Time and Space

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Everything is relative. Nothing is certain.

It takes 16 minutes to get to school. Sometimes 16 minutes is very quick, sometimes very slow. It can't both be slow and quick so my perception must be innacurate. How can you say how long something takes is sometimes it is quick and sometimes it is short and it is still 16 minutes?

How can I know that other people see 16 minutes as I see 16 minutes?
How can I be sure that other people are conscious at all? They might be objects or just things.
I need to do the right thing. How do I know what is right? And one thing that is right for me might not be right for anybody else, or if it is right for me is it automatically right for everybody else too? Everything is so confusing.

All I know is I am me. And I am here. And I am always me despite what happens to the world around me.

Mathematics is certain!



Well, that's a matter of psychology depending on a number of neurological variables.



Because you know that you're conscious, and you know that our brains our identical [from the point of view of humanity as a species, obviously we're unique].



That's a big issue. Morality is relative to an extent. There are some morals that we take as almost axiomatic truths, that are logical to obey (it does not make much sense to murder our brethren), but others are more ambiguous (especially religious morality, like abortion, premarital sex, etc.).

Only if the four assumptions it is based on are correct.


why not?

Space, quantity, structure, and change? What do you mean?



Because they are, or could be, assets to help us in our survival (obviously self-defense is an exception). What sense does wanton slaughter make to you?

Last edited by Phagocyte on 24 Feb 2008, 3:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I don't believe in the existence of time. I can't really make an argument as to why I think time doesn't exist as I don't have an extensive knowledge of theoretical physics, but the whole notion just seems like a huge logical fallacy. Things change, age, and deteriorate, but that's not sufficient in my opinion to justify time's existence.

I think that time exists because it can be dilated it's actions can be [mathematically] described (like the Lorentz Transformation for example) based on variables.

No more sense than wanton kindness. We are atoms. If atoms exist. Why do I have to say good-morning? Does the universe ascribe a judgement to wanton slaughter?


Parallel line never hit. But they do on a curve. Logic is fallable because it is bound to human perception and not reality. Even maths.

Kindness makes human interactions easier and allows us to function in our everyday lives in a more efficient manner. For example, I walk into class. I can either punch the professor, and get kicked out of school and my dreams trampled, or I can be polite and kind, which will make him/her more likely to aid me and help me succeed in my pursuits. How is that not logical?



Just because you have not adapted your mode to thinking doesn't mean that mathematics is bound to human perception. In euclidean space, they never hit, but on a sphere, which is a manifold and bound to it's own rules (which are still independent from our perception) they do.

Phagocyte, what subject are you studying?

I need to go to bed now.

I study biology at Rutgers University. I am thinking about pure mathematics, but my math is a little behind, so I'm taking three math classes this summer (up to and including calculus II if all goes well), so by Fall I'll be able to see what I really want to do.

What about you?

I would think that taking 3 math classes would cause time to slow down...or at least feel that way...

Yeah really. The way I see it, it will give me something productive to do during the summer and bump me up to a sophomore standing as a math major if that was a path I was interested in.

Plus, it's an excuse for not having a job.

I would be in the first year of 6th form if I was in Britain. I want to study theoretical pysics.

Uh-Huh


So are you Uncertain about the FACT that one day you will die??.............

The flow of time is an illusion, all moments exist as states of a unified spacetime.

Ontological Eternalism

Parallel lines never meet only in Euclidean and hyperbolic spaces, they do meet in spherical spaces. Our universe is very slightly hyperbolic in geometry