perhaps it’s simply a ridiculous question i’m about to ask, but even so, i’d like to know. it seems as though just about everything has it’s opposite… and if that’s the case, what would be the opposite of time? and if you’re thinking of the usual ‘no time’ response, some sort of explanation (crazy as it might have to be) would be very much appreciated.
“human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust; we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” - albert einstein
Time = money, therefore the opposite of time = debt.
That’s the best I can do at this hour.
That was, of course, the smart ass answer. There are many things that just don’t have opposites- time, gravity & Senator Jesse Helms to name only a few.
Try not to lose any sleep over it.
hey! what about in the last episode of ST:TNG?
was there not the concept of ‘anti-time’?
and no, i don’t want to hear that it’s only a tv show. concepts are concepts.
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
No time?
If you define time as discrete events occurring serially (and there are, of course, other definitions of time), then going backwards in time is simply negative time, so that is not time’s “opposite.”
However, by that definition, the opposite of time could be eternity (if eternity is defined as all events and all objects occupying a singular reality with no discrete, serial events).
I don’t think it’s a ridiculous question; I just think you’re going to get a headache.
Tom~
sure it sounds like a viable answer… but what is that, ‘no time’?
thanks for the warning, i’ll go grab some tylenol.
“No Time” would be where everything happened all at once.
-David
This is another Marilyn answered question. As she pointed out most tangible things DON’T have an opposite.
you mean ‘once’ like all at the same time?
Well…ok, ya got me there.
I don’t know for sure, of course, but if you were experiencing “no time” (assuming that such a thing exists,) AND you still had a perception of time, I guess that every single thing that would ever happen would all happen, but you’d have the perception of it all happening, and continuing to happen for eternity. How’s THAT for a run-on?
If you had no perception of time while in such a state, I guess that you would see everything happening in an ordered sequence, similar to how you perceive it now. Yes, I know that my guess seems to contradict itself.
Most probably, however, there is no opposite to “time”, just like there is no opposite to “mathmatics”.
Maybe though, someone would care to explain World Lines in layman’s terms, so we can debate this topic to hell and back in whole new ways.
David
Stasis
Doesn’t Einstein’s Relativity Theory allow for the concept of ‘anti-time’ ?
Granted, I don’t know what that would mean, but it’s my WAG, and I’m sticking to it.
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mega, until you can define ‘time’ there can be no answer.
So, define it, oh wise person.
Newsweek
very clever, kawliga
“human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust; we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” - albert einstein
See Stephen Jay Gould’s discussion (in last month’s Natural History) of Marcel Duchamp’s 4-D paintings. The gist was that if you look at spacetime from a 4-D vantage point, there is no time; you can see simultaneously things that you would have to see sequentially in 3-D space (e.g., the entire circumference of a building big enough to walk around).
What I’m trying to spit out here is that time is a construction of our 3-D experience. No time is what a four dimensional being would experience.
You first want a definition of time? I’d say it’s what the posters here have too much of on their hands.
Then ‘reverse time’ is when someone here posts the answer before the question is posted.
‘Reciprocal time’ is rate, as in typing 90 words/second without saying anything.
And of course, ‘imaginary time’ is that transpired orthogonally to the task at hand.
‘Transcendental time’ remains a little beyond me.
But the opposite of time itself? If ‘everything all at once’ is, then where does ‘nothing ever at all’ come in? The complement of the concept of time would be all concepts other than time, would it not?
I think anyone preoccupied with this would discover his answer by way of an untimely expiration.
Ray (clueless and doesn’t know the time of day. . .and fugit from the scene faster than tempus could ever)
before anyone attempts to define time, why doesn’t someone start by defining ‘opposite’?
or we could just ask a Tralmafadorian.
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox