Is time an illusion?

The past does not only exist in our mind, the memory does, but we lived through the past. Time is not an illusion. One year ago I was 20 yrs old, that is not something my mind made up, that is a fact.

This is not The Matrix

I was thinking about this the other day when for some reason the Gregorian calendar came into my mind, and how they changed the date all of a sudden. I was then made to think about time again when a programme I was watching said that until the coming of the railways all the towns in England were at a different time, but with the railways, a common time was necessary.
Thought also about a physics class years ago that made me think that we determine “time” from the relationship of where we are on the earth to the light coming from the sun. What time would it be on the moon?
Does time really exist? If we lived forever would time still count? I dont think its an illusion, but having time brings order even though its not a physical entity

It depends on what you mean by “illusion.”

In a sense, your experience of touch is an illusion. When you touch a keyboard, no contact is actually made between the atoms in your body and the atoms in your keyboard. The sensation of “touch” is hallucinated by your brain to represent the physical force of electromagnetic repulsion between the atoms in your finger and the keys.

However, saying “touch is an illusion” doesn’t mean it’s made-up or meaningless. Allow me to illustrate this point with a fable:

Three beasts sit in front of a television watching “Planet Earth.”

The first beast sees the animals on screen and swats at them, thinking that they are physically real.

The second beast looks away from the television because whatever the appearances, the television doesn’t smell like the animals it’s showing, so it’s not “real” and is not worthy of any attention.

The third beast sits enraptured staring at the television, seemingly absorbing the sights on screen.

Which beast is the wisest?

I would say the third, because while it recognizes the television is an “illusion” in the sense of not being physically real, it is nevertheless something that you can experience.

I imagine time works the same way. A photon does not experience time. Within its reference frame, it arrives everywhere it goes simultaneously. As Stephen Hawking shows, it is possible to think of the universe where time’s “flow” is an illusion, where time is treated no different than space, going forward or back. But even if time is an illusion, like touch and the images on a television, the “experience” of it is real.

This is usually framed as a metaphysical question, but there are scientists who argue that it’s possible to describe what we currently know about the physical universe without ever referencing time. If they’re right, and time isn’t absolutely essential to physics, then it may simply be a handy way of accounting for the way we experience the universe, and not a feature of the universe itself. By that reasoning, we can’t imagine that time isn’t a hard reality because it’s the mind’s way of processing experience. Take the concept of time away, and the way we imagine the universe goes wonky. But maybe that’s our problem, not the universe’s.

Yes.

Don’t have the (put word here) to explain.

No, silly. It’s a magazine.

@Qingu and @Sandydog thank you _brilliant answers!! wow… I need to absorb…. will come back!! when I’ve done some studying

@AstroChuck tee hee x

@J0E my friend does frequently quote matrix type of stuff…and he follows the Advaita Vedanta tradition I believe…if that sheds any light… :-/

Lunchtime, doubly so.

Our measurement methods of time are artificial. Regardless of the unit of measurement, time must exist or everything would be in stasis.

No. Time is not an illusion, but it is relative, and it changes based upon your velocity in relationship to the speed of light, and/or the presence of a gravitational field. I could get a lot more technical if you wish with math, but that’s the gist.

The universe is in a constant state of change and movement. Time is the percieved “distance” between discreet events in reality. Without the reality of time, every event that we experienced or might experience would be the first and the last event of our existence. One need only look at one’s own life in the present to understand how it was shaped by events in the past, so clearly the past is real. Knowing that today was once the future, proves that the future is real, even if not yet realized. Time is real, the past is real, the future is coming.

@josie, for us.

For sentient creatures living in other reference frames, our future is their past.

For photons and fermions in general, every moment in time is simultaneous.

If us is not included in the discussion, it has no real value.

“Some four decades ago, the renowned physicist John Wheeler, then at Princeton, and the late Bryce DeWitt, then at the University of North Carolina, developed an extraordinary equation that provides a possible framework for unifying relativity and quantum mechanics. But the Wheeler-­DeWitt equation has always been controversial, in part because it adds yet another, even more baffling twist to our understanding of time.

“One finds that time just disappears from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation,” says Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France. “It is an issue that many theorists have puzzled about. It may be that the best way to think about quantum reality is to give up the notion of time—that the fundamental description of the universe must be timeless.”

No one has yet succeeded in using the Wheeler-DeWitt equation to integrate quantum theory with general relativity. Nevertheless, a sizable minority of physicists, Rovelli included, believe that any successful merger of the two great masterpieces of 20th-century physics will inevitably describe a universe in which, ultimately, there is no time.”

(from here)

Time is a construct of society, so although the passage of time is measurable, the measurements are arbitrary, so proving the existence of time is impossible.

I know we’re talking about physics, but if I may speak psychologically for a minute, I found in my work as a psychotherapist that time moves backwards as well as forwards, in the sense that when we re-envision a memory in a new way, the re-envisioning “changes the past”. This made me wonder if time can also move sideways, and I think that (psychologically speaking) it does so, in the sense that while I’m immersed in my own version of current time, I’m also capable of apprehending what’s going on in someone else’s (as are they, and so on). I’m talking about subjective reality, but as others here have noted, we’re all talking about subjective reality except in the case of photons and fermions (whatever those are. wow, fermions).

I actually got the fermion thing wrong. I was thinking of the other kind of thing, bosons.

@Qingu: wow, bosons.

So there are, when you get down to it, only two kinds of things: bosons and fermions. Bosons include light (protons) and other particles that act like forces. Fermions include everything else, such as the electrons and quarks that make up atoms. Oh, and gravity is somewhere in there but we don’t know what’s up with it. And we aren’t sure how things get mass exactly.

The answer illudes me.

It seems to me that time is an invented concept. What exactly is time anyway?

Not being a physicist or a metaphysician, I am content with understanding time in three ways at once:

1. Time is a dimension, and as such it no more needs to be proved than we can prove length or width. It is a property of experience and has no separate existence.

2. Time is a way of expressing our sense that events are separate from one another and hence sequential; or, to say that another way, that things are in a state of constant change. Everything is changing all the time. Memory involves a contrast of a former state with a present state; if there were no change, there would be no such distinction. Change is an essential condition (the essential condition? I don’t know) for life; without it, there would be no breathing, no growth, no digesting, etc. As for what propels change, you’ve got me there. Maybe the law of gravity.

3. We have a notion of ourselves passing through time, but that’s just because we tend to think of ourselves as the center of existence and the sine qua non of reality (and who invented the idea of reality, after all?). In reality (haha) I think it is more likely that time passes through us.

The way we measure time is arbitrary and has changed over the millenia but there is a need to ‘keep track’. As in the other q about time, I agree that it is a dimension, one that helps us understand change and events in relation to other dimensions. Please, please read Stephenson’s Anathem for a cool way to look at time.

I’ve read before that time itself is not linear, but that it is happening all at once, always. It is that we are only able to experience it in a linear fashion. If we could find a way to step out of time….Gggaaaaaa! Ask Stephen Hawking!

@Trillian you too, off to read Stephenson’s Anathem – you’ll love it if you like this topic

@PupnTaco if that’s true, then it’s certainly SEP!

The short answer is, Nobody knows. It’s a deep question beyond limits of our understanding of physics and consciousness.

Here’s a good article from a reputable source: Is time an illusion – 19 January 2008 – New Scientist

I would add that if time is considered a dimension, the analogy with spatial dimensions doesn’t quite hold. That’s because, according to equations of relativity, space-time ‘distance’ is the square root of x^2 + y^2 + z^2 – t^2. That final minus sign—rather than the usual plus sign in Euclidean 4-space—makes time into an ‘imaginary’ dimension in the mathematical sense. Very weird.

It may help you to realize that time is a part of the universe. It’s a part of you. You aren’t separate from time. Time is exactly as real as you are. It’s as much a part of you as your ankle is, or as your children are, or as your parents are.

Time is not an illusion, like @Jeruba said, it is good to think of time as a dimension.

Time is eternal, never ending, but also never beginning. We can measure time by when we understand the world to have been created, or by when Jesus was supposedly born.
Time exists, but in a way that we do not yet understand, much like the fourth dimension. It is possible, and it is probably out there, yet we have no means of seeing it, or sensing it. At least all of it. In the fourth dimension, we can only see three dimensional cross-sections, while in time we can only understand our realm of beginning.

If life is our own reality then time can be seen as an illusion. Minutes don’t always feel the same. Hours can fly by or inch by. Our experience is what is real.

But we are waking and sleeping, days are going by, we are maturing. Time is just a measurement to make order.

Fact from diction, truth from fiction. Time as a certainty is very real. Like gravity, it does what it does. Animals have a concept of time but not metered as we humans see it. My cat knows day and night, either the sun is up or it is down. That is why certain animals get confused during solar eclipses. They just know sun is up, sun is down. Depending on if the sun is up, down or almost down my cat figures it is time food comes to the bowl which to her is the place to eat. She doesn’t look at a watch and think “um 6pm, dinner time” etc. It has been said somewhere that once man invented time (which is basically just a metering system) he promptly became a slave to it.

Time as a psychological dimension. Psychology arises from biology – and as such there is a biological underpinning to our understanding of time. Simply put, our biological clocks. The cells themselves have a set number of divisions that they tick by – but it’s relative and not an accurate interval. Cortical systems have many different clocks ticking, relating to intervals for bodily functions, sleep, eating etc – but they too are relative and dependent upon the environment. Biologically, ‘time’ is adaptive and approximative. Signifying the ‘time’ certain systems require to complete a cycle, which then affects another cycle and so forth.
Finally, time in terms of memory which involved a higher level federation of cortical systems – is dependent on narrative more than time-lapse. (look for memory narrative research). Which hints to that even in our memory, if events happened as per alphabet – our reconstruction of them could be anything dependent upon the focus of the narrative. That in itself depends on the current thoughts and information running through our heads – because memory in itself is a reconstruction. Imagine a group of people in a room, each knowing a bit of the information – now ask a question. Each reconstruction will be different dependent upon the “request method”, the question itself and information in the moment.
In this sense, the past is not real, well not as we remember it. It will never be. Human memory is not like computer memory. We do not record everything, and even if we did we do not recall everything – as a computer.
Obsessions with the future can be maladaptive or harmful given the amazing property of the future to often break our plans/predictions etc.
So in short, your friend’s intentions to there is no past, future etc may be good.
When you think about the past, be open about your interpretations, know that you may be fooling yourself, or self-suggesting, or being suggested by someone or something. Focus on the good times, learn from negative experience turning it positive – and then let traumatic experiences die – like plants that haven’t been watered. Now, for the future. Again, be open – you can’t say there won’t be any future because there will. But attaching to one guess, one possible tangent as THE future will only lead to problems. Make plans/dreams, sure, but keep them as a direction instead of a requirement for “success”.

Time as a standard for a collective cooperation. Again, it’s relative. The universe—leave that, our solar system even does not follow a perfectly regular interval. So we have to tailor our arbitrary tracking/collaboration system to the changes for it to make sense.

Time in relation to the universe and micro-world. Sometimes we need to fight blocking – knowledge or theories we may have formed. That seemingly work, but only in our contemporary view of the world. We have all these pretty-looking theories and equations. I don’t think the world works that way, this is a perception cut down to extreme simplicity. Ever-increasingly models and equations start looking more complex, less pristine – more real as to how the world is in relation to our perspectives.
We need a fresh look on this dimension. Simply because some theories work in our limited view, it doesn’t mean they are exempt from re-evaluation.

The universe is in constant motion as pointed out, felt and imagined.
I like that thought. I can’t find myself agreeing with – someone else’s present being our past, or future – or any combination thereof. Everything just is, in the same way as everything can be, everywhere, at any state. At least what’s what I make of it.

Good thing there’s no word limit ;)
Fun times!

hmmm… my head so hurts so much….

@gasman I read the article and probably understood 3% of it… and that was after wikpediaring about 10 of the strange concepts I came across… I reckon you need a PhD to understand the term “wavefunction” let alone anything else…

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I’ve put it on my wishlist!!! thank you x

I have no idea about the deep science stuff… but I think that the fact is I experience time and therefore it exists in my reality…

time is only a measure that we (humans) made to keep stability and order in the community. Without time we would not know when to meet each other fr lunch and so on etc. So yes time exists only inte minds of us humans if you actually think about time doesnt exist in a natural world yet animals go to sleep at night because of internal clocks so time exists but only in the mind and no in acuallity.

@Hypocrisy_Central – Not too sure your cat thinks about time at all. I think she perceives light and dark. So does Mr Bear. When the days are long he eats, and when the days are short he sleeps. But I don’t think he looks at his calendar.

How much time did it take you to write that question? ;)Existence exists whether or not one has the ability to perceive.Time is a measurement of existence.Your damned right that tree fell and made a noise in the woods! ;))

Let me answer this obliquely.

Critters can do logic, perceive the present. Act on it.

Future however is contained in altered response to stimuli. (Pavlovian conditioning) Every time I (a doggy) climb on the couch I get yelled at – couch bad. The relationship between choice and a future outcome is wired in. Being able to then discuss the pros and cons about that choice is not. Dogs have a tough time with introspection and philosophy.

Humans have achieved a level of abstraction. While cats and dogs can problem solve, we humans can get a whole level of brain magic better using symbolism. (so I allege).

So is our experience of time an illusion?

Actually yes.

If you consider the formation of symbols, abstract, then they are not hard reality, but to a critter it is majik, information we are able to manipulate that approximates preception of the future but does not actually experience it. This predictive behavior is not reality.

it is an approximation of it.

we spend our days living one step ahead.

Unlike our critter cousins, we do not stop and smell the roses.

Time is relative to the person experiencing it. Dreams only last a few seconds at a time but may seem like they are much longer. Look at sleep, if you have a person next to you in bed that isn’t sleeping it will be a LONG night for that person, compare that to the person sleeping and it will seem like only a second has passed since they closed their eyes.

I heard scientists say that if you were able to travel at or near the speed of light to a planet that was 2½ light years away and than immediately back (total of light years of time/distance of 5 light years) it would still be 5 regular years to you, you would of aged only 5 years, but coming back to earth depending on how close to light speed you were traveling you will have found that everyone on earth waiting for you aged anywhere from 40 to 70 years! But there would be no going back.