Time is not a dimension. There is no time

Great Debates
1

Lately, I’ve been trying to use the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics to my advantage by summoning Scyllas from alternate universes to help me out with various tasks, like taking out the garbage, or by singlehandedly outnumbering a vast mob of my enemies, things like that.

I’ve had little trouble communicating with alternate Scyllas across the spacetime barriers of the multiverse. However, summoning them into this universe has proven difficult. I am at the limit of my powers simply to transport myself into an alternate universe. Sadly, this sometimes has unforseen side effects, so I try to do it as little as possible. For example, yesterday I found that they forgot my onion rings at the BK drivethrough, so I transported myself into an alternate timeline where they did not forgot. After enjoying my onion rings I find that the SDMB has turned all liberal and Obama won the election!!! There’s no way to get back since there are an infinite number of timelines, and if I somehow get back to the one I left, than my eating the onion rings violates causality and the universe comes to an end, or something, so best just to deal with it.

Anyway, seeing as I cannot summon Scyllas from alternate universes and cause them to actualize in this one, I got to work on a different tack. Scyllas from the past and the future on the timeline that I inhabit should be a lot easier to contact and summon than ones from alternate timelines due to proximity.

Naturally, I began to study the techniques of the Temporal Fugue.

I cannot tell you how disapointed I was to discover that the techniques one uses to summon past and future selves via the temporal fugue are exactly identical to the ones you would use to summon selves from parallel universes!

Fuck!

The best I could was summon a hazy image of myself from a few seconds ago summoning a hazy image of myself, at which point I found myself becoming transparent. Of course, I had to stop right then or risk getting caught in a time loop.

Doublefuck!

Since there’s really no trouble communicating across multiverses I figured I might as well apply those skills to speaking with Scylla from the distant future to see how he resolved the problem. It turns out that he was all busy and shit and worried about causality, so he just gave me a stock tip and signed off. So, I next communicated with a future Scylla from an alternate timeline who was neither busy nor concerned with causality. He told me some pretty interesting things, which I’ve been thinking about. The only problem is the onion rings. They make me skeptical. When you start to talking to alternate selves from parallel universes you never know what other baggage might come with the territory. I can’t know for sure that the alternate Scylla who was neither busy nor worried about violating causality was being straight up.

As we all know, parallel selves have their own agendas and are prone to dishonesty.

So, I thought I would test out what he told me by sharing it with you, since we all know the internet is a reliable place (or at least it is in all the universes I’ve inhabited.)

So, without further ado, this is what alternate future Scylla said:

"The reason why the techniques for communicating with alternate universes are identical to those for communicating across time is that there is no such thing as time. physicists know this and cover up by saying we live in three spacial dimensions and one temporal dimension, but that’s just gobbledygook. Any Freshman knows that time is an altogether different bird from spacial dimensions. Calling time a dimension is like saying “chicken” is an element on the periodic table between iron and molybdenum.

There is no time, only alternate universes, each of which consists of a frozen instant of planck time. Just as you can communicate with selves from parallel universes you are also in communication with past and future selves (except you do this part naturally.) This allows you knowledge of the past, and the ability to speculate about the future, based on the probability matrix defined by the set of future selves.

For example, to decide whether or not it’s safe to go outside, you unknowingly and naturally communicate with all the future selves that have done so. 99.99999999999…% that have done so are fine. A vanishingly tiny fraction got hit by meteorites, eaten by tigers, enchanted by leprechauns or what have you. The former drown out the latter and you speculate based on this that it’s pretty safe to go outside.

The illusion of consciousness and of the flow of time is simply an artifact of the simultaneous existance of all these past and future selves who are interconnected. You are not moving through time so much as simply solving an ongoing probability problem.

At this point in time alternate future Scylla had to go and make a sandwich so that was all I got. He hasn’t been able to take any further calls, so I have to rely on you tell me whether this is an accurate view of things or not.

Do you agree that there is no time, or not?

*****really getting sick of election threads

2

I don’t know about that, but I do know there is no spoon.

3

I’ll let you know in a few minutes.

4

That’s a pretty long post to say nothing.

I think you should run for Congress.

5

Then you did not understand it, I’ve just refuted the existence of time.

6

I’m planning on meeting a future me in 3, 2, 1 … Hey Hamlet!

7

The problem with that is that the past you had to leave for the present you to arrive. I guess this is why when I travel to alternate timelines the Scylla who inhabits that one disapears.

8

Last time I communicated with an alternate universe erl–who happened to be in a hospital at the time–he was very, very upset that I had neither committed suicide nor won the lottery.

My favorite teacher of all time had a boatload of little sayings like “Ohms law still works,” and, “It’s like peeing your pants.”[sup]*[/sup] For physics, it was “Nothing happens in no time.” Your atomic view of past, present, and future, alternate or otherwise, is compelling, but what really links one moment to the next in your tale? Or, to avoid the question-begging there, how is Scylla[sub]a[/sub] connected to Scylla[sub]b[/sub]? The tale of solving a problem is a temporal question. If we reduce it to position–something happens here, but not there–I feel like repeating, “Nothing happens in no time.”

  • [sub][sup]A nice warm feeling, but it ain’t gonna last.[/sup][/sub]
9

You have not.

10

Too much positing for me to agree, exactly–my cross-dimensional communicator reads negative, but the clock still works. But there’s no logical inconsistency either… I like your theory better than Nine Circles… frozen in ice forever… brrrrr…

11

NM

12

Not true. While not physically existing at the exact same time, the future me had the same everything that the past me did. Think of Zeno’s paradoxes. The past me keeps getting closer and closer to the current me, and, at one point (where the length of time is infinitely small) they were at the same. At that point, we met, had an infinitely small amount of beer while watching an infinitely small amount of Monday Night Football, and the past me handed off all that is me to the future me. It was a bitchin’ good time. Next time, I’ll try and invite you.

13

Yes I did. I said “There is no time.” That is a refutation of the existence of time.

14

Seems to me that this view – of Planck-sized universe timeslices – breaks down when considering relativity, in particular the relativistic notion of simultaneity: if an observer in a given reference frame experiences two events as happening at the same time, another observer in a reference frame moving relative to the first one will generally experience the two sequentially, depending on his motion, which would mean that they inhabit the same timeslice for the first, yet two different timeslices for the second observer.

15

I’m fairly confident in saying that the fourth, non-spatial dimension in the universe exists and that it differs from the three spatial dimensions in various important ways (eg the unidirectional flow of entropy … perhaps that is the only way and everything else follows from that?)

That is of course an entirely different matter from the question of how our individual consciousnesses encounter that dimension - what the connection is and why it exists in the moment-to-moment fashion in which it appears to.

I read an interesting speculation in a book by Fred Hoyle once (October the 5th is Too Late I think it was called) that our consciousness does not actually progress from one instant to the next, linearly, but “jumps about” in a sort of quantum fashion, randomly forwards and backwards - in fact, I believe he might even have taken this speculation to its logical extreme, which is that there is only, at root one element of consciousness (or, if you prefer, conscious entity) in the universe, and the illusion of multiple consciousnesses is due to it alighting in different brains where it can, at that particular instant, access the brain patterns of that biological organism, and then move on - or forwards or back or across or wherever.

An interesting speculation, BUT, as far as I can see totally non-falsifyable so not a subject for scientific endeavour.

As for the speculation that future consciousnesses can influence present ones - well, I can only point out that if that were true even to a limited extent, James Randi would be out a million dollars already.

16

That’s not how rebuttals are made here. If you don’t think the OP has refuted the existence of time, post your argument for the reasons why rather than saying just claiming he didn’t.

17

They are connected in the sense that they are members of a set of possible values just like the possible values of X in a differential equation. One occuring in a given universe occupies that value excluding all others. Scylla[sub]a[/sub]'s existance in a given universe excludes Scylla [sub]b[/sub].

Not only does “nothing happen in no time” Nothing actually happens. Or, more accurately “all things have happened simultaneously across infinite cosmos’”

18

You can have planck-sized quantized time without violating relativity (in fact, I think you have to - a quantum generally encompasses a non-zero length of time and also a non-zero length of space doesn’t it?) - it just can’t be a timeslice across the whole universe. But I don’t think Scylla was suggesting that it was - his timeslice was limited to the local space around Scylla

19

Or that the universes in question diverge at that point.

20

Time is the experience of motion. If we could replace every molecule in the Universe to precisely the same position as it were ten minutes ago, it would be ten minutes ago. But you cannot “travel in time” because there is no practical means to such an end.

So, in that sense, the OP is correct, there is no separate discrete dimension that is “time”. But since all beings experience “time”, in one form or another, the distinction between is and not is blurs. Time does not exist, except that, so far as we can observe, it does.

Oh, and the cat is dead. Stone dead, dead as a doornail. Dead. Yes, I’m certain.