Nameless your signature uses this quote:

'The First Law of Soul Dynamics'; "For every Perspective, there is an equal and opposite Perspective!" FUDD

Was that Elmer Fudd by any chance?

So what is the anti perspective of life? death? nuff said!

Sorry man, I couldnt help myself! Just tryin to make these boards a little fun once in awhile.

Does that hypothesis have any support for it at all or is it just completely an idea. If so then I'd say we have more evidence for an intelligent designer then we do have for that idea.

Thats because the moons an activagon..or maybe more.....Infinity appears to be the flavour of the here and now.

Nope. *__-


There are quite numerous Perspectives of 'life' and 'death'.
Your question is quite answerable/discussable, but I don't think here and now appropriate.


Not a problem, like I said; "For every Perspective, there is an equal and opposite Perspective!"
Any time you want to discuss this 'Law', I'm ready.
Later...

All theories are ideas. Perhaps your definition of 'idea' is different than mine?
There is good support for the theory from diverse places/Perspectives.

One is Richard Feynman's quote that;
"The Laws of Nature are not rules controlling the metamorphosis of what is, into what will be. They are discriptions of patterns that exist, all at once, in the whole Tapestry... The four-dimensional space-time manifold displays all eternity at once." - 'Genius; the Life and Science of Richard Feynman'

"at once" = synchronous

Later

You are using a quote which doesn't justify itself to justify the idea you are presenting?

I understand the gist of the idea. What I don't understand is how there is any proof to even give the idea a moments glance. no pun intended.

Sometimes I think that these tactics are used simply to divert the attention away from their failing argument.

The initial thread began about the linearity of time realting to the possibility of sich a thing as infinity.

It was suggested that in order to measure anything one must have a point of origin to put the tape to. And from there on time is merely a measurement of that tape.

I am quite interested to some proof towards this theory. I understand what the theory states and now I want to hear something to back it up.

THIS is not a theory Click.

This is logically applied thinking based on what we have before us. The theorires arise when someone attempts to argue the logic with some other suggestioon.

Try measuring anything without a starting point and see what happens to your ability calcualte distance.

The same can be said of the measurement of the passage of time.

oh my bad on the confusing reply. I quoted you because I was agree with you wishing to see evidence to the theory that nameless is talking about.

btw how is this edited sylogism?


Premise 1: All future dates in time are attainable only through the passing of those before.
Premise 2: You can not arrive at a specific date in time without first starting somewhere in history before that.
Conclusion: The universe had a beginning or time is not linear.

The quote wasn't offered as any 'proof', but as evidence that arguably the most brilliant physist of his generation seemed to think so. It wasn't just a 'notion' of his either. Perhaps you'll like to follow his mathematics to find how he came to his understanding. It's all available if you can do the math. His explanations are quite lucid also. He is but one source (he was a neighbor, once, in Far Rockaway, NY).
I came to this understanding after evaluating evidence/data from many diverse paths (of enquiry) over decades of research. Any little bit of data might not lead so clearly to this understanding, but when so much diverse evidence all cleanly coincides and solves so much paradox (evidence of error), this seems the best theory yet (not yet been refuted). Predictions, so based, have come true. Not to mention personal (allowably anecdotal) experience.
'Time' will tell...


It is not 'proof' that inspires examination, there is 'evidence', 'experiment' (gedanken and 'real'), and dissatisfaction with the superficiality (and lies, errors, paradoxes...) of the 'status quo'! A sincere and honest search for 'truth/reality' leaves no stone unturned!
Perhaps one reason to give it a glance is that 'naive realism', the evidence of your senses, are so faulty; upon the least examination rife with paradox and inconsistency. As it is refuted as an accurate reflection of existence, one might be open to alternate theories that are simple and elegant and have thus far withstood the storm of greyfaces 'appointed to guard the past'!
How are you at higher math? That is a good beginning for those so inclined. Critical thought is another avenue leading to simulteneity.
Though it is counterintuitional, we now have the ability to bypass our base 'senses' in the understanding of existence; now mind becomes our best (and only?) 'tool'.

I don't have a horse in this race, its just the cutting edge of many decades of research and practice.
Time will tell what differences this new understanding will feature in our 'worldview' and our technology. Or, perhaps, be supplanted by a better theory. Quantum seems to be on fire after hundreds of years cutting our baby teeth/paying our dues with 'classical physics'.

What appears most important is the basic structure of the 'moment'; the particular juxtaposition of moments less 'socially' relevent (for Now!).

I have no 'higher' math skills.

What do you think of my edited sylogism?



Premise 1: All future dates in time are attainable only through the passing of those before.
Premise 2: You can not arrive at a specific date in time without first starting somewhere in history before that.
Conclusion: The universe had a beginning or time is not linear.

Does that conclusion only leave room for 1 of those 2 choices?

Is it not possible to logically 'prove' what this mathmatician says about time being all things present at once or w/e you said.

Why is your first premise correct? Note that your second premise actually claims that there can be no starting point because then you could not arrive at the starting point without starting before it, a contradiction. The universe is not necessarily linear. That we have any non linear processes would imply that the universe is not linear. If all processes were linear, then we would not need a word for linear processes. On the other hand, one might claim that non-linear processes are misunderstandings of linear ones, that we simply do not fully understand a process and this is why it seems non-linear to us.

The universe may have had a beginning, but we still don't know if the universe is 'everything'. The universe should not have an end for an end would imply a barrier which would imply that there is something beyond the barrier. If everything begins at X, we automatically ask what comes before. It is all like the line of thinking where we are told 'God made everything' and ask 'then what made god?', 'I don't know', 'well then why should I believe you?'.

The reason that you cannot prove that the universe has a beginning is because its not logically impossible for it not to have one.

Your assumption of universal 'linearity' is in dispute.
The very phrase "all future dates" already implies 'passing through other dates prior'.
So, all of existence prior to the advent of you and your perception of 'temporal location', from moment to moment, determines the definition of 'past' and 'present' and 'future'?
What about to your great grandmother's Perspective? Some of your past is her future, your present is her future, your great grandson's past is your future etc... Who gets to determine exactly what constitutes 'past' or 'future' for anyone but oneself?
A problem with your first premise is it's complete subjectivity. Your syllogism might be true from only one Perspective, yours! Are you claiming some sort of universality in it's implication?


Assuming linearity, of course, and youPerspective, you repeat the first premise.


...or there is no such actual thing as 'time' but as an 'appearance' to certain Perspectives'.
The notion/illusion of 'time passing' is a linear construct. No linearity, no 'time'.


Both choices say the same thing, to me.
You argument for a 'beginning' is valid, from the Perspective of the perceiver of the premises.


It is not possible to definitively 'prove' anything. Heisenberg taught us that. There are probabilities... We examine the evidence for ourselves once we understand it.
At this point, the structure of the 'moment', Now!, is of more 'existential value' than it's juxtaposition with other 'moments'.

My conclusion states that if time is linear then the universe had a beginning. If the universe had no beginning then time absolutely can not be linear. So if one says, "The universe had no beginning!" then that person absolutely can not subscribe to linear time. Since linear time can not be disproven then you can not state that the universe having no beginning is empirical.

I very much like what the monkey said above.

defining these things without any object to scrutinize is pure conjecture.

However it is a mistake to consider the beginning of existence as a starting point that one can go back to for measurement purposes. The point of origin and our inability to place a measuring tape at that point does not mean that there was no point of origin. I think the confusion begins when we use the term universe to define what we mean by existence. Universe is being implied as a place of boundaries. Existence is simply that which exists. Everything had a beginning.

The paradox comes about, not in the facts of what has existed, and where it originated, but in our attempt to understand the dynamics.

Well it's common belief that our Universe as we know it today has a finite age.

Beyond that, hoo, I don't know

The cosmos could be either of the two. It just depends on the syntax we're talking about sort-to-speak.

Understood. Translated in this Perspective would be as follows; When one's Perspective is linear, 'motion' and thus 'time' is a feature of that Perspective.


'Time' = linear (sequential) Perspective + the perception of 'motion'. Time as we define/know it can only be linear (the fabled 'arrow of time'), even in 'reverse'.


Fair enough... well, there are also those who see time (linearity) as stretching off infinitely in all 'both' directions of the observed 'linearity'. So, from that Perspective, one can say thus and still subscribe...


Whoah! (Sound of screetching train wheels) First, 'linear time' has not been 'proven' as anything more than a feature of a local phenomenal appearance. It is an 'observation'. And science is disproving it every day as a quick search would reveal. of existence/universe, not inherent (other than as a particular Perspective) to the basic nature of existence. In 'reality', nothing moves. As motion is actually impossible, the notion of 'motion' and thus 'time' are personally Perspectival illusions.
Nice to see science catching up.

For instance;

Is time an illusion?

Is time an illusion? - physics-math - 19 January 2008 - New Scientist
19 January 2008
New Scientist Magazine issue 2639.

IT IS the invisible presence that governs your world. Trailing you like an unshakeable shadow, it ticks and tocks incessantly - you can sense it in your heartbeat, in the rising and setting of the sun, and in your daily rush to make meetings, trains and deadlines. It brings order to our lives through the categories of past, present and future.

Time. There is nothing with which we are so familiar, and yet when you try to pin it down you find only a relentless torrent of questions. Why does time appear to flow? What makes it different from space? What exactly is it? It's enough to make your neurons misfire, then sizzle and smoke.

You are not alone. Physicists have long struggled to understand what time really is. In fact, they are not even sure it exists at all. In their quest for deeper theories of the universe, some researchers increasingly suspect that time is not a fundamental feature of nature, but rather an artefact of our perception. One group has recently found a way to do quantum physics without invoking time, which could help pave a path to a time-free "theory of everything". If correct, the approach suggests that time really is an illusion, and that we may need to rethink how the universe at large works.

For decades, physicists have been searching for a quantum theory of gravity to reconcile Einstein's general relativity, which describes gravity at the largest scales, with quantum mechanics, which describes the behaviour of particles at the tiniest scales. One reason it has been so difficult to merge the two is that they are built on incompatible views of time. "I am more and more convinced that the problem of time is key both to quantum gravity and to issues in cosmology," says Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

According to general relativity, time is stitched together with space to form four-dimensional space-time. The passage of time is not absolute - no cosmic clock ticks away the hours of the universe. Instead, time differs from one frame of reference to the next, and what one observer experiences as time, another might experience as a mixture of time and space. For Einstein, time is a useful measure of things, but nothing special.

Not so in quantum mechanics. Here time plays a key role, keeping track of the ever-changing probabilities that define the microworld, which are encoded in the "wave function" of a quantum system. The clock by which the wave function evolves records not just the time in one particular frame of reference, but the absolute time that Einstein worked so hard to topple. So while relativity treats space and time as a whole, quantum mechanics splits the universe into two parts: the quantum system being observed and the classical world outside. In this fractured universe, a clock always remains outside the quantum system (see Diagram).

Something has to give. The fact that the universe has no outside, by definition, suggests that quantum mechanics will be the one to surrender - and to many, this suggests that time is not fundamental. In the 1990s, for instance, physicist Julian Barbour proposed that time must not exist in a quantum theory of the universe. All the same, physicists are loath to throw out quantum theory, as it has proven capable of extraordinarily accurate predictions. What they need is a way to do quantum mechanics in the absence of time.

Single quantum event

Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of Marseille in France, has found just that. In the past year, he and his colleagues have worked out a method to compress multiple quantum events in time into a single event that can be described without reference to time (Physical Review D, vol 75, p 084033).

It is an intriguing achievement. While Rovelli's approach to dealing with time is one of many, and researchers working on other models of quantum gravity may have different opinions on the matter, nearly every physicist agrees that time is a key obstacle to finding an ultimate theory. Rovelli's approach seems tantalisingly close to surmounting that obstacle. His model builds upon research into generalising quantum mechanics by physicist James Hartle at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as Rovelli's earlier work on quantum systems.

The idea is this: suppose we have an electron characterised by its spin, a quantum property that is either "up" or "down" along whatever direction you measure it. Say we want to make two consecutive measurements of its spin, one in the x direction and one in the y direction. The probabilities of the possible outcomes will depend on the order in which we perform the measurements. That's because a measurement "collapses" the indeterminate state of the wave function, forcing it to commit to a given state; the first measurement will change the particle's state, which affects the second measurement.

Say we already know the electron's spin is up in the x direction. If we now measure the spin in the x direction followed by the y direction, we will find the x spin up - no change there - and then there is a 50:50 chance of finding the y spin up or down. But if we begin by measuring the y spin, that disturbs the spin in the x direction, creating a 50-50 probability for both measurements.

If reordering the measurements in time changes the probabilities, how can we calculate the probabilities of sequences of events without reference to time? The trick, says Rovelli, is to adjust the boundary between the quantum system under observation and the classical outside world where measuring devices are considered to reside. By shifting the boundary, we can include the measuring device as part of the quantum system.

In that case we no longer ask, "What is the probability of the electron having spin up and then spin down?" Instead we ask, "What is the probability of finding the measuring devices in a particular state?" The measuring device no longer collapses the wave function; rather, the electron and the measuring device together are described by a single wave function, and a single measurement of the entire set-up causes the collapse.

Where has time gone? Evolution in time is transformed into correlations between things that can be observed in space. "To give an analogy," Rovelli says, "I can tell you that I drove from Boston to Los Angeles but I passed first through Chicago and later through Denver. Here I am specifying things in time. But I could also tell you that I drove from Boston to LA along the road marked in this map. So I can replace the information about which measurement happens first in time with the detailed information about how the observables are correlated."

That Rovelli's approach yields the correct probabilities in quantum mechanics seems to justify his intuition that the dynamics of the universe can be described as a network of correlations, rather than as an evolution in time. "Rovelli's work makes the timeless view more believable and more in line with standard physics," says Dean Rickles, a philosopher of physics at the University of Sydney in Australia.

With quantum mechanics rewritten in time-free form, combining it with general relativity seems less daunting, and a universe in which time is fundamental seems less likely. But if time doesn't exist, why do we experience it so relentlessly? Is it all an illusion?

Yes, says Rovelli, but there is a physical explanation for it. For more than a decade, he has been working with mathematician Alain Connes at the College de France in Paris to understand how a time-free reality could give rise to the appearance of time. Their idea, called the thermal time hypothesis, suggests that time emerges as a statistical effect, in the same way that temperature emerges from averaging the behaviour of large groups of molecules (Classical and Quantum Gravity, vol 11, p 2899).

Imagine gas in a box. In principle we could keep track of the position and momentum of each molecule at every instant and have total knowledge of the microscopic state of our surroundings. In this scenario, no such thing as temperature exists; instead we have an ever-changing arrangement of molecules. Keeping track of all that information is not feasible in practice, but we can average the microscopic behaviour to derive a macroscopic description. We condense all the information about the momenta of the molecules into a single measure, an average that we call temperature.

According to Connes and Rovelli, the same applies to the universe at large. There are many more constituents to keep track of: not only do we have particles of matter to deal with, we also have space itself and therefore gravity. When we average over this vast microscopic arrangement, the macroscopic feature that emerges is not temperature, but time. "It is not reality that has a time flow, it is our very approximate knowledge of reality that has a time flow," says Rovelli. "Time is the effect of our ignorance."
It is not reality that has a time flow, but our very approximate knowledge of reality. Time is the effect of our ignorance

Cosmic time

It all sounds good on paper, but is there any evidence that the idea might be correct? Rovelli and Connes have tested their hypothesis with simple models. They started by looking at the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation that pervades the sky - relic heat from the big bang. The CMB is an example of a statistical state: averaging over the finer details, we can say that the radiation is practically uniform and has a temperature of just under 3 kelvin. Rovelli and Connes used this as a model for the statistical state of the universe, tossing in other information such as the radius of the observable universe, and looked to see what apparent time flow that would generate.

What they got was a sequence of states describing a small universe expanding in exactly the manner described by standard cosmological equations - matching what physicists refer to as cosmic time. "I was amazed," says Rovelli. "Connes was as well. He had independently thought about the same idea, and was very surprised to see it worked in a simple calculation."

To truly apply the thermal time hypothesis to the universe, however, physicists need a theory of quantum gravity. All the same, the fact that a simple model like that of the CMB produced realistic results is promising. "One of the traditional difficulties of quantum gravity was how to make sense of a theory in which the time variable had disappeared," Rovelli says. "Here we begin to see that a theory without a time variable can not only still make sense, but can in fact describe a world like the one we see around us."

What's more, the thermal time hypothesis gives another interesting result. If time is an artefact of our statistical description of the world, then a different description should lead to a different flow of time. There is a clear case in which this happens: in the presence of an event horizon.

When an observer accelerates, he creates an event horizon, a boundary that partitions off a region of the universe from which light can never reach him so long as he continues to accelerate. This observer will describe a different statistical state of the universe from an observer who doesn't have a horizon, since he is missing information that lies beyond his event horizon. The flow of time he perceives should therefore be different.

Using general relativity, however, there is another way to describe his experience of time. The geometry of the space-time he inhabits, as defined by his horizon, determines a so-called proper time - the time flow he would register if he were carrying a clock. The thermal time hypothesis predicts that the ratio of the observer's proper time to his statistical time - the time flow that emerges from Connes and Rovelli's ideas - is the temperature he measures around him.

It so happens that every event horizon has an associated temperature. The best known case is that of a black hole event horizon, whose temperature is that of the "Hawking radiation" it emits. Likewise, an accelerating observer measures a temperature associated with something known as Unruh radiation. The temperature Rovelli and Connes derived matches the Unruh temperature and the Hawking temperature for a black hole, further boosting their hypothesis.

"The thermal time hypothesis is a very beautiful idea," says Pierre Martinetti, a physicist at the University of Rome in Italy. "But I believe its implementation is still limited. For the moment one has just checked that this hypothesis was not contradictory when a notion of time was already available. But it has not been used in quantum gravity."

Others also urge caution in interpreting what it all means for the nature of time. "It is wrong to say that time is an illusion," says Rickles. "It is just reducible or non-fundamental, in the same way that consciousness emerges from brain activity but is not illusory."

So if time really does prove to be non-fundamental, what are we to make of it? "For us, time exists and flows," says Rovelli. "The point is that this nice flow becomes something much more complicated at the small scale."

At reality's deepest level, then, it remains unknown whether time will hold strong or melt away like a Salvador Dali clock. Perhaps, as Rovelli and others suggest, time is all a matter of perspective - not a feature of reality but a result of your missing information about reality. So if your brain hurts when you try to understand time, relax. If you really knew, time might simply disappear.


Have we missed the part where i informed you that 'empiricism' is flawed and thus refuted. It still has a few local pragmatic applications, like the pedal powered grinding wheel out behind the barn...
Arguing 'empiricism' with me merely tells me that you have a bit of catching up to do on the subject.
Logic trumps empiricism, and so does praxeology.
If someone came up to you and said, "I just observed something that is A and not A at the same time," you wouldn't chuck out logic. You'd probably think the person was crazy, or look for some basic error in their assumptions (e.g. an fallacy of equivocation, one of their A's is not really identical to the other.)

Enough of such study and we find the new and larger world/universe that QM has opened for business to those who take the 'critical update'.

If someone told you that they saw water running uphill, you wouldn't say, "Oh well, the law of gravity doesn't hold." Again, you'd look for errors in assumptions related to the law of gravity. Was it an optical illusion? Was energy added (a hand pump?) Did it occur in a space capsule? Similarly, if someone says a rise in price, of apples, gold, iPods, or labor, didn't result in lowering sales, you don't chuck out the praxeological law that people prefer more to less. You look for assumptions that don't hold. Was it really ceterus paribus, or unconsidered factors effect it?

The assumptions of empiricism are refuted in the findings of QM.

Why haven't they devoted as much effort to trying to figure out what an inch is and how that relates to creation? Or maybe even a foot? What about a gallon, now there is a real dilemma!