I had a debate over if inches exist.

[Neoma]

So what do you think, do inches exist or is this tedious human concept of measuring things a false sense of how objects collate with our existence?

I had a thought that went like this: "I know the earth is round, but what about the universe?" and it set off my train of thought for the day. I then asked someone this and we had a huge disagreement about if the universe is infinite or not. I explained my concept of how we view the universe:

"I think we're like blood cells in a persons body. We can explore as much as we can for a short amount of time but we die and we reproduce and we cannot even get out of the body and if we do, we're wiped away and dried up into a waste can. And so it's not even possible to explore anything in this way."

He set an example of how time works, and it set me off: " Time doesn't exist, it's just a concept we came up with to measure how long we live." and so he went off saying: "Yeah, inches don't exist either. But guess what? They're all the hell around us." and it triggered my philosophical mind (like it wasn't triggered already.) If human concepts exists purely because we use the concepts, then we'd probably still be celebrating some sort of goddess. We only use those concepts to make things easier and most of these concepts complicates everything to death.

The time travel concept bugs me because it would have nothing to do with time if such a thing exists. If we go through 'time' by light then the only thing that would have anything to do with time would be the time measurement of the phenomenon. It's wishful thinking by bringing along this notion that you can undo the actions you took in some area of your life. If something is wacky with time then it probably has nothing to do with time traveling. In reality it's possible that it has to do with getting out of our universe or with some such concept.

--
I would post more stuff like this if I thought people would actually pay attention. The lounge doesn't take most things seriously and general discussion basically only talks about politics. The other forums aren't as mainstream.

[BlooInBloo]

1. See Dennet's "Real Patterns".

[Neoma]

2. What's that?

[BlooInBloo]

3. An essay by a (justifiably) big-wig philosopher about essentially that topic....

... Very useful for setting the thinking-table on this subject.

EDIT: It's short, and engagingly written.

[Neoma]

4. Do beliefs exist?

[BlooInBloo]

5. It's a short essay, but not that short. Those are just the opening words.

EDIT: Clarified subject.

[wildhorses]

6. you lost me at this phrase

"I know the earth is flat,...'

:smoke:

[Neoma]

7. Whoops, I meant to say round.

[wildhorses]

8. if there is a god --

time is it

:hippie:

[Neoma]

9. Or maybe our universe is an egg.

[wildhorses]

10. and the shell of the egg?

can we ever break on through to the other side?

:bounce:

[Neoma]

11. Well, as I was saying about time travel up in the original post...

Speed of light. :P

[Ptah]

19. Of course we can

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tah0OnS3nBU

You know the day destroys the night
Night divides the day
Tried to run
Tried to hide
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
Chased our plea here
Dug our treasure there
Still recall
Time we cried
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
Break on through, yeah!

[wildhorses]

20. hells yeah

:headbang:

:yourock:

the shell has a 'door':P

[The Straight Story]

12. The key to it all, to me, is

well, oddly enough the book of Revelation.

Now stay with me a sec here - I am not relating all this to God and the bible/prophecy really.

The IDEA is that John did see the future, but could only talk about it in terms he knew (and the whole study of language and etymology is relevant here to science).

We create new words which tie back to concepts so that we can communicate - so while 'inches' is merely a term we invented, the concept of length transcends that. Which basically goes back to number theory I might add. We invent ways to communicate about the world around us, but that does not mean those things are our invention - our words are ways for us to better grasp them and learn more things.

Example: light travels at a certain speed - speed is a word we invented but the physics behind the word (speed) is sound. You don't get from point A to B without there being some delay (and speed is a calculation we humans devised to discuss that).

As far as Time Travel goes - we humans measure things in a way that says once something has occurred and time (the movement of matter from one place to the next for example) has changed, then there is no way to revert that on a large and complex scale. Once energy is expended and changed you cannot undo that.

However! :)

I once wrote a story back in high school (back in oh, 1982 - after playing with Eliza) about 'god' - he was a programmer and each human was a processor. He could go back and forth in time, defy our laws of physics, etc and so on because all we could measure were things inside the system we 'existed' in. God, on the other hand, was not bound by our laws as he was outside of them (and I use 'he' here simply as a convenience, I don't think God has a sex). Everything we knew could have been programmed and ran in days - but we would see it as millions of years.

Time and other things can be relative. We can think above the things we can measure and wonder, but proving them is a bit hard :)

[Neoma]

13. Doesn't mean he's god.

Just means he's been around for quite awhile.

[The Straight Story]

14. Another word we use

'God' - the jews used to ponder 'can god make a rock so big he cannot lift it?'

The idea was to show that god, and the connotations of that word to humans, is far too broad.

God has limitations (call it, the physics of theology) - one example is that we see that god is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (from the good book) - which is what led to all of this in the first place.

To wit: Lucifer rebelled, was punished and condemned, and so when man fell (after being enticed by Lucifer) Lucifer thought he had won the day. God was consistent, he had to be, it was his nature - his physics.

But God found an out, he never said who had to be punished, only that someone had to be. So he crushed Satan's ego (stepped on his head as per Genesis) and bruised his own heel in the process (ie, he became human and took on the punishment).

God was the first attorney :)

You talk about 'inches' and the term being one we made up (well not you, but your friend) - and that is indeed true, we did coin it to describe a system of measurement. God is also a term we created to describe someone who is more powerful than we are and does not conform to our science.

What we have done is to bastardize the term to mean all powerful in all ways - but a careful examination of the term does not bear that out (to me and others at least...the fundies are a different matter).

[Neoma]

15. To me it describes an invisible friend.

[The Straight Story]

16. Gravity describes an invisible friend too :)

and yet, there it is....

We don't have to see something to feel it. Another concept devised by us humans.

[wildhorses]

17. inches is inches and gravity is gravity

and god is in, of, and over it all...

language cannot do justice to the concept.

:shrug:

[unpossibles]

22. but I can prove gravity exists... n/t

[rug]

18. Maybe you should post this in the Weights and Measures Forum.

[Deep13]

21. Time really exists.

Hours and minutes are merely yardsticks to measure time.

[Inchworm]

23. Deep...

I cannot sway from my quest to define art and love though.

I guess short answer would be language. We can't just all walk around grunting. You need to hear someone say "this is a pen." If it was just a grunt, what would separate it from a pizza pie? All things we have concept of need words to attempt description/identification.

Now are humans out of the allegorical cave? I think not.

:hi:

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

24. I had a very similar thought when I was blitzed out of my skull

I might record it in detail later. In any event, it's a very interesting subject

[The2ndWheel]

25. The sad thing is the impulse to label time, whatever it is

Especially these days with digital clocks. At least with the old clocks, it was circular. Like the Earth orbiting the Sun, the Sun twirling around the galaxy, etc. Now with the digital clocks, time has an even greater forward motion, almost a relentless push forward. We just seem to be in such a hurry to get there.

[flying rabbit]

26. Time is nature's way

of making sure everything doesn't happen at once.
Actually I think it is a byproduct of motion.:P

[Neoma]

27. How do we know everything doesn't happen all at once?

We could just be viewing everything slowly.

[billyskank]

28. Inches may not exist but space does

And so does time. The proper analogy would be, seconds are to time what inches are to space.

[Neoma]

29. Time is just counting how many times earth turns around.

Putting a view up like time traveling is going beyond the range of the general idea.

[billyskank]

30. But if it were not for time the earth would not turn around

Nothing could possibly happen without the influence of time. It is time that makes animate things move, and in the end time destroys everything.