The Many Directions of Time

http://www.stanford.edu/~afmayer/ ^ | 1 February 2006 | Alexander Franklin Mayer

[NicknamedBob]

"There is no particular reason why reality should conform to math."

In your philosophy, is not math more real than reality?

Reality has umbras and penumbras. Math has points and lines, and in fact, the only true equalities to be found.

[woofie]

I keep running out of time

[RightWhale]

No. The realest thing in my world is law. That is one of the few things we have somehow created all by ourselves.

[NicknamedBob]

Surely you must at least be speaking of Scientific Law.

Created law as in that which men live by is no more real or permanent than the dew of the morning.

[RightWhale]

Civil law is as real as it gets. When I drive my ford down the road into town, where other people see trees and sidewalks, I see legal property lines. Real estate is called real for a reason. It is real, maybe the only reality.

[NicknamedBob]

Oh man, are you delusional!

[TheBrotherhood]

There is not past or present, only an infinitesimal tiny ever-present present.

[RightWhale]

I am an attorney, if that makes me delusional.

[TheBrotherhood]

>At a basic level time exists, otherwise everything would happen at once.

And it does.

There exists only a constant present.

[RightWhale]

See? There is only now. The future is a guess, and for that matter so is the past.

[NicknamedBob]

"I am an attorney, if that makes me delusional."

It may, or it may not.

In American Plains Indian society, crossed sticks on the teepee’s entrance were a “lock.” You could not enter.

Our civil law “property rights” are just as flimsy, especially these days. The legal fabric of our property protection is threadbare and dry-rotted.

Hardly more substantial than cobwebs. I’ll stick to my created realities, thank you. One of these days, I might get somewhere.

[RightWhale]

Property rights would be strong as steel if you were the 'right' kind of entity. Even the ACLU protects corporation property rights.

[longshadow]

e e cummings stole my theory!!??

Don't be too angry; after all, somebody stole his capital letters and punctuation.

[inquest]

That's one of the many faces of energy. Mechanics is not the whole story anymore.

It's still the scientific definition of energy, unless there's a more updated one that you can cite.

[MarkL]

Time is nature's way of making sure everything doesn't happen at once!

Mark

[Ultra Sonic 007]

Interesting. Sounds like how the 'five different theories' problem of String Theory was solved; all part of the same theory, but looking at it from different directions.

[timer]

The TIME PRIZE : $10,000 in small, unmarked bills in a brown paper bag to the first person who demonstrates a time event that is not a kinetic energy event...

[MeanWestTexan]

Yeah, but you're only renting real estate from God (or the supreme being of your choice, or the universe), you don't really own it.

[MeanWestTexan]

The trick is that the bills are all from the United States of Western America del Sur year 2041.

[King Prout]

Not too long ago, people thought the Earth was flat,

I'm not pleased by any reiteration of that particular irrational and easily debunked fallacy, and its inclusion in the intro to what purports to be scholarly work causes me to view that work's claims to scholarship with great suspicion.