Einstein and Time (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, February 13, 2012, 17:33 (4666 days ago) @ dhw

Dhw: On the understanding that we cannot &quot;know&quot; any ultimate, objective truth, I firmly believe (David will be amazed at such commitment!) that even if there were no humans, there would still be events going on in the universe, via a process of cause and effect, which would pass from a non-existent future through a present and into a non-existent past (e.g. the birth and death of stars). Do you or do you not share my belief? If you do, you believe in the reality of clockless time as I have defined it. That is as far as any of us can go.&#13;&#10;> &#13;&#10;> DAVID: Congratulations!! Your continuum goes back to First Cause!!! Or is there an infinity back there, infinite regression? Not possible if we rule out Multiverse. The Big Bang is an origin, as I believe Alex Vilenkin just told us that at Hawking&apos;s 70 B&apos;day party. So get off your fence and recognize FC, thanks to Aristotle, refined by St. Tom.&#13;&#10;> &#13;&#10;> Ah, you never miss a trick, do you? But 1) if you believe in a First Cause, you have no choice other than to accept that time as I have defined it is a reality. 2) Big Bang is still just a theory, and we still need to know what went bang. 3) Big Bounce seems just as feasible to this layman. And 4) an endless series of mindless bouncing universes or, for that matter, mindless universes that go bang in the blank of nothingness, seems no less and no more incredible than an endless intelligence that just sort of happens to be there. Come and join me on my clockless fence.&#13;&#10;> -And as one of my new favorite physicists Gevin Giorbran echoes, &quot;A creator simply moves the question of existence back one layer. Instead of &apos;why is there something rather than nothing,&apos; we then ask &apos;why is there a creator rather than nothing?&apos;&quot; It is no more a solution the the problem than many worlds or many universes. And though he writes agnostic to creators, he asks, &quot;Why then, couldn&apos;t a universe--a simpler object than the creator--also be uncreated?&quot;-Another good quote, relating to the Big Bang: &quot;In the theory of relativity, the concept of time begins with the Big Bang the same way as parallels of latitude begin at the North Pole.&quot; (Kari Enqvist)--> Matt, this correspondence has already reached &quot;book-length&quot;, and I wonder how productive a &quot;book-length reply&quot; would be for either of us. I feel guilty already at subjecting you to so many unreal, earthtime hours of writing and research when for us subjective earthlings the question of time&apos;s reality is ultimately one of definition, philosophical criteria, and personal belief. The only way you and I might possibly find out the objective truth about anything will be if there&apos;s an afterlife, so as far as the subject of time is concerned, are you sure you don&apos;t want to leave it till then? (Yeah, &quot;till then&quot; implies there&apos;s a difference between now and then, present and future, in a continuum. Sorry. LOL.)-I know you&apos;re laughing at me right now (in a good way) but since I started reading this book, These key thinkers in the last 100 years came to the same conclusion about time: -1. Albert Einstein&#13;&#10;2. Richard Feynman&#13;&#10;3. Stephen Hawking&#13;&#10;4. Niels Bohr (<--not sure about this last name, but I don&apos;t have the book at hand. It could have been Bohm.) -Now, you know I don&apos;t prefer arguments from authority, my point for looking at these thinkers is because of this:-Their manner of thinking about the universe was each as revolutionary and counter-intuitive as the previous. The fact that they each came to the same conclusion--each from studying a different path--lends credence to the idea that they may not be crazy. And they all faced fierce opposition for their ideas.-The key in the video I was posting to you before, about the train, is that BOTH views of the lightning flashes are correct. They really DID happen simultaneously for one observer, and sequentially for the moving observer. -What it means, is that there is a sequence of events--true, but time is necessarily separate from the sequence of events. Time requires an observer. Of course in physics, an observer doesn&apos;t mean an intelligent one--any time two objects interact that is an &quot;observation.&quot; But the very fact that mathematically--both observers are correct--means that there isn&apos;t a binary relationship in regards to time. It isn&apos;t a &quot;yes/no&quot; question.-I don&apos;t yet agree with the idea of the past and the future co-existing with the present, but I also haven&apos;t been faced with that argument yet. -The differences here aren&apos;t philosophical as you keep insisting. Relativity is an experimentally verified phenomenon. Clocks run slower orbiting the earth, because reality is different there. -Giorbran starts his book with a discussion about &quot;nothing,&quot; and I think it will breathe some fresh life into our discussion as well... Your homework question is to come up with some thoughts about why &quot;Nothing&quot; is necessarily simpler, more primordial than &quot;something.&quot; What is &quot;nothing?&quot; &#13;&#10;(This one goes for you too David...)

--
\"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.\"