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I started a Zoom book club - 17 people joined. I’ll have to figure out the logistics of a larger group. Sitting outside, watching a crane of some type eating what looks like a snake from this vantage point. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen him catch anything.
Leigha Wrote:I started a Zoom book club - 17 people joined. I’ll have to figure out the logistics of a larger group. Sitting outside, watching a crane of some type eating what looks like a snake from this vantage point. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen him catch anything.
My wife started a book club 5 years ago. We have about the same number of people but attendance is usually 8 to 12 which is good. More than 8 present and it is difficult hold together. It is supplemented by an on line site with additional members, some from very far away. Of course, some local members use this also.
My random thought for the day....... if time stopped then would there be a way to measure for how long it stopped?
(May 22, 2020 12:44 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]My random thought for the day....... if time stopped then would there be a way to measure for how long it stopped?


Probably not by those experiencing the stoppage (i.e., measurement requires relationship to another realm that was still experiencing activity -- from the subatomic level upwards -- and its researchers having observational access to the realm where things froze).

Claims about a passage of time being applicable without change seem dependent upon there being an absolute background still designating units of time, despite any "freeze of the world" extending slash persisting through them for a duration (Newton's, Plato's, etc take on the matter.). Or dependence upon other speculative regions still experiencing change (like Sydney Shoemaker's thought experiment below).

With respect to the former, it's crudely analogous to an old reel of cinematic film repeating the same unchanging scene in several frames; or there being an interlude of blank frames intruding in the storyline before the movie events resume. IOW, the film frames -- which are more fundamental than the story unfolding on them -- are still marking off discrete intervals of time.

It's doubtful, however, that the "inhabitants" could ever know about the freeze or missing period since there would be no evidence of their world having had the same state reiterated over and over, or that an empty interruption ensued in the past. Those "transcendent" aberrations simply aren't influencing the internal continuity of the story. They are not held as information in it.

Leibniz's relational view of time/space and Einstein's work clinching it in the 20th-century put an end to Newton's absolute conception of time (that it can be independent of change).

In the eternalism model of time, "changes" are instead a sequence or complex of differences constituting existence rather than being short-lived steps of a process (as the usage of "change" often seems to imply).

A quick explanation of Sydney Shoemaker's thought experiment for the possibility of time without change.


ALSO: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/#RedPlaResTim
Thanks CC.

My wondering mind was thinking that there might be unexplained time gaps in the universe from an observer point of view. If you take expansion for example, could time time stoppages allow us to believe space is expanding at a speed faster than light? But I guess that would mean expanding without the time to move. Who’s to say if time would stop locally or universally Or if it stops at all...lol
(May 22, 2020 11:58 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: [ -> ]Thanks CC.

My wondering mind was thinking that there might be unexplained time gaps in the universe from an observer point of view. If you take expansion for example, could time time stoppages allow us to believe space is expanding at a speed faster than light? But I guess that would mean expanding without the time to move. Who’s to say if time would stop locally or universally Or if it stops at all...lol


Yah, from a personal perspective there can be awareness of missing time or even what seems to be leaps into the future. And it can be detected or measured due to the rest of the world still having continued to experience changes. If a vase teleports from one spot in a house to another, and it happens without anything in the world indicating a missing period, then it really did teleport (or something). But OTOH, if there are beings from another realm who arrive and state: "We [magically, without photons] saw your whole universe freeze for yada moments of our own and Zimbar here prankishly moved your vase from place to another during that frozen period" ... then maybe it wasn't teleportation.

I don't feel that Shoemaker's thought experiment eliminates relational dependence upon "an outsider or background circumstance" still measuring or designating time by its own unaffected changes or differences.
CC..... We’re back to ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ explained. She simply stopped time then went and got whatever Major Nelson desired, brought it home and restarted time. Magic.  Big Grin
Hi all, I lost my password here and just now got access again. Been fine. No health scares among any friends, family, or coworkers. Work has just isolated people who had fevers, but no one's actually come down with coronavirus, or even missed any work.


(Apr 16, 2020 04:01 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: [ -> ]I guess conservatives gathered together in Michigan to protest the excessive restrictions but it’s not unconstitutional. The state can exercise its police power to establish quarantines against human beings, animals, or plants.

It is actually unconstitutional, both on the Federal and State levels for the executive branch to make up laws, with fines and punishments, without the say of the legislature. Emergency powers exist to bring order, like in the case of riots, looting, etc., not to curtail basic, guaranteed rights. And definitely not to persecute religion, like some states saying churches can only have ten people but all other businesses can have 50% capacity. Fascists have been making their power grabs.
(May 23, 2020 05:27 PM)Syne Wrote: [ -> ]Hi all, I lost my password here and just now got access again. Been fine. No health scares among any friends, family, or coworkers. Work has just isolated people who had fevers, but no one's actually come down with coronavirus, or even missed any work.


That's always good to hear. Stryder tipped it off as possible password trouble, but as the week passed, started to wonder again.
We bought a house in suburbia (actually a bungalow) we both liked just before UK lockdown. Very elegant with a garden and everything. I've been doing it up for a few weeks and gradually it has come to me I don't actually want to live there. I like (current crappy home) stepping out of the door into a seaside holiday town. I like (love) having seagulls chattering on the roof and rats scuttling about under the floor.