Level1 Philosophicum: [Is time just a human construct?]

Half way trough, it makes it even more impossible to make a choice, its playing 3 counter opinions and they al make sense :exploding_head:

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Unless your a membrain theory follower, then the big bang was the touching of 2 membrains to make the multiverse possible. Infinite touching infinite universes.

Quite the reply you got there, Iā€™ll need some time to get back to you :ok_hand:

Good discussions in here.

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I just played myself.

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No worries, I donā€™t expect you to read it in five minutes. The warning at the top is there for a reason. :wink: (Have you found all the ā€œHide detailsā€ arrows yet?)

I agree! :+1: Itā€™s quite enjoyable :slightly_smiling_face:

Does it mean that it is real though?

I read your entire post and I have no comebacks or counter arguments, I was already stretching my knowledge on the subject.

My takeaway is we have yet a lot to discover, time may very well be real, but not necessarily what we think it is. With what we know I donā€™t think thereā€™s a clear answer.
The time that we live our lives by and that plays a major part in almost every aspect of society I still consider a human construct, if that makes sense.

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I can not answer that without establishing a concise definition of ā€œrealā€ or reality that we share first.

The only thing I can definitely say is that the effect of time has real consequences in the physical world, can be measured with the highest accuracy of all measurements we can make today and without a consistent framework of time across all observed effects in physics the world would be entirely different. The laws of physics as we observe them would be different. For me this is what makes something real, the rest is a discussion about semantics.

Earlier in our discussion you made a comparison to gravity and that you consider it to be real. I tried to pick up on that and show that both time and gravity share a lot of the properties that make it hard to define as a ā€œrealā€ or physical thing. The result would be to either conclude that time and gravity are real or that both are not. Obviously this argument does not work if you conclude that one of the properties that gravity has and time does not have is required for being real.

Absolutely, there always will be.

If we observe an effect and give it a name, even if we later learn more about said effect, does it mean that it is not real? If, we observe the interaction of said effect with the world and we conclude the world would be different without it, does it not mean the effect is real? This is how I use the concept of reality in everyday life.

What is the line by which you determine if something is real for yourself? I am genuinely curious.

I think I know what you mean. This is why I am convinced we are speaking about two different things over most of our discussion. Most of the time I am using the definition that is regularly used in physics: ā€œTime is what a clock measuresā€ If you look into the details there is a lot of fine print to this simple sentence. We have to be aware of that when doing experiments but so far it has worked exceedingly well.

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If your definition of real relies on the theory of general relativity, because thatā€™s what we base our physics and understanding of the world on, but what we observe in quantum mechanics does not align with that theory, does that then change your definition of real?

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Please help me there. Where does my definition of real rely on general relativity?
Also, as I said before general relativity and quantum mechanics do not contradict each other. Both theories are still valid and work in their respective areas, even when there comes a successor to both of them.

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Either they work together or they donā€™t.

I dont buy the, relativty works on large scale, quantum works on a small scale.

It was meant more as a rhetorical question, but based on this

For that to be real, the theory of general relativity would have to be correct no?

And if it isnā€™t, does that then change your basis of reality?

But they do work together. Time dilation for example (a major part of the theory of general relativity) applies to fundamental particles the same as it does to macro objects. (It is even one of the early direct proves for relativity.) The effect the other way around are not possible to be proved yet with our current instruments. The major problem that is hard to solve is a way to unify both theories into one. It is a mathematical problem. So far there are no clear contradictions in predictions both theories make.

I do not depend on any theory to be true here, I am depending on the observations only. This is why I said ā€œThe laws of physics as we observe themā€.

Scientific theories make predictions. These predictions then get tested. If the predictions are true and repeatable we consider the theory to be good. Scientific theories are a logical and mathematical framework that describe reality. These theories donā€™t get disproved in the common sense of the word they get refined to cover more observations. Keplerā€™s laws of planetary motion are not disproved by general relativity they are contained within.

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