How do you perceive time?

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Moni: Thank you Yorick [img]smile.gif[/img] and best of luck with your work! Regarding your re-mix...if you were happy with it prior to this thread, leave it alone. Chances are it was perfect already.

Thanks Moni. I was a Spiralist, seeing the apparently cyclic nature of things, or "seasons" as part of a spiral as Chewbacca put. (Well said BTW bro)

I then wrote this song about how a situation felt like it was continually reoccuring, but then after overcoming a relationship problem, where I had been seeing "same situations" I resolved to see time as linear. Especially regarding moments between people. Taking each situation with the person as it is in that moment.

The 'new song' thing was referring to something she and I have been joking about. I need to write a new song to counterbalance the ideas of this current one.

But thanks again. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Melusine]

Wow, great topic Yorick, really very interesting.
It sure as heck is something I think about an awful lot... Time is one of the strangest concepts to wrap your mind around.
A single second can influence years.
I feel a bit like Revruby when she says time is fleeting: you cannot control it AT ALL, even less than you can influence the other "inevitables" of life. It goes too fast when you want to enjoy every second, yet way too slow when you want the days to fly by. Even with the fixed measurement of time we have, some days seem longer than some weeks, and a fixed amount of time seems to go then fast, then slow. I guess the only thing to do is concentrate on the seconds you are using right now, not on the ones that have passed and the ones that are yet to come. If you are going through difficult times, take them one second at a time... worry about what you're going to do NOW, don't panic about all the time you will need to get through after that. When you are happy, don't let the precious time slip away but enjoy the most of it....

I'm ranting, I know, mostly because this subject has always puzzled me a great deal....

BTW Hugh I know what you mean by thinking spirally... and of course it is true that sometimes problems just keep recurring. Doesn't mean it's a cycle, that it is BOUND to keep recurring...

[ 10-14-2002, 05:49 PM: Message edited by: Melusine ]

I see time as a convenient sort of referential filing system that isn't necessarily linear or cyclic, but has perceptual aspects of each. In some ways, we can "prove" that time flows bi-directionally at least, with no particular reason to go one "direction" over the other. I think we use the concept of time to allow us to progress through a part of eternity sequentially, and that time is an agreed-upon construct.
Good god, I sound like a loon.

[Chewbacca]

Originally posted by Absynthe: I see time as a convenient sort of referential filing system that isn't necessarily linear or cyclic, but has perceptual aspects of each. In some ways, we can "prove" that time flows bi-directionally at least, with no particular reason to go one "direction" over the other. I think we use the concept of time to allow us to progress through a part of eternity sequentially, and that time is an agreed-upon construct. Good god, I sound like a loon.

Sage thoughts there... for a loon. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Azred]

For lack of any better description, time is linear. The only point in time where we have any sort of control or freedom is now. We can relive the past but not change what happened; we can dream about the future but cannot accurately predict what will be. In face, where you are right now is the result of the choices you made yesterday, last month, and last year--as much as many people might not want to accept this, the fact remains that we all consciously chose to be exactly where we are.

When time seems to be cyclic (the "here we go agin" syndrome) is because we don't yet know how to keep from repeating actions or choices we made in the past. For some strange reason, many of us keep making the same mistakes over and over until we finally learn to make a different choice. [img]graemlins/petard.gif[/img]

*****************

A quick note on "time paradoxes". Suppose you could travel backwards in time and meet yourself (or whatever). If you ascribe to the "many universes" hypothesis you can avoid any paradoxes--any changes you make in the past simply create an alternate future. Less of a headache that way. [img]graemlins/beigesmilewinkgrin.gif[/img]

Originally posted by Yorick: Thanks Moni. I was a Spiralist, seeing the apparently cyclic nature of things, or "seasons" as part of a spiral as Chewbacca put. (Well said BTW bro) I then wrote this song about how a situation felt like it was continually reoccuring, but then after overcoming a relationship problem, where I had been seeing "same situations" I resolved to see time as linear. Especially regarding moments between people. Taking each situation with the person as it is in that moment. The 'new song' thing was referring to something she and I have been joking about. I need to write a new song to counterbalance the ideas of this current one. But thanks again. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I do understand the Spiralist's perception of time.
I grew up seeing (and eventually believing) that time merely cycled & recycled around me.
It was when things changed so drastically for me that I saw the wisdom in that ever hated phrse "Life is what you make it".
Learning to use time on its linear scale, I found that the way I used each minute that I had contributed greatly to the quality of the next and like you, I learned to take each situation with a person as it is in that moment.
It was something that was very much a forefront of my conscious thought for quite some time until I eventually just started living it without having to think about it and I do believe it (perceiving time as linear) brings us to a higher level of consciousness in how we tend to deal with every day situations and our relationships with other people.
I think RevRuby hit the nail on the head when she said "time moves forward and so must I".

I also agree with Mel that it is one of the strangest concept to "wrap your mind around" (lol) It can be dizzying if we try to analyze it (see Timber loftis' hurting head LOL) but all in all when we accept it for what it is (for me that would be opportunity) it makes life's little bumps and wrinkles seem a lot smoother than they would have had I remained in the Spiralist's train of thought by dreading every challenge and twist as it hit me "again" as opposed to "anew" (even though some of life's challenges are similar to others, they are all different and the way we react to each one has different consequences).

OK if I didn't create any more confusion lol I am going to stop here...my head is beginning spin as I have a lot to do and little time to get it done LOL! [img]smile.gif[/img]

On a couple of side notes...
#1. I can't see you egg!
#2. Thank you for the link in your profile to your music! KHaN and I enjoyed listening to some clips earlier and if you would, do please let us know how we can support your talent by buying releases of your work!

[John D Harris]

OH NO Yorick not the time thing again I see time as the first dimension, the thing that alows space, distance, movement, orbits, everything in the other three dimensions. From "our point of view", Stuck inside the dimension of time, I see it as liner, and if you throw space into it, an every expanding flat ring.

Now my head hurts

[JeraalMordeth]

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.

Well, you are very nearly on top of the subject. Scientists have a term called "Chirality" which explains why things in the universe that *should* have a 50/50% chance of being the way they are, tend to be one sided. Galaxies tend to spin counter-clockwise relative to the plane that the Milkyway is in, and planets and moons tend to rotate and orbit counter-clockwise as well. There appears to be so much matter in the universe, but very little "confirmable" anti matter, even though the "odds" of their existence are even.

Time itself is "Chiral", favoring forward motion to backwards, at least as far as we can tell. Entropy is also Chiral across the universe because it tends to increase "with time". There are some impressive arguments that suggest that that not only is entropy directly related to time, but ENTROPY IS TIME. We know that while the total entropy of the universe always increases, it is possible, even common, for entropy to *decrease* in localized areas, such as endothermic reactions. So even for things that are "Absolutely chiral" it is possible to break the chirality for a very short "time" in a very isolated area.

Therefore I say that time travel in EXTREMELY SMALL SCALES AT UNIMAGINABLE ENERGY LEVELS is indeed possible and happens all the time. I'm talking about "quantum fluctuations". Time, and dimension itself, has a quantum nature, therefore the "time spent traveling back in time" argument is simply irrelevant. The "object" would simply appear in its location as though it had already been there. Similar quantum effects happen all the time with electrons and other leptons and have been observed. The energy that causes this apparent "creation" of quarks is supplied by the annihilation of other quarks, therefore the total energy state, and entropy, of the universe is preserved even when this happens, but entropy went down locally.

Quarks exist, theoreticly, at a level of about 10^-33 meters, and have an estimated energy level of about 10^60 metric tons of tension per pair, so the "chronaton" must be significantly smaller and significantly more powerful. If one wanted to control time and send a human being back, he would need an energy source that would be capable of producing that much power PER QUARK that he wanted to effect, PER CHRONATON he wanted to "travel", multiplied by whatever the constant is that controls the Chirality of time. Folks, there isn't a fraction of that much power at tapable levels in our entire galaxy, possibly int the universe itself...

As for "skipping to the future". We already know from Einstien that it is possible for a ship flying close to the speed of light to experience "fewer years" along a voyage then what observers at the origin, destination, and any point between, i.e. near rest with repect to most of the universe, will observe. This has already been proven using atomic clocks.

Unfortunately this is basicly useless: even though the crew of the Enterprise travels at 99.9% of the speed of light in hopes of intercepting the Borg before they get to alpha centari, they will get there to realize the Drones had 80.5 years to carry out their assault! Not exactly useful IMO. Travel time, speed, and distance is measured with repect to the traveler after all, and after working the transforms backwards it means 80.5 years passed "everywhere else". This is why Gene Roddenberry invented the totally fictitios warp fields, transwarps, coaxial drives, and slipstreams to explain the fake continutiy of time across frames of refrence in the show, and make millions of $$$$.

Some of this is sumarized and paraphrased from "Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything, by F. David Peat.", some is based on my own musings, some from my college physics text, and some I can't remember where I read it, but all of it is theoreticly sound.

And now I reveal just how big a dork I really am...
LOL.

[Yorick]

Great posts. Bring on the dorks, loons, wookies and double-dutchies I say.

[Thoran]

Thanks for adding some terminology to my meanderings [img]smile.gif[/img] .

I'd read some regarding the entropy argument... it was interesting but quickly degenerated into abstract concepts that made it difficult for me to make the connection between time and entropy on more than a superficial level (they both go one way).