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does the past still exist ?
- Thread starter moon man
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Associate
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- 3 Oct 2014
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Exactly, time is relative depending on where you are in the universe.
Although I think I'm stating the obvious there
We have clocks accurate enough without needing to go that fast. Without taking relativity into account, satellites and GPS etc wouldn't work
In theory, time always exists. When you were born, the sights and sounds of that event go off into space and theoretically they say if you shot off into space faster than light and went past the image of your birth and then turned around to look back through a massive telescope you could see yourself being born.
A bit like if the sun snuffed it, we wouldn't witness the event until 10 minutes after as that is how long it would take for the remaining light to get to earth.
All a load of bull? Yeah probably
A bit like if the sun snuffed it, we wouldn't witness the event until 10 minutes after as that is how long it would take for the remaining light to get to earth.
All a load of bull? Yeah probably
The book is much better than the film (as it usually is in most cases!). Read it as a teenager... almost tempted to read it again, but it's a hefty read.
Like all truly deep questions, it can be answered with another question: does something exist once you are no longer aware of it?
If something moves from left to right by a metre, is it still the same object? What about if it moves from up to down by the same amount? What if it moves forwards in time by half an hour?
You're thinking of the past as a place and asking if something still exists there? What if I thought of the town I was born in and left when young, and asked you if I still exist there?
Up / Down.
Left / Right
Present / Past
Why do you think of one of these as different to the others? If you found you could only move right and could never go back left, would you then think of Left and Right in the same way you do Past and Present?
The past is another country. It is still there. But you are not. You are visiting Today and marching quickly towards Tomorrow, always heading East, never able to turn around and go West.
Time is another direction, it's the orientation on your compass that points perpendicular from the dial.
Maybe you will understand Time one day. But you wont be standing now when you do.
This is wrong.
All of the above depends on an assumption that you haven't questioned - you think you can't be in two places at once. That's rather a high ambition when you're not anywhere at all! Sub-atomic particles manage to be in two places at once - far more in fact. If a particle can be in two places at once spatially, why not temporarily? Tachyon's travel backwards in time and classical physics works as well forwards as it does backwards.
So the above, whilst sounding clever and "deep" isn't right. Mathematically you can be in two places at once - ask any old electron, it'll tell you it's easy. And if you can be in two places simultaneously, then yes, the past can exist distinct from the present.
Wait, are you arguing with your own past self to prove that you still exist in the past and the present?
I already addressed this when I began my post but it seems you didn't understand it. I asked the question "can something exist if you're not aware of it". Does a tree make a sound if it falls in a forest and there's nobody there to hear it? It comes down to this fundamental question: you argue that a particle can be in two places at once. But it cannot be observed in two places at once. I.e. you're attributing "existence" to something that exists only as a probability. Once it is resolved by observation, it has a single location. The past is inherently by its nature unobserved and cannot have existence attributed to it in the way that a particle superposition does when it is resolved. Ergo, it can only be understood as a direction, a set of co-ordinates. Not as something that has an existence. Your argument is, ultimately (pun intended) self-defeating.
Neither of them exist. On further consideration, I don't think either is right and as there is a clear difference of belief between them and what I believe, I'm pretty confident they're no more me than the meal I ate yesterday is still a salad. If we can't even define something the same way from hour to hour then really time should just be interpreted as a recognition of change and neither a place nor a direction as they both argue.
Caporegime
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There is no spoon.
Why shouldn't I? Our pasts argue with us all the time. Those past selves are always following me around with their guilt and their angst and their embarrassments. They're only mental models of myself that are out of date. I can tell them to **** off if I want.
Don't make me get present/future/past Jesus to go back and show you the hairy side of the p(s)alm.
So let me get this straight, you're arguing with people you think no longer exist and you're trying to make an argument that the past is effectively an illusion? You're not going to resolve this until you set a specific and limited definition of exist - which you can't do without fixing a specific limited definition of time. Ergo, you're in a loop and successive iterations of yourself - whether present or past, are just as valid in terms of existence as you are if you can't actually define your terms.
Also, Daddy doesn't love us and you cried today at school - quick message from 1997.
One of the best philosophical introductions to the issues is here. Its very terse but an excellent introduction to the arguments.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/
That does depend on the interpretation though. Right now, both yes and no seem to be equally valid answers.
So, to answer you OP. We don't know.