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Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

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Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#141

Post by spiralx »

vintermann wrote: post #131
CreateAccntAgn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is incomplete in that it cannot replace older ideas of time in all contexts. It is perfectly valid/complete for use in scientific contexts. But the general population's use the idea of time for other purposes as well where Einsteins purely Relativistic formulation cannot be a stand in replacement is how I read it.

There is a distance-free notion of time which predates, and necessarily predates, all experimental theories of time. This is (loosely after Kant): * Every thing that happens, happens at a time. Let's call those things "events" from now on. It's nonsense to claim that a thing happened, but never (at any point in time) happened. * Every event happens in a place. It's nonsense to say that a thing happened, but nowhere h…

Cause or pre-condition? It's simple to state the pre-condition for quantum tunnelling to occur, but as a probabilistic event the cause seems hard to define...

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#142

Post by _8j50 »

lmm wrote: post #113
_8j50 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then what? Then it us a "simulation". "Pixels" of reality rendering.

And? That doesn't explain anything. What rules is the "simulation" following? If it's not following any, how come reality behaves so consistently in most respects?

Simulation theory is not my invention, actual scientists have tested it and theorized with strong evidence.

I would answer your question but not worth the downvotes like my original comment.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#143

Post by dventimi »

mellosouls wrote: post #138
dventimi wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suit yourself. I'm not going to make your case for you.

Thankfully, "making my case" for a standard definition is not something I need to do. It's very basic stuff. If you are unable to work it out from the original link and description I gave or the previous reply, I think any more effort on my part will be a pointless time sink.

No, you do need to make your case--i.e. mount an argument based on evidence and reason--if you want me to believe "scientism" is real. That it has a "standard definition" is not enough. After all, you can look up in any dictionary the standard definitions for other things that are also not real, like clairvoyance, telekinesis, and palmistry. Until you or someone else does make a case, I'm going to continue believing scientism is little more than a cry from charlatans who lost the attention of their audience.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#144

Post by hetman »

dang wrote: post #94
hetman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

" Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html There's also the uncollected-garbage problem, which this case is a good example of. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

While I'm generally on board with this principle, I felt, given the nature of the conversation, this was a particularly egregious instance. Besides, sometimes new users can use a reminder. I'm generally not a fan of absolutist rules as they always tend to break down in some corner cases doing more harm than good (though of course we can disagree whether this was such a case). Either way, thank you for your reminder to my reminder :)

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#145

Post by crazydoggers »

tsimionescu wrote: post #130
crazydoggers wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s a gross misinterpretation. General relativity does show that what one observer would consider the future can exists as the present of another observer, and vice versa. As time is part of the 4 dimensional Minkowski space, saying that the future, past and present don’t coexist would be like saying left doesn’t exists when you’re going right.

> General relativity does show that what one observer would consider the future can exists as the present of another observer, and vice versa. Not in any way that is inconsistent with an evolving universe, actually. Sure, an observer may exist at some coordinates in 4D spacetime where they are detecting light from Sagittarius A that in our frame is 1000 years old, but also light from the Sun that in our frame is 1000…

Yes I agree, it’s true that causally connected events maintain their ordering. However, there is no sense where one can say definitively that some set of spatially separated events happened simultaneously. And as each reference frame is valid it’s impossible to say that there is a correct “present”. If two events happens at the same time in one reference frame, you can’t then declare that they happened at the same time “in reality” as that’s not valid. The events also happened at different times “in reality” in other reference frames. And in fact, the two observers could meet and discuss that the events happened at different times.

The result is that some reference frames have other frames future and past events, so to the grandparent posts point, there is a real sense in which the future exists along with the past. No reference frame gets to say what the official “future” is, so it must already exist.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#146

Post by acjohnson55 »

robertlagrant wrote: post #12

> Bergson emphasised the cultural and technological context in which Einstein formulated relativity and argued that a theory of time that relies on clocks but doesn’t understand their history and significance, is incomplete This is hard to get on board with. A theory of time is incomplete without a history of clocks? Have I misunderstood?

I think most people can relate to sometimes feeling like their experience of time is incongruent with objective clock time. We're educated and socialized to believe that it is our perception that is incorrect, because the clock is right.

Some philosophers and other types of scholars would question whether we should cede all sense of reality to that which can be objectively measured. You might say that there's no one "real" time. Perceptual time is real because it matters to the person experiencing it.

I don't think the point is to deny objective time or physics, but just to say that it is incomplete as a way describing lived reality. And probably also that we'll never have an understanding of neurology that's complete enough to let us even fully characterize perceptual time scientifically.

So, we should accept that there is more to time than what physics can tell us.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#147

Post by Nevermark »

tsimionescu wrote: post #129
Nevermark wrote: post #122

We know time and space are the same fabric, because different relativistic speeds let us see the same regions of space-time with different space-time coordinates. The “angle” of time vs space is different based on perspective. Each perspective sees a different direction of time through the 4D space-time. Yet from any perspective, the space time regions coordinates are still best represented with three real values and…

On the contrary, I would say that the Lorrentz transforms prove that time is fundamentally different from space. They form a continuum in some sense, but they are not the same at all: you have to flip the sign of the "time" coordinate compared to the three space coordinates to get the right results. Additionally, events in 4D spacetime can be either space-like separated or time-like separated, and this difference is…

Yes, there is always a 1D time aspect, which is always different than a 3D space aspect.

But relative to two observers traveling in different directions at relativistic speeds, the way time is observed to be oriented in a space time region (where the two observers directions of motions are not parallel) is different.

Different to the point that orders of events (their observed direction of time) can be completely flipped.

Upon smoothly changing the angle of one observer A’s motion, from parallel to the other observer B, to orthogonal, to reverse parallel, the observed order (observed time) changes.

A initially sees the ordering as identical to B’s, then simultaneous (no time between events, I.e. time is orthogonal to the space-time vector between events: space-time delta vector of all space, no time), then in reverse order (negative time orientation, relative to A’s observation of time).

They both see time, different than space, but its direction through space-time is observed to be in a different direction in space-time relative to each other’s observations of the same space-time position’s of events.

The orientation of time through space-time, the space-time basis vectors, change based on observation.

Between observers, space & time get traded off with each other.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#148

Post by qbxk »

foobar1962 wrote: post #96
jerf wrote: post #16

I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to this basic mistake: We know relativity is wrong somehow. We know quantum mechanics is wrong somehow. They're both incredibly correct with their predictions but they don't go together, so they can't both be right and in the end they both have to be wrong somehow. Two of the places where they are both clearly somehow wrong are gravity (completely missing from QM, incomp…

> I find myself becoming more and more sensitive to this basic mistake: We know relativity is wrong somehow. We know quantum mechanics is wrong somehow. Please don't use the word "wrong". Alchemy is wrong. Astrology is wrong. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics get many things right but are probably "incomplete" in the same way Newtonian mechanics wasn't wrong, only incomplete.

astrology is not wrong, because it doesn't say anything provable. it just is. it's like saying poetry is wrong or paintings are wrong

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#149

Post by tsimionescu »

crazydoggers wrote: post #145
tsimionescu wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> General relativity does show that what one observer would consider the future can exists as the present of another observer, and vice versa. Not in any way that is inconsistent with an evolving universe, actually. Sure, an observer may exist at some coordinates in 4D spacetime where they are detecting light from Sagittarius A that in our frame is 1000 years old, but also light from the Sun that in our frame is 1000…

Yes I agree, it’s true that causally connected events maintain their ordering. However, there is no sense where one can say definitively that some set of spatially separated events happened simultaneously. And as each reference frame is valid it’s impossible to say that there is a correct “present”. If two events happens at the same time in one reference frame, you can’t then declare that they happened at the same ti…

My point is that, while there isn't a single universally defined future, for every observer there exist events that haven't happened yet, and no observer is ever going to communicate with some other observer and disagree about whether an event has happened yet or not. They can only disagree about the order in which events in their shared past happened.

Additionally, there are events that are in the future for any observer in any reference frame anywhere in the universe (except for those already caught beyond the event horizon of a black hole, but their future consists exclusively of the black hole so it's not that interesting to the discussion). For a simple example, present day on Earth was in the future for any observer anywhere in the universe 5 seconds after the big bang, regardless of their speed. So, there is no reason to say that present day Earth must have already existed 5 seconds after the Big Bang.

Of course, the block universe model is self-consistent, so it's possible it's correct. All I'm claiming is that an evolving universe is also consistent with relativity, though the way it evolves is more complex than a single universal arrow of time.

Re: Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

#150

Post by tsimionescu »

Nevermark wrote: post #147
tsimionescu wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, I would say that the Lorrentz transforms prove that time is fundamentally different from space. They form a continuum in some sense, but they are not the same at all: you have to flip the sign of the "time" coordinate compared to the three space coordinates to get the right results. Additionally, events in 4D spacetime can be either space-like separated or time-like separated, and this difference is…

Yes, there is always a 1D time aspect, which is always different than a 3D space aspect. But relative to two observers traveling in different directions at relativistic speeds, the way time is observed to be oriented in a space time region (where the two observers directions of motions are not parallel) is different. Different to the point that orders of events (their observed direction of time) can be completely fli…

But only upto some limit. Events that are timelike separated are always perceived to happen in the same order by any two observers. It's only events that happen farther away in space than in time from each other that can be perceived in different orders.

So, I don't think the relativity of simultaneity hurts the notion of an arrow of time that much. You don't get a single universal arrow of time, but there are still local arrows of time all over the place, ones that all observers agree on.

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