"If we do not have causality, we are buggered"...

[eFestivals]

As soon as I start thinking about time, I can't pin down what it actually is. Are we moving through it or is it moving around us?

Neither. Time moves past us.

Time is a abstract concept of humans, to help us represent what has been before and what will come. So, from any individual's perspective, we stay still and time moves past us.

[eFestivals]

I've always liked to fantisise that if you could fly round the world fast enough against the flow of time that you could get home before you'd taken off. (Only a silly idea. No need for explanations as to why it's not possible, unless you want to).

Not such a silly idea, and not actually a fantasy.

You can fly from Japan to California and arrive before you've taken off.

Seriously, you can ... tho of course that's only true in relation to the international date line. Time has still passed, although the calendar says that you've passed time.

[philipsteak]

Not such a silly idea, and not actually a fantasy.

You can fly from Japan to California and arrive before you've taken off.

Seriously, you can ... tho of course that's only true in relation to the international date line. Time has still passed, although the calendar says that you've passed time.

[Ed209]

I think we move through time. If you think of time as a coordinate system which describes the order of events, much like a coordinate system we use to describe our position in space, then we are being perpetually driven with no choice through time at the speed of light, in the same way that if we move from one spacial coordinate to another then we have moved through space.

A nice way of thinking about relativity (although it isn't actually quite the correct way of looking at it), is that we are always moving through joint space-time at a constant speed of light. The faster we move in space, then the slower we can move through time, so the running of time gets distorted.

Edited September 26, 2011 by Ed209

[Ed209]

neutrino.

Knock knock. Who's there?

[worm]

Neither. Time moves past us.

Time is a abstract concept of humans, to help us represent what has been before and what will come. So, from any individual's perspective, we stay still and time moves past us.

[worm]

a scientific method includes accepting the results of any experiment.

[eFestivals]

But time doesn't move past us. It is always the present.

it's fully dependent on how a person views the abstract concept of time.

The fact is that the present needs no abstract concept of time, so time cannot be "always the present". That's the one thing that it can literally never be.

[eFestivals]

No it isn't. It's any logic that pertains to human behaviour.

PMSL - any religionist would be dead proud of a cop-out answer like that. The bad men can't be religious because they've done bad things.

[worm]

it's fully dependent on how a person views the abstract concept of time.

[worm]

Back to nonsensical rubbish again I see. If it's a logical explanation of human behaviour then it's psychological, rather than biological or any other logos you may care to mention.

Edited September 26, 2011 by worm

[eFestivals]

No, viewing the change of phenomena gives us an abstract concept that we then call time. No change in phenomena, no time.

I a

I agree with that 100% - which is why time cannot be 'now'.

'now' is an unchanging phenomena, because it is always 'now'.

The 'present' is a concept abstracted from human experience. It is abstracted from phenomena changing. Time is always present because experience is always immediate. Once experience has gone, then we have memories that we call the past.

Nope, 'now' is always everyone's current state at all times, an unchanging phenomena, and a non-abstract one. It is our reality, not something abstract.

It can appear abstract when considered alongside the abstract phenomena of 'past' and 'future', but that's simply a result of mental confusion, a mental muddling of ideas. Because 'past' and 'future' are abstract then a poor mind will believe that 'now' also is when considered alongside those abstract ideas.

This is proven by the fact that nothing abstract is needed to know of anything that is 'now'. It just is, as a part of your reality. If there's no 'now' then there can be nothing at all, not even existence.

[eFestivals]

If it's a logical explanation of human behaviour then it's psychological

I'll go with that if it makes you happy.

But what won't make you happy is that they're meaningless words that mean nothing at all. You might as well say "If I've seen a bird then I've farted".

Just because it might be a logical explanation (tho that's something that only works for someone who has bought into dark ages* dogma; current thinking has the established thinking always being proven wrong) doesn't say anything about whether it's actually right - and the facts get to show that it never is, because everything about it is being constantly revised in the light of new evidence (unlike science, which is so solidly established that mostly only small parts get revised, and mostly with no impact on other parts) if done as a true science (tho more often than not the dark-ages dogmatic refuse to accept just how wrong they are).

(* as so brilliantly put by Stephen Fry in his new series last night )

Edited September 26, 2011 by eFestivals

[fred quimby]

Backwards travel I reckon will exist. well I'm sure I saw a very old version of myself coming out of a shop with a euros million ticket this morning.

[worm]

I agree with that 100% - which is why time cannot be 'now'.

Edited September 26, 2011 by worm

[worm]

I'll go with that if it makes you happy.

But what won't make you happy is that they're meaningless words that mean nothing at all. You might as well say "If I've seen a bird then I've farted".

Just because it might be a logical explanation (tho that's something that only works for someone who has bought into dark ages* dogma; current thinking has the established thinking always being proven wrong) doesn't say anything about whether it's actually right - and the facts get to show that it never is, because everything about it is being constantly revised in the light of new evidence (unlike science, which is so solidly established that mostly only small parts get revised, and mostly with no impact on other parts) if done as a true science (tho more often than not the dark-ages dogmatic refuse to accept just how wrong they are).

(* as so brilliantly put by Stephen Fry in his new series last night )

[eFestivals]

No, you're confusing time with the changing of phenomena. The change of phenomena is not time. Our perception of phenomena changing gives us time, which is always abstracted from a position of immediate experience. That's what abstracted means. If it was just the change in phenomena that we were referring to then time wouldn't be abstract. It would be objective.

To put it another way, once phenomena is outside of immediate experience it is past. Once it is past, we have a sense of time.

The confusion is all yours, and the result of the limits of language. You're applying all of the concepts of time to the separate idea and experience of now. Now is a thing in its own right.

"now" exists. It exists aside from all concepts of time, and of language. It is everyone's here & now, their reality, their experience at every moment*.

(* NOTE: *not* their experiences in every moment, but their experience at every moment)

It is not a phenomena, it is not a concept, it is not abstract. It is reality.

It's only when 'now' gets put into language alongside its language-related but not-reality concepts of 'past' and 'future' that a person might get confused as you have and think it's of the same abstract substance. Yet it's not. It is its own thing.

There can be no change in 'now'. 'Now' always is, it never changes or moves. The only things which change or move in relation to 'now' are the experiences that a person experiences at every 'now' moment.

No one has to abstract the immediate experience of now. They exist within it, it is their reality. 'Now' is never past, and so there can literally never be any sense of time to relation to 'now' (from your own words above!!).

The experiences move, but 'now' never does. It is always a current experience and therefore cannot ever be abstract.

Edited September 26, 2011 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

You can say that about any logos Neil. Biology is no different. Nor is physics. Nor chemistry. None of these are comparible to the scientific method because they all use it.

And the reason that science (or the scientific method) is not constantly revised is because it is positivist in nature, meaning that when an experiment has been proven wrong (or inconsistent) it is the lack of the necessary variable or hypothesis that has been proven.

PMSL - are you getting a whooshing sound above your head? ... I don't think you've ever missed such a simple point as I made here.

The proof of the ideas of the science of, say, physics are constantly proven as correct. Nearly every new discovery further confirms that the previous ideas held by physics are correct.

The same is not true for psychology, but the opposite. Just above every progression along the line of discovery gets to prove those ideas wrong. You, for example, still cling to many old and proven-wrong ideas of psychology (as you did in a recent-ish thread which went this way) and reject the science that proves them wrong simply on the basis that it's different to the book you once swallowed. You're so sucked up into your dogma that you simply refused to check some easily available evidence which would have out you back onto a more scientificly accurate path - which is as unscientific as it gets, and proves that the version of psychology that you subscribe to cannot rightfully be called a science no matter the fact that it finishes in 'ology'.

Physics was once like this, before the 'enlightenment' of getting the right starting points that things could be built up from. Psychology currently remains in the dark ages compared to the enlightenment that led to the progression of physics, and the approach you and many others take towards psychology helps ensure it remains in that state for longer than need be, by your default rejection of new scientific discoveries.

[Katster]

I pity A Level Physics students.

When I was doing Physics they realised the theories on particle physics (higgs boson) and dark matter (cold dark matter/exotic mesons) we were learning were wrong - however our course refused to acknowledge this and we had to learn what had become out dated theories - I refused to answer the questions pertaining to these with the wrong answers put about the new findings and got marked zero each time.

It totally put me off science.

[feral chile]

That's exactly what I'm saying. The same scientific method used twice with the same body of people under the exact same conditions yielding different results means, obviously, that there is a variable being unaddressed in the original method.

[Jaybles]

Maybe it was god playing games ?

[grumpyhack]

If time is a human concept and also a personal concept any thoughts on why sometimes time seems to take longer to pass than others? For example, at a festival when you're chilled, perhaps aided by a 'relaxing' cigarette, time seems to pass more slowly. On other occasions it seems to fly by.

[eFestivals]

When you're talking about human behaviour, it's quite difficult to generalise, as Neil rightly states. You can say copper always expands when heated. You can't predict what humanity will always do when heated.

my personal take on psychology and it's huge failings to make any major inroads for itself as a science is that the questions being asked of human thought are currently so wrong it's not surprising that the answers that are got back are as good as meaningless.

Comparing it with more developed sciences again, you only have to look back on them to see that things only got somewhere once the science had settled on relevant basics - and not wildly wrong assumptions which kept taking people down the wrong paths.

[eFestivals]

If time is a human concept and also a personal concept any thoughts on why sometimes time seems to take longer to pass than others? For example, at a festival when you're chilled, perhaps aided by a 'relaxing' cigarette, time seems to pass more slowly. On other occasions it seems to fly by.

I dunno about that one, but as an old git it's clear that a person's perception of the passing of time in general is very strongly related to their age - which is why (say) days in the classroom as a young kid often dragged so much, because the proportion of your life that was 2 hours back then was much bigger than 2 hours is now.

[worm]

Or, the hypothesis is invalid. The original results might be flawed. The data might be corrupted by an unknown variable that correlated significantly with the variable being tested.