Time Travel is Science Fiction

Discussion in 'Alternative Theories' started by Farsight, Feb 17, 2014.

  1. Motor Daddy Valued Senior Member

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    Do you agree that there is distance between two specific and separate points in space? Do you agree that if light is emitted at one of those points that the light that was emitted at that point ends up at the other point? Would you agree that the light is not at two places (points, or "locations") at one point in time? Farsight, Farsight, Farsight...when will you learn what time is?

    Remember when you were a Schoolboy and you walked to school from your house (two locations,one distance between your house and the school). Remember how when you left the house at 7:15 everyday, and you would move your legs at a medium pace, and then get to school just as the bell rang, just in time to be on time? Remember those days when you were sick and you left the house the same time as usual, but since you were sick you didn't have the energy to move your legs at the same rate as you usually do, so the result was that your legs were moving at a reduced rate, taking the same length stride as you usually do. The only problem is that you heard the late bell ring and you weren't even to the parking lot yet. Why, Farsight? Why were you late?
     
    Last edited: Feb 18, 2014
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  3. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    Farsight, your descriptions of time are pathetically silly:
    Whether it is true or not that a particular clock utilizes a periodic motion to measure time (some do and some don't) doesn't in any way imply that time does not flow. When you say that you can't see time, all you are really proving is that time isn't like length and width, not that it doesn't exist....and note that that claim by you isn't really correct either: you can't see the spacial dimensions either, just the amount of the spacial dimensions that objects posses: you can't see space, but you can see the length of an object. But you can certainly also see an object pass through time: just go look at it again tomorrow.

    Now how's about you provide some mainstream references that describe what time is/how it works or be clear about which parts here are (current) mainstream science and which parts are your own personal crackpot nonsense. That'll make things a whole lot easier on all of us, including you. For example, please provide a reference that explicitly agrees with you that the flow of time is just a figure of speech and that time doesn't progress.
     
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  5. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    Plot the events on a spacetime diagram.
     
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  7. Farsight

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    I know what time is, Motor Daddy. Watch and learn...

    Yep.

    Yep.

    Yep. But note that "at one point in time" is tautological. You should say the light is not at the two places at once. Think about it for a moment. Imagine our gendanken environment. You and I are standing on a hilltop looking up at the clear night sky. We have lasers and other gizmos. We can point to one point in space, and we can point to the other. We can arrange for light to travel from A to B. With a sprinkling of dust we could watch it move. But what have we actually got? Have we got any time flowing? No. Have we got any travel through time? No. What we've got is space and light, moving through space. We "time" this using our clock, which features a crystal, moving. We have space and motion. That's our real world. It isn't some static block-universe. The map is not the territory. We can't see any world lines or light cones. There is no time flowing. Because clocks clock up some kind of regular cyclical motion. So time is just a measure of motion. And you can't move through a measure of motion. So time travel is science fiction.

    Capiche? Do you get it, Motor Daddy?
     
  8. Farsight

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    No they aren't pathetically silly, Russ. They are empirical.

    Oh yes it does. ALL clocks feature some kind of regular and/or cyclical motion. Grandfather clock. Mechanical Clock. Quartz wristwatch. Atomic clock. Optical clock. You name it. There is NO clock that actually "measures the flow of time". Care to prove me wrong on that?

    I can hold my hands up and show you space. I can waggle my hands and I can show you motion. Now you show me time flowing. You cannot. Because it is a figure of speech. It is not scientific. It is a myth.

    I can see the object. If it's a ball I can see it move through space. And I can put it down on my desk and look at it today. Then I can get up. I can move. Just as the Earth moves. And when the Earth has moved enough, people say "a day has passed" as if it went by like a bus. It didn't. Things moved, that's all. And they moved through space. Not through time. Because time is a measure of motion, and you can't move through a measure of motion.

    Look at the OP. Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein. Do your own research Russ. Why have I got to do it all?
     
  9. Motor Daddy Valued Senior Member

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    Oh good, so you know that as a river flows time elapses?
     
  10. Farsight

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    Clunk. That's my head hitting my desk in exasperation.

    Motor Daddy: watch my lips. Time does not flow. Such is just a figure of speech. Things move. Things like light and cogs and beating hearts. And that thing you call a clock merely "clocks up" some kind of regular cyclic motion. It uses gears. It has a big hand and a little hand. And these hands move. When the big hand is pointing straight up and the little hand is pointing straight down, you call it six o'clock. This clock is showing you a cumulative display that you call "the time". But it does not measure the flow of time. There is no river of time flowing inside that clock.

    Have you got it yet?

    Sigh!
     
  11. Motor Daddy Valued Senior Member

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    When will you be telling me why you were late for school? (post #21, you may have missed it 'cause I added it later (elapsed time after original post))

     
  12. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    A description of an observation you don't understand is silly.
    Well the definition of the word "clock" is enough to prove you wrong on that, the way you worded it, but there is more to your claim than that. You are really trying to say something to the effect that clocks just measure motion. It is wrong on two levels:
    1. Motion is not what is being measured, periodic events are. Clocks don't record motion, they count events. This is true of all clocks, even those that use a periodic motion to create those events. This error of yours is based on your misunderstanding of what time is*.
    2. The best clocks are atomic clocks and they don't use motion at all, they use quantum mechanical transition events. An additional clock (calendar, since it runs so slow) that uses events directly is radiocarbon dating (and thus any other time measure using radioactive decay).

    *Really, this is all circular: you misrepresent what time is and then claim it doesn't exist. Well in a way then, that is true: what you describe does not exist because that's not what time is. You're basically proving yourself wrong here by default.
    No you can't. You can show me length of an object - the dimension it occupies in space, not space itself. But I know what you meant even if you don't

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    When you show me motion, you show me time flowing. Motion doesn't exist without time: Motion is a measure of change in space and time coordinates.
    Again, ultimately this comes down to your own made-up crackpot crap unless you can show a reference that agrees with you. C'mon, be clear here: you do recognize that this view of yours is not the mainstream scientific view, right?
    Your thread, your claim, your burden of proof. I can't and won't prove your claim for you and you already know your claim doesn't match anything I can find on the internet, so what is there for me to do? You want the wiki on time? Here it is (saved you three seconds):
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time
     
  13. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    Don't worry about me, Farsight. I took the precaution of not reading your OP to begin with.

    Thing is, I knew of the paradoxes in time travel before I knew you even existed. Question I can't seem to answer (or want to think about for too long.) Is why championing such a notion would make you feel intellectually superior? Quite the opposite if it can be shown to demonstrate a lack of curiosity.
     
  14. Farsight

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    Timewaster.

    Do we have an ignore option on this forum?

    Ah, yes we do.

    Beer w/Straw has now been added to your ignore list.
     
  15. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    LOL!

    You honor me.

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  16. Farsight

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    No motion, no events. So you're splitting hairs. Try again.

    Rubbish. Shows what you know. They use microwaves. That's light in the wider sense. Moving. Look at the NIST caesium clock and the definition of the second:

    "Since 1967, the second has been defined to be: the duration of 9192631770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom".

    Note the bit that says periods of the radiation. You sit there counting up 9192631770 microwaves coming at you, then you say that's a second.

    Some isotope changes into another isotope, and it's got a half life. It's radioactive. Big deal. Things are still moving.

    No I'm not. Like I said, I'm being empirical. The one being circular here is you. And why? To defend time travel? Bah.

    Huh? Are you crazy? When I turn on the tap you see water flowing. But when I wave my hands around, you don't see time flowing.

    I've already referred to A World without Time: the Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein. I'm not making this up Russ. Look at Presentism. When you've led a sheltered life and don't know about something, that doesn't mean that that something is crackpot crap.

    No. The mainstream scientific view is that time travel is science fiction.

    Russ: think for yourself.
     
  17. Farsight

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    And that elapsed time came from a clock on a computer. Open up your computer, Motor Daddy. Listen carefully. Hear that roaring sound? That's time flowing through your computer's clock, that is. Flowing from the future through the present into the past, like sand through an egg timer. Wooo!

    Uh huh. I moved my little legs, and I moved down the street. And the clock moved its little cogs, and moved its big hand and its little hand. And then the bell moved its little clapper, then the air moved, and I heard the sound.

    Because I moved slow. But everything else didn't.
     
  18. Motor Daddy Valued Senior Member

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    1. What do you mean when you say "I moved slow?"
    2. How do you know whether anything else moved or not?
     
  19. Farsight

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    1. What do you mean when you say "I moved slow?"

    I lagged behind my sister. She walked faster than me. I moved slower than her, and slower than normal. So I moved slow.

    2. How do you know whether anything else moved or not?

    I saw it move. Because the light moved from it to my eye, and inside my head electrochemical signals moved too.


    All: Note how some noteworthy posters are missing? They won't participate in a thread like this where they know they'll have to concede. They won't participate in the next thread either, because they know they'll end up conceding step by step that their current position is untenable.
     
  20. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    That is the only possible reason?

    Another possibility is that this thread is sort of a retarded argument over semanitcs, so it is a waste of time.
     
  21. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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    This is great stuff.

    It pains me to be ignored. I somehow feel uninvited to celebrate in Farsight's triumph.
     
  22. Motor Daddy Valued Senior Member

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    So you would have made it to school on time if your sister would have walked slower, that way you could have both been there on time??
     
  23. Motor Daddy Valued Senior Member

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    Farsight, I have to admit, I'm losing a little confidence that you know what time is as you claimed. But I'm still 100% on the fact that you and Einstein are in the same category. Keep it up, I'm looking forward to it. It's almost like talking to Einstein himself!
     

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