How do you perceive time?

Cyclic?

Linear?

Spirally?

After writing a song about familiarity and repetition of a negative experience, I determined to see time as linear, not even spirally which I had done.

I kept focussing on "last time' this happened". Being obsessed with not repeating the same mistakes.

After discussing this with friends, I came to this conclusion.

We seem to see repetition when we experience negativity.
We seem to see negativity when we experience repetition.

Doing the same old thing each day becomes a negative experience.
When we go through hardship repeatedly we can view it as 'the same place'.

I'm working on seeing each experience as new, and seek to experience new experiences.

As a professional creative, I've always sought new experiences. Aside from creating a "long life" - as days can feel like months - it gives more colours to the palette.

However working on seeing each day as completely new is not so easy.

We call every seventh day Monday. We have sayings like, "the third teusday every month", and "this time last year".

This time? There was no 'this time' last year! That was then!

Thoughts anyone?

Oww, my head :confused:

Linear, like going along a straight line. Even if you were to "go back" in time, your experiences would only alter the future that you're in, not the past (does that make any sense?) [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Yes it does. Very good. [img]smile.gif[/img] Interesting...

It doesn't take me long to look in the mirror every morning and see time as linear. :D Seriously.

I see repetition as sometimes good/ sometimes bad, but never as a reoccurence of the same event - I either wanted to have a similar event occur again or I didn't learn and similar situations brought it about.

I also see time as infinite - but do not see that as conflicting with its linear nature. Ever read FlatLand? It's perception-based, and time is certainly a dimension, as Einstein pointed out. Thing is, we cannot percieve it in its fullness - our only proof of it's existence as a dimension is the rule that 2 things cannot be in the same place at the same time. Otherwise our perception of it is limited - and no matter how much I try to wrap my brain around what time should/could "be," I still SEE it as linear.

Now my head hurts too. ;)

there is no such thing as time

we are in a constantly changing single point

Yes it does, and I tend to think it's a reasonable way to avoid the Time Paradox that they're always so worried about in Star Trek.

I'm leaning towards the theory that time is linear, thus if you could go back in time (which may be possible) you would NOT be able to do anything to change time as it exists today... because your actions in the past would have been a part of the timeline.

The most often used Paradox is the "go back and kill your father" paradox. Well my solution is that you simply COULD NOT kill your father... no matter how hard you tried to go back to get him, you would fail. The reason your failure would be guaranteed is because it already happened and he didn't die, pretty simple. Even if you hadn't gone back yet, your actions in the past are already commited to the timeline, and therefore fixed.

Sounds like a reasonable theory, but it's the second order effects that tend to give you a headache. One example would be what if you found out in THIS timeline that you will sometime in the future go back in time and do something. Well until you go back you are guaranteed not to die (no mattter what you do)... and what if you happen to know exactly how old you are when you went back, and resolve to NOT go back... well SOMETHING then is going to change your mind... because it's already in the past that you WILL go. Tends to bring up lots of questions about Free Will and such... and lead you down the road towards a preordained timeline where our actions... EVEN IN THE FUTURE... are already determined.

(in my best Johnny Bravo voice) "Wiggy!"

Now with regards to how I percieve time (a different question imo), I tend to think of it like a guy with hiccups. A lot of time goes by without much action... then all of a sudden your entire life convulses due to something (good or bad). If you survive the hic... well then you get another period of quiet as your reward. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I also think that we as humans tend to reinvent ourselves after particularly traumatic hiccups. If I WERE to go back in time and meet the 22 year old myslef... I would have very little in common with the guy. The intersting question that poses is with regards to memory. All our memories are filtered through the personality that we have TODAY... so in a way they're automatically a distortion of what actually happened. It's probable that you would describe an event TOTALLY different 10 years later... even if you remembered it exactly the same.

Alright, time for a break... I'm getting dizzy. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I think any notion of "if you could go back in time" automatically throws out the notion that time is linear - if it is linear, you could NOT go back.

That said, I think time is in fact NOT linear. If it is a dimension, it is of a higher magnitude that the 3rd. You can only percieve your dimension and those of lower magnitudes. Thus, we cannot properly percieve time. But, if it is a higher dimension (I think Einstein said 6th but I could be wrong), then it would have Length, Width, and Height, as well as a few other physical properties. As well, the fact that gravity warps time further supports the notion that time is more than linear.

However, I again reiterate that I percieve time as linear, regardless of the realities of its existence.

But if, when you "go back" in time, you're still going forward. IE the time the machine takes to move, etc, keeps itmoving forward along the same path.

I don't think time is a dimension (though I am going against the likes of Einstein.) There is no future or present, only what "is" and time is our way of keeping track of that.

Whew [img]tongue.gif[/img] [img]smile.gif[/img]

I agree with most everything you are saying here, Yorick, and it is hard for me to say that to see each day as completely new is truly not easy.
For myself, it took a life altering second in time to forever change the way I perceived each minute I had left.
Nothing I would wish on any other person as a way to learn the concept but consider these things as you lay down to sleep tonight and see if tomorrow doesn't seem like it is going to be whole new experience.:
"If I were to die before morning, could I say that I have absolutely no regrets? That I have forgiven where forgiveness is due? That I have made up for the wrongs that I feel I have counted against me?"

"The next time I encounter a stranger, am I going to look at them as if they are a stranger or am I going to relate to them, through my eyes, the familiarity of being human and the happiness that I don't share this fate alone?"

"If I am only given the first ten minutes of tomorrow to live, can I make something enjoyable out of even the reptiious and the mundane?"
"Am I going to perceive the newness of a new day in what I do on a daily basis?"

With every passing day even dirt gets one day older.
I am sitting here not knowing exactly how I do it but even though I live a life of mostly mundane repetition, every day, nay, every minute of every day, is something new and exciting, something to be thankful for, and something that has the potential to bring the unexpected into my life good or bad...I feel like I am ready for anything and always appreciate each minute, even if it seems unchanged from the last...its not.

I perceive time as the opportunity continue living. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 10-14-2002, 04:49 PM: Message edited by: Moni ]

Linearity does not imply uni-directionality... only that time is a continuous one-dimensional function that can be solved for a single state (as opposed to the infinite timeline theory where time at each instant can be solved for infinite states). The unique aspect regarding time (which IMO is the fourth dimension of the universe) is the fact that time appears to be uni-directional as well as linear (which makes it different from the dimensions of space). There are theories regarding how this effect could be defeated to allow time travel,(wormholes being one) but they often have the downside of requireing infinite energy or something equally improbable.

Tricky subject, time. Just like a movie we can define the universe as infinite slices of time during which the state of the universe can be known. With your remote control you can rewind or fast forward, but at T=2:00, it's fixed that the screen will always look a certain way. But as TL said, time isn't an independant variable in the universe, but rather time itself is a part of the equation... gravity affects it, velocity affects it. At this point all we've seen is the ability for time to be affected in the same direction we're going (faster or slower, but always forward)... and most Physicists I've read seem to believe that there is no rewind. BUT, there is a possibility for a DVD-Like JUMP to a different point in the movie. Even if that were so... I tend to think that the movie (the timeline) itself couldn't be changed.

[ 10-14-2002, 05:13 PM: Message edited by: Thoran ]