I'll leave this here with little comment, as it hits that personal blindspot where I cannot distinguish wisdom from folly.

https://oscillations.one/Assets/Publications/The+Holographic+Sky

But if your bullshit detector hits the red, you can retreat to the safety of Penrose's theory:

https://richardvnd.medium.com/conformal-cyclic-cosmology-is-the-end-of-the-universe-the-beginning-b8bd70b5b712

But it seems to me that Kant had it about right in pointing out a peculiar difficulty with conceptions of time and space, whereby one cannot conceive of a limit without conceiving of 'beyond the limit', and neither can one conceive of the absence of any limit. Time and space are the conditions of thought, that thought cannot contain.

Hence the seeming identity of deep theoretical science and psycho-ceramics, and thus my blind spot.

would such a progression of linear time to a conscious being allow them to understand its infinite nature though not being able experience infinity itself due to their limited timespan — invicta

What are your criteria for understanding in this case? You have experienced living for N number of years. Can you understand the duration of N+1 years despite not having personally experienced it? You have seen a limited number of things in your life. Would this fact be an obstacle to you understanding some thing - a rock, a tree - that you have never seen and may never see?

You will impatiently respond with "yes, of course!" to these questions and then tell me that your question is different because infinity, etc. But this is why it is crucial to first understand - and be able to explain - what it is that you are asking. In philosophy this is the most - and often the only - important thing.

So, what sort of "understanding" are you after? What would satisfy you that you "understand" infinite time?

It would be more like realising that you’d never see the acorn turn into a tree kinda thing! And that tree producing more acorns that turn into trees.

I guess the answer is easy then. Though the type of experience itself may be infinite in nature the subjects finite nature is no barrier experiencing such infinity, albeit briefly, which kinda seems counterintuitive.

Such constructs like time and space are abstractions made real. The only limit that could be placed on it would be its origin just like if you had to count to infinity you’d start at 1 but never finish, although metaphysically time would be immune to such a starting point as it would have no starting point.

Infinity really exercises our imagination to the limit, going into the realm of the incomprehensible, our powers of conceptualising infinity hit a brick wall and even the best metaphors fail to capture their true metaphysical nature though that by no means stops a philosopher since the days of Aristotle…

Question: would such a progression of linear time to a conscious being allow them to understand its infinite nature though not being able experience infinity itself due to their limited timespan or would the experience of time standing still as it were during it’s progression constitute an understanding of infinity anyway of the infinite nature of time ? — invicta

The only way someone could experience and thus appreciate the "infinity" of time is to have infinite memory/recall and perfect prediction of future events. To have infinite memory one must have infinite matter to code it into, infinite space to store that coded info, exist in infinite places at infinite times to observe and collect the data for storage. Not even the universe has infinite matter nor energy as these are finite (cannot be created nor destroyed) but they can change. And change they do. It can condense it's processing. Improve efficiency (put more memorising ability in a smaller entity) by natural selection of phenomena. Trial and error.

If all matter can store the secrets of time and what happened to it with the passage of time (which I believe it does - rings of trees, geology, plate tectonics, the rotation of galaxies, the cosmic microwave background, then the only thing with just enough memory to store the whole universe, is the whole universe.

But I'll level with you on a more pragmatic and achievable alternative to infinite memory, or existing forever to witness and memorise all of time.

Condensation. Intelligence. Cramming as much density of information, knowledge, memory and awareness into the smallest package possible (a brain perhaps).

You don't need all the minute details and permutations at every moment/instant, they are implicit in your existence already. You don't need to have been there to "witness" in the minds eye these things that have come to pass.
You merely need the formula. A refined logical paradigm of relationships, dynamics, rules, laws and constants that reveal an accurate prediction of both the past and future as it was and will be. Something to connect the self to the past and future. This is what brains are specialised at doing.

After all, the present is the only time one can exist as a material object in this exact momentary state of arrangement. The past no longer exists for ones body, though it remembers when it did. The future also doesn't exist for ones body, although it can anticipate certain parts of it with varying degree of accuracy (climate change for example).

The arrangement of one's matter, the quality of its structure, in essence, it's efficiency in establishing correct relationship to the rest of the world, is it's awareness of the world/reality, of time. The big picture.

By temporality I mean the passage of time and its experience….. — invicta

Would you entertain the notion finite beings don’t experience the passage of time, but rather, only experience change? And even if change makes explicit successions in time relative to each other, it remains it is not time itself that is the object experienced.

Question: would such a progression of linear time to a conscious being allow them to understand its infinite nature…. — invicta

If the above notion is granted, it follows time doesn’t have the infinite nature, but the infinite resides in the changes that are possible to imagine. If space and time are merely necessary conditions for human experience, then each would be only as infinite as that experience which is conditioned by them.

But the apparent infinite nature of space and time, properly understood, is merely the infinite possibility for change. The argument goes….even given the infinite divisibility of space and time, each division is still just space or time.

Would you entertain the notion finite beings don’t experience the passage of time, but rather, only experience change? And even if change makes explicit successions in time relative to each other, it remains it is not time itself that is the object experienced. — Mww

Agree with the idea that it’s not time that is being experienced but change, although the two concepts of time and change are inseparable.

We cannot experience time the best we can do is measure it, and if something like time cannot be measured can it be said to exist at all?

The continuous stream of awareness/consciousness experiencing the world or self is taking part in this infinite continuum of perpetual existence as it were. But of course it switches off at some point when death stops it yet the fabric which experience is impressed upon occurred in the infinite.

Our senses that allows us to experience the external world although pretty amazing are not anchored by a sense of time. We simply lack it hence us building clocks to tell its passage in a consistent way.

Agree with the idea that it’s not time that is being experienced but change, although the two concepts of time and change are inseparable. — invicta

In the metrics of spacetime, should time be entirely independent of spacial change?

if space is removed from time then the notion of space loses meaning I’d say. Also because space is occupied by matter it leads to transformation of such matter into energy and creates entropy.

The same would apply to time if you removed space from it.

They’re co-dependent or co-existing and cannot exist without the other hence spacetime (one word)

if something like time cannot be measured can it be said to exist at all? — invicta

Ehhh….I’d give that a big fat no. Can’t buy it by the pound, can’t store it in the freezer. Usually when we say something exists we can lay a hand on it, or could lay a hand on it if we knew where to find it. Or if not that, then just sit around and wait for it to show us an effect impossible for anything else to cause. Far as I know, none of those have happened.

Our senses (…) are not anchored by a sense of time. We simply lack it hence us building clocks to tell its passage in a consistent way. — invicta

Our senses are not anchored by a sense of time, true, but we can’t say we lack a sense of it, in that we must somehow have a sense of that which eventually will be conceived as “time”, otherwise there’s no legitimate reason for us to build clocks at all.
————-

if space is removed from time then the notion of space loses meaning I’d say. — invicta

If the notion of space loses its meaning, how could you say one object is adjacent to, far from, or contained in, another?

If the notion of space loses its meaning, how could you say one object is adjacent to, far from, or contained in, another? — Mww

Space would not exist altogether then in that case.

Let me explain my reasoning:

Objects in space must also exist in time correct? In the present that is which is a manifestation of temporality.

Take away time then WHEN does space exist ?

Without a when there is no material world and so no space or objects within space, could you deny this ?

Objects in space must also exist in time correct? — invicta

Yes, as far as we’re concerned anyway.

Take away time then WHEN does space exist ? — invicta

You’ve conflated the time of objects with the time of space. That notwithstanding, while it is the case objects are necessarily conditioned by both space and time, that necessity, which is the method by which we as humans relate to real objects, does not carry any implication that space is conditioned by time, which could have no relation to us whatsoever. Objects related by both to something else, does not imply they relate to each other.

The question, then, is unintelligible.

Without a when there is no material world….. — invicta

All when’s belong to rational agents. Without a when belonging to rational agents, there would be no material world for them, but that is not authority to deny the material world altogether.

You’ve conflated the time of objects with the time of space — Mww

If space is everything that exists, then it would be meaningless to speak of time outside of it as there is no outside of everything that is. So time then by necessity would be a property of space and space a property of time.

All when’s belong to rational agents. Without a when belonging to rational agents, there would be no material world for them, but that is not authority to deny the material world altogether. — Mww

Time is not a quality that belongs to rational agents only, it’s on objective concept that applies to the material world as events that happen within it happen progressively rather than all at once if a material world did in fact exist without rational agents …would you agree to that ?

If space is everything that exists…. — invicta

Reality is everything that exists; space is that in which everything that exists, is found.

Time is not a quality that belongs to rational agents only, it’s on objective concept…. — invicta

And what other than rational agents, conceive?

And what other than rational agents, conceive — Mww

Your point to this line of questioning? Time exists regardless of rational agents, otherwise you’d claim nothing exists without rational conscious agents.

Time exists regardless of rational agents, otherwise you’d claim nothing exists without rational conscious agents. — invicta

I would not affirm either of those things.

How could it possibly be comprehensible, that time exists without the intellect that uses it? Actually, how is it comprehensible that time exists, at least in the same manner, under the same conditions, as real things exist? If it doesn’t exist as real objects exist, how can it be said to exist at all?

My point is….it’s all too easy for the human intellect to contradict itself.

How could it possibly be comprehensible, that time exists without the intellect that uses it? — Mww

It would not be comprehensible in that sense, as comprehension is something only done be a comprehensive entity, mind, consciousness etc.

But you will then have to assume a universe without such an entity, consisting only of moving bodies, atoms, matter/energy.

Events will still happen despite no observation of such events by entities such as minds etc.

Events A, B, C happening all at once removes temporal linearity, in succession reintroduces it.

So time only makes sense only in terms of actions/events occurring linearly.

It is of course a very complex notion to speak of time in terms of events occurring simultaneously as well as instantly as there was no present or past state for those events to occur in. It could be said that 3 such events being instantiated are unobservable yet if happening non-instantly they’re occurring in time although not linearly but also in space. Spacetime.

But isn’t that the Big Bang ? A huge explosion/expansion emitting forms of matter/energy all at once in all spatial directions! Simultaneous-Instanteous event in terms of origin, linear thence as the expansion itself takes time and grows outwards linearly at a measurable rate (probably faster than light but still measurable)

Our apparatus of detection of this event looks at the early entropy state of such an event, a snapshot of this simultaneous matter/energy emission at its earliest point from origin to the outwards expansion.

Before this event, the prior state leading to this simultaneous burst cannot be known due to multiple events such as A, B, C occurring all at once and also instantaneously in opposing directions or even criss-crossing as there is no linearity to speak of if such an event is a one off in terms of origin.

In the static void of such a universe prior to the big bang, how could events like this even occur if matter/space/time was created subsequently? The assumption in my last sentence has started to become slightly outdated in the current scientific realms of physics/astrophysics so truth on the matter remains a subject ripe for scientific/philosophical speculation or just plain old metaphysics.

...would such a progression of linear time to a conscious being allow them to understand its infinite nature though not being able experience infinity itself due to their limited timespan — invicta

One might hardly count past a few hundred, but that does not prevent one understanding much larger numbers, together with infinity, transfinite numbers and other mathematical beasts.

the two concepts of time and change are inseparable. — invicta

You might enjoy What's the big mystery about time?, in which that notion is taken to the cleaners.

In the metrics of spacetime, should time be entirely independent of spacial change? — jgill

if space is removed from time then the notion of space loses meaning I’d say. — invicta

What I was referring to is seen in the Minkowski metric of spacetime, in which the time term is in fact a distance term $c^2\left(t_1 - t_2\right)^2 - \left(x_1 - x_2\right)^2 - \left(y_1 - y_2\right)^2 - \left(z_1 - z_2\right)^2.$

….truth on the matter remains a subject ripe for (….) just plain old metaphysics. — invicta

Pretty much, yep. Same as it ever was….

What I was referring to is seen in the Minkowski metric of spacetime, in which the time term is in fact a distance term c2(t1−t2)2−(x1−x2)2−(y1−y2)2−(z1−z2)2. — jgill

This I consider to be the principal defect of the current conventional conception of spacetime, that time is reduced to being spatial, rather than conceived of as being logically prior to space.

As we get older time seems to pass more rapidly. At the age of ten one hour seemed like an eternity. Is it possible the "rate" at which time passes actually is varied? But we only have time itself to compare it with, so we cannot tell, apart from rapid motion in special relativity. As I sit typing this, is time fluctuating, and if so is the fluctuation a local phenomenon?

In a typical spacetime graph (2D space + Time) how is it that passage of time is allowed at a purely spacial stationary "event"?

Is Elon Musk really a time traveler from the year 5000AD? :chin:

There's seems to be two experiences that keep me cognizant of the passage of time: 1) the constant change of entities (taken broadly as everything empirically relevant to my experience), and 2) the fact everything seems to come into existence and then exit. It's the latter that can make things seem urgent. But if I bracket (2) and just look in terms of (1), I can get a sense of eternity. I want to think of change as necessary to our experience of the passage of time, and maybe it is, but if change is a constant and there's no fear of not-being-there, then it's a different experience, I think. The moment becomes much more relevant, maybe, and that's all there really is.