Time exists. It's the observed difference between two states. Also, i am not a physicist.
What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
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Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#32Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#33Time exists. It's the observed difference between two states. Also, i am not a physicist.
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#34Between modern physics suggesting time and space may be illusions, leading technologists agreeing that we're almost certainly in a simulated reality, and many ancient traditions being certain that this is all an illusion, I may have to have to go ahead and take this seriously....
The simulation argument comes from the fact that there a quite a lot of physics effects that are both surprising, and look an awful lot like dirty hacks that a programmer might put it. Quantum physics looks a lot like lazy evaluation (State doesn't exist until "observed"). The speed of light seems like a hack to prevent an n squared problem of everything in the universe effecting everything at the same time.
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's very nearly a religion. I'd argue it is a religion. The word religion means to "bind back" or "yoke" [edited], i.e. to seek an understanding of the universe and our place in it. That's what physicists and cosmologists do. These disciplines also fulfill the needs of scientists for meaning and community and ritual, not unlike Christianity or Islam or whatever. Just because you might happen to believe something d…
> The word religion means to "bind back" or "yolk", No, it doesn't. Less importantly, you mean "yoke" and not "yolk", and more importantly you are confusing the definition of a the Latin word religare from which it is believed the Latin word religio may have been derived (from which, in turn, the Middle English "religion" meaning "life under monastic vows" may have been derived) with the definition of the Modern Engl…
If you look at these lists of 'modern' definitions of religion, the plurality (if not the majority) of the ones from academia seem roughly aligned with the (disputed) etymology.
http://web.pdx.edu/~tothm/religion/Definitions.htm
http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln101/defi...
E.g. the William James quote: "[Religion is] the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine."
That's basically another way of saying what I said, and I don't see any reason not to include scientists under that umbrella. I mean even the phrase from the paper "a quantum state eternally evolving in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space" sounds an awful lot like a conception of "the divine".
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#36Between modern physics suggesting time and space may be illusions, leading technologists agreeing that we're almost certainly in a simulated reality, and many ancient traditions being certain that this is all an illusion, I may have to have to go ahead and take this seriously....
The simulation argument comes from the fact that there a quite a lot of physics effects that are both surprising, and look an awful lot like dirty hacks that a programmer might put it. Quantum physics looks a lot like lazy evaluation (State doesn't exist until "observed"). The speed of light seems like a hack to prevent an n squared problem of everything in the universe effecting everything at the same time.
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#37Between modern physics suggesting time and space may be illusions, leading technologists agreeing that we're almost certainly in a simulated reality, and many ancient traditions being certain that this is all an illusion, I may have to have to go ahead and take this seriously....
What is ironic is the amount of blind faith required to accept some of these things that are so completely against everything we experience. It's very nearly a religion.
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#38When do we want it? Doesn't matter.
Re: What If Time Really Exists? (2008)
#39Between modern physics suggesting time and space may be illusions, leading technologists agreeing that we're almost certainly in a simulated reality, and many ancient traditions being certain that this is all an illusion, I may have to have to go ahead and take this seriously....
There is no serious evidence for the simulation theory. It is more of a religious belief than a scientific theory since it poses more problems than it answers (who is running the simulation? How did they come to exist? What is their reality like? Etc.)