How does time exist, seriously?

What is the present?

The moment that divides the past from the present.

How long is a moment?

0 seconds.

Update:

Daniel, your answer is essentially meaningless. My point was that the basic unit of time measurement is equal to 0 -- no matter how many times you stack it up or multiply it a 0 will always stay a 0.

Update 3:

Sherlock, you again make the same mistake as Daniel; you can't honestly think that I don't believe that time exists?

You, like the mathematicians who attempted to solve Zeno's paradoxes by using calculus to find the sum of an infinite set, are overlooking the far more interesting philosophical implications of the question in your uninspired mathematical approach.

Comments

  • How does time exist, seriously?

    ~~~ Everything exists!

    Existence, the complete Universe, Reality... is all inclusive!

    'Time' exists as 'thought'. Much has it's existence solely as 'thought'; all the 'who', 'what', 'where', 'when', 'why' of life, for starters,; beauty/ugly, me/you, tall/short/..., all subject/object distinctions are perceived by/as 'thought'!)

    Thought = ego! One and the same!

    What is the present?

    ~~~ Now! Ever Now!

    The 'present' is all there is! Even 'thoughts' of a 'past' or a 'future' are perceived in the Now!

    The moment that divides the past from the present.

    ~~~ No such thing! All moments of existence manifest synchronously, simultaneously!

    "The Laws of Nature are not rules controlling the metamorphosis of what is, into what will be. They are descriptions of patterns that exist, all at once, in the whole Tapestry... The four-dimensional space-time manifold displays all eternity at once." - Genius; the Life and Science of Richard Feynman

    How long is a moment?

    ~~~ How Long is a Chinaman! (sorry)

    One Planck moment is; 10^-43/sec; "almost" one billion trillion trillion trillionths of a second!

    One moment is of insufficient duration to have any temporal qualities! Hence, Reality/existence/the complete Universe is 'timeless', literally! All notions of 'time' are just that, notions, 'thought'!

    Bye the bye, one 'moment' is not a unit of 'time', it is a unit of 'perception'! It is one percept!

    "Consciousness is the ground of all being!" - Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics

    That which is perceived exists.

    That which exists is perceived.

    Not a thing exists that is not perceived.

    Not a thing is perceived that does not exist.

    There is no, nor can there be, any evidence to the contrary.

    Every Perspective/percept is unique, by definition/nature.

    The First Law of Soul Dynamics;

    "For every Perspective, there is an equal and opposite Perspective!" - Book of Fudd

    All inclusive!

    "The complete Universe (Truth/Reality/existence/Mind/God/Self... or any feature perceived herein) can be defined/described as the sum-total of all Perspectives!" - (op. cit.)

    All inclusive!

  • Sherlock put his finger on the problem with your analysis. Still, I can grant your measurement of zero and still show that your argument doesn't work.

    Since any unit of measure is completely arbitrary, we can assign zero to the height of the Chrysler building. Does this mean the Chrysler building doesn't exist because we assign an arbitrary measurement to it? Of course not. You can call a rabbit a shark, but it still can't breathe under water.

    In any event, there is still the question of whether or not there is a positive argument for the existence of time as something that is independent of human thought.

    Many people, including myself, think that entropy gives us a clue. Chemical reactions only happen in one direction. You can't undissolve a sugar cube back into the sugar cube. So, broadly speaking time is what explains change with directionality.

    Google, the arrow of time, for more.

  • Wrong, a basic unit of time measurement is NOT zero, because a basic unit of time measurement is not "a moment", unless you're being literary or something. Time is measured in... well, if you really want to get into it, we measure time by a "photon clock", which is two mirrors parallel, bouncing a singular photon back and forth between them, in a vaccuum (theoretically, but it works for reality). Light will always travel at a constant speed (the speed of light, duh) unless put through a material like glass or something. You might not accept this reasoning, but because C (speed of light) is constant, and speed is d/t (dist/time), and we can measure the distance, we can measure time.

    If that doesn't work for you, time can be measured as an elapse in teh decay of an atom, the atom was once whole, now there is half of it, half the matter has changed into a different substance, it has taken time to get from one physical aspect to another one.

    Basically, time is real, because if I go to teh park, and there was once a kid playing at the park, but he left as I was walking, that kid will no longer be there. If he isn't there NOW, but in his life he has played at that park, he must have played there in a another dimension... time. So everythign else is the same (width, hieght, depth of the park) except one aspect, which is the time variable, of when he was there at 3 oclock and I was there at 4.

    To put all this Einstein-ly simply: The only reason for time is so that not everything happens at once.

    p.s. The fallacy of your question is using "moment" as a significant measure, when its a qualitative thought.

  • Time is a measurement. You have to have something to compare it to, like how long it takes to go around the sun.

    Time is space, and space is time. The earth moves through space and that is how time is measured.

    If time is only an illusion, or an endless procession of zeroes. Then are we just counting zeroes? No, because the universe is constantly changing and change always adds up to something. We are simply floating through the galaxy. Our awareness of time will not make it speed up, slow down or stop.

  • In my opinion, time really doesn t exists, the only constant is eternity, and the only reality is the exact now! Just an sequence of infinite zeros (0). The real meaning of eternity is the most scientific concept, but when we think about it, we tend to think more about something spiritual or religious, but eternity is the most real thing of all! Time only exists in our minds, the fact that we were born and grow, etc, etc... make us think about time, but all that happen in the eternity, which have only one "time" = 0.

  • Time doesn't exist as such: we create it because we go through it.

    It is quit obvious if you think of it.

    It is also my firm belief that our obsession of wanting to explain eternity or looking for a beginning or an ending to it, is due to our own way of feeling and thinking and living as a human being: being conceived and born, growing up and conceive, getting older, getting old and dy.

    We call that 'time.'

    But Time doesn't care.

    Because time doesn't exists :)

  • That was deep man ever think how are you alive right now? what is making you do this? what controls you, what is death, why must you die or is it just a deep sleep, reincarnation? What is an emotion, what is words and how do you understand these "words"

  • time is perception which has been achieved through various units of change. "How does it exist?" Well, that's just the boundless essence of eternity doing stuff I guess....

  • time exists so that we can influence it

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