[His Dudeness]

Sounds like you're defining time as speed, but isn't speed a property that arises from time? I can't help but wonder if time is actually linear at all, or if that is only the way our limited consciousnesses perceive it...

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly....timey wimey...stuff...

[MNiS]

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly....timey wimey...stuff...

If you want to explain it in a way to package it for the masses, then yes.

[ManWithoutHats]

I just think about myself really, the way I just lay out in the grass at night and gaze up at the stars.. billions of them, dead and gone... then I think about the universe and all that is, and time, and what it means to me, and possibly to others, and to science, etc... and I just somehow doubt an animal, even our closest relative the ape, does this. its much too deep. but you are right, there has been much research suggesting, even proving, that some animals are much more intelligent than previously thought. so I deem you more insightful than me on the subject of animals and they're perceptions.

I haven't been following this debate but to jump in here-

I doubt that they experience their existence in the same way as you and I and I doubt they are capable of nearly the same level of thought, wonder and all that. But, as far as we know, what they do experience is one of the rarest and most significant anomalies of the universe and that is that they experience anything. Maybe I shouldn't say we 'know' this, but many animals have many of our more primitive brain structures related to emotions and conditioning and motor coordination. I'd imagine their (animals such as dogs or apes) experience lacks any reflective qualities and that they live almost entirely 'in the moment' driven by emotions and innate drives and conditioned actions. Not really by 'thoughts' as we think of them. That's what I think anyway.

[Xiong Mao]

@ManWithoutHats I believe Existentialism is the word that sums up your point best.

[elle vs]

I haven't been following this debate but to jump in here-

I doubt that they experience their existence in the same way as you and I and I doubt they are capable of nearly the same level of thought, wonder and all that. But, as far as we know, what they do experience is one of the rarest and most significant anomalies of the universe and that is that they experience anything. Maybe I shouldn't say we 'know' this, but many animals have many of our more primitive brain structures related to emotions and conditioning and motor coordination. I'd imagine their (animals such as dogs or apes) experience lacks any reflective qualities and that they live almost entirely 'in the moment' driven by emotions and innate drives and conditioned actions. Not really by 'thoughts' as we think of them. That's what I think anyway.

I agree, well put :]

[ManWithoutHats]

How fast or slow time is depends on the observer. When you are unconscious, does time still flow for you? No, unless you dream, it skips. Why you see time at the rate you do is because the neurons in your brain are physical things that have a specific speed they are bound to. This perception isn't always the same, but it averages to your consciousness.

Energy is movement and speed is related to how much movement comparatively to others. Speed doesn't really matter because it is a physically predicted phenomenon. Humans can't predict it, but speed obeys physics. "Time is the perceived flow of consecutive reactions. " Perhaps that's a better definition.


The problem still is that energy is movement, and that if matter is stuff with energy, which is movement...where exactly is the actual matter? Protons are small spinning sphere's made of smaller spinning sphere's. These's spinning spheres attract others spinning sphere's and bond....but when does it stop becoming spinning spheres? and just become "matter"?
Then, how does this matter manifest consciousness?
Uhh, so many mysteries.

You've got me stumped. I'm just glad it at least seems like we have free will and consciousness. I like existing.

[Graficcha]

Ugh. Research. Every question is answered with another question...thereby defeating the purpose.

Defeats the purpose? It's half the point to find out which questions still need to be asked. The first step towards a good bit of research is to have a good question. If you're looking for nice straight-out answers with no strings attached, you're either overlooking the sheer complexity of things, or you don't appreciate it xD


My two cents on 'time':

Mass exists.
Light quanta and electromagnetic waves and gravitational forces exist.
We don't know the exact proofs of this yet, but I'm quite sure anyone but the most hardcore 'we all live in a dream'ist would agree that the world and the universe exist, whether we're there to see, perceive and think about it or not.
There are units that we have defined as 'a certain amount of this something' like a kg, a Newton, a unit of time.

What Stephen Hawking postulates is that, since in his theory time and space are hugely intertwined, there is no point in asking 'what was there before the universe'. The universe is space, is time, before that, no space-time, moot point.

Next step: I postulate that 'time' again is a real thing that exists outside us. We defined 'the second' as a discrete number of discrete constant cycles at a hugely tiny scale to have something to work with in our calculations and research.
You might agree that a timespan of five seconds on a clock is five seconds on the clock, which is made based on these calculations to yield this exact rate of progression, whether you're bored or braindead or on speed.


What differs though, and this has been proven, is the EXPERIENCE of time.
When you're in the flow, you perceive time differently than compared to when you're waiting for the teacher to come in, waiting for your girlfriend to call, or when you're happily munching an ice cream.
The same applies to colour, the only thing that exists outside us is waves at a certain frequency and intensity. Only in the brain does this translate to what we call colour. Without the brain's interpretation, all our eyes do is bleep-bleep through a series of charges, that for now no computer can possibly translate. What the brain does is take the fine-grain input and find patterns upon patterns upon patterns and combinations until our image arises. Even then it's modulated by where our attention lies at the time and many other things.
We don't all 'see the same things', definitely don't THINK the same things about what we see, and neither do we all experience time the same.


An example of the concept of time in mice:
Mice fuck a mate, then go into several days of killing pups. Once their mate has their babies, they settle down again, and weeks later the killing starts again.
This behaviour is adaptive and linked to the timing of pregnancy and growing up of a litter.

They found that keeping mice on artificial long-days and short-days messed with their timing, and what counted wasn't the number of absolute time passed, but rather the number of day-night cycles.
I'm sure you could keep a human being on such cycles and utterly mess up their perception of time, too. Jetlag anyone? Seasonal changes driving us nuts?

On dogs:
Dogs seem to have general expectations rather than an observable sense of time. We see dogs afraid to be left alone freak out instantly, and those that aren't can very well spend an hour alone or five hours alone, with no difference in how they come and greet us happily when we return. They might have some mechanism to be aware of time, but they don't seem to display much conscious awareness.



So my take on it:
Time is real and unreliant on our perception, which, without mechanical or chemical measuring devices is unreliable at best.
This is why we wear watches or learn to calculate from the sun and stars.


Appropriate maybe:

[Graficcha]

Double post of general sudden implusiveness:

The human brain is so damn good at self-deception many people grossly overestimate the reliability of their own memories and perception.


Thoughts?

[antahon]

Has anyone read the book by Eliot Weinberger "An elemental thing" ?

[gaudy316]

Have any of you did something compassionate even if you didn't have to? Such as giving change a homeless person