Live data from Hacker News

The closer we look at time, the stranger it gets

sciencefocus.com

11–20 of 119 posts

Re: The closer we look at time, the stranger it gets

#12
post #7

> Combining quantum mechanics and General Relativity is all well and good, but there‘s one key mystery it doesn’t address: why does time only seem to flow in one direction? Could the problem just be with us? When time flows backwards, we lose the ability to perceive the events that came after the "current" event. As it flows forward again, we have more time in our context window. We are able to perceive only those ev…

there is no flow per se, as it’s a subjective experience. it’s just that our current environment (specifically human environment) is predominantly structured in a way that the past makes an imprint on the present (in terms of biological memory, historical records, etc) and the future generally being unpredictable because we kinda don’t want it to be too predictable (eg you don’t want to be too predictable when a tige…

If you consider a person, their brain in particular, flowing backwards in time, the brain becomes a prediction tool. Events-memories (neural connections) appear out of nowhere (from the state of being 'forgotten' in the forward time flow) then completely disappear when the corresponding event happens, annihilating its 'predicting' memory.

Re: The closer we look at time, the stranger it gets

#13

We understand "time" in the context that we must: to subsist in order to procreate. The extent it exists outside of our own perception as we imagine it does, is debatable. Ultimately, time is our sensory interpretation of the world around us to facilitate our survival and thus, we may never make sense of it outside the constraints it exists within.

We know empirically that time only flows in one direction, it can’t be described as just a perception. You’d have had at least the tiniest of evidence that time sometimes flows backwards.

Re: The closer we look at time, the stranger it gets

#14
This was perhaps my favorite part of Physics 390 ("modern physics") which was about quantum dynamics and relativity. The speed of light is defined in terms of a velocity (~300,000,000 m/s) but if you were traveling at the speed of light time stops (which keeps the rule that its constant in all frames of reference). That and time passes more quickly at higher altitudes and these days we can actually measure that. Wild stuff.

Re: The closer we look at time, the stranger it gets

#15
IANACosmologist, but in for a penny, in for a pound. If one accepts weirdness along the lines of extra spatial dimensions and mathematical singularities made physical, why not throw in a few extra dimensions for time or why not have imaginary time (in Hawking's sense)?

> One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_time

Re: The closer we look at time, the stranger it gets

#18

We understand "time" in the context that we must: to subsist in order to procreate. The extent it exists outside of our own perception as we imagine it does, is debatable. Ultimately, time is our sensory interpretation of the world around us to facilitate our survival and thus, we may never make sense of it outside the constraints it exists within.

We know empirically that time only flows in one direction, it can’t be described as just a perception. You’d have had at least the tiniest of evidence that time sometimes flows backwards.

How do you know anything outside of your perception is true? All things boil down to a philosophical argument. The simplest answer is that "time" as we imagine it is a product of our interpretation and the true nature of "it" is hidden from us.

Re: The closer we look at time, the stranger it gets

#19
In Anthroposophy or Western occult science time runs in reverse in something we call the etheric body. The physical body on the other hand is something that experiences the world through organs that register only the present moment. It can't perceive what no longer physically exists or what has not yet manifested physically. The etheric is a time-body, containing the complete formative record of one's biography and is the source of memory, the brain is sort of a receiving organ for it, though the whole body utilises it.

Upon death the etheric body opens up and turns itself inside out and as you identify less with your physical body and more with your etheric body your perception of time is now in reverse. Your entire life tableau is opened in front of you, and as your spiritual organs of perception once "facing inwards" to your interior are now "outward-facing" and working backwards you start to see the effects of all your choices and actions from the perspective of its consequences. This is the source of those "life flashes before your eyes" moments people with near death experiences go through.

Only for very unconscious people is it a hell-like experience. Even if you lived a rather thoughtless and abusive life it is said that it can still be a time of reflection and learning. Eventually after viewing your entire life "inside out" your perception opens up to your pre-birth condition, the etheric body sloughs off (being made of elemental beings itself) and is picked up and put together with all the karma of your previous lives for your next go-around on Earth. You liberate the elementals in your etheric body (which are just below humans in the spiritual hierarchy) by growing spiritually either during life or in the etheric condition and eventually, hopefully, move up the spiritual hierarchy to a being that liberates humans, an Angel.

Thought maybe HN might be interested in some other conceptions of time. :^)

Re: The closer we look at time, the stranger it gets

#20
post #7

> Combining quantum mechanics and General Relativity is all well and good, but there‘s one key mystery it doesn’t address: why does time only seem to flow in one direction? Could the problem just be with us? When time flows backwards, we lose the ability to perceive the events that came after the "current" event. As it flows forward again, we have more time in our context window. We are able to perceive only those ev…

there is no flow per se, as it’s a subjective experience. it’s just that our current environment (specifically human environment) is predominantly structured in a way that the past makes an imprint on the present (in terms of biological memory, historical records, etc) and the future generally being unpredictable because we kinda don’t want it to be too predictable (eg you don’t want to be too predictable when a tige…

The past that we have yet to subject to our subjection also is effectively future.

Supplication for unknown outcomes surely already determined in the objective past wrt the present time still makes sense. The Divine Successive Relaxation with physical laws as the substrate, and the choices of human free will, human petition and desire, and Divine Will And Intention as boundary conditions, will solidify objective reality into a coherent whole in Open Theism.

Post reply on HN