Life, the Universe, and Everything

[prémont]

I'm not sure that objects are created, they merely appear. Why? No one knows; there's nothing behind the curtain.

I don't know if they are created or merely appear, I just adopted your way of thought:

You can look at it differently. Everything happens only in the now. The past and the future don't actually exist. From this perspective, creation is happening endlessly, in the now.

[AnotherSpin]

I don't know if they are created or merely appear, I just adopted your way of thought:

Speaking of "creation is happening endlessly, in the now," I meant the creation of the world.

[Karl Henning]

Guys, do we need a mysticism thread in The Diner for these discussions? Or are we still solving the mystery of where Todd went? 

Who?

[Florestan]

This thread gets weirder by the hour... 

[prémont]

This thread gets weirder by the hour... 

Yes, but please observe that there is no improper arguing.

[JBS]

Guys, do we need a mysticism thread in The Diner for these discussions? Or are we still solving the mystery of where Todd went? 

Maybe he's gone, gone beyond, gone totally beyond.

[Madiel]

If I got this right, it means that Todd doesn't exist now, and he will not come into existence before he is recreated.

And now I'm thinking about Schrödinger's Cat.

[Karl Henning]

If I got this right, it means that Todd doesn't exist now, and he will not come into existence before he is recreated.

If Todd doesn't exist, leave us agree not to invent him.

[Mandryka]

Even more simply: we exist only now. But the mind endlessly flits between past and future, because mind cannot enter the present. This is perfectly obvious, and you don't have to be a mystic or a philosopher to know it without doubt. Any child knows it, until they've been conditioned otherwise .

One view is that Todd is a four dimensional space time worm, a process made up of all the Todd time slices which ever have, do or will exist. Maybe one of the scientists here could comment about whether this is suggested by modern physics.

If it's right, I am not wholly here now - though one of my time slices is. I am the mereological sum of my time slices.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/

[Spotted Horses]

One view is that Todd is a four dimensional space time worm, a process made up of all the Todd time slices which ever have, do or will exist. Maybe one of the scientists here could comment about whether this is suggested by modern physics.

If it's right, I am not wholly here now - though one of my time slices is. I am the mereological sum of my time slices.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/

Everyone and everything is a four dimensional space time worm, since every physical object occupies a locus of points in three dimensional space at any given time between the time that it comes to exist and the time it ceases to exist.

[Madiel]

Everyone and everything is a four dimensional space time worm, since every physical object occupies a locus of points in three dimensional space at any given time between the time that it comes to exist and the time it ceases to exist.

Can we at least take the Earth as a fixed point, or do I have to include the planet whizzing through space in this worm?

My feelings about Todd are well known, but right now I'd welcome him puncturing this conversation.

[Karl Henning]

Tangentially, in rereading the first chapter in a MS. by @Cato I thought, I don't think multiple universes would be a good idea at all, at all: GPS faces challenges enough in just this one. Or, are the problems with GPS explicable by multiple Massachusettses?

[Cato]

And now I'm thinking about Schrödinger's Cat.

Perhaps it is high time to think about Schrödinger's Dog...or his hamster...or even his goldfish!  They would like equal time, which, of course, may not exist, sort of, kind of...

Tangentially, in rereading the first chapter in a MS. by @Cato I thought, I don't think multiple universes would be a good idea at all, at all: GPS faces challenges enough in just this one. Or, are the problems with GPS explicable by multiple Massachusettses?

It has been our experience that a 2-dimensional paper map often solves GPS problems! 

[Madiel]

2-dimensional maps don't work in Edinburgh. A new technology is required there.

[AnotherSpin]

One view is that Todd is a four dimensional space time worm, a process made up of all the Todd time slices which ever have, do or will exist. Maybe one of the scientists here could comment about whether this is suggested by modern physics.

If it's right, I am not wholly here now - though one of my time slices is. I am the mereological sum of my time slices.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/

The idea that a person is some sort of time-stretched worm made up of different temporal slices might sound philosophical, but it's really just another way of reducing the self to a physical or mental process. I'm not talking philosophy, just something simple and obvious that anyone can recognise. The true 'I' isn't confined to the body, the mind, or any particular moment. It's beyond time and change.

[Spotted Horses]

The idea that a person is some sort of time-stretched worm made up of different temporal slices might sound philosophical, but it's really just another way of reducing the self to a physical or mental process. I'm not talking philosophy, just something simple and obvious that anyone can recognise. The true 'I' isn't confined to the body, the mind, or any particular moment. It's beyond time and change.

It has nothing to do with "the self" or mental processes. It is simple geometry in which time is taken to be a forth coordinate. It's true in Newtonian physics as well, What Einstein added is that time and space coordinates are not entirely distinct.

[AnotherSpin]

It has nothing to do with "the self" or mental processes. It is simple geometry in which time is taken to be a forth coordinate. It's true in Newtonian physics as well, What Einstein added is that time and space coordinates are not entirely distinct.

Oh, I didn't quite realise we were talking about geometry, sorry about that.

[Spotted Horses]

Oh, I didn't quite realise we were talking about geometry, sorry about that.

Well, I was.

[Elgarian Redux]

It has nothing to do with "the self" or mental processes. It is simple geometry in which time is taken to be a forth coordinate. It's true in Newtonian physics as well, What Einstein added is that time and space coordinates are not entirely distinct.

Quoted both for truth and relevance, and I'd like to pick up your ball and run with it, Scarps, if I may.

I've often been thankful that Relativity at least gives our imagination some rational (and verifiable) way of thinking about the otherwise unfathomable nature of time: 'Yesterday' becomes a section of the time axis in four dimensional space-time.

It also does raise doubt, at least, about the idea that past and future don't exist in the same sense as the present does. Think about a point X on a straight line in space. There are clearly points on the line to the left and right of it, and those points are no more nor less real than X. Well, similarly, once you think about the moment 'now' in time, as a point N on a line which stretches off in opposite directions along a time axis in a 4th dimension, with other points on the line representing 'past' and 'future' moments, there's no reason to regard those 'past' and 'future' moments as any less real than the moment 'now'.

Of course the imagination struggles to visualise the meaning of this model, but mathematics describes it perfectly, and in a way that can be (and has been) repeatedly tested. There's nothing mystical about it, apart from the idea that mere existence itself might be so regarded.

[AnotherSpin]

Quoted both for truth and relevance, and I'd like to pick up your ball and run with it, Scarps, if I may.

I've often been thankful that Relativity at least gives our imagination some rational (and verifiable) way of thinking about the otherwise unfathomable nature of time: 'Yesterday' becomes a section of the time axis in four dimensional space-time.

It also does raise doubt, at least, about the idea that past and future don't exist in the same sense as the present does. Think about a point X on a straight line in space. There are clearly points on the line to the left and right of it, and those points are no more nor less real than X. Well, similarly, once you think about the moment 'now' in time, as a point N on a line which stretches off in opposite directions along a time axis in a 4th dimension, with other points on the line representing 'past' and 'future' moments, there's no reason to regard those 'past' and 'future' moments as any less real than the moment 'now'.

Of course the imagination struggles to visualise the meaning of this model, but mathematics describes it perfectly, and in a way that can be (and has been) repeatedly tested. There's nothing mystical about it, apart from the idea that mere existence itself might be so regarded.

Just to share a different take, not to disagree for the sake of it.

The way I see it, points in time are really just ideas that show up in the mind. They don't actually exist on their own. And anything we can describe or explain is already an object, something we're looking at, not the one who's doing the looking.

Even Einstein's brilliant equations still belong to the world of things we know about. But truth, if we're talking in a deeper sense, is the knower, the subject itself. It can't really be put into words or grasped by thought.

So the moment we try to pin time down and make it all make sense, we've already stepped away from the centre, the source, and started heading outward.