Everyone who talks about time travel might be putting the carriage before the horse.
That's a fair POV.I don't remember a single thing as a philosophy major in college. Early on I came to the conclusion that every single philosophical question was the result of the lack of defining the terms. Once you define the words you use, all questions are easily answered. Does time exist? Easy. Define time. Philosophical discourse needs the absence of/obfuscation of definition in order to thrive.
The best place for wasting time is the dock of the bay.Like wasting time on forums
For me philosophy does not have to be precise or clear or to provide good answers, it just needs to be interesting. Somewhat like music.
That's the whole idea I guess. Loooong way to go, though.The great thing is that science is steadily chewing away at philosophy, limiting its reach
42And at the end of that road there is another giant question. Say we are finally able to calculate/predict every particle, every thought, every piece of music..everything. What then?!?!
The great thing is that science is steadily chewing away at philosophy, limiting its reach
Correct. If you get close enough to the speed of light, you can travel to any point in the universe, in as little time as you want -- from your own frame of reference. The Andromeda Galaxy that you see your telescope is about 2.5 M light years away. If you travel there at 99.99999% something the speed of light, you can get there in 1 minute, or 1 second, or 1 millisecond, from your own frame of reference. But for people on Earth your trip will take something over 2.5 M years. Taken to its logical conclusion, this implies that in the photon's own frame of reference, traveling at the speed of light, every point in the universe is 0 seconds away, which means it exists simultaneously at every point in the universe. Of course, Einstein showed that simultaneity itself is also relative to one's frame of reference.No, your sensation of elapsed time would be reduced. Cross the Galaxy in a few minutes, though "time" back on Earth would progress 100,000 years or so.
But that introduces the problem of how the “branching” happens. Naively, does everything get duplicated instantaneously? If so, where does the matter come from?One way to resolve the various contradictions of time travel is to imagine multiple parallel universes. If you travel in time, at the moment you arrive you branch off another "thread" or parallel universe. So if you go forward, you can create a new future but it doesn't change the future of the past from which you came. And if you go backward, you can make the future unfold differently, but it won't affect the future you came from.
You seem to be confusing science with the uses scientific discoveries are put to
science is a method, and is self-correcting: if there is censorship or chicanery other experiments will show it up
your whole post, esp. conflating vivisection into some weird mix inside your head, tells me you know nothing about science
Good question. I don't have the answer. The parallel universes concept is also used to explain quantum mechanics. Some people think every possible outcome actually does happen, but we only observe the one outcome that happens in our universe. Alternately, that the observation we make which tells us what the outcome was (measuring it), actually determines which universe we are in.But that introduces the problem of how the “branching” happens. Naively, does everything get duplicated instantaneously? If so, where does the matter come from?
Luckily for me, I did not have to study any of that formal "philosophy in practice". I can see how that could become a seriously annoying bore. Particularly those discussions/debates in terms of who's right/wrong, winner/loser, etc. IMO, it's all just a philosophical POV, it may give you a different perspective on things, might put some OOTB thoughts in your head, etc. It doesn't have to be 'right', just to expand your brain/thinking/universe in some way.Philosophy as you describe it (somewhat like music and lacking precise definitions) is a wonderful thing. As you describe it, philosophy is the extension of our natural curiosity about things which we cannot readily test. But in my experience, philosophy in practice is very different. Philosophy as subject of study is more like playing chess, where one is a winner or a loser, sort of like many of the somewhat heated "discussions" here, despite the best efforts of the hosts and others. And like many heated "discussions" here, the winner and loser is ultimately decided based on political-type affiliations. In the world of philosophy, believe it or not, there is so much pettiness, viciousness and celebrity. It's very much a game, as I said like chess, and dependent on a lack of definition of the terms used in order that the game can be played.
The Simulation-Universe is a nice theory. Get access to that "computer" and time travel and all superpowers are yours. Might be a bitter red-pill thoughI've been thinking about time and some of the readings of time. I'm sure some of you have heard that our reality as it is is one computer simulation . Suppose that it is, then time is just many rendering of reality at many instances and we are moving from one rendering to another in a proper manner. What actions and choices I and all others take will render the next instance in this "computer". Our memories or "soul" move from one rendering to the other in a linear manner from past to present to future. Let's assume that this computer/simulation does not erase past renderings and assume that we can move our memories from present rendering to the past, then essentially we "travelled" to the past and our actions may change the rendering thereon depending whether we did things differently before. This change starting from the "past" will be instantaneous in the computer world and when we move our memories to the present, the changes will already have occurred. Think of the rendering as avatars of ourselves in infinite renderings of instance and when we move our memories from present rendering to past rendering we are basically inhabiting our past avatars with memory from the present and living it in the past. Now comes the question if we want to go far back in past rendering where we do not exist, then we have to "ask" the computer to insert our avatars into that past, then we can essentially move to a time before we were born. That is traveling to the past but to the future, perhaps rendering of the future is already done in the computer based on the actions we take presently. Anyway this is my take on time. Thanks for taking time to read it....
You do realize that, by it's very nature, any temporal incursion would have MASSIVE side effects that could not be foreseen/simulated yes?Just think for only one second; being able to master time travel we could fix our past mistakes. We could get rid of this pandemic just for a start.
Am I unrealistic, or are we simply not advanced enough, or both?
Not really. It doesn't explain how the "real" universe hosting the simulation came to be. Perhaps it's simulations all the way down.The Simulation-Universe is a nice theory.
You do realize that, by it's very nature, any temporal incursion would have MASSIVE side effects that could not be foreseen/simulated yes?
To use such technology for something as much of a non-issue (on a human species level, mind you) as this tiny virus would do more harm than good.
There is a reason why everyone in sci-fi usually regards temporal incursions as a bad idea and time travel is strictly limited to observation and research.