continuing the streak of what is-threads, this time we ask AF's opinion on what time is?
as a personal opinion, I have to say I tend to think time as a straight line from fast to future, that simply keeps ppl on track, letting them keep a record of the past and plan ahead. Still, time should be valued, as you only exist in this very second, the you of few seconds back is already gone and it's not coming back, and the future won't be here any sooner, no matter what you do. Still, the concept of time travel interests me and thus i can't help but to think all this.
in most cases, we think time in terms of newtonian time. This concept defines time as a straight line from past to future. This is the most useful concept of time as it allows us to speak of the past and plan the future based on the present.
the other concept of time comes from modern physics and is called either timeless physics or the multiple worlds- interpretation, depending on the viewpoint. In either case time exists as a series of frames. Thus we can have multiple pasts and futures and they all take place "simultaneously" Altough the allegory of frames may be familiar to you from The melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, it is still scientifically accurate:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time Other than modern physics and anime plot device, this concept of time is not very useful. If you think about time in this way, past and future lose their meanings and planning ahead seems meaningless as the future is already happening in some time frame and thus everything is pre-defined unless we interpret that we are capable of choosing which future time frame we will end up in, which is just newtonian time in a much complicated way.
If we forget real world physics for a while and mix time travel into the mix, well have something like this.
the upper picture is the newtonian concept of time with common sci-fi time travel such as terminator. You can travel from future to the past but time travel from even further future is not possible.
The other picture is the concept used in modern physics and funnily enough, the melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. Time travel from any point to any other point is possible because they all exist simultaneously.
Other than physics, time also has meanings in philosophy. Having evolved from a simple measure of day and night to a unit measured with a cesium atom, time itself is hard to measure as the brain often messes up it's measurement.
in any case, state your own opinion and discuss anything even vaguely time-related.
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