Does the Past Still Exist?Follow

As long as we would assume that the "Future" doesn't exist... can we conclude that the universe is constantly being "re-created"

although if you concider the energy that must be expended in that process, you could question the validity of it..

however, i could be that some things have a more semi-permenant existance, things such as galaxies and mountains... although not so much permenant as it is more slow to change.

AS one looks farther down the scale of things... change would appear seemingly more chaotic.. wehn you concider the scale of atoms and electrons.. change seems to occur so rapidly that it appears to be on in an infinate scale... But I think that it's all that we are capaple of noticing with the facilities available to us as self-aware humans.

The Present seems to be an infinatly small instant of reality laying between past and future.. The future would be the state of the universe that is created by the forces of the Present(and past) acting within their potentials... forces such as gravitational, and electrical, and nuclear... All of these forces in their own way dictate waht the future will be.

Big question is how "consciousness" would fit into that equation. Otherwise, waht would be the point in thinking about any of this?




AS I said, it may be that the past "exists" still in the form of radiation... as you seem to agree.. although ther are more forms of radiation than just Light.

But as much as I would agree that the past is irrelevant to our lives... the past is that from which we grew out of.. and the Present.. is waht dictate waht the Future will be..

linear thinking FTW!

You're all will have going to have been are pwned!

Yes, it wasn't a great analogy but you're technically wrong. The dinosaur is the ENTIRE thing. You can talk about the dinosaur's legs, feet, molecules, teeth, whatever, but those are PARTS of the dinosaur. The actual dinosaur no longer exists. Just whatever is left of it that's been decomposed and givin its energy and whatnot to everything around it.

Kelvy keeps saying things from the past leave their radiation as their "legacy" which is technically true. The future doesn't have radiation because it hasn't happened yet. So there's a fallacy in your attempt to thwart that argument Demea.

Just because something from the past's radiation still lingers (which I doubt, it's probably all been absorbed by something and re-emited by now) doesn't mean that physical thing or event still exists, just the by-product of that thing or event.

I have to stop typing now. The public computer I'm on has a really loud keyboard

We cannot be the past. The past is wholly dependent on the present. Without present there is no past. Ofcourse this could be a "chicken or egg situation" but it seems to me that the present writes the past, and the present becomes the future Time is also inaccurately measured, as we base our "time" on this rock as it circles the sun. In the grand view of things, is a very primitive, and inaccurate measure of time. So knowing the smallest measure if time is impossible to know. Time doesn't have a physicial or energenic force(as known as of yet).



Time just might be a conception only thought of by Humans(considering if there is other intelligent life in the universe). That is all we(humanity) know as the very fabric of "time". It is upon that measurement of "time" we base a lot of other measurements, speed, work, energy amounts, ect. One's awareness of time moving from past to future is purely subjective.


Present defines reality in a part. Height, width, depth, and time. Philosophers contrast reality with non-existance which would bring up a load of other questions. My opinion is that the "present" is reality. Past once exsisted in the "present" but doesn't exist anymore. The future is unborn and thus doesn't "exist" yet. Things(like dinosaur bones) that existed in the past, still exsist in the present. Due to age(passing of time), the bones are not the same as they were in the past. Myself 10 minutes ago, is different than myself in the present. No matter how small the difference, there is a difference. And that past difference doesn't exist anymore so thus is not real.


My head hurts now...

I have it on vinyl.

Fixed for common sense.

You still ignore the fundamentals. The radiation you call the past is, in fact, matter in the present, reflecting a previous state. There is no inherent "past" in it at all. Light being the most obvious example of radiation all around us, we must accept the fact that though the offset is ridiculously small, none of us has ever visually experienced the present, but that does not mean the past has ever reached our eyes. The light that reaches us is comprised of real-time, "present" photons reflecting the state of matter at the time of reflection.

EDIT: I see you up there, Niobia. Chime in, brain girl.

Edited, Wed Oct 12 01:39:38 2005 by MoebiusLord

I once saw two seconds into the future, but by the time I realized it, it had become the past already. I spent the "now" in a sneeze, what a wasted "now".

"You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.
And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?
And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not form love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?
And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?
But if in you thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,
And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing."
- The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran

there!... problem solved =)... now we'll never have to think of this ever again! =)...... .... ... right?

I will agree with this, because it can still be argued whether or not any sustained form of consciousness can exist regardless of the solid world.

but I actually do agree that in regards to physics, that there is no past or future, only the ever-changing present state of the universe.

Yeah, but look how far off he was with Andomeda Strain. We're gonna die from bird flu, not space flu. F'ucking quack.

There is a quantum uncertainty between time and energy: the product of the uncertainties is plank's constant. It means you can *borrow* energy from "the vacuum" (e.g. nothing) for small ammounts of time. Often this is confused with time travel. Creighton may be referring to this. The product of time and energy has to be phenominally small, order 10^(-33), so if you wanted, say, 1000 second (about 20 minuets) advanced warning of a horse winning a race, let's say, the energy would be, say from one photon, it's energy would be 10^(-36) joules and thus not sufficient to excite a single electron in an atom, not by a long shot. The passing fly would cause larger pertubations in energy (do the math). It would be undetectable. Further, this is an *uncertainty* relation. It means you cannot know, not that you can send back corrolated information.

More likely, he is referring to some kind of exotic general relativity solution. The math is rather heavy. The kind of math needed is called "differential geometry". After about a year of that, one can begin to understand general relativity, mathematically, so very few people are prepared to discuss GR.

I'm not one of them.