A Different Perspective on the Existence of Time: Thought as the smallest Unit of Time

Sometimes a change in perspective is all that is required to know and understand the world. Some questions drive people crazy. Sometimes they lead people to believe in ridiculous fantasies. Scientists used to be tried in court for witchcraft. When people first encountered printed Bibles, they thought it was the works of the devil because each copy was similar to the other. That was actually the whole point of printing. It was an act of making perfect clones. People shouldn't have bothered with writing stuff faster. They could have made a machine that make exact copies of something.

The concept of time is something that even scientists can't wrap their minds around. But we can't solve these problems with the state of mind and kind of thinking that created these problems in the first place. Scientific knowledge is a mere instrument. It doesn't necessarily contain objective truths about the universe.

Instrumentalism is a view in philosophy of science that claims scientific theories are merely useful tools for predicting phenomena instead of true or approximately true descriptions of the physical world. Instrumentalism can best be understood as a position against scientific realism
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Instrumentalism

For additional reading please visit https://steemit.com/philosophy/@vimukthi/2-thought-experiments-to-forever-change-the-way-you-look-at-the-world-philosophy-discussion where I talk about "Constructive Relativism" which is like a far more developed and advanced evolution of Instrumentalism. I've expanded the discussion on this post: https://steemit.com/philosophy/@vimukthi/chintana-the-socio-psychological-force-that-guide-the-fate-of-nations-cultures-and-all-sorts-of-groups-an-explanation-of-the

Time is an interpretation - What you see on a Screen

You laptop/ PC/ Tab/ Mobile screen does not receive an image like that of a projector. What it receive is a set of electrical impulses which are read as "1"s and "0"s. I've given my inputs some time ago at various places. I'm going to quote some of them.

Time only exist as a concept. Any any given moment there are things that has happened (Eg: Yesterday) and the things that has not happened but is set to happen (Eg: Tomorrow or the ringing of an alarm)
When somebody is refereeing to time, it's actually a chronology. The things we see are not the things that exist but things that are processed by the mind. Eg: A color blind person sees differently. An animal sees differently.
The colors are a construct based on the wavelength of light(Electromagnetic Waves). The time is a construct based on chronology.
Colors don't exist but electromagnetic waves does. Time doesn't exist but chronology does. It's like the water in a mirage. The water isn't there but the process that make it appear so exists.

Are you looking at a GIF?

You can check out the file extension. That's not what I'm trying to point out. If you take your phone and pause a video and show it to a person, how is that person going to determine whether it's a paused video or an image? Let's take things further. What if the above image is a GIF and what if you edit a video to play with a freeze frame and show it to a person? Just think about that for a moment.

We don't perceive a flow of time unless something have changed. If fact "Time" is change itself.
Show me the Present and I'll show you the Past.
You can never capture a present. You have things that has happened and things that has not yet happened. Past-Present-Future is a mental classification that has great utility like our economic activities. Where does cryptocurrencies get their value? They don't really have any value. Some individuals are willing to exchange another something for something like Dash, PIVX, NEM. An electronic medium of exchange is useful. Making a distinction of Past and Future has immense value.

Thought as the smallest unit of Time

One could say time is infinitely divisible. I used to be around this idea too as a kid. It made a lot of sense. But I could see no origin...... a cause and effect of the existence of time. That's when I understood that I was trying to draw a box while being inside of a box. You can divide any number by any large number and still get a value. But that is an already existing piece of time.

Source

Without 2 different thought instances there can be no perception of time. You can't measure the length of a point. You can't measure the width of a 1 Dimensional object. In the same way you can't measure a duration of time in a single thought instance.

"What is the All? Simply the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect & ideas. This, monks, is called the All. Anyone who would say, 'Repudiating this All, I will describe another,' if questioned on what exactly might be the grounds for his statement, would be unable to explain, and furthermore, would be put to grief. Why? Because it lies beyond range."
-https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn35/sn35.023.than.html

Try to simulate being blind and explain me the experience. I want you to describe the difference between the two kinds of sensory perception of being blind and not blind. How does your senses feel while you are blind and while you are not blind?



What if the blackness get replaced by any of the above 3 colors? What if we hack someone's nervous system to make sure it only feed one Wavelength (color) into the brain via electric impulses? Would it be any different from the simulated blindness of yours? Without change, there are no thought instances. Without thought instances, there is no time. This is an extremely simple and elegant explanation of what time is. I see no holes in my understanding and this is what I stand by.

Transitioning from Chess to Go

This is what my simple metaphysical explanation does. Chess is a more complex game. Go is rather simple. There have been chess games running on those old PDAs for decades. But the current pinnacle of Artificial Intelligence research was making a computer be a champion at Go. It's honestly an inch deep and mile wide Vs a mile deep and inch wide scenario. I'm not exaggerating. Do your own research into the two games.

A radical difference in the way of thinking does force us into a whole new paradigm and this time (accidental pun) we can rely on no equipment. In certain meditation texts I've read that meditating upon the subject of time leads to the understanding of the nature of the universe. The thing is that the Universe is HUUUUGGEE. So don't let the thinking make you go mad :-)