I know of to describe what we mistakenly see as a window of opportunity (the present).

We can no more choose not be in this state than we can choose to unmake history.


Oh, eah, and I've moved this into Social... here

[ 03. September 2003, 14:31: Message edited by: Charles ]

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Posted: 3rd Sep 2003
I've looked all through this thread for a post by the El Bendery one, but couldnt find one, (which in itself is rather surprising, because I'm fairly sure he could integrate the subject of llama's somewhere here...)

Charles, I think you are mistaking people for other people again. In particular, this time, Ucof for Bender.

In regard to the rest of this thread:


My brain hurts.

Currently on the right side up of the world.

Posted: 3rd Sep 2003
I believe time is nothing more than a perception - a property of the human condition rather than the universe. I actually stopped wearing a watch because I wasn't entirely sure of the existence of time.

So time may exist, but it's very possible that we may be percieving it incorrectly. I mean, our eyes present us with an image of the world upside-down, yet we perceive it as being the right way up. Look at everything you see right now, and try to see the raw image as your eyes are showing it to you - the other way up.. it's hard, but I dare say not impossible. We learn to percieve the world based on what makes sense to us. It's something that takes time too - when we're born we don't know how to interpret what we are sensing, which is probably why we don't remember seeing anything as a newborn.

Forward flowing time is only assumed on the basis of our natural assumption of freewill. We assume the past is the cause and the future is the effect, simply because the other way doesn't make sense to us. Hold a pen in the air, then drop it onto the table - the pen falls and makes a sound. The cause for that event was your decision to drop the pen - but you're assuming you freely made that decision. The pen could just as easily have been already sitting on the table, then you (with your lack of freewill) were forced by a cause-effect relationship to hold your hand out as the pen rose up to meet it. This might sound crazy, but the process of a pen lifting from a table still obeys the first law of thermodynamics - which states simply that energy must be conserved in any process. In the case of the 'rising pen', sound and heat energy would be converted to kinetic (motion). It doesn't obey the second however, which is a restriction of the first. The second law states that entropy must remain constant or increase during any process. But this law was created on the assumption of forward flowing time. It suggests that everything is slowly becoming entropic, and will naturally tend towards a state of chaos. But if we're percieving time backwards, then this law is also backwards - which almost makes more sense. Then the universe would've begun as a state of complete chaos - as sea of heat and energy, which is now slowly forming itself into a single point of unity becoming orgainsed and more stable.. a state of perfection rather than nothingness.

But then maybe time isn't flowing forwards or backwards, maybe it's circular rather than linear. Maybe we don't know what happened before the Big Bang because it hasn't actually happened yet. Maybe we're now evolving for no other purpose than to gain the knowlege required to destroy ourselves, only to see it all happen again.

I suppose if time does actually exist, then it can be either finite or infinite. Forwards and backwards flowing both suggest finite, whereas circular suggests infinite. Finite time needs both a beginning and an end - neither of which I can concieve. Infinite time on the other hand is strange, in that in it's very definition it actually denies it's own existence. If our existence is eternal (which i'm hoping it is - as if it ever ends at any point then everything is and was meaningless) then there can be no beginning, no end, and therefore no past or future. Everything exists in the moment.. the now. If something is going to happen, then essentially it already has.

We think we're living our lives, but if our existence is eternal then we're really just remembering them.

-As angels debate chance and fate-
i was riding through melbourne on a midget giraffe, things were peachy.

Posted: 3rd Sep 2003
Which mungbean moved this?

Posted: 3rd Sep 2003
Guilty Mungbean present and accounted for...

Um...Frosty...

quote:

---

it's a continuum just as distance is - i was using the 10second drop as a comparison to your example of taking the width of an object - it has width, and it takes a certain amount of time to drop no matter what units we use

---

No, it's not a continuum at all, there is only the present, as it happens.

The past doesn't exist in any way shape or form, it never did, it is simply a concept of past actions that may or may not be true.

Take an observer who has pefect eyesight and can see this object falling through to earth from a googol light years away.

From his perspective, the 'present', being the time when this object fell to earth, is the same as your own present, evemn though it is billions and billions of years after you considered the event to happen.

Neither of you are wrong, as you are both usuing the visual spectrum to see what you consider an action occurring that is creating a past.

But your 'presents' are astronomical distances apart.

Timelines, I believe, are as insubstantial and irrational as the "all pervasive ether" that was thought to exist everywhere, even in a vacuumn, about 140 years ago.

Very few people disputed it because it made sense, but that didn't mean it was correct.


Can i also ask if you do understand what i'm trying to say (few do). If you do, then this is becoming very interesting, if not, then we need to find a better discussion point as we can't argue without know roughly where the other side is coming from...

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Posted: 3rd Sep 2003
you got me confused with bender AGAIN!

(not your last post...the last but one post...you did it in someones intro thread as well..)

Posted: 3rd Sep 2003
This is fun!

quote:

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the past MUST exist

---

Why? The past doesn't have anything to exist IN. Where is it stored? what is it made up of.
What are its basic components?

The past does not exist in exactly the same way that the future does not exist. There is no medium for it to 'be' in.

Just because we can write down or remember something that has happened, is no reason to believe that action still exists of it's own accord.

The London of a 10 years ago does not exist, only the London of NOW. Sure, the London of NOW is seriously influenced by the London of 10 years ago...so, if you must, then the EFFECT of the past still exists, but not the past itself.


The present is a term that conjures up the past and the future, but it is really just a culmination of previous events. Those events in and of themselves do not exist anymore than the theoretical 'ether' ever existed.

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