Sorry, I am inés samengo - I seem to have been logged out at some point.

Dear Laurence Hitterdale

I invite you and every physicist to read my work "TIME ORIGIN,DEFINITION AND EMPIRICAL MEANING FOR PHYSICISTS, Héctor Daniel Gianni ,I'm not a physicist.

How people interested in "Time" could feel about related things to the subject.

1) Intellectuals interested in Time issues usually have a nice and creative wander for the unknown.

2) They usually enjoy this wander of their searches around it.

3) For millenniums this wander has been shared by a lot of creative people around the world.

4) What if suddenly, something considered quasi impossible to be found or discovered such as "Time" definition and experimental meaning confronts them?

5) Their reaction would be like, something unbelievable,... a kind of disappointment, probably interpreted as a loss of wander.....

6) ....worst than that, if we say that what was found or discovered wasn't a viable theory, but a proved fact.

7) Then it would become offensive to be part of the millenary problem solution, instead of being a reason for happiness and satisfaction.

8) The reader approach to the news would be paradoxically adverse.

9) Instead, I think it should be a nice welcome to discovery, to be received with opened arms and considered to be read with full attention.

11)Time "existence" is exclusive as a "measuring system", its physical existence can't be proved by science, as the "time system" is. Experimentally "time" is "movement", we can prove that, showing that with clocks we measure "constant and uniform" movement and not "the so called Time".

12)The original "time manuscript" has 23 pages, my manuscript in this contest has only 9 pages.

I share this brief with people interested in "time" and with physicists who have been in sore need of this issue for the last 50 or 60 years.

Héctor

Dear Laurence,

I very much enjoyed your well-written and highly readable essay. Indeed, if the passage of time is not real, how ought we to conduct ourselves? Undoubtedly a fascinating question. But I am not sure if you chose to give an answer?

In my essay I argue that time itself is not real, in quantum theory. Rather, time is an emergent concept of the classical world.

My best wishes,

Tejinder

    Dear Tejinder,

    Thank you for your kind words.

    You ask what answer I would give to the question whether the passage of time is unreal. You are correct to say that I do not explicitly answer the question in the essay. At present I would guess that the passage of time is real. I base this judgment on two premises. First, there is the fact that passage is a characteristic of time as we experience it. Second, it is difficult to see how experience could invent this characteristic or have such a characteristic imposed on experience from without, unless passage or something like it exists in time as it really is. I recognize that the position you take in your essay complicates the picture I just presented. If I understand your essay correctly, you contend that in objective reality (i.e., reality independent of consciousness), already there exist at least two different levels of time. I am prepared to argue only that the objective temporal level which impinges on human consciousness probably contains passage. The forms of time which are more remote from consciousness might be different. In the view that you present, the more remote level or levels would appear to be more fundamental than the kind of time which presents itself immediately to human consciousness.

    However that may be, my main concern in this essay is not to take a stand on whether temporal passage is or is not real. Instead I want to look at some of the implications of the question for our understanding of the human condition. If passage is unreal, then we ought to conduct ourselves differently than we now do. More to the point, our attitudes toward our own lives and toward our conduct should be different from what those attitudes now are. However, I doubt that we could make those changes. The sense of temporal passage appears to be so deeply rooted in human consciousness that we probably could not do much to change it or to change the approach to the future which takes temporal passage for granted. Thus, if we became convinced that there is no such thing as the flow of time, we could not incorporate that conviction into our living or into our attitudes toward living. Such a failure of convictions would be awkward.

    The final point is that we are at the present time in a different situation, but a situation which is nonetheless awkward in a related but different way. Right now we do not know whether the flow of time is real. As I stated earlier, I think it is, but I do not believe that anybody knows for sure. So, the current situation is awkward, because judgment has to be suspended on the issue whether the normal attitudes toward time are or are not in order. The essay ends by calling attention to this uncertainty.

    I appreciate your asking the questions which provide the opportunity for this clarification.

    Laurence Hitterdale

    Hi Inés,

    I much appreciate your comment, because you have stated the key idea more clearly and concisely than I did.

    I have also read your essay, and my comment about it is on the Web page for your essay.

    Laurence Hitterdale

    7 days later

    Laurence,

    A very interesting essay and resume of possibilities, though as you say we have no choice anyway but to do what we do.

    In Astronomy and Cosmology I'm used to the past being 'real'. Indeed the distant past is ALL we deal with as it's all we can observe. Of course we must also come to terms with infinity which maybe most still can't do. But then also is not the near future as instantaneously real at every instant? Can we not only act in the future as by the time we decide to act it surely IS the future!

    I hope you may read my essay, where I identify that our minds continually imagine futures and 'run scenario's to find outcomes, even triggering motor neurone responses and biochemical releases, which outcomes feed back to help us set aims and make decisions. So does that mean the future really does have a causal link to the present?

    Thanks for some fresh views and an interesting glimpse of another future.

    Peter

    Dear Laurence Hitterdale,

    Thank you very much for your intersting essay with a strong emphasis on the perceived notion of the flow of time. When you write "The great problem, according to many thinkers, is our supposition that time flows. We are wrong when we believe in a moving Now. There is no such thing as the passage of time.", to me is a true statement depending on your vantage point. If we consider the full history of the universe, we can effectively treat our present point in space-time as a single point. A few thousand years in time from "now" or a few thousand light-years in any direction will not change what we can observe in cosmological terms. Having said that, I do believe George Ellis makes a strong argument for the case of an Evolving Block Universe and does challenge our thinking in that regard. I would be interested to know if you have had an opportunity to look at that closely?

    In any event, I wanted to thank you for your essay and let you know I have rated it too in the meantime.

    Regards,

    Robert

    Dear Laurence,

    Congratulations for another great essay. You took the interesting approach of framing the question of aims and intention with respect to the flow of time, and I agree with you that "if there is something wrong with our ordinary conception of time (...) then perhaps the mistake pervades what we think we are doing when we set goals and attempt to implement them." At the most fundamental level, I believe that the "totality of existence" is an atemporal, unchanging "given"(great Hermann Weyl and John Bigelow quotes, by the way), and in such a context, the notions of aims and intention can only have, at best, a localized, limited application. That's why I think it was quite a challenge to address this year's FQXi essay contest question, but you did so admirably.

    I just rated your essay. Good luck in the contest --- so many essays, so little time!

    Marc

    7 days later

    Hi, Laurence, I just write to apologize because it took me a long time to reply my comment in my forum, I have now finally managed to engage in these discussions again. I left my reply there (nothing truly illuminating!), and let you know here, because after my long silence you are unlikely to see by your own initiative. Best! inés.

    Laurence,

    Of thinking too precisely on th' event--

    A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom

    And ever three parts coward Hamlet

    I would say rather four parts wisdom.

    Your pearls of wisdom flow, unlike time. "The present moment slips away into the irretrievable past" I like that.

    I can't help thinking that the past is accessible with our telescopic views into space, something the observer can share with the world. It is retrievable as an observer but as a data point.

    Many mysteries.

    Hope you get a chance to comment on my essay, for which I displayed an iota of precise thinking.

    Jim Hoover

    Laurence,

    I loved this essay. We know it's an illusion, and yet we make goals. And we become good at explaining the illusion, and become equally good at setting goals. Go figure!

    You want to read my short essay.

    This is one essay is slowed down to read, it was delicious.

    Thanks,

    Don Limuti