🧵 Untitled Thread
Anonymous at Sun, 3 Nov 2024 23:46:03 UTC No. 16461555
Could time flow unevenly without us ever being able to detect it? This isn't about our subjective experience of time passing quickly or slowly, but rather about the actual flow of physical time itself. For instance, could what we measure as a 24-hour day actually be taking 30 "true" hours to unfold in some absolute sense? Consider a video game analogy. Characters within a game experience their world through the game's internal clock. Whether the game runs at normal speed, half speed, or double speed, everything within the game world remains proportional and consistent. The characters walk, interact, and measure time using only elements within their world, and all these elements scale uniformly with the game's running speed. They have no way to detect if their entire reality is running faster or slower relative to our external time. Our universe might operate similarly. All our measurements of time are based on comparing regular physical processes - atomic vibrations, planetary orbits, decay rates, or any other consistent physical phenomenon. If time's flow varied but affected all physical processes uniformly, we would have no way to detect this variation since all our "clocks" (in the broadest sense) would be affected identically. The laws of physics would remain consistent, just as game physics remain consistent regardless of play speed. Just as a game can be paused, slowed, or sped up by the player, our universe's time could theoretically be "running" at different rates relative to some external framework. But just like game characters can't detect if their game is running on a fast or slow computer, we can't detect if our universe's time flow is "fast" or "slow". The universe's time would be like the framerate or tick rate of reality itself - the actual rate at which the "cosmic processor" is processing our reality. The game has its internal clock measuring time in frames/ticks. The computer has its actual processing speed running those frames.
Anonymous at Sun, 3 Nov 2024 23:49:32 UTC No. 16461563
Between these, there's the REAL time passing in the physical world. Similarly, we could imagine: Our measured time (what we call 24 hours), the universe's "processing rate" (how fast reality is actually "running"), and some hypothetical "true time" outside our universe. So when we say "could this day last 30 hours while measuring as 24", it's like asking: "Could the computer be processing 30 hours worth of reality while the game reports 24 hours have passed?" Unlike with video games where we can step outside and look at a real-world clock, we can't "step outside" the universe to check its actual processing speed. We're like NPCs who can only perceive and measure the game's internal time, with no access to the computer's clock or the real world's time. Just as a game might run faster on a more powerful computer, could different regions of space-time have different "processing speeds" that we can't detect because we're part of the system? Just as Einstein showed that time's flow is relative to motion and gravity (which we can measure because these effects don't affect everything uniformly), there could be other factors affecting time's flow that we can't detect precisely because they affect everything uniformly. The challenge lies in the fundamental nature of measurement itself. Time, unlike space, can't be "stepped outside of" to measure it against some external reference. We're always within it, measuring it with tools that are themselves subject to whatever properties time has. It's like trying to measure a ruler with itself - there's no external standard to compare against. So what makes one timeframe more "real" than another? If our "24-hour" day actually takes what would be 30 hours in some hypothetical external timeframe, what makes that external timeframe more valid than our measured time?
Anonymous at Sun, 3 Nov 2024 23:50:33 UTC No. 16461568
Since all our physics, all our causality, and all our experiences remain consistent within our reference frame, perhaps the concept of "true" time is meaningless, and only relative measurements have any significance. If our universe were a simulation, its operators could theoretically run it at different speeds while everything within the simulation would perceive time as normal - just like a video game running on different hardware. The simulation could be paused, accelerated, or decelerated relative to some external time, but we within it would have no way to detect this. It's an unfalsifiable hypothesis - by definition, we cannot detect or measure such uniform temporal variation using any physical means within our universe. It serves as a reminder of the limits of empirical knowledge and the mysteries that might lie beyond our ability to measure or observe. Some aspects of reality might be fundamentally unknowable to us, not because we lack the right tools or understanding, but because we are inextricably part of the system we're trying to measure. Like the video game characters bound by their digital physics, we are bound by the very physical laws we seek to understand, leaving some questions perpetually beyond our reach.
Anonymous at Mon, 4 Nov 2024 00:10:45 UTC No. 16461576
>>16461555
Can you make a video and link it? I unironically have adhd i cant read that much stuff.
Anonymous at Mon, 4 Nov 2024 02:49:15 UTC No. 16461703
>>16461555
>flow of physical time itself
ooof
Anonymous at Mon, 4 Nov 2024 03:22:01 UTC No. 16461731
>>16461555
yeah it does all the time lol
Anonymous at Mon, 4 Nov 2024 04:13:57 UTC No. 16461782
>>16461568
Game physics often has glitches where for example certain jump is possible only if the frame rate is low. But in your case the integrator step size remains the same?
Anonymous at Mon, 4 Nov 2024 19:04:12 UTC No. 16462509
>>16461555
I did not understand this when it was still called Timecube and I don't understand it now.
Anonymous at Mon, 4 Nov 2024 19:17:27 UTC No. 16462529
>>16461576
You are literal atom perfect description of what's wrong in this world.
Anonymous at Mon, 4 Nov 2024 19:22:26 UTC No. 16462535
>>16461555
>can this unprovable, inconsequential and therefore meaningless thing happen?
yes. i think the common example is a teapot floating in space or something like that, yours is even more meaningless
Anonymous at Mon, 4 Nov 2024 19:31:34 UTC No. 16462552
>>16462535
hey that teapot floating out there could be what's holding the universe together
Anonymous at Mon, 4 Nov 2024 19:45:30 UTC No. 16462574
>>16461555
>Could time flow unevenly
No, because time isn't a thing and it doesn't flow, it's an abstract derived from comparing events
Anonymous at Mon, 4 Nov 2024 20:04:26 UTC No. 16462610
>>16461555
Yes.
My understanding is limited but isn't this something that's already the established science? That time is dependent on gravity and since local gravity is going to fluctuate depending on the position of any object in relation to others then so would time.
So even now on Earth time undergoes slight fluctuations according to the background noise of the rest of he universe's movements.
Anonymous at Mon, 4 Nov 2024 20:06:44 UTC No. 16462614
>>16462610
>time is dependent on gravity
Also speed.
And since you're never going to be able to go absolutely the exact same speed from one moment ot the next then your local perception of time will fluctuate.
Anonymous at Wed, 6 Nov 2024 06:20:09 UTC No. 16464536
>>16461555
Time is what a clock measures and also relativity Einstein etc.
It doesnt flow.
Anonymous at Wed, 6 Nov 2024 10:01:27 UTC No. 16464776
>>16464536
>Time is what a clock measures
So, the flow of moments.
Anonymous at Wed, 6 Nov 2024 10:10:23 UTC No. 16464782
>>16464776
motion isnt a flow
Anonymous at Wed, 6 Nov 2024 10:12:26 UTC No. 16464784
>>16464782
Clocks motion flows in a circle from moment to moment to measure time.
Anonymous at Wed, 6 Nov 2024 10:25:29 UTC No. 16464797
>>16461555
Uh what's time? What's time made off?
Anonymous at Wed, 6 Nov 2024 10:39:53 UTC No. 16464800
>>16464797
chronatoms
Anonymous at Wed, 6 Nov 2024 13:11:55 UTC No. 16464880
>>16461782
It's pretty common for modern physics engines to have a fixed timestep which runs separately from the game's framerate.
Anonymous at Fri, 8 Nov 2024 02:00:45 UTC No. 16466683
>>16462574
Events separated by what?
Anonymous at Fri, 8 Nov 2024 03:02:04 UTC No. 16466712
>>16461555
There's nothing stopping you from picking a retarded clock to measure against -- there is no absolute reference clock.
Anonymous at Fri, 8 Nov 2024 04:04:24 UTC No. 16466775
>>16461555
Time flows very unevenly and this can be directly observed. It passes near-instantly while I'm asleep, for example.
Anonymous at Fri, 8 Nov 2024 06:06:15 UTC No. 16466848
>>16461555
In pic related (spoilers ahead), people have their brains uploaded into a computer running a simulated world. Sometimes the resources for that computer are strained by too many people having been uploaded into it which results in a single second in the computer taking days or longer in the physical world. The minds in the simulated world are completely unaware of this change in speed.
Anonymous at Fri, 8 Nov 2024 06:51:37 UTC No. 16466872
>>16461568
I think there is no real measurement ever. It is always relative. In engineering anyhow. I see thus time being something we literally invented to have a concept of, which requires it to be measured with our own conceptual apparatus. This is however not true of some other physical quantities such as mass or speed, such things are bound to the game engine so to say. But as OP said, you could manipulate the game clock. So a real Nobel winner (and admittedly a real money maker/weapon) would be if someone found a "non-relativistic" timer or clock or a reference of sorts.
Anonymous at Fri, 8 Nov 2024 15:20:42 UTC No. 16467226
>>16466683
By space and energy
Anonymous at Fri, 8 Nov 2024 18:29:56 UTC No. 16467407
>>16461555
Physical time doesn't exist. Time is our perception of events past and future. Nothing more.
Stop guessing start learning at Fri, 8 Nov 2024 18:43:54 UTC No. 16467424
>>16461555
How many times do we have to go over this?
Time isn't real.
There is no flow
There is no direction.
Time is a measurement.
Anonymous at Fri, 8 Nov 2024 18:49:51 UTC No. 16467427
>>16466683
>Events separated by what?
By the measured difference between the state of the system at the moment of measurement