Isn't time a measurement of motion?

[TimMcCollum]

Yeah that helps because it indicates you actually do consider the past to be real and to have occurred, in the past.

True, but the ability to disconnect from past is what saved me.

 

[durangodawood]

True, but the ability to disconnect from past is what saved me.

Yeah I get that for sure. Here's to change!

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Even mathematics itself is flawed by the simple equation 1=1. There is no thing that is the same as another thing. They can be as similar as you want them to be, but they will never be the same.

Numbers in mathematics represent concepts. The symbols for a number don't have to be identical as long as they recognisably refer to the same concept.

 

[TimMcCollum]

Numbers in mathematics represent concepts. The symbols for a number don't have to be identical as long as they recognisably refer to the same concept.

You see what I mean. Mathematics is a set of concepts, meaning they aren't real. Math works wonders for us, but it is not as perfect as existence.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

If time simply measures motion, like Earth's orbit and rotation, then wouldn't that make time a concept of imagination. By this I mean, wouldn't time be a human concept? It wouldn't exist at all!

What do you think of this?

Absolutely correct.

Time is simply the measurement of motion. It is a second distance measurement to confirm the first distance measurement.

Whether this is the distance a point on the earth's surface revolves back to its starting point. The distance the earth orbits the sun to return to its starting point. The distance a pendulum swings. The distance a second hand on a clock moves, or the distance between crests of electromagnetic waves due to the oscillation of a cesium atom (the distance an electron travels in one revolution).

Time is merely a second distance measurement. Easily confirmed mathematically as one can not divide two unrelated things without first converting one to the other. You can not divide gallons by ounces without first converting them to the same measurement. Likewise yards can not be divided by feet without first converting them to the same measurement. That distance can be divided by time without any conversion shows they are related and are exactly the same thing.....

 

[TimMcCollum]

Absolutely correct.

Time is simply the measurement of motion. It is a second distance measurement to confirm the first distance measurement.

Whether this is the distance a point on the earth's surface revolves back to its starting point. The distance the earth orbits the sun to return to its starting point. The distance a pendulum swings. The distance a second hand on a clock moves, or the distance between crests of electromagnetic waves due to the oscillation of a cesium atom (the distance an electron travels in one revolution).

Time is merely a second distance measurement. Easily confirmed mathematically as one can not divide two unrelated things without first converting one to the other. You can not divide gallons by ounces without first converting them to the same measurement. Likewise yards can not be divided by feet without first converting them to the same measurement. That distance can be divided by time without any conversion shows they are related and are exactly the same thing.....

Beautifully said my man!!

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

You see what I mean. Mathematics is a set of concepts, meaning they aren't real. Math works wonders for us, but it is not as perfect as existence.

The reality of concepts is immaterial (see what I did there? ).

My point was just that your particular criticism of mathematics was mistaken. But of course, Gödel showed maths to be incomplete and not demonstrably consistent.

 

[TimMcCollum]

The reality of concepts is immaterial (see what I did there? ).

My point was just that your particular criticism of mathematics was mistaken. But of course, Gödel showed maths to be incomplete and not demonstrably consistent.

I disconnect imaginary concepts from infinite reality. I think that's where this disconnect is.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I disconnect imaginary concepts from infinite reality. I think that's where this disconnect is.

I have no idea what you mean.

 

[TimMcCollum]

I have no idea what you mean.

Sorry, let me restate. I believe Imagination exists inside reality, but everything that happens in the imagination is not reality itself. So, mathematics is inside reality (i.e. immaterial,) but it is not a reality itself.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Sorry, let me restate. I believe Imagination exists inside reality, but everything that happens in the imagination is not reality itself. So, mathematics is inside reality (i.e. immaterial,) but it is not a reality itself.

OK, thanks; the question that raises is whether mathematics is 'in the imagination', or is an abstraction of reality; i.e. is it created or discovered?

You might be interested to hear that some physicist philosophers think that the basis of reality is information (I've yet to explore this in detail), and some - like Max Tegmarck - have proposed that the universe is a mathematical structure (not just described by mathematics, but fundamentally mathematical) - his book "Our Mathematical Universe" is a very good introduction to theories of reality, including his - and his argument is surprisingly strong...

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Beautifully said my man!!

yah, but most don't like hearing the truth as it then affects their concept of magically expanding, bending, accelerating nothing..... I mean spacetime.... No, actually I mean nothing.... FAIRIE DUST.....

 

[TimMcCollum]

You might be interested to hear that some physicist philosophers think that the basis of reality is information (I've yet to explore this in detail), and some - like Max Tegmarck - have proposed that the universe is a mathematical structure (not just described by mathematics, but fundamentally mathematical) - his book "Our Mathematical Universe" is a very good introduction to theories of reality, including his - and his argument is surprisingly strong...

The only problem I have with mathematics being used to create or form the universe, which we later discover, is that our number system is based on our 10 fingers. If we had 8 fingers, or 12 fingers, then the base digit system would result in completely different patterns of use. By this I mean 1-8, then 10-18, then 20-28, etcetera would lead us to different mathematical discoveries. I have a hard time believing that we as humans discover mathematical patterns. It makes much more sense to me that we created them.

 

[TimMcCollum]

yah, but most don't like hearing the truth as it then affects their concept of magically expanding, bending, accelerating nothing..... I mean spacetime.... No, actually I mean nothing.... FAIRIE DUST.....

I lost you there xD .
But it is hard to contemplate these concepts. Especially at first. Sometimes I get anxiety when listening to metaphysics, and I've been contemplating the philosophy since I was a teen.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The only problem I have with mathematics being used to create or form the universe, which we later discover, is that our number system is based on our 10 fingers. If we had 8 fingers, or 12 fingers, then the base digit system would result in completely different patterns of use. By this I mean 1-8, then 10-18, then 20-28, etcetera would lead us to different mathematical discoveries.

Decimal numbers are just the base notation our culture happens to use (although we can use other bases for different situations - binary, octal, and hexadecimal for digital computing, for example). Other cultures have used bases other than 10 - the Chinese used hexadecimal; in olde England we used to use duodecimal (base 12 - a dozen, a gross, 1 foot = 12 inches, etc); the Babylonians used sexagesimal (base 60). The last two are arguably more convenient than decimal for calculations, with 12 being usefully divisible by 2,3,4, and 6, and 60 by 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20, and 30, whereas 10 has only 2 and 5.

The number base doesn't make a significant difference to mathematics; e.g. primes are still primes whatever the number base.

I have a hard time believing that we as humans discover mathematical patterns. It makes much more sense to me that we created them.

There's a good argument that we derive or abstract the foundations of mathematics from our experience of the natural world - in counting, logic, etc.; The Fibonnacci sequence, the Golden Ratio, pi, fractals, and many other mathematical entities are also to be found in the natural world. Once you establish the basic axioms and formalise the system, you can take it much further.

The physicist Eugene Wigner once published an article called "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences":

"The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning."​

 

[TimMcCollum]

I hope you can one day separate the imagination from reality. Mathematics is a set of observations that works out a lot of times, but not so a lot times too.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I hope you can one day separate the imagination from reality.

Likewise. The reality you think you see around you is just a predictive model in your head; literally an imaginative construct, updated and corrected by the digital pulses sent from your senses. Good luck with distinguishing imagination from reality

Mathematics is a set of observations that works out a lot of times, but not so a lot times too.

If mathematics is a set of observations, doesn't that agree with what I suggested earlier, that we didn't create it?

 

[Steve Petersen]

I could say that you can measure time ... via regularly occurring events, like sunrises, and phases of the moon, but I understand what you're saying.

You could say that time is the forward procession of existence.

I used to think very similarly to you.

What has made a bit of a difference for me is Einstein's notion of a space-time continuum (or context), which proposes that time can be manipulated with the right combinations of extreme mass or velocity. I don't really have a sense of how that is, but it is interesting to contemplate.

Isn't entropy the evidence of the passage of time?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Isn't entropy the evidence of the passage of time?

The increase of entropy is evidence of time because it's a statistical consequence of systems changing, and time is a measure of change. In pragmatic physical terms, time is what clocks measure - and in doing so, they too increase entropy.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

I lost you there xD .
But it is hard to contemplate these concepts. Especially at first. Sometimes I get anxiety when listening to metaphysics, and I've been contemplating the philosophy since I was a teen.

If time is nothing but a distance measurement, then there is no such thing as "spacetime" only distance.....

No 4th dimension of a thing called time, merely a distance within the three.....