∆-2 The Language of Time works.

The language of time works extremely well - and throughout this website and the book words such as 'before' and 'after' are regularly used, but like 'money' just because the 'language' works it doesn't mean there is a real thing behind it.

Now you're talking my language !

Numbered sheets of printed paper.

'Money' - a word used to name something that, while very useful, ultimately doesn't exist other than as an idea.

Back to >> ∆ Timeless v.Time distinctions (Rhetoric and Semantics).

The language of time works, but this doesn't prove that 'time' exists.

One of the biggest problems with seeing time for what it really is, just a useful notion, is that the language, and the 'idea' of time works extremely well.

On the 'idea' of time.

Time seems to be the most perfect of illusions, in that the 'idea' of time, existing, and flowing in one direction and so on, works so well that everything in the universe moves and changes 'as if' time did exist.

If the idea of time fits the description of the universe so well, then isn't that the same as time existing, or a proof of time ? Well, no, because part of the way that the description of time seems to fit the universe is because the two most amazing aspects of time , the past,, and the future, are both deemed to be 'invisible' for various reasons.

So the idea of time fits what we see, just as the idea that the emperor is wearing a 'new' but completely invisible robe, also fits what is seen.

What i am saying in this work is that although time does not exist, everything we see appears and makes sense just as if time did exist. In fact, i'm not even suggesting we drop the idea. But I am saying that everything is in fact all just here now, and any talk of time being anything other than a 'word', e.g. in theories for example of 'time travel', must be incorrect.

(See>> ∆ Parents and children. >>∆ Prof Hawking's Mad Scientist Paradox.)

The language of time.

In fact the language works so well that it seems to be evidence that time also exists as a real and separate thing that actually has its own attributes. Attributes that mankind is not making up but is discovering.

A very useful analogy here is that of money. While we can agree that money is a human invention, it is different to other inventions such as toothpaste or cars, because they really exist, in that you can find them, see them, use them, weigh them photograph them or whatever.

Money however seems to be real, but it is really only an idea. It is believed that originally some parts of the world would label goods in a market with their equivalent value in agreed units of copper. So in theory if say a melon was valued at 10 grams of copper you could hand the merchant the correct weight in copper and walk away. More realistically you would have given, or promised to give the merchant some of your own goods, also to the value of 10 grams of copper. From here we can see with the keeping of agreements, and written notes, how no actual copper was needed to exist or change hands, and the idea of money may have started.

Money, is an ‘idea’ or notion, that lives, careers, industries and even TV stations are often entirely controlled by, devoted to, improved or destroyed.

In the language of money we have Capital, interest rates, exchange rates, debts, investments, insurance, pounds, dollars, Euros, hedge funds, gambling, and so on. But If you ever try to actually find money, or these aspects of it, you will not succeed.

All you will ever find is understandings and agreements between different people that various round pieces of metal, bits of paper, or bits of magnetic data, re-present money. But if you search deeper still you will find that there are only re-presentations of money, and the actual thing they apparently represent is nowhere to be found.

This works fine, as long as we all agree never to need to actually see ‘the money’.

If money does exist, then it should be something we have found, like oil or coal, and thus something that there is only a finite amount of for use to hold or exchange. Instead we find that while cavemen apparently had no money, today we have trillions upon trillions of every conceivable currency, and even that the land our ancestors roamed freely around ‘is’ worth millions of Dollars or Euros. If only they had known.

At the very best you may find a large pile of metal or minerals, in a very secure safe, that most people agree are rare, precious, pretty, or that have very useful physical properties, e.g. gold, silver, diamonds – and it is apparently these physical things that are represented by the notes and coins you may hold.

Along with the language of money is the idea that savings may grow with ‘compound interest’, and of course the opposite, debts and loans have to be paid off with ‘interest’. But even ‘interest’ doesn’t really exist. If you look for ‘interest’ to try and find what it actually is and how it works to make sums of money grow, you will find nothing in nature relating to it. Again all you will find is human beings ‘insisting’ that ‘interest has accumulated’. And showing you graphs or squiggles on paper or screens. Ultimately, no matter how passionately people may argue, fight, rob, lie, rejoice or cry about ‘money’, and no matter how vast and complex the words and ideas about it may be, it does not actually exist other than as an agreement or human idea.

The fact that money is a word that actually relates to no real and existing thing, but which non the less ‘works’ and is in common use, is not a proof that ‘Time’ also only exists as a human agreement, word, or idea. But what this does show us is that just because a thing can seem to exist, and have an entire, very useful, and fully functioning vocabulary surrounding it, these things alone is not proof of a things existence.

The notion of time may at first indeed seem to be about something real, or even about everything real. Although I hope to show that time has no physical reality at all we have to be clear here and accept that like money, the language and agreements surrounding time are extremely useful and do work very well – and therefore throughout this book time based word have to be used because they are familiar to us and are an efficient way of wording explanations.

Assuming, as I do, that there is no reason to think the past or future exist, it follows that this entire book could be written in the present tense. But to do this would be like writing a book about the global financial situation without using the language of money, which would be possible but even the simplest sentence about a $5000 car, bought with a loan at 15% interest, would become overly complex.

So throughout this book you will read many words and sentences relating to time, because this is a very efficient way of talking about the change that happens in the world. This entire book/website could be written in a timeless vocabulary but this would lead to unfamiliar and excessively long sentences. So while words such as hour and minute, before, after and so on are used it should ultimately become clear that these words can be shown to only actually be referring to amounts of movement and change ‘now’, and not amounts of movement and change ‘over time’.

>> ∆-3 Assumptions 'seem' to be confirmed.

Back to >> ∆ Timeless v.Time distinctions (Rhetoric and Semantics).

M.Marsden.