<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">All -</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">We’ve often discussed the non-existence of time. Kind of the basis of this mailing list… but, we’ve also discussed the non-existence of motion. It’s the non-existence of motion that many find hard to follow. While the non-existence of time seems a simple thing to grasp, many people can’t believe or wrap their head around the non-existence of motion. We can’t see time, we can’t smell it, we can’t taste it, etc, etc. It can’t be sensed, and our futile attempts to measure time are all based upon arbitrary measurements that we seem to change at a whim. How can time be a standard if it keeps changing? If we keep redefining time (How long was a day in 1372?), how can it be the basis for so many different calculations and derived measurements? How long is one second? Let me guess, the definition of time is defined using time as a reference. One second is one second long. Which is a division of an hour, a division of a day, etc. All based upon the amount of ‘time’ it takes for the earth to rotate around the sun? </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Many are willing to accept that the silliness of a self referential standard makes something not a standard, thus non-existent, made up, etc… We get it. Time doesn’t really exist, it’s a silly measurement we constructed so that things would make sense in the world. It’s a part of our attempt to order the world. To understand things that we couldn’t fundamentally explain. It helps explains other things that we see, but it’s not a ‘thing’ in it’s own right.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">If you accept that time isn’t a thing in its own right, that it can’t stand in as an actual standard, then why do some people have such a difficult ‘time’ with motion?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;" class=""><div style="font-size: 16px;" class=""><font color="#4d22b3" class="">According to WikiPedia: <<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_(physics)" class="">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_(physics)</a>></font></div><div style="font-size: 16px;" class=""><font color="#4d22b3" class="">In physics, motion is a change in position of an object with respect to time.</font></div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">An object is observed to change it’s position; the fact that we describe this as changes over time is just another way that we attempt to explain or rationalize something that we don’t fundamentally understand. We invented time as a way to explain something that we didn’t fully understand, and now we’re applying time to explain something else that we don’t fully understand.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">If we agree that we don’t believe in time, because it’s a made-up/arbitrary non-existent thing, then how can we say that motion is thus changes observed over a given period of time. What period of time?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;" class=""><div class="">Here’s a thought experiment for you:</div><div class="">- Let’s say you are sitting in a room and there are no clocks or watches with which to ‘measure’ time. The room you’re in has a window, a chair, a table with a notepad and pencil. Behind you there is the door you entered the room through.</div><div class="">- You take a seat on the chair next to the table, which is adjacent to the window. On the countertop is a pencil and some paper so that you can make notes. Through the window you can see a mostly empty room. In that room is a chair, a table (positioned on the floor, adjacent to the table, between the table and a closed door on the far side of the room). There are no people in that room, and you don’t see any other objects in the room.</div><div class="">- You are told to measure the movement of the chair. You observe that the chair is pushed up to/under the table. The room is lit by some form of lighting that you cannot directly observe. The light in the room does not appear to vary in intensity and it doesn’t give off any noticeable heat.</div><div class="">- As you observe the chair and table, you become hungry, thirsty and tired. You have no idea how much ‘time’ has passed.</div><div class="">- Eventually, while you are thinking about food, you close your eyes and rest your head on the table.</div><div class="">- When you wake up, you have no idea how long you’ve slept. You feel refreshed, but you’re still hungry, and now you’re very thirsty - Oh yes, and now you need to use the bathroom.</div><div class="">- As you glance at the table and chair in the room on the other side of the window, you notice that the table is positioned atop the table. The notepad and pencil are still there, on top of the table. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div></blockquote><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;" class="">Has the chair moved? How can you tell? Are you able to say with certainty that the chair actually moved? You can say with certainty that it is currently positioned on top of the table, but you have no way of measuring or proving where it was before now. Without time as a basis with which to measure ‘motion’, you cannot in fact say that the chair has moved. </blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;" class=""><div class="">Consider for the moment, which room are you in? Could you be in the room you were observing, and now you might be observing the room you were in? You check your notepad. You didn’t write anything in it, so now you’re wondering whether the room is observing you… You really need to use the bathroom and get something to eat, your mind is starting to play tricks on you.</div></blockquote><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">If motion is measured using time, and we remove time from the equation, can we still measure motion? I guess we could make a grid for reference and note the position of something. If the reference position changes, we can then assume that an object has ‘moved’. Or can we? We can in fact state that the object is now at a different position, but how can we say where it ‘was’? If we can’t prove that it was located elsewhere, how can we prove that it moved? </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Oh, but we would say that I ‘saw’ it move. In our thought experiment, you didn’t see it move. For the sake of argument, lets say you didn’t fall asleep. Lets say you woke up and saw the chair moving. Perhaps there are fine cables attached to the chair that allow an unseen person to move the chair. You observe the chair move - It jerks back from the table, ascends three feet into the air, then moves over the table and descends to rest on the table.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">You observe that the chair ‘moved’. While observing the chair move, you would constantly be applying an imaginary measure of ‘time’ to your observation. You would estimate that it took approximately five seconds for the chair to ‘move’ from its location behind the table to the top of the table.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">In order to make sense of the observed ‘motion’ you apply the arbitrary measure of ‘time’ to your observation. If you don’t actually observe the motion, you really have no way to ‘prove’ the motion. The chair simply is in one position, or the chair is in some other position. Perhaps motion only occurs within view? </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Here’s something else to consider when it comes to time:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">A: Can you ‘prove’ the future? The answer most are likely to give is ‘No’ - The future hasn’t happened yet, so we can’t say with certainty prove that something will happen.</div><div class="">B: Can you ‘prove’ the past? The answer most give is ‘Yes’ - We have evidence of the past. We might have a photo taken three days ago (the date time stamped on the photo ‘proves’ that the picture was taken three days ago). We have fossils that prove the past existence of life forms. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">In the case of B: I would argue that the existence of a fossil now, only proves that you currently have a fossil. A photo with a ‘past’ date only proves that you have a photo with a ‘past’ date. It doesn’t prove the past. Does the fossil prove the past? If the past can be proven, where does it go? What happens to the past? As time passes what happens to the past? Does it evaporate? Does it simply cease to be? If the past exists, why can’t we go there?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">All these things can be described without time or motion. If all of reality is static, unmoving and unchanging. Things exist in various possible states. All the possible states of matter coexist within a simultaneous now.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">If you will yourself to experience a different matter state - Like the one where I’ve already sent this email, then it may occur. Provided it exists within the realm of possible* matter states <i class="">(*Possible given the limited experiential set of nodes which I am able to access)</i>.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Things to think about.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">- Robert</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>