Before I get to my topic today, I would like to refer back to my previous post. It has been a week since that post, and I continue to receive unsolicited comments from various sources that are clearly not related to the posts they are purported to be about. Despite my continuing to delete those comments upon moderation, more comments keep being sent. Thus, as per my last argument, I have proved that those sources are not human. And thus, if you are such a source, and if you insist you are human, I challenge you to prove it.
That said, it is about time I return to my discussion on time. Recently, I attended a small discussion group regarding the possibility of time travel. As often happens in these discussions, no firm answers were suggested. It was simply a discussion of the puzzles associated with a limited set of particular views of time travel. For example, the infamous Grandfather Paradox. For those not familiar, this is the problem of whether it would be possible for an individual to go back in time to kill their own grandfather, specifically before their grandfather is able to set events into motion that would result in the killers origination. That is, if I kill my grandfather before he procreates to generate my father, then how could I have been born in order to go back to kill my grandfather? It is a very puzzling puzzle, and as no one has (to my knowledge) performed any sort of time travel, we do not know how this sort of puzzle could be resolved. In fact, some believe that the existence of such a paradox precludes time travel altogether. Some others believe that this paradox is not an issue because if one tried to kill their grandfather in this way, the universe would simply prevent the event’s occurrence through “ordinary, everyday reasons.”
It is my firm belief that all this discussion is poorly grounded. Before we could possibly consider time travel (in reality), we would first need to know what time itself is, in order for us to somehow traverse it. It is all fine and good to discuss a fictional fantasy, calling it a hypothetical situation, with a goal to practice logical structures and follow them through to seemingly reasonable conclusions. However, an argument with false premises tells us nothing about its conclusion. If I suggest that “Socrates is a man,” and that “all men are mortal,” I cannot suggest that “Socrates is mortal,” if I cannot first establish that “all men are mortal.” It seems reasonable to conclude such an argument at the present time, as many men I have known have demonstrated their mortality by dying. But there are also many men in existence presently who are still very much alive. How can I be certain that they will all one day die? With technology and medicine as they are presently, it has even been suggested that there may be men in our present generation who will be able to escape that finality. Only time will tell.
This leads me directly to the heart of the issue, as I see it: time. As I had begun discussing near when I had started this blog, time may be merely a literary and descriptive thing, helping us to delineate in what order events took place. In many fantastical works of fiction, time may also be used as a plot device in order to bring about something in the story being told. But none of this tells us anything about what time might be in itself. To traverse time, we first need to have something to traverse.
During my last discussion of time, I had established that the use of time to describe sequences of events is itself incredibly problematic. For you (assuming you are a human living on Earth), time has a foundation based upon events related back to the rotation of the Earth about its axis. In fact, time for you will be more accurately based upon the counting of various events you consider to be “sufficiently regular and reliable.” You likely either will be referring to a count of how many times the sun has been at the highest point in the sky, or you will be referring to a count of how many oscillations of a quartz crystal have occurred within your favorite timepiece. Actually, in our modern age of computers, you will probably be trusting the time presented on your favorite technical gadget, be it your personal computer or smart phone, both of which will be synchronizing their time information through a chain of servers that ultimately refer to an atomic clock located somewhere secure, and that atomic clock will be counting the change in energy levels of an electron in some subatomic particle. In the end, some sort of recurring event that is considered to be reliable and regular is being counted, and the result of that count is translated into the everyday description of time we are using. And because you and I are both living on Earth, and because on some level you and I have agreed to this structure, you and I will be able to agree as to what time it is.
This is all well and good, but it says nothing about time itself. It doesn’t even say anything about conscious beings who have not agreed to our structure of counting events. Try talking to a young child about time, and see what sort of responses you get. A young child that has not yet learned about this agreed upon standard of counting will not understand in the least about the passage of time. Tell that child that you will give them their meal in 10 minutes, and they will come back to you in much less time. Or if they ask how much time will it take for Christmas to arrive, your response of 2 weeks will be meaningless to them. They must learn this agreed upon standard. They must be taught how to read the clocks and other signs in order to understand that we are just counting events. How many sleeps until Christmas day arrives?
Once again, as with my previous post about time, we have still not learned anything about time in itself. I may even have alluded to answering this question. However, in truth, I doubt I will be able to. You see, I do not believe it exists at all. There is no time in itself to speak of. For me, there is only now. All that is in the past is simply memories. All that is in the future is simply possibilities. I do not exist in the future nor in the past. I exist in the now. Everything that occurs is occurring now.
If the past is just my memories, then they are subject to change with the reliability of my mind in remembering. How reliable is my mind? Science suggests it is not very reliable at all. I find this is likely to be true. I cannot tell you what I ate a week ago. I could look up evidence, or ask my partner, or some other reference, but then I am relying upon testimony of an alternative source. They can tell me that I ate pizza a week ago, and I might agree that I did indeed eat pizza, but then I am simply deferring to their judgement or memory of the event. I do not remember the event myself, which is why I have had to ask. I trust my partner, and so I believe that is the correct information. And I will continue to live my life based on that information. However, what I ate a week ago is actually shrouded in mystery. In fact, it is entirely possible that I did not eat anything a week ago. Perhaps I did not even exist a week ago.
Similarly with the future. The future is simply possibilities and hopes. I can try to predict what I think may occur in the future, but until the future becomes the now, I will never know. Tomorrow never arrives, it is simply transformed into today. Sometimes I may be correct about events that occur, but other times I am incorrect. It is a gamble every time. And as is suggested in the gamblers fallacy, there is no guarantee of an outcome. Even a minuscule possibility can occur, just as something considered almost certain may not occur. People do win the lottery jackpot occasionally. I can, and will, continue to live my life following those probabilities, but that doesn’t make them guarantees. The sun has risen in the sky for every day I have existed, so I expect it will continue to rise each day in the future. It will be a very dark day when that expectation is dashed.
I continue to be talking in circles; dancing around the question I have asked. None of these things are discussing time in itself. It seems like there is nothing to talk about. Or perhaps it is simply beyond my capability to speak of it. Perhaps I do not have the words to describe it. But I admit that I do not know what I would be describing either. It is not simply a case of having an idea in my mind and lacking the language to describe that idea. In this case, I don’t even have an idea to begin with. Is there something out there that I can consider that anchors all the events that occur? Where occurrences are imprinted like footsteps in dirt. The best I can do is consider time (if it even exists) as a sort of ground. Like a thread that I walk along. More like a thread that I slide along, regardless of my desires. Because I am always sliding, and I am unable to stop. The passage of time continues unimpeded for me, though I cannot say whether it speeds up or slows down. After all, I can only ever refer back to the counting I have been doing.
If time is like a thread, and if I am sliding along that thread, then to travel in time would simply be to alter the movement along the thread. To slow, stop, or even reverse the sliding. It is my hope that this is what the recent movie Tenet is about. I have yet to watch this film, so I cannot confirm this as yet. However, even if I could do such a thing, how would it affect the world around me as I did slow, stop, or even reverse the sliding? Einstein suggested that if I travel through space quickly enough, I would slow the passage of time for myself, while the world around me would continue unimpeded. That I would age more slowly. Is this true? It has been suggested to me that experiments have been conducted with astronauts on just this idea. Unfortunately, the first article I found seems to side-step this question. The second article discusses the sending of an atomic clock into orbit, but seems to dismiss the time dilation issue.
This is the article I think we need to discuss: the Hafele–Keating experiment from 1971. I will take some time to read this article and discuss it in my next post.