A little paradox I am having trouble with...

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


you have a point but we are not measureing time, we are taking a known unit we call 1 second of time, then we are dividing it and measuring it. we could just as easily replace 1 second with 1 inch and have the exact same answer, we could not do it with 1 inch of leather, because now we are not talking about an abstract unit of measurement like a second, or an inch, but we are talking about something that would be like the coast. Unless we made the condition that we were only considering one inch of the piece of leather in one dimension, there by removing any fluxuation and guarenteeing a straight line.

As far as time really existing, time only exist in our memories and our future prediction of events. Their really is only one time, the present. Everything else is some abstract value we understand to mean a length of time. a day is only a day because we all have an assigned an abstract value of how long that is. When the earth made one full rotation we know a day has passed, but at any time during that event we are still in the present. at the begining we are in the present thinking what will happen in 24 hours. At the end of the measurement we are in the present thinking about what happened when we started measuring 24 hours ago.

We created time to handle change in the state of the universe, we only notice the change of time becuse things are different then we remember and we have vague ideas of how long ago that is.

even clocks really are just things that move at a consistent rate so we can draw some conclusion on how much change should have occured in a constantly changing object if the constant rate of change of the clock is 1x units or 4x uints or 8x units. in each case the constant moving thing should have moved 1x 4x and 8x with this corrolation we think time exist

This is also why backwards time travel is impossible, because to get from today to yesterday you would have to move everything back to where it was 1 day ago, you would litterally have to rearange the entire universe since yesterday does not exist anymore, only today exist, the present.

on the graininess of mater, I guess we have to guess, is there ever really a point where we reach a single uniform point, who knows but I think it would be a stretch to actually say it is infinite, just beyond the ability to measure.

[edit on 19-9-2007 by Redge777]

Originally posted by LuDaCrIs
Ok, here goes. I am having some trouble understanding a certain concept. Please point out where I am wrong. I hope everyone can visualize this.

Between one second and the next is obviously one second of time. Now take that second and divide it in half. We have two halves of half a second. Now take one of those halves and divide it in two. We now have a quarter of a second. What I am getting at here is that I can divide one second into 'n' pieces; for that matter an infinite amount of segments. So if we assume that one second, and maybe this is where i am wrong, can be divided into an infinite amount of segments, how can "time" go through these infinite amount of segments in one second?

Any one follow me?

Hello Ludacris

I often wondered about this issue as well and I do follow your paradox .

What if " the time "is an compressed energy of some sort ?

I mean if the matter is compressed energy , could it not be possible that the time is an undefined , different , undiscovered type of compressed energy - better still maybe even uncompressed energy ?


Those infinite segments of any second exists because of us , the living beings , by focusing on them maybe everyone is attempting to define " the time " as we know it .

If the time is an undefined type of energy maybe an attempt to define it , is the paradox itself ?

OK, drop a ball to the floor. In math, it can never reach the floor. No matter how far it falls, it must still cover half the remaining distance.

The ball is at 1 Foot, and it falls half the distance to 6 inches. Then to half of that, which is 3 inches, etc. etc.

But no matter how far the ball falls, there is always half the distance from the last point left to be covered. And then half of that.

Any number can be devided by 2, so the ball can never reach the floor.

[edit on 19-9-2007 by NGC2736]

Time isnt what you think it is, its not comletely static I think, though it can be measured that way, but a measurement is merely a test sample of something I think we dont even fully understand, unless our military spending already figured it out? in that case i may be wrong. im guessing its like a liquidy stream moving like its stuck in motion.