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Article - "Researchers say time is an illusion. So why are we all obsessed with it?"

cyfanatic

cyfanatic

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Oct 18, 2006
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Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Thought there would be a few on here that would enjoy this article...subjects like this can get deep in my head...and drive me crazy with thinking about them...thinking about space does the same to me:

www.npr.org

Researchers say time is an illusion. So why are we all obsessed with it?

Even guardians of America's atomic clocks say time doesn't work the way we think it does.
www.npr.org www.npr.org
 
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That article wasn't making the case time doesn't exist or is a "social construct" in some bizarre postmodern sort of way. It was making the case time gets weird when you account for advanced relativistic physics that only few of us understand and when you are considering some of the more extreme circumstances with gravity throughout the universe (e.g., black holes, etc.) that we're never going to encounter.

But in the context of day-to-day life for ordinary humans... it's a thing and absolute.
 
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Time per se is not an illusion. After all, Earth revolves around the sun, we have so much darkness and so much light which define a passage which we have learned to measure. In that aspect, time is no more illusory than feet or meters or even light-years used to measure distance.

In cultures (such as ours) where time is viewed as a commodity having monetary value, there are illusions about its importance, as well as about deadlines (one need only think of the invasion of Iraq to realize that those deadlines were as illusory as the fabled WMD's supposedly there).
 
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"Time is the fire in which we burn"

The perception of time is really interesting to me - does time move slower based on our perceptions? If we are more focused on the moment, then are we actually slowing time down, or just our experience of it? Or is our hyper-focus when time seems to slow down, just additional processing power coming online and slowing down the simulation that we actually exist in?
 
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CascadeClone said:
"Time is the fire in which we burn"

The perception of time is really interesting to me - does time move slower based on our perceptions? If we are more focused on the moment, then are we actually slowing time down, or just our experience of it? Or is our hyper-focus when time seems to slow down, just additional processing power coming online and slowing down the simulation that we actually exist in?
Click to expand...
"A watched pot never boils." "Time flies when we are having fun."

If I have fun watching a pot, does time ceases to exist?
 
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houjix said:
"A watched pot never boils." "Time flies when we are having fun."

If I have fun watching a pot, does time ceases to exist?
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If a bear s**** in the woods and no one is around........does it stink?

This is just a bunch of pencil heads probably baked on psychedelics with nothing to do and all day to do it.
 
CascadeClone said:
"Time is the fire in which we burn"

The perception of time is really interesting to me - does time move slower based on our perceptions? If we are more focused on the moment, then are we actually slowing time down, or just our experience of it? Or is our hyper-focus when time seems to slow down, just additional processing power coming online and slowing down the simulation that we actually exist in?
Click to expand...
Interesting topic. Reminds me of the pot smoking scene in Animal House.
 
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houjix said:
"A watched pot never boils." "Time flies when we are having fun."

If I have fun watching a pot, does time ceases to exist?
Click to expand...
No, time would continue, just the water would never boil. The energy supplied would be converted to fun, rather than heat, and thus would not be able to heat the water sufficiently to boil the water.

It's the 697th law of thermodynamics, pretty basic stuff really.
 
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The best representation of the passage of it is Time, by Pink Floyd. Amazing song.

Time is such an interesting concept. I remember the first time I finally “got” the Theory of Relativity and understood that time is not actually a constant. It blew my freaking mind. Still does.
 
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