Infinte Regress Timeline...

[untermensche]

It's absurd to say the past ends at the present.

It may be absurd depending on the point of view but it's not illogical.

It most certainly is illogical. It is logical to say that something that occurs AFTER something else is the beginning of that thing which occurred first.

It is illogical to say that the step I take after the first step is the start. The first step is the start.

First you have a present moment. Next that present moment becomes a past moment. The present comes BEFORE the past. It is illogical to say it is the end of the past.

You can look at it this way if you like but there is no compulsion in that and it's not the ordinary notion of absolute time. If I imagine that I am counting the past backward, i.e. starting from now = 0, I will indeed begin with yesterday = 1 (or -1) and then the day before = 2 (or -2). So my counting will start now. So what? If you have a road that stops here you can say that it begins here. Big deal!

Your counting cannot start at some past moment. No past moment came before the present moment it was first.

All counting has to start at the start. And the start of both the past and the future is the present.

Every moment is first a real present moment then it is a conceptual past moment. A figment of the imagination.

But your use of "growing" here is defective, as often with whatever you say in this thread. In our conventional view of time, only finite periods of time are said to grow. For example, I can be said to be growing old because I was born at a particular time so that the time I already lived is growing with time itself. Similarly, the time left to me to live is growing smaller and smaller (or diminishing) every day. But an infinite future doesn't grow smaller and smaller and an infinite past doesn't grow bigger and bigger.

Grow means here to increase in number. I agree that this is an abstraction of the word "to grow", but it means something real.

The positive integers increase in number without end. Loosely speaking this means the series "grows" without end. If you see the word "grow" it merely means to increase in number, or in the case of time to increase in amount or duration. I use the word to mean the same thing in this argument whenever I use it.

To have the same exact amount of time you would need a definitive count, something you could not have in the case of an infinite past or an infinite future.

If both infinities are the same thing they represent the same duration of time. If infinite time in the future is a duration of time without end then an infinite past must be the same.

No. Again, amounts don't start or finish.

Amounts of time most certainly do. The start must be an arbitrary point of our choosing and the ending point the same, but within those arbitrary points is an amount of time.

A second is an amount of time. A day is an amount of time. Amounts of time are something arbitrary but real. And they have a start and a finish.

I don't see one valid objection to anything I've said in this.

 

[untermensche]

If one claims the amount of time that has already passed is infinite they are saying it is an amount that has no limit or end.

Amounts don't have "ends". They may have a limit (finite amounts) or no limits (infinite amount).

The amount of time that has already passed may be infinite if time that has already passed had no beginning.

Amounts of time have a beginning and an end. If I ask for you to wait an hour that hour will start and it will finish. That amount of time will start and end.

Amount of time is simply another way of saying duration of time. A duration of time has a start. If it is finite it has a finish.

I don't think your criticism here has any validity.

Amounts don't have "ends". They may have a limit (finite amounts) or no limits (infinite amount). Only periods of time may have ends, not the amount of time they represent.

An infinite amount of time has no end. It has no finish. But all finite amounts of time have a finish.

You are quibbling over nothing. Amount can mean duration, it can mean period of time. It makes absolutely no difference.

Once again you have no valid objection.

But at least you looked at the argument and tried to address it, yet you didn't address the logic of the argument in the least.

 

[ryan]

An event is something that happens in time. I'm taking time out of the picture. In a frozen snapshot there is no time, there are no events.

There is only a specific arrangement of all things in that snapshot. That specific arrangement represents a universal "now".

Cameras take snapshots of motion every day.

Cameras take a snapshot from their frame of reference. Since there are no frame of reference common to the entire universe, or indeed my room, there is no common now.

The idea of a snapshot is not the problem. The problem begins when you think that it represents an universal now.

The snapshot is not taken from within the universe. It is taken from outside of the universe.

It flows from the idea of an "eternal multiverse", which is how Lawrence Krauss describes it. The snapshot is taken from outside the universe from the "eternal multiverse".

It is a picture of the entire universe looked at from an external frame of reference. A frame of reference that is beyond time, a frame of reference in an "eternal multiverse".

And this snapshot would most definitely represent a universal now. No other now could possibly exist besides the now represented in the frozen snapshot of the universe.

I can 't believe that people are arguing this with you. If everything is still, relativity is irrelevant, even with gravity.

 

[untermensche]

I can 't believe that people are arguing this with you. If everything is still, relativity is irrelevant, even with gravity.

I have faced one irrational argument after another in this thread.

Where are the scientists in this thread?

But to those who claim there is no universal now they must fight this idea of a frozen snapshot of the universe with all their might.

It infringes upon their faith.

Forget the fact that it is a simple conception. The looking at all motion and effects of energy in a frozen snapshot.

There is no reason to think this conception breaks any laws of the universe. It only conflicts with the faith of some.

 

[skepticalbip]

I can 't believe that people are arguing this with you. If everything is still, relativity is irrelevant, even with gravity.

I have faced one irrational argument after another in this thread.

Where are the scientists in this thread?

But to those who claim there is no universal now they must fight this idea of a frozen snapshot of the universe with all their might.

It infringes upon their faith.

Forget the fact that it is a simple conception. The looking at all motion and effects of energy in a frozen snapshot.

There is no reason to think this conception breaks any laws of the universe. It only conflicts with the faith of some.

You can do a thought experiment to freeze the universe but it will not tell you what you claim it tells you.

 

[untermensche]

You can do a thought experiment to freeze the universe but it will not tell you what you claim it tells you.

What it tells us could be discussed. I see no arguments from you demonstrating what it is.

We haven't even gotten to the point where people say it is possible to conceptualize it.

But this frozen snapshot could be replaced with a next different frozen snapshot and then a next.

And that would be time. And every frozen snapshot would represent a universal now.

 

[another1]

untermensche, the supposed building you mentioned didn't exist to me until you said this. We worked together to construct the building and time was the tool we used. It is a lovely building and I appreciate your mentioning it. If I said that the building was dilapidated with Escherian stairs, much like the concept of building a building from building up thoughts inside a transcendental machine such as time... that would be the case. That would be a cool building, but in reality it wouldn't exist until we consented. The consent is judged and constructed with invisible beams and little plastic worker toys inside the belly of time. We sit at the colon of time waiting for reality to give us a cool building. Space is relative just as "now" is. My idea is that now is not now because a now would obliterate itself when you and I realized that as we sit waiting at the colon of time we, ourselves are not actually here other than in our own imaginations which are supported and perpetuated by machines such as time. We are either inside or outside the rectum of time, but we are the product of the kinetics that we unknowingly control inside the intestines of time that move data so quickly that time isn't a factor, for the simple purpose of maintaining illusions such as buildings.

 

[skepticalbip]

You can do a thought experiment to freeze the universe but it will not tell you what you claim it tells you.

What it tells us could be discussed. I see no arguments from you demonstrating what it is.

We haven't even gotten to the point where people say it is possible to conceptualize it.

But this frozen snapshot could be replaced with a next different frozen snapshot and then a next.

And that would be time. And every frozen snapshot would represent a universal now.

You can certainly do the thought experiment but the snapshot would not represent a universal now. We went over this for page after page back many, many pages ago.

You are assuming a "god's eye" view in which the snapshot was taken. This assumes a preferred reference frame and there is no preferred reference frame.

 

[Juma]

I can 't believe that people are arguing this with you. If everything is still, relativity is irrelevant, even with gravity.

But we are not talking about a universe that has stopped. We are talking about a snaphot of the universe. That is a recording of the current state of everything. So the recording of a space ship moving with the speed of 0.5c will be recorded as having that speed. Thus the recorded state must follow the laws of physics, where relativity is included.

 

[untermensche]

I can 't believe that people are arguing this with you. If everything is still, relativity is irrelevant, even with gravity.

But we are not talking about a universe that has stopped. We are talking about a snaphot of the universe. That is a recording of the current state of everything. So the recording of a space ship moving with the speed of 0.5c will be recorded as having that speed. Thus the recorded state must follow the laws of physics, where relativity is included.

In 1 snapshot nothing has speed because nothing is moving.

It takes 2 snapshots to have movement and from the amount of movement have speed.

 

[untermensche]

You can certainly do the thought experiment but the snapshot would not represent a universal now. We went over this for page after page back many, many pages ago.

Things which I disputed were said. Nothing was presented that I agreed were valid objections.

You are assuming a "god's eye" view in which the snapshot was taken. This assumes a preferred reference frame and there is no preferred reference frame.

There is no preferred frame from within a moving universe.

I am talking about, as you say a "god's eye" view, but not from heaven, from what Krauss calls the "eternal multiverse". From somewhere beyond the universe.

I take the man at his word, that this "eternal multiverse" is a logical idea.

 

[untermensche]

untermensche, the supposed building you mentioned didn't exist to me until you said this. We worked together to construct the building and time was the tool we used. It is a lovely building and I appreciate your mentioning it. If I said that the building was dilapidated with Escherian stairs, much like the concept of building a building from building up thoughts inside a transcendental machine such as time... that would be the case. That would be a cool building, but in reality it wouldn't exist until we consented. The consent is judged and constructed with invisible beams and little plastic worker toys inside the belly of time. We sit at the colon of time waiting for reality to give us a cool building. Space is relative just as "now" is. My idea is that now is not now because a now would obliterate itself when you and I realized that as we sit waiting at the colon of time we, ourselves are not actually here other than in our own imaginations which are supported and perpetuated by machines such as time. We are either inside or outside the rectum of time, but we are the product of the kinetics that we unknowingly control inside the intestines of time that move data so quickly that time isn't a factor, for the simple purpose of maintaining illusions such as buildings.

I disagree. I think there is a now. We are forced to experience that now differently but it is the same now for everyone.

But what I mean by now is not the personal experience. I mean that which causes the experience. That is now.

The same thing can cause a different experience depending on your frame of reference, but it is the same thing.

 

[skepticalbip]

Things which I disputed were said. Nothing was presented that I agreed were valid objections.

You are assuming a "god's eye" view in which the snapshot was taken. This assumes a preferred reference frame and there is no preferred reference frame.

There is no preferred frame from within a moving universe.

I am talking about, as you say a "god's eye" view, but not from heaven, from what Krauss calls the "eternal multiverse". From somewhere beyond the universe.

I take the man at his word, that this "eternal multiverse" is a logical idea.

Krauss does not call his multiverse a preferred reference frame.

Using it for the view is just adding one more inertial reference frame. Take a snapshot from there and no other observer in the universe would agree that it corresponded to their universe. There is no preferred reference frame.

Assume you have fifty different observers scattered around the universe plus one with your "god's eye" view. They each freeze and record in 3D everything in the universe from their reference frame. Now they all come together and compare. None of them will have the universe described like any of the others.

 

[untermensche]

Krauss does not call his multiverse a preferred reference frame.

It doesn't have to be. It just has to be a place where the frozen universe could be looked at whole.

Then the universe would be like a building. The shape of the building changes depending on your frame of reference but the building itself is one thing.

If the universe can be conceptualized to be one thing at a given moment in time then that one thing can represent a single moment in time. A universal now.

 

[skepticalbip]

Krauss does not call his multiverse a preferred reference frame.

It doesn't have to be. It just has to be a place where the frozen universe could be looked at whole.

Then the universe would be like a building. The shape of the building changes depending on your frame of reference but the building itself is one thing.

If the universe can be conceptualized to be one thing at a given moment in time then that one thing can represent a single moment in time. A universal now.

So you are creating a universe that has only one reference frame. I suppose you could imagine it but it would be a fantasy that had nothing to do with our universe so it would tell you absolutely nothing about our universe. It wouldn't show our universal now because there is no universal now. You would have a frozen image of our universe from the perspective of whatever reference frame you used to take the snapshot. Thought experiments are supposed to tell us something about what we want to study. This one could only tell us something about the universe from the perspective of your "preferred reference frame".

 

[bilby]

http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/srelwhat.html

To summarize: given the known rate at which these raining-down unstable muons decay, and given that 570 per hour hit a detector near the top of Mount Washington, we only expect about 35 per hour to survive down to sea level. In fact, when the detector was brought down to sea level, it detected about 400 per hour! How did they survive? The reason they didn’t decay is that in their frame of reference, much less time had passed. Their actual speed is about 0.994c, corresponding to a time dilation factor of about 9, so in the 6 microsecond trip from the top of Mount Washington to sea level, their clocks register only 6/9 = 0.67 microseconds. In this period of time, only about one-quarter of them decay.

What does this look like from the muon’s point of view? How do they manage to get so far in so little time? To them, Mount Washington and the earth’s surface are approaching at 0.994c, or about 1,000 feet per microsecond. But in the 0.67 microseconds it takes them to get to sea level, it would seem that to them sea level could only get 670 feet closer, so how could they travel the whole 6000 feet from the top of Mount Washington? The answer is the Fitzgerald contraction. To them, Mount Washington is squashed in a vertical direction (the direction of motion) by a factor of (1-v²/c²)^0.5 - the same as the time dilation factor, which for the muons is about 9. So, to the muons, Mount Washington is only 670 feet high—this is why they can get down it so fast!

If we take a snapshot of the universe, how high is Mount Washington in the snapshot? Is it the 6000 feet as measured by an observer on the mountain; or the 670 feet as measured by the observer on a muon; or some other height?

It is all of these at once, depending on where you stand. To take a 'snapshot', you have to define the way the device taking the snapshot is moving relative to the rest of the universe. There is no 'right' way to do this; No two observers, moving independently of each other, agree on what time it is 'now', nor on the sizes of any objects.

It is counterintuitive, but it is observably true.

There is no universal 'present'. The past or future may or may not be 'real' for a given meaning of real; but the present is demonstrably not real - it is an entirely local phenomenon linked inextricably to a given observer. Your now is not my now.

 

[untermensche]

So you are creating a universe that has only one reference frame. I suppose you could imagine it but it would be a fantasy that had nothing to do with our universe so it would tell you absolutely nothing about our universe. It wouldn't show our universal now because there is no universal now. You would have a frozen image of our universe from the perspective of whatever reference frame you used to take the snapshot. Thought experiments are supposed to tell us something about what we want to study. This one could only tell us something about the universe from the perspective of your "preferred reference frame".

I am creating a reference frame on the outside of the universe.

To look at the universe whole.

The only thing that is necessary is the ability to look at the universe whole.

A frozen in place whole universe is a single moment in time.

It doesn't matter what that universe looks like to an observer on the outside of the universe.

 

[skepticalbip]

So you are creating a universe that has only one reference frame. I suppose you could imagine it but it would be a fantasy that had nothing to do with our universe so it would tell you absolutely nothing about our universe. It wouldn't show our universal now because there is no universal now. You would have a frozen image of our universe from the perspective of whatever reference frame you used to take the snapshot. Thought experiments are supposed to tell us something about what we want to study. This one could only tell us something about the universe from the perspective of your "preferred reference frame".

I am creating a reference frame on the outside of the universe.

To look at the universe whole.

The only thing that is necessary is the ability to look at the universe whole.

A frozen in place whole universe is a single moment in time.

It doesn't matter what that universe looks like to an observer on the outside of the universe.

Let me know when you actually read what I am taking the time to try to explain to you. You could do that by actually trying to respond to the individual points as to why you think they are wrong - or maybe, god forbid, where you think they are right.

 

[untermensche]

If we take a snapshot of the universe, how high is Mount Washington in the snapshot? Is it the 6000 feet as measured by an observer on the mountain; or the 670 feet as measured by the observer on a muon; or some other height?

We would be measuring it from outside the universe. Not from within.

We would have to do the experiment and see.

But this isn't about making measurements, because that still may be difficult, because this frozen universe may appear differently to different observers.

It doesn't matter what it looks like or if it is possible to say measurements will be the same to all observers.

It only matters if it is a whole thing that isn't changing.

If it is a whole thing that isn't changing then it can represent a universal now.

 

[untermensche]

I am creating a reference frame on the outside of the universe.

To look at the universe whole.

The only thing that is necessary is the ability to look at the universe whole.

A frozen in place whole universe is a single moment in time.

It doesn't matter what that universe looks like to an observer on the outside of the universe.

Let me know when you actually read what I am taking the time to try to explain to you. You could do that by actually trying to respond to the individual points as to why you think they are wrong - or maybe, god forbid, where you think they are right.

I have no time for your commands.

Respond to what I write or don't.

Make arguments or don't. I don't wait for any from you because they are so weak and illogical.

You haven't touched my argument. I can still post it unchanged.

If one claims the past is infinite. That is the same as saying the amount of time that has already passed is infinite since the past is time that has already passed.

If this can't be understood then people have trouble understanding truisms. It is simply a truism that the past is time that has already passed.

If one claims the amount of time that has already passed is infinite they are saying it is an amount that has no limit or end.

This is just another truism, a definitional truism. An infinite amount of time is an amount of time that has no end. Infinite time in the future is time without end in the future. It is an amount of time that will never finish passing.

So if one claims the amount of time in the past is infinite that means they are claiming the amount of time that has passed before any present moment is an amount of time than never finishes passing.

Their claim is absurd. An amount of time that never finishes passing can't have already passed before any present moment.

It is like claiming the amount of time in an infinite future has finished passing.