Theories - Time Travel, Parallel Dimensions, Etc.

[FortyTwo]

Huh. I'm unable to see how time couldn't exist. I can see people not thinking it isn't like what we think it is, but... I'm just at a loss on that one.

Okay, what I'm saying is that time is just a concept that is in our minds. There is no such thing as the past, we only have memories of what the Universe was like before the present (or rather, what we perceive of it and hear of it from others, and our memories of doing so). The future is only what we plan to do and what will inevitably happen due to physical circumstances.

The "passage of time" is just us observing the state of the Universe as it changes from one, to the next, to the next, because of the interaction between the contents of the Universe. I don't believe that the "past" is stored anywhere or that it is accessible by any means other than our memories (which, as stated before, are simply based on our observations and not the actual state of the Universe), and if it's not stored anywhere, then it simply fails to be because the state of the Universe is constantly changing.

The future simply hasn't happened yet, and it only exists as we conceptualize it. Once "the future" becomes reality, it is the present. The present is the only thing that exists.

Therefore, the only plausible method of backwards time travel I can think of relies on the existence of parallel universes - hopping from this one to a parallel one where things have played out exactly as they have here, but the Universe was created about 50 years later, causing you to land in 1962 (for example). Of course your actions would only affect that universe and not our own - in our own you would simply vanish.

I think you're wrong about the 5th Dimension.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_5th_Dimension

Before my time, sorry.

I don't know what that means either. Do we have examples of 4 dimensional objects, such as a tesseract?

Well, the tesseract is only a 3D (technically 2D because that's how we perceive everything around us) model of a 4D object, so it's quite wrong (except in principle). A real tesseract would be too hard for us to totally conceptualize. Look at it this way:

and it starts to make a little more sense, I guess, if you pay attention to where each cube ends up. It's supposed to represent how an infinite series of 3D universes would be grouped in 4D space.

I think the idea of parallel universes makes for okay/mildly interesting sci-fi, but that's about it for me. Without some kind of evidence, I'm simply at a loss with that.

Yeah, it's all entirely theoretical, if not simply hypothetical, but it's the only way I can think of to rationalize backward time travel.

Also remember that the theory/model you were previously arguing, with time being the fourth dimension, actually supports alternate universes.

 

[Blobbenstein]

I've had clairvoyant dreams, so I am pretty sure the future exists, and the past.

 

[FortyTwo]

I've had clairvoyant dreams, so I am pretty sure the future exists, and the past.

If you're joking about this, then you're joking.

If you're serious, then you should say right now if you're comfortable discussing this scientifically, or if you'd rather refer to a spirituality-themed thread to talk about it in that context.

 

[Blobbenstein]

well, science is about observation.
I suppose I observed future events, but I suppose that it is super natural, and so maybe falls outside of what science can say about reality.

 

[FortyTwo]

well, science is about observation.
I suppose I observed future events, but I suppose that it is super natural, and so maybe falls outside of what science can say about reality.

Science is the study of reality. If something takes place, and there is (irrefutable) evidence of it taking place, then it can be explained by science in some way, regardless of how weird it is.

How did these clairvoyant dreams work?

 

[Blobbenstein]

Oh, I've forgotten most of them.

In these dreams, sometimes the dream is a fairly realistic representation of what ends up happening, and sometimes the dream just incorporates something that will happen...I have had dreams that incorporate images, that I end up seeing. Quite a few of the images have been off the tellie, and maybe even a few years ahead.
I had quite a vivid dream that incorporated images from the film BeetleJuice. That was a weird dream, and that dream also incorporated some images that ended up as part of my real life too.

I don't think science can study all reality. I believe that probably most of reality is untestable by science.
It's a bit like science trying to study burglary by setting up cameras and lights around one house and expecting to see burglars. They wouldn't come.

 

[Blobbenstein]

anyway, I see it more as a philosophical subject. I don't always like 'spiritual' threads.

 

[Blobbenstein]

I had the dream about Beetlejuice in around 1991, and the film came out in 1988, but I don't think I even saw any trailer for it, and I certainly hadn't seen the film before around 1993/94


anyway, that is only one example, I only used it because that dream was so weird.
That dream had an event in it that wasn't to happen to me, in real life, until a few years later.

 

[FortyTwo]

There is no foundation, though, for clairvoyant dreams. How would you suppose they work?

 

[FortyTwo]

I had the dream about Beetlejuice in around 1991, and the film came out in 1988, but I don't think I even saw any trailer for it, and I certainly hadn't seen the film before around 1993/94

I often find myself having dreams that I later associate with something that happens, and then I realize that the dream itself is vague enough to be interpreted in that way, so my mind filled in the blanks and caused me to see the correlation. Unless you wrote down "last night I had a dream about a movie where a couple dies and calls upon a trickster ghost to help them haunt their old house due to its snobby new owners" or you told a friend "hey, I had this weird dream" then you can't really prove you had that exact dream, even to yourself.

 

[Blobbenstein]

it's just personal experience. Unless something happens to you, sometimes it is hard to accept.

 

[FortyTwo]

I don't think that's true. I won't take it any further unless you are okay with it, because I know some people get very offended when their beliefs are challenged.

 

[Blobbenstein]

I don't think I get offended, but I can end up feeling a bit hurt.

A religious discussion on VB ended up with someone saying I had a poor understanding of science.....

 

[Blobbenstein]

anyway, you can talk about it. I can always hyperspace to another part of the internet, if things get a bit rough.

 

[Blobbenstein]

but it is important in science to realise that you are studying reality, not seeing the world from the perspective of current theories.

if reality says X, but the theories say Y, you have to accept X.

 

[FortyTwo]

In my arguments in this thread I've made a lot of assumptions based on theories, so I'm certainly not averse to explaining this. In order to see into the future, you'd have to have an existing future to look into. I don't see any way that the future could exist in any other form than what we expect to see with our own minds - as I mentioned earlier the Universe doesn't exactly store this stuff - so I don't see how one could see into the future.

Either that, or your brain would have to be running a pretty good simulation of the entire Universe (or at least everything on Earth) that could, based on how events are going now, map out what will most likely happen in the coming years, delivering it to the conscious thought processes in the form of dreams. However, I also don't believe the brain is capable of running such a simulation, so I don't think that works either.

Those are the only two physical possibilities, really, unless time truly did exist and was stored somewhere, which would imply the existence of a form of predestination, which I don't really agree with (unless we're considering a hypothetical Universe, possibly our own, which does have time storage of some sort, in which case I agree with it completely as it adheres to the Self-Consistency Principle).

 

[Envy]

The universe is predetermined.

 

[FortyTwo]

The universe is predetermined.

And by that you mean...?

 

[Envy]

And by that you mean...?

That it's following a chain of events.

 

[nog]

Okay, what I'm saying is that time is just a concept that is in our minds. There is no such thing as the past, we only have memories of what the Universe was like before the present (or rather, what we perceive of it and hear of it from others, and our memories of doing so). The future is only what we plan to do and what will inevitably happen due to physical circumstances.

The "passage of time" is just us observing the state of the Universe as it changes from one, to the next, to the next, because of the interaction between the contents of the Universe. I don't believe that the "past" is stored anywhere or that it is accessible by any means other than our memories (which, as stated before, are simply based on our observations and not the actual state of the Universe), and if it's not stored anywhere, then it simply fails to be because the state of the Universe is constantly changing.

The future simply hasn't happened yet, and it only exists as we conceptualize it. Once "the future" becomes reality, it is the present. The present is the only thing that exists.

It's odd, to me, to say that time doesn't exist simply because it's always the present. The past existed as the present at some point. Time, as I understand it, is simply a linear collection of events. To say that there is no such thing as the past is like saying that everything we have memories of never existed. Sure we could have been just created, but that seems unsubstantiated.

I agree to an extent that I'm not convinced the past is 'stored' in a strict sense, but it is stored by extrapolation. Our memories, physical processes and structure on Earth (fossils, rock formations, etc). Further, since light takes a finite time to reach us, we know that what we see started out at some point in the past, we're not seeing it in the present (whatever that really means).

Therefore, the only plausible method of backwards time travel I can think of relies on the existence of parallel universes - hopping from this one to a parallel one where things have played out exactly as they have here, but the Universe was created about 50 years later, causing you to land in 1962 (for example). Of course your actions would only affect that universe and not our own - in our own you would simply vanish.

Well, I don't buy backwards time travel any way, nor parallel universes, so .

Before my time, sorry.

Before mine too, but it was an extra credit when I was younger (before the internet). I asked my parents and I got it right, so it always stuck with me.

Well, the tesseract is only a 3D (technically 2D because that's how we perceive everything around us) model of a 4D object, so it's quite wrong (except in principle).

I have two eyes, don't you think that allows some depth perception?

A real tesseract would be too hard for us to totally conceptualize. Look at it this way:

and it starts to make a little more sense, I guess, if you pay attention to where each cube ends up. It's supposed to represent how an infinite series of 3D universes would be grouped in 4D space.

I understand the concept of a tesseract (not that I can visualize it in my head), but that doesn't help me with knowing that there are 4 dimensions. I was more asking if there's any evidence (not speculation) of a 4th spatial dimension.

Also remember that the theory/model you were previously arguing, with time being the fourth dimension, actually supports alternate universes.

Alternate universes are speculation based on assumptions based on current physics. Time being the fourth dimension does not in and of itself support the idea of alternate universes.