Rethinking Time: Is Our Perception of Time Just an Illusion?

[ebon]

Relativity suggests that all referential frames of time are equally valid, right? This makes time seem so...redundant to me. Is it possible that time is really transposed. That is all events are occurring simultaneously. Of course this does not explain why we perceive time in a linear fashion. Perhaps our brains are incapable of crunching that much data and evolved to perceive only one timeline?

To clarify I have been thinking of time like multi-threading in a cpu. Multiple time lines are occurring in parallel like this:

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but our brains can only process one of those threads and we trudge along blissfully unaware of all that is going on.

I mentioned this idea to someone but he told me that relativity disproves my theory in a 4-d universe and that parallel time requires 7-8 dimensions(he also claimed that branching time requires 5) but he never explained why/how this was true.

Have my concerns about time already been addressed?

 

[HallsofIvy]

I have no idea what you mean by that!

 

[ZapperZ]

Relativity suggests that all referential frames of time are equally valid, right? This makes time seem so...redundant to me. Is it possible that time is really transposed. That is all events are occurring simultaneously. Of course this does not explain why we perceive time in a linear fashion. Perhaps our brains are incapable of crunching that much data and evolved to perceive only one timeline?

To clarify I have been thinking of time like multi-threading in a cpu. Multiple time lines are occurring in parallel like this:

-----------------
-----------------
-----------------

but our brains can only process one of those threads and we trudge along blissfully unaware of all that is going on.

I mentioned this idea to someone but he told me that relativity disproves my theory in a 4-d universe and that parallel time requires 7-8 dimensions(he also claimed that branching time requires 5) but he never explained why/how this was true.

Have my concerns about time already been addressed?

How come you don't have the same "worry" about space? It "suffers" from similar frame-dependent effects as well? Why are people only picking on time?

Zz.

 

[Naty1]

ebon: posted:

That is all events are occurring simultaneously.

That makes no sense to me as stated since relativity specifically invokes non simultaneity and we also know things do change over time...time is, in effect, a measure of change...so things (events) do not occur simultaneously...in other words, science currently understands time very differently than you have stated.

You may have a worthwhile idea, but as stated, few here will likely be able to discern what you mean.

Einstein and related work discovered two things that are independent of one's motion: the speed of light and the space-time interval. Space is not fixed; time is not fixed; each varies according to observer motion. That means events themselves are observed differently by different observers in motion: it's call relativity of simultaneity.
This means neither space (distance) nor time are constant; it is only the four dimensional space time interval that has an absolute reality independent of observer motion.

Once you understand facts supporting your idea and those opposing it, you are free to make an objective evaluation: that's how Einstein started when he doubted the formulation of Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism...he turned out to be right!