What is time? (Again)

[joigus]

4 minutes ago, Edgard Neuman said:

Entropy can stop changing. 

Not even plastic surgeons can do that.

12 minutes ago, Edgard Neuman said:

I was explaining that if entropy (a property of a system can go backward) can go backward. Therefor it can't be time. That's it. You talked about entropy, you know why you do. I don't ! 

You're 1 non-sensical/non-sequitur comment away from my ignore list. Time is indeed precious.

[Edgard Neuman]

9 minutes ago, joigus said:

Not even plastic surgeons can do that.

You say stable systems don't exist ? The moon, left in the cold space, does its entropy change ? The fact that entropy always increased (I think I mixed up the law before sorry).. doesn't mean It "has" to increase. 

Quote

You're 1 non-sensical/non-sequitur comment away from my ignore list. Time is indeed precious.

sorry I admit I go too fast. Anyway, I've said enough. The question is "what is time". You have my answer, if you can explain why I am wrong, do go one, but I don't need your answer.  

Edited July 31, 2020 by Edgard Neuman

[joigus]

2 minutes ago, Edgard Neuman said:

You say stable systems don't exist ? The moon, left in the cold space, does entropy change. The fact that entropy always increased (I think I mixed up the law before sorry).. doesn't mean It "has" to increase. 

sorry I admit I go too fast. Anyway, I've said enough. The question is "what is time". You have my answer, if you can explain why I am wrong, do go one, but I don't need your answer.  

Being wrong requires making sense. Bye.

[Edgard Neuman]

4 minutes ago, joigus said:

Being wrong requires making sense. Bye.

Sorry if you don't understand me. 🤷‍♂️
Information, meaning "minimum causalities" from "outsides of system" is what ultimately animates them.. It's like "things happens" because you know "outside exists"
I think it's simple.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Edgard Neuman

[geordief]

22 minutes ago, Edgard Neuman said:

sorry : *Light

You are unfortunate with your misspellings (flow/flaw earlier)

Perhaps you are a victim of autospell or autocomplete

😉

[Edgard Neuman]

17 minutes ago, geordief said:

You are unfortunate with your misspellings (flow/flaw earlier)

Perhaps you are a victim of autospell or autocomplete

😉

That's a big problem I have. I am too enthusiastic, I always want to answer the fastest, and I usually have to edit my answers many times.. when I hear the notification sound, I can't wait to answer.. I always have trouble understanding people don't understand me.. I usually suppose that I already said enough, because in the first message I send, I usually consider that I closed every loop hole.. A lot of things are supposed to be deducible from a single text.  
(for instance If I say "ultimately, each point in the universe because the speed of light is finite, receive some photons from the CMB"
You should not ask after that "where does the information come from" and ask about the conservation of information.. my first message imply the information come from outside the universe at each point of time.  And for instance, I know the CMB is not "outside of the universe".. ) So I feel annoyed to have to explain each point one by one. It seems to me people should not waste time criticizing the form of the message, but the "idea" itself, once understood. I'm not here to write an essay, but to discuss ideas.
I know that plays against me. Sorry for that. 
 

Edited July 31, 2020 by Edgard Neuman

[MigL]

The last time you introduced this idea, you were told

"Do not start another thread on this unless you can provide the required mathematical rigour in place of the waffle."

and the thread was closed.
What makes you think you can re-introduce it by hijacking this thread ?

[Markus Hanke]

9 hours ago, MigL said:

No, that is not my viewpoint; change does not need to involve a process.
But [...] you only note the change because our universe has a time dimension.

Yes, I agree with this.
It's just that the act of observation isn't what the discussion is about - I think it is fair to say that we all agree that in the absence of time, there can be no observation. This is not in contention (but it actually has interesting implications, if you think about it...but that's for another thread). 
So that leaves us with this: if change in itself (not its observation) does not need to involve a process, and thus does not reference time either implicitly nor explicitly, how can it be defined? Here is where I would argue that the best way to do so is via set-theoretical considerations, as detailed earlier. Essentially, I understand it as a relationship between elements in a set (or even between sets of comparable type). Surely that is not an unreasonable (albeit admittedly counterintuitive) position? 

9 hours ago, MigL said:

I find that interesting .Could you elaborate ?

To be honest, having slept over this whole thing, I am not sure whether I should. Since the tea cup universe has proven so controversial, the implications of a purely temporal universe might set off a riot
Perhaps a shout-out to the other participants here is in order - how do you feel about this discussion? Should we continue on, or agree to disagree (which is fine)? I think even from the little bits we have been talking about, it is quite clear that time does not just equal change.

 

[Eise]

16 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

22 hours ago, Eise said:

In my opinion, if somebody says that 'y changes as function of the change of x'

  But no one has been saying this...?

  Well, at least I interpreted your remark so:

On 7/22/2020 at 9:58 AM, Markus Hanke said:

Sure why not? Mathematically, instead of having quantities that change with respect to some time coordinate, you can always have quantities that change with respect to one another, without reference to any notion of time. ‘Change’ doesn’t imply time, and time doesn’t imply change. Derivatives (in the calculus sense) with respect to some quantity other than time are well defined and commonly used.

 

16 hours ago, studiot said:

OK gentlemen, so by you definition I would be incorrect to say that the colour changes from top to bottom on this circular button  ?

In the literal sense, yes, because you put something in that implies time: 'from to to bottom'. that is a movement. Where (nearly) everybody fully understands what you mean, it is metaphorical speech. less metaphorically formulated, I would say 'if you move from top to bottom, at a certain moment you will see that the colour changes from black to white'. And statically I would say 'the top half is black, the bottom half is white'. Nothing changes, the knob looks what it looks like, and that's it.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Eise

[studiot]

1 hour ago, Eise said:

  Well, at least I interpreted your remark so:

 

In the literal sense, yes, because you put something in that implies time: 'from to to bottom'. that is a movement. Where (nearly) everybody fully understands what you mean, it is metaphorical speech. less metaphorically formulated, I would say 'if you move from top to bottom, at a certain moment you will see that the colour changes from black to white'. And statically I would say 'the top half is black, the bottom half is white'. Nothing changes, the knob looks what it looks like, and that's it.

I said nothing whatsover to refer to time.
I most certainly said nothing about movement.

Nor does 'top to bottom' refer in any way to time.
It is purely a spatial expression.

Why this obsession with an observer?

The colour changes in space only and whether it is observed or not.

This 'whether it is observed or not' has been recognised by many famous philosophers in the past as important.
Their scenario included time and if you transposed your argument to the famous

Does a tree fall in the forest, or make a sound if there is noone there to see the fall or hear the sound?

You would be forced to accept that the tree did not fall and no sound ensued.

Edited July 31, 2020 by studiot

[joigus]

6 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

To be honest, having slept over this whole thing, I am not sure whether I should. Since the tea cup universe has proven so controversial, the implications of a purely temporal universe might set off a riot
Perhaps a shout-out to the other participants here is in order - how do you feel about this discussion? Should we continue on, or agree to disagree (which is fine)? I think even from the little bits we have been talking about, it is quite clear that time does not just equal change.

 

I think I may venture a reason why the teacup example has proven to be so controversial: Human-made objects are generally designed with the hope that they last unchanged for as long as possible*. So you can go back to the handle, the spout, or whatever part and find it exactly the way it was before, except for a scratch or a slight discolouration.

Consider, OTOH, the example of a metamorphosing insect somewhere along the causal line: egg, larva, caterpillar, pupa, butterfly. It's almost impossible to look at a caterpillar without picturing in your mind the butterfly to be that it represents: Our experience of the past deeply affects our thinking, and I would go on to say that in many cases leads us to some kind of circular-time representation space. This is the realm of inductive thinking. Laws that seem to suggest cycling and re-cycling in continually perpetuating process seeding and re-seeding.

Cosmology imposes on us to stretch the concept of time to its very limits: Eternal inflation, accelerated expansion, thermal death. It's so tempting to try to make sense of time in this difficult context that many models try to embed them in some kind of cyclic time, which is the one we're so familiar with. Collapsing and recollapsing universes, multiverses, etc. The caterpillar-pupa-butterfly kind of universe.

I may have got all of you completely wrong, but it seems to me that those who are closer to seeing time as an aspect of thinking that's so intrinsically hardwired in our brains that sort of impregnates everything we think, are:

@Markus Hanke, @michel123456 , @MigL, and myself.

I'm not so sure about @Eise, @geordief, @studiot, @The victorious truther, and @vexspits. Seems to me like they are more inquiring about other people's views. In particular, whether we identify time with any kind of differentiation. To the risk of misrepresenting them, I would say they're interested but not convinced.

Then there's the "hardliners" if you will, represented by @Phi for All, @Strange, and @StringJunky who, to the risk of oversimplifying their views, go more like: I don't see what the problem is, what's soooo special about time. Time is just a factual aspect of physics. Get over it.

Then there's @iNow, who seems to line up with "us", the puzzled-by-time bunch, by quoting Sagan.

This is not to say that within these groups everyone agrees with everyone else. And again, I'm not sure whether I've represented you faithfully. Please, feel free to correct me.

---------------------

* Planned obsolescence aside

Edited July 31, 2020 by joigus
Minor addition

[michel123456]

18 hours ago, studiot said:

Of course.

When one charge is positive and and negative the direction will be opposite to the situation when both charges are postive.

We denote this by a plus or minus sign.

 

 

OK gentlemen, so by you definition I would be incorrect to say that the colour changes from top to bottom on this circular button  ?

No there is no change in this picture. You posted it 18 hours ago and it hasn't changed a bit. There are 2 colors (B&W).

[studiot]

16 minutes ago, joigus said:

I may have got all of you completely wrong, but it seems to me that those who are closer to seeing time as an aspect of thinking that's so intrinsically hardwired in our brains that sort of impregnates everything we think, are:

@Markus Hanke, @michel123456 , @MigL, and myself.

I'm not so sure about @Eise, @geordief, @studiot, @The victorious truther, and @vexspits. Seems to me like they are more inquiring about other people's views. In particular, whether we identify time with any kind of differentiation. To the risk of misrepresenting them, I would say they're interested but not convinced.

Then there's the "hardliners" if you will, represented by @Phi for All, @Strange, and @StringJunky who, to the risk of oversimplifying their views, go more like: I don't see what the problem is, what's soooo special about time. Time is just a factual aspect of physics. Get over it.

Then there's @iNow, who seems to line up with "us", the puzzled-by-time bunch, by quoting Sagan.

This is not to say that within these groups everyone agrees with everyone else. And again, I'm not sure whether I've represented you faithfully. Please, feel free to correct me.

 

A very good point. How difficult it is to be objective about 'time' as it is so deeply embedded in our every day experiences. +1

Markus has indicated he has some additional thoughts, not yet offered  -   and so have I.

I think some may be similar.

 

I would add to this the notion of coordinate systems which have crept so deeply into our thinking about the world.

Most of the argument has been about the nature and application of coordinate systems.

This is a point I would like to address further, just as Markus +1

6 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

Perhaps a shout-out to the other participants here is in order - how do you feel about this discussion? Should we continue on, or agree to disagree (which is fine)? I think even from the little bits we have been talking about, it is quite clear that time does not just equal change.

 

2 minutes ago, michel123456 said:

No there is no change in this picture. You posted it 18 hours ago and it hasn't changed a bit. There are 2 colors (B&W).

Thank you for making your position so clear so amusingly. +1

I like the play on words.

 

Sadly this also means we must disagree.

I don't think this will be a disadvantage to you, since you don't do Mathematics.

But I know you think very carefully about things.
 

[Markus Hanke]

28 minutes ago, joigus said:

Human-made objects are generally designed with the hope that they last unchanged for as long as possible

Yes, perhaps. My original impulse was actually to just use a function or a field that does not explicitly depend on time, but I thought it would have been too abstract. Hence the tea cup in a 3D universe. But perhaps my first impulse would have been better, as those things have an explicit set-theoretical definition.

8 minutes ago, michel123456 said:

No there is no change in this picture.

I think it must be that our thought processes are fundamentally different. For me, it is difficult to understand how someone can not see a notion of spatial change in that picture, just as it is hard to see why change should be in any special way connected to time. But perhaps that's just me and my autistic mind  But then again, the concept of change without reference to space or time is fundamental to some models in physics, notably attempts at quantum gravity that are background-independent, such as LQG and CDT. Even in ordinary quantum physics, time does not play the same central role as it does in the classical world. So I'm certainly not the only one finding value in it.

Perhaps it is best to leave it at this, since my intention hasn't been to convince anyone of anything; it was mostly to explore the meaning of 'time' a bit more, and hopefully get the reader to go beyond what might seem obvious at first glance. 

[joigus]

25 minutes ago, michel123456 said:

No there is no change in this picture. You posted it 18 hours ago and it hasn't changed a bit. There are 2 colors (B&W).

That was brilliant! +1

<giggle>

</giggle>

[Strange]

1 hour ago, joigus said:

Then there's the "hardliners" if you will, represented by @Phi for All, @Strange, and @StringJunky who, to the risk of oversimplifying their views, go more like: I don't see what the problem is, what's soooo special about time. Time is just a factual aspect of physics. Get over it.

That isn't quite my view. But I do tend to adopt it it response to "time doesn't exist" or "time is just change" arguments.

There are, of course, complexities around how time is modelled in different physical theories (as something that "passes" vs just another dimension vs ...) and philosophical;/ontological/psychological aspects: why does it only "go" forwards? Is that just because of human perception, or is it a fundamental aspect of time?  And so on.

On 7/22/2020 at 8:58 AM, Markus Hanke said:

Sure why not? Mathematically, instead of having quantities that change with respect to some time coordinate, you can always have quantities that change with respect to one another, without reference to any notion of time. ‘Change’ doesn’t imply time, and time doesn’t imply change. Derivatives (in the calculus sense) with respect to some quantity other than time are well defined and commonly used.

For example, imagine you have a purely 3D universe, without time, that contains a tea cup. The handle of the cup has a certain curvature; the interior surface of the cup also has curvature, which is probably numerically different. So the surface curvature changes with respect to spatial coordinates, rather than time. So you have a universe that encompasses changes, but no time. This is perfectly consistent and valid, at least in my mind

I think this is an utterly brilliant answer to the question. (My naive answer would have been "of course you can't have change without time." How wrong I was.)

[joigus]

20 minutes ago, Strange said:

That isn't quite my view. But I do tend to adopt it it response to "time doesn't exist" or "time is just change" arguments.

Well, I must tell you my choice of word, "hardliners" was not very fortunate. I should have written something like "practical".

I would say you are practical, but then you seem to want to have a passageway to the stance "interested but not convinced".

Is that any closer?

[Strange]

6 minutes ago, joigus said:

Well, I must tell you my choice of word, "hardliners" was not very fortunate. I should have written something like "practical".

I would say you are practical, but then you seem to want to have a passageway to the stance "interested but not convinced".

Is that any closer?

How about "interested, open-minded but not really too worried about it" !?

(I wasn't bothered by "hardliner", BTW)

[joigus]

13 minutes ago, Strange said:

How about "interested, open-minded but not really too worried about it" !?

(I wasn't bothered by "hardliner", BTW)

Ok. You got your passageway. +1

We would have:

A) The practical group: Why bother?

B) The interested but not conviced: Mmmm, tell me more about it

C) The 1st passageway: Goes from "why bother" to "tell me more about it"

D) The puzzled or deeply concerned people: There's something special about time

E) The 2nd passageway: Not convinced, but I have a funny feeling about time

F) The unrestricted passageway: Goes from "why bother" to "there's something special about time"

I'm selling out.

<joke>

You can add your own. For example:

There's something spacial about being special

</joke>

Edited July 31, 2020 by joigus
Addition

[iNow]

1 hour ago, michel123456 said:

No there is no change in this picture. You posted it 18 hours ago and it hasn't changed a bit. There are 2 colors (B&W).

I agree with others. This was clever and funny, however, it’s also mistaken on multiple levels. 

The image you perceive is being processed by a brain in a different state than when you first saw it. Your body and neural substrate have changed quite a bit between experience 1 and experience 2 of receiving the image. 

Likewise, the image file has changed server locations, and experienced minute breaks and changes (an evolution of sorts) in the packets transferring it across servers and through the network to your screen versus mine. 

There are other similar changes which occurred over the course of that 18 hours, and this point is in a way tangential to the thread, but IMO it’s inaccurate to say it hasn’t changed a bit unless you’re looking at it from too high / too broad / too abstract a level. 

[Eise]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Why this obsession with an observer?

It is an obsession with correct language. It would not be the first time that metaphoric thinking leads to absurd conclusions. I think you will find a reference to time in every meaning in a dictionary. Why do you understand me if I would talk about a universe where nothing changes. Do you think then automatically about a universe that is uniformly filled with a continuous substance, or completely empty? If I say to you 'Imagine a universe where nothing changes', would you then ask for clarification 'you mean no change in space or no change in time?' Wouldn't people wonder when somebody says 'the difference between a TV set and a picture, is that at a TV the picture is changing continuously', and then you react 'but a picture changes too. if you go from left to right, its colour changes'. They would think you are a nerd, weirdo, or the like.

[joigus]

2 minutes ago, iNow said:

I agree with others. This was clever and funny, however, it’s also mistaken on multiple levels. 

The image you perceive is being processed by a brain in a different state than when you first saw it. Your body and neural substrate have changed quite a bit between experience 1 and experience 2 of receiving the image. 

Likewise, the image file has changed server locations, and experienced minute breaks and changes (an evolution of sorts) in the packets transferring it across servers and through the network to your screen versus mine. 

There are other similar changes which occurred over the course of that 18 hours, and this point is in a way tangential to the thread, but IMO it’s inaccurate to say it hasn’t changed a bit unless you’re looking at it from too high / too broad / too abstract a level. 

Good points. +1. Let me add another one:

1 hour ago, michel123456 said:

There are 2 colors (B&W).

There are more than two. Our mind tends to translate into binary if given the opportunity. Actually, there's a gradient of greys if you look at the picture closely enough. Our mind shapes what we see, and our mind likes to interpret the world in binary. Could that happen with time too? Our mind "likes" to shape the world as a continuous sequence?

[Eise]

1 hour ago, michel123456 said:

No there is no change in this picture. You posted it 18 hours ago and it hasn't changed a bit. There are 2 colors (B&W).

Exactly. You have to imagine going from top to bottom, to get a change in colour. 

7 hours ago, Markus Hanke said:

think even from the little bits we have been talking about, it is quite clear that time does not just equal change.

Yep, time does not just equal change. In my view however, they are strongly related: you can see it in two opposite ways:

• change is always change in time. That means time is some (local?) background dimension
• time is the highest abstraction of change

 But certainly time and change are not the same.

1 hour ago, Markus Hanke said:

For me, it is difficult to understand how someone can not see a notion of spatial change in that picture, just as it is hard to see why change should be in any special way connected to time.

I can see it: by letting my gaze/attention/imagination move from top to bottom...

[Strange]

22 minutes ago, joigus said:

D) The puzzled or deeply concerned people: There's something special about time

Z) Those with serious issues: "There is something wrong with time" (yes, I am thinking of the Time Cube guy)

13 minutes ago, Eise said:

Exactly. You have to imagine going from top to bottom, to get a change in colour. 

Isn't that like saying you have to imagine reading all the digits of pi to know what its value is?

Pi has a well defined value that does not depend on time passing.

Similarly, the colour in that drawing is a function of the y (or θ) coordinate in a way that does not depend on time.

[studiot]

5 minutes ago, Eise said:

Exactly. You have to imagine going from top to bottom, to get a change in colour. 

No I don't this and you previous still post show a preponderance of observer.

An observer might go somewhere. The button won't.

But I have already given a Mathematical (set theoretic explanation of how it is possible to observe without movement in this case)

16 minutes ago, joigus said:

Could that happen with time too? Our mind "likes" to shape the world as a continuous sequence?

That is one of the points I wanted to bring out in further discussion.

Granularity v continutity.