What is the purpose and meaning of time?

Comments

• rikudou@lemmings.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  No purpose and no meaning, I’m afraid. As far as we know, it’s just one of the fundamental properties of the universe.

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• Deestan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  “Purpose” is not applicable, as time wasn’t deliberately created. It just is.

  As for meaning: If you look at all of space/time/dimensions as one big soup. We are creatures of time. It is special to us because we move along it.

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• theKalash@feddit.ch ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

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• dan1101@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

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  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    For example, quantum entanglement happens at once.

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• Lanthanae@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Why do you assume there is one?

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• Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  So that you’ll know that the food you ordered is late.

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• forrgott@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  My simplistic answer, time exists so we can quantify change. In a static universe without time, could there be any change? Without change, there is no life.

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  • angrystego@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Imagine all moments of your life existing as a continuum- like a movie. When you don’t watch the movie, it still exists and there are still changes - the beginning is different from the end. But the changes are spatial, not temporal. It’s more like a painting that you can admire as a whole. Does that mean there’s no life? I really don’t know.

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  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    universe without time, could there be any change?

    Yes, but it would not be change as we know it. Change would look diifferent.

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    • radix@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      What could it be then? Or is this just poetry?

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    • forrgott@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s a very interesting hypothesis…

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• bstix@feddit.dk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It’s a way to describe that one thing can cause another thing to happen and that from our perspective this doesn’t happen instantaneously.

  Time exists in the same way that numbers do. It’s just a definition that allows us to tell things apart. Time and numbers don’t exist by themselves, but the definition will always be necessary to describe things that do exist.

  Even the most simple description implies time and quantity. F.i. the sentence “apple is red” doesn’t mention the time or quantity directly, but the word “is” implies both time (present) and quantity (singular) and existence.

  Saying only “red apple” doesn’t imply existence, so we can’t say that it describes anything that exists.

  So the purpose of the human invention of the time concept is to describe existence. The meaning is dependant on what definition you use.

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  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Are you sure that cause and effect always need time?

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    • bstix@feddit.dk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      No, only to things moving slower than light.

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• AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Meetings

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• Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  See: Entropy.

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• leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  A way of measuring events, relative to gravity.

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• slazer2au@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  An artificial construct to give our lives structure based on a planetary alignments.

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  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    In my world, artificial means man made. But time is surely not man made.

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    • slazer2au@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Time as a concept is man made. I am unaware of any other animal who tracks time like we do.

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