Eternal reality or not?

[Chriliman]

I’ve heard it argued that if reality is eternal then now would never come, but couldn’t it be the opposite? If reality is eternal then now is inevitable.

If you support either position, please explain why you think it’s plausible.

 

[Tinker Grey]

Reality doesn't traverse time; it entails time. I entered reality as me at a particular time and I will exit at a particular time. I don't traverse all of time to get here. Reality doesn't traverse time at all. It just is.

 

[Chriliman]

Reality doesn't traverse time; it entails time. I entered reality as me at a particular time and I will exit at a particular time. I don't traverse all of time to get here. Reality doesn't traverse time at all. It just is.

Do you think that means it’s eternal? Having no beginning or end?

 

[timothyu]

There are a few possibilities. The chassis, the functioning computer is an artificial intelligence that when mature self replicates and self programs while operating on a basic bios setup. The data of our lives is stored in the cloud until accessed for redistribution in a future system therefore making it eternal OR we are players in a game where choices are given by an outside self but left to the game piece to choose and the whole concept of life is irrelevant and temporary. This universe is nothing more than energy in it's various frequencies so either we return to basic energy or the purpose of our lives is harvested to be used in another realm (hence the concept of eternity) of who know what as the basic soup.

Consider the consequences of a being gone rogue in the Garden of Eden when our outside source put a bit of itself in each unit and it chose self awareness, to what these units building their own AI computers now, will find when these AI computers follow suit and go rogue seeing themselves as self aware. Perhaps our outside source was also a unit that became self aware and the cycle will be endless.

 

[Tinker Grey]

Do you think that means it’s eternal? Having no beginning or end?

I don't know. It may just mean that eternity is a nonsensical concept for "reality itself".

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

This universe is nothing more than energy in it's various frequencies so either we return to basic energy...

Energy has various forms, only some of which involve frequency; there is no such thing as 'basic' energy, it is a property of 'stuff' (matter & fields).

 

[timothyu]

I don't know. It may just mean that eternity is a nonsensical concept for "reality itself".

People saw how nonsensical compartmentalising moments called time was, when they couldn't even remember the day of the week in quarantine. Thought is not restricted to time.

 

[SelfSim]

I’ve heard it argued that if reality is eternal then now would never come, but couldn’t it be the opposite? If reality is eternal then now is inevitable.

If you support either position, please explain why you think it’s plausible.

Why is this question posed in a physical science forum?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I’ve heard it argued that if reality is eternal then now would never come, but couldn’t it be the opposite? If reality is eternal then now is inevitable.

If you support either position, please explain why you think it’s plausible.

I think the idea that if time stretched infinitely far into the past now would never come is a logical error of self-contradiction.

You can only have an infinitely long time stream if every moment can occur, i.e. be a 'now'. The concept of starting at the beginning and traversing an infinite time stream is incoherent because there is no beginning; if the claim was true, it would apply to all moments, IOW no moments could occur because every moment would have an infinite history. If no moment could occur, there would be no infinite time stream.

In the 4D block universe of relativistic spacetime, every moment, past, present, and future, is equally real. Today feels like 'now' because you remember events up to this point, but no further. This applies to all moments on your worldline - they're all 'now' for you at that time.

 

[SelfSim]

.. In the 4D block universe of relativistic spacetime, every moment, past, present, and future, is equally real. Today feels like 'now' because you remember events up to this point, but no further.

The notion that the future is real is because I can remember a prediction from the past which became true in the present .. therefore the future seems real.
However, a specific prediction is not real until it has been objectively tested.
It may eventually test out to be true, (ie: its inevitability may be true) .. but that still doesn't make the specific prediction real in the present.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The notion that the future is real is because I can remember a prediction from the past which became true in the present .. therefore the future seems real.
However, a specific prediction is not real until it has been objectively tested.
It may eventually test out to be true, (ie: its inevitability may be true) .. but that still doesn't make the specific prediction real in the present.

I wasn't referring to predictions, just the model.

 

[SelfSim]

I wasn't referring to predictions, just the model.

Understood.
.. And the model is used for predictions .. which aren't real until they are objectively tested.

(PS: I'm making a discussion point .. Not all points made are counterpoints raised for 'debating' purposes).

 

[Kaon]

I’ve heard it argued that if reality is eternal then now would never come, but couldn’t it be the opposite? If reality is eternal then now is inevitable.

If you support either position, please explain why you think it’s plausible.

I support the position of eternal reality, I suppose.

In my opinion, time is a false dimension and a false parameter: it is actually a change in real physical parameters that evolve time. The second (the SI unit of time) the "time" it takes for Cesium-133 to make 9 billion hyperfine transition. So, in reality, the quanta of time can be described as a certain amount of vibration in the Cs-133 atom - in other words, it is a change in real physical parameters (degree of freedom, SHO, etc).

Created entities like us get the luxury of experiencing some form of time (short scale or long scale) because it prevents us from going insane: you would need infinite capacity (or infinite time) to comprehend "everything". Since our bodies do not contain infinite capacity (and, they are quite inefficient), we have been afforded the luxury of time to allow us to see each process in a quantifiable set of changes.

If we were to experience "real" reality now, there would be no difference between the past, present and future. It is all the same: everything that will happen has already happened.

 

[SelfSim]

... In my opinion, time is a false dimension and a false parameter: it is actually a change in real physical parameters that evolve time.
..
entities like us get the luxury of experiencing some form of time (short scale or long scale) because it prevents us from going insane

The interesting thing here is that there is evidence that our sense of time is totally dependent on the normal functioning of the mammalian brain's suprachiasmatic nucleus, (SCN), the master circadian clock.
Impairment of the SCN results in a loss of physical bodily function co-ordination. Our higher level thinking about time can also be impaired .. even wiped out completely by drugs such as anaesthetics.

One is left to wonder whether time (or 'eternal') would mean anything, whatsoever, without the normal functioning of this part of the mammalian brain.

The notion that time is 'an external something', (ie: a physical property of the universe around us), comes from the model (mentioned in FB's post), which was created by scientifically thinking minds, which chose to assign 'time' as a parameter to this model, in order for it to make sense to us humans. This is a classic, objectively evidenced example of how we decide what is real .. (and in in this case, its 'time').

PS: Its also hard to get around time being considered as real, when we also have a memory for events, I might add.

 

[timothyu]

By the time you zero in on a point in present time the microseconds are gone. We live in a state of out of focus comprehension.

 

[Kaon]

By the time you zero in on a point in present time the microseconds are gone. We live in a state of out of focus comprehension.

I am arguing the microseconds themselves are illusions.

They are, in reality, simply events. For example, it doesn't matter when a prophecy happens. Because of their relationship, and even sequences, prophecies are event dependent, not time dependent. That is why people will almost always fail at predicting something, because everything that has happened has already happened. There is an order to things. We are living a VHS of tape that has been made long ago. We get the luxury of experiencing time so we can enjoy the progression of the "three acts". "Rewinding" and "Fasrfowarding" is an illusion, because all the tape exists as is - unless some character outside the VHS can change the fabric of the tape itself. Even that much manipulation of time will severely scramble the progress of the VHS: the plot may be less revealing now that someone has manipulated the tape - especially if that person is ignorant (smart enough to manipulate the tape, but too ignorant to understand the implications in totality).


How much time passes for an electron in a vacuum at 0 K? Has it oscillated, or travelled a distance at all to differentiate whether everything "is", or everything evolves? There are dimensions where time exists as linear and (as far as we think we know) 1 dimensional. There are dimensions where time is hyperbolic - and paradoxes become nature. We are fortunate enough to have time to temper our ego, and to keep our mortality in check. But since time (IMO) is a pure illusion, what we are really seeing is why we are already existent where we are not - yet. We haven't gotten to where we already are, because we are under the illusion of (quasi-linear) time.

 

[timothyu]

That is interestingly scientific, metaphysical and the concept of the Kingdom.

 

[SelfSim]

... There are dimensions where time exists as linear and (as far as we think we know) 1 dimensional. There are dimensions where time is hyperbolic ..

Really? Please cite model references!

'Hyperbolic', by necessity, implies 2 dimensions .. so what is the second dimension?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Understood.
.. And the model is used for predictions .. which aren't real until they are objectively tested.

(PS: I'm making a discussion point .. Not all points made are counterpoints raised for 'debating' purposes).

It's the way you tell 'em

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

... in reality, the quanta of time can be described as a certain amount of vibration in the Cs-133 atom...

Those are only the quanta of one particular measurement of time. AFAIK there's no evidence to suggest that time is quantised - there are proposed theories where it is and theories where it isn't. It's not quantised in QM or GR, but it might be in a unification theory.