Further Treatises on Time... (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, March 14, 2011, 22:36 (4799 days ago) @ dhw

MATT: I'm out of ideas on how to convey this to you; in my own life I reject the feeling of continuity of time as false. It is a feeling, that has no basis in reality. Our brains fill in the gaps, give us the impression of time. The notion of time is further reinforced by the fact that our existence isn't eternal. (Which I'm sure will suffer you some more heartburn...)
> 
> Unless someone else can step in to provide a new slant, we may well have to call it a day ... which is the period of something or the other (does physics have a word for this?) that it takes the Earth to rotate on its axis, though apparently if we weren't here to observe it, there wouldn't be a period of something or the other, although the Earth would presumably continue to rotate on its axis. (I hope that at least you can understand why I find all this so confusing!)
> -Trust me... I completely understand. It took me years to fully wrap my head around the idea. Physics acknowledges time but only as a unit of measure; for example a second is defined thusly: "The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom." But that's it... there's no more discussion of time inside of physics beyond what we've already covered. It's a quantity such as a meter or kilometer that is only used to describe intervals between observations. -I notice that you like to return often the the idea of continuity. One of the things that we've discovered about nature at its lowest levels is that continuity does not exist. -In a famous experiment hydrogen atoms were exposed to energy, which causes its single electron to jump up a level in energy. However, this shift is EXACT. -There's no gradual transition here. And this rule holds for all of quantum physics; the name itself 'quanta' implies a discrete, non-continuous nature.-> I agree that the notion of time is reinforced by our awareness of death (don't worry about my heartburn), but that doesn't make it any the less real. I view births and deaths (like the rotating Earth) as evidence of causes and effects, and befores-nows-afters, which confirm the definition of time as "the continuous passage of existence in which events pass from a state of potentiality in the future, through the present, to a state of finality in the past." In the material world I know ... which I and many others believe to be real ... most everyday experiences appear to contradict what you call the "qualifier" issued by modern physics: "Everything you think you know about the nature of reality is either wrong or backwards." If you genuinely believe that the laws of physics, not to mention biology, are wrong or backwards, step in front of that bus (but do please give yourself enough something or the other to step away again).
> -Here you're taking the discussion from time to cause and effect. We haven't made it there yet. Remember the same physics that describes what happens when I step in front of a bus is the same physics that denies a continuity of time; maybe we should dive deeper here?

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"