Einstein and Time (Humans)

by dhw, Tuesday, February 14, 2012, 17:23 (4665 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: The differences here aren't philosophical as you keep insisting. Relativity is an experimentally verified phenomenon. Clocks run slower orbiting the earth, because reality is different there.
 
Screams of dismay, disbelief, despair, dis AND dat. Am I an illusion? Are you an illusion? Is everything an illusion? I speak, but no-one answers. I am alone in the universe. But I am British. Stiff upper lip. Never give up. If at first you don't succeed...If at the one hundredth time you don't succeed...Once more unto the breach, dear friends...-Matt, nobody has the authority to make statements like "Time is necessarily separate from the sequence of events", or "Time requires an observer". It all depends what you mean by "time", so please listen carefully to the following points as I make them for the umpteenth "time":
 
1) I have never questioned relativity or any of the examples of it that you have given. 
2) I am not talking about clock time.
3) There are many different uses of the word "time". The time I am talking about is: a sequence in which the not yet existing future becomes an existing present that becomes a no longer existing past. (Similar definitions of "time" are to be found in multiple, perfectly respectable sources.)-Now here are three questions for you:-1) Do you believe in the reality of the sequence defined in Point 3) above?
2) If you do, what do you call it?
3) Do you believe, as I do, that even if there were no humans, this sequence would continue to occur in the universe (e.g. the birth and death of stars)?-Are you with me, Matt? Have you read and understood the questions? Please answer questions 1) and 3) with yes or no, and I promise I won't tell Einstein.