The conventional view of time is that only one point in time is real, the present, and that that time flows at a certain rate. People believe that in order to experience the flow of time, the past moment must disappear, and a new moment must become real, but this can be logically shown to be unnecessary to experience the flow of time. If the past moment ceases to exist, then it must have no bearing on or be otherwise necessary for you to be conscious in this moment. Therefore the existence or non existence of the past can't be responsible for what you perceive in the present, including one's perception of flowing through time.
Furthermore, evidence from relativity has shown there is no such thing as an objective, or absolute present. Every observer with a different velocity has their own conception of what the present includes. Since no reference frame is more valid than any other, and every observer could have their own view, there can be no absolute present, no laser beam reifying a point in time for all beings in the DVD. The appearence of different presents for different reference frames can be explained as a side effect of observers embedded in a four-dimensional universe, with each observer's present being a slice at a certain angle through those four dimensions. Jason On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 8:59 AM, Brian Tenneson <tenn...@gmail.com> wrote: > I was wondering if you could help me flesh out an idea. It's related to > the questions "is reality dynamic or static," and of determinism versus > non-determinism. Also another question that plagues me is What breathes > dynamism into static principalities? > > > > I view our world as being on a static or dynamic (to be decided later) > storage device of some sort. This stored set of scenarios is "read" by a > temporal mechanism, aka transition and change, to give us the impression > that things really are dynamic. The reading of the film exposes something > that time changes. But if you look at the sum of all instantiations of > the film being read, this sum is a fixed set of scenarios. > > > > The DVD metaphor. > > > > There is a DVD (ie, recording), let's call it DVD#1, which is the film and > it is read by a "laser" and that laser transitions by some temporal > mechanism. DVD#1 doesn't change, the way it is looked at changes. This > change implies the existence of time relative to DVD#1. In my metaphor, > the film, which is DVD#1, is the totality of all observations an any > observer could have. > > > > Now say someone films me watching DVD#1 and call this a new DVD, DVD#2. DVD#2 > doesn't change, the way it is looked at changes. This change implies the > existence of time relative to DVD#2, yet DVD#2 is actually static. > > > > Continue indefinitely. Let n denote an arbitrary number. We've got DVD#n > for all n>=1. DVD#n is the DVD created by filming an observer that is > observing DVD#(n-1). > > > > What significance does the union of all these DVD#n have, if any? > > > > It would appear that dynamism and stasis are juxtaposed in an unending > hierarchy and saying "time exists" (ie, reality is dynamic) and saying "time > does not exist" (ie, reality is static), is equivalent to saying the light > is on if it is flipped once per second forever. In essence, this > hierarchy is like a divergent series (by which I roughly mean union). > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<everything-list%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
