Now

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Bowser, Mar 10, 2018.

  1. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Theoretically you are right of course. But theory is based on specific sets of assumptions, which may not necessarily hold true in reality.
    Keyword "timeline". Of what?
    However I do agree that NOW is a measurement, albeit arbitrary, and not a thing. Thus while NOW can be described, it is always a result of change (timeline) a measurement of duration, a byproduct of physical activity..
     
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  3. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    I think it's the same as any other number line, except that our reference frame is always zero. Negative values are the past, positive values are the future. We can move forward, backward, sideways, etc. in space but in time we carry our reference frame with us. We can never be "at" a negative or positive value.
     
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  5. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    OK, that's reasonable. But the question remains, where, not when. IMO, NOW exists everywhere, i.e. all reference points in the universe are always in a NOW frame., yet we do not experience NOW thoughout the entire universe, which is obvious by the fact that when we receive the light of a far away star, it occupies a negative value of being in the past.
    In fact that star may not even exist in our NOW anymore, and may have burnt out millions of years ago, which places it in a negative NOW relative to our NOW, or simply, in the past from our NOW, at the beginning of its own timeline of NOWS, which no longer exists.

    I believe you will agree the star's NOW is no longer part of our NOW, although we can observe it in our NOW.
    Thus our NOW is only relative to other NOWs by its position outside relative to all other NOWs, including our own frame of reference.
    And if a NOW point is merely a coordinate in spacetime, then other NOW points occupy other coordinates in spacetime. And as I understand it two separate Nows cannot occupy the same spacetime coordinate, i.e our frame of reference.
    Which means that we can never be at a negative value, but we can observe a negative value in our NOW. But what we observe no longer has a NOW spacetime coordinate of its own.

    I am not sure what that implies in theoretical geometry, but to me there seems to be a contradiction hidden in this example.
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2018
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  7. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    The only "where" in the universe is "here". All we know about the universe is what we're experiencing "here" and "now". We're not experiencing a star; we're experiencing light. We can infer that that light left a star sometime in our negative time but we can't surmise from the starlight alone whether or not the star exists "now".
     
  8. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    I agree with that. Except that we do "experience" our star (the sun), but even then that information is from 8 minutes in our past.
     

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