Talk:Time/Archive 1

message: Time is also suspected to be perceived differently by people, due to neurological differences. This is believed to be the result of the differences between the various ways people tend to perceive their own world. The term 'absent-minded' carries with it the connotation of being chronically late or unaware of the "correct" passage of time on a more general scale, or, in other words, the passage of time as it is more generally perceived. The term itself, however, has nothing to do with a perception of time, and it simply is a descriptor applied to a person who is introverted. Since human thoughts often flow faster than the observable events of the world outside (human neurons spike in electrical activity 200 times every second), introverted individuals who are more focused on what happens within their own minds may find themselves unaware of and often completely disinterested in time as perceived by extroverted individuals, because mental events occur at a much more rapid pace than external events.
Thusly, introverted people often measure large periods of time happening in very short periods of time, in relation to the measurements which might be derived if one were to focus on the outside world as a means of time measurement. Because of this, introverted people are prone to 'losing track of time', as they may perceive that, on a general basis, large amounts of time pass between events in 'reality' which most people would consider to be temporally significant but which they themselves would not find any significance, relative to their own perception of the passage of time. Therefore, introverted people are more likely to spend ages thinking about 'something else' and to not realize when a large amount of time has actually passed in terms of a system of temporal measurement they have no interest in maintaining. If a large amount of time spent thinking is equal to a short amount of time in 'outside reality', then it becomes difficult to distinguish at which point a large amount of time has transpired in 'reality' without counting, equating and making differences with the apparent time-frame of outside reality. However, no experiments confirm or discount this hypothesis so far.
what the ...? where does that hypothesis come from then? it's basically a lot of blah, closing with "it's possibly not true anyway". Can we all now append our random stream of thoughts to articles? Please remove this, unless the source of that theory can be named. -- Paniq 03:22, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Perception of Time

message: The article says
:The standard unit for time is the SI second, from which larger units are defined like the minute, hour, day, week, month, year, decade, and century.
I believe it is impossible to define month, year, decade, century, or millenium in terms of seconds, no? Week is also not one of the "official" derived non-SI units. I think even day is questionable, though it does remain an official non-SI derived unit.--JimWae 21:56, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)
:Yes, all the units from day upwards can have varying numbers of seconds. I guess the standard day of 86,400 seconds is OK, although you do get complications like sidereal days entering in. The official calendar is now worked out so that every year is an integer number of seconds, so the second is still the basic unit (just not the same number of seconds from year to year). Above the day level, we are out of the realm of physics definition and into the calendar.  --FrankP 15:57, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Units

message: "The common way of defining the idea of 'before' and 'after' is based on the assumption of causality. One can typically say that a particular event "occurs" after another event, and one can apply the extra-contextual relative metric of "time" to gauge the interval between the two. The term "time", however, describes both the measurable interval between two (perceived or conceived) events, and implies the truth of a continuous measurable system as the purposeful metric for conceptualizing relationships between the forementioned two events and all other events within the same universe."
I take exception to the following from the article:
:The common way of defining the idea of 'before' and 'after' is based on the assumption of causality.
It is not obvious that this is common, nor does it seem to add anything to the discussion.  It gives some kind of ontological/ psychological/ epistemological primacy to causality over time, whereas it seems to me the opposite is more apparent. We can experience before & after WITHOUT ascribing causality, and furthermore understanding how to use the term causality presupposes an understanding of before & after.   --JimWae 09:58, 2004 Nov 16 (UTC)
:I completely agree with JimWae, I've moved the whole para here. If anyone thinks this says something useful and is not patent nonsense, I suggest you edit it here and see if there is agreement. Otherwise, why not drop the whole thing? --FrankP 17:44, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Causality

message: The stuff with  J. W. Dunne is one of the larger pieces of nonsense I have ever seen.  Seeing the future with dreams is not a widely held idea and should either be deleted or a very large warning be placed in that paragraph. 
"The engineer J. W. Dunne developed a theory of time whereby he considered our perception of time like notes being played on piano. Having had a number of prescient dreams, he monitored his dreams and found that they generally included as many past as future events. From this he concluded that in dreams we escape linear time. He published his ideas in An Experiment with Time in 1927 and followed this with other books."
--ShaunMacPherson 17:09, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: J.W.Dunne

message: I (Hadal) have moved the following paragraph and commentary (by User:Wikisux) from the article:
Paragraph:
:Amazon resident Dr. Neil Grant came up with the philosophical idea of Backwards Time. Since the first appearance of this theory in August 1998, it has been endorsed by many prominent scientists, including a personal letter of recognition from Stephen Hawking. See Philosophy of time.
Wikisux's commentary:
:Despite having gone untouched for over two weeks, this paragraph, along with the related article Reverse Time Ideology, appears to be pure crap--further evidence that Wikipedia should never be trusted as a reliable source. Can someone verify?
I must agree that the whole thing looks dodgy (but don't appreciate the commentary's unnecessary abrasiveness). While the paragraph was added to this article by User:Jarjar, comparing his contributions with those of the related article "Reverse Time Ideology"'s author, shows they're probably working together (e.g., Jarjar edited Soilguy5's userpage). I can't find any corroborating evidence to support these supposed philosophical theories. -- Hadal 03:53, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Backwards Time

message: * Is time real (or a physical entity) or is it just a human construct? 
Time is one of the topics i never understood much. Many people consider time to be another dimension. The question is whether time is only description of events according to the deception of our senses (sight is the most effective one) or is it really implemented in our physical universe?
Now this brings me to the question of FTL and time travel. No matter (or subatomic particle) was yet observed in quantum mechanics (or particle physics), which can trasmit information faster than the speed of light. A wavefront for example can move faster than light in the eyes of a moving observer but there is no transmission of information. Therefore it's an optical illusion. (See also special relativity, causality and tachyon).
However even if it is possible to trasmit information faster than light why do people think it will cause a regression of time? According to Lorentz factor the result will be undefined. -- Orionix 23:47, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is [[time]] even [[real]]? 

message: Operational definition of time #1:
Time is what a clock measures.
Operational definition of time #2:
Time is measurement of monotonic foliation of energy-matter in space.**
Note 1: Time perception is like color perception, which is neurons reacting to light. Clocks substitute for direct perception of time like color photographs substitute for direct perception of object colors.
Operational definition of time perception:
Time perception is measurement of complex reactions in neurons to various changes of energy-matter in space.** 
Note 2: Past, present and future are constructs of cultures and societies provided to enhance individual perceptions of time for the purpose of survival.
**Note 3: Strictly speaking, these are not operational definitions. However, if you were clever enough, you could find ways to take measurements of monotonic foliation or complex neuron reactions.
--john 19:10, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Operational definitions of time and time perception 

message: :::Assuming that you were using 'separate' as a transitive verb and not as an adjective, (although your sentence is ambiguous as it stands) you are still misusing language as I have tried to point out in  previous comments, to which you seem impervious.  The point is that time is an abstract concept. It does not participate actively in anything. It participates passively when people attempt to measure the time that elapses between events, the duration of events, or the simultaneity of events. All those activities are ultimately futile if extreme precision is required, as there is no absolute reference frame for the calibration of each person's measurement. This may all seem a bit pedantic to the non-scientist.
:::However people look up encyclopedias to gain a better understanding of difficult ideas. Wiki is not providing a useful service if it does not attempt to give some insight into difficult concepts like the real nature of time. The current (3/6) Wiki intro states "Time" is the word we use to refer to the sequence of events, and to quantify the duration of events and the intervals between them." A person wanting to understand the real nature of time will already be yawning, as this is common knowledge to every child from the age of about three.
:::My definition was intended to give the curious reader pause for thought and perhaps to prompt him or her to read some of the linked articles that address various subjective difficulties with aspects of time. There is a place for subjective impressions of time but it is not in the introduction to a major Wiki topic that is likely to be referred to by people who want to read objective information. 
:::Geologician 21:18, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Grammar & such