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[Sordid]

Well, first try to define any single moment of time as a single time slot. it's impossible to do exactly because we take more than one time slot to think "that was a time slot". We understand the universe as a fluid thing, but all things must happen at one time, like the instant a photograph takes a picture (still not perfectly instantaneous, but I don't think we can do better right now). All is fluid and yet static, flowing but still.

P.S. Lose 1d20 San if you actually understand any of this...

Well there is such a thing as Planck units, including among other things the Planck length and Planck time. These are the shortest that are physically possible; to put it simply, Planck time is the shortest amount of time in which anything can happen. It's, quite literally, a 'tick' of the clock of the universe, much like FPS is for DF.

[Neonivek]

Just to inform the topic creator:

The combat in the game is nowhere near what Toady, and most people, want it to be. Also Adventure mode is too light to even be considered Skin and Bones (just try shopping... NIGHTMARES!!!).

However Combat has an Arc onto itself.

So you will have a whole cycle of development by Toady devoted entirely to combat.

[Neruz]

The amusing thing is; time logically has to be discrete, because continuous time is impossible.

[Baughn]

Don't fall into the same trap as the old greeks.

Continuous time is perfectly possible (don't tell the universe what to do!), and the planck units, while neat, do not imply that there is nothing shorter/faster than those units. They're the smallest a single event can be, the precise location of those events can perfectly well have arbitrarily better precision.

Now, many people think that time might in fact be discrete (including me!), but we have no proof of that, and the laws of physics certainly aren't restricted to being computable. Probably.

[XSI]

I have seen from a few different sources, time is actually a fabric, which would explains why it can slow down/speed up when something goes really fast, and why black holes apparently slow down time.


Also, combat mechanics to a discussion on the science behind time? I love this forum.

[Sordid]

Don't fall into the same trap as the old greeks.

Continuous time is perfectly possible (don't tell the universe what to do!), and the planck units, while neat, do not imply that there is nothing shorter/faster than those units. They're the smallest a single event can be, the precise location of those events can perfectly well have arbitrarily better precision.

Now, many people think that time might in fact be discrete (including me!), but we have no proof of that, and the laws of physics certainly aren't restricted to being computable. Probably.

I.... was told otherwise by people who claim to understand this, but seeing as I'm not a theoretical physicist myself I'll just have to shrug here and drop it.

[Neruz]

Don't fall into the same trap as the old greeks.

Continuous time is perfectly possible (don't tell the universe what to do!), and the planck units, while neat, do not imply that there is nothing shorter/faster than those units. They're the smallest a single event can be, the precise location of those events can perfectly well have arbitrarily better precision.

Now, many people think that time might in fact be discrete (including me!), but we have no proof of that, and the laws of physics certainly aren't restricted to being computable. Probably.

The problem with time being continuous is you run into good old infinity, which breaks everything at a logical level. Modern caculus and advanced mathematics and physics gets around the infinity issue by ignoring it and thus claiming to have solved the problem, without actually addressing the problem. Continuous time raises a whole bunch of very hard-to-answer questions that require some rather silly contortions of science in order to explain away, discrete time raises a smaller number of relatively easy to answer questions that require almost no contortions to explain.

Based on our current scientific knowledge, Discrete time seems both more likely, and cleaner.



Of course, if you go far enough time starts screwing with you and you become less concerned as to if it's discrete or continuous and more concerned with if it even exists in the first place.

[Rowanas]

Huh... This is why I fail at physics. I got an A in my GCSEs all those years ago, but proper physics just hurts.

[Neruz]

Proper Physics is incredibly messy, it's the scientific equivilant of a car that's been pached up and repaired so many times it's more like a big ball of welds and duct tape than an actual car.

Odds are this is because we're missing some fundamental part of the puzzle, probably a corner piece. Einstein felt this way and spent the latter half of his life looking for that piece, unfortunately he, and all those who have so far come after him, have been unable to do so.

[Typoman]

watch it turn out to be something so incredibly simple that everyone who ever worked on it cries out in dismay when they hear it 

but really, proper physics is a scary place

[Neruz]

watch it turn out to be something so incredibly simple that everyone who ever worked on it cries out in dismay when they hear it 

but really, proper physics is a scary place

Of course it will. Like standing an egg on it's tip, once the trick is explained, anyone can do it.

[Bricks]

Modern caculus and advanced mathematics and physics gets around the infinity issue by ignoring it and thus claiming to have solved the problem, without actually addressing the problem.

The whole notion of a limit is pretty rigorously defined.  Are you really claiming that calculus doesn't have a sound basis?

Wow, this thread is so far gone.  Someone please kill it.

[Starver]

Well there is such a thing as Planck units, including among other things the Planck length and Planck time. These are the shortest that are physically possible; to put it simply, Planck time is the shortest amount of time in which anything can happen. It's, quite literally, a 'tick' of the clock of the universe, much like FPS is for DF.

I'd say more like the shortest observable tick of the clock/difference in position.  I subscribe to the idea that sub-Planck physics is a deterministic but non-trivially complex environment which can only be observed at a resolution >= Planck*[x,y,z,t,etc].  A continuous and wave-function (or several, overlaid upon each other) thus appears as discrete an 'unpredictable' phenomena in time and space, inclusive of the kind of particle/anti-particle pairs that are key to Hawking radiation, that are (maybe) local maxima or minima in either the bare continuous waveform (as measured against one or more or all of the available dimensions, and possibly at higher orders or derivation).

That's if the universe's intrinsic mathematics is anything like the pure maths we like to work with, of course.  I think I've mentioned before the possibility of a Conway's Game Of Life universe simulated by us, in which intelligent creatures could 'arise', but have no understanding of the silicon technologies and coding techniques used to implement their world, and who would have their own 'Planck distance' and 'Planck time' limits to detection that are greater than the cell-size/tick-length that we, as almighty lords and rulers of their universe, actually know to be the Truth.  The scientific approximations adopted by the denizens to explain the world around them would by far more distant than Quantum Theory is to the Newtonian kind, and remain so, even when at their equivalent of Quauntum 'understanding'.  Mainly because I suspect that our Quantum Theory is also a significant distance away from the Truth, in whataver form that may be.  (Although I shall probably never accept the possibility of there being a set of Lord and Rulers behind us.  Because then we're into Turtles All The Way Down territory.)

There, a little light philosophy to help me wind down for the day.

[Baughn]

Deterministic? Sure, just don't expect it to look anything like your intuitions. (And why should it? Those intuitions are evolved to deal with macro-scale phenomenon, not.. this.)

Specifically, never forget that Bell's theorem has been experimentally validated. IMO that pretty much rules out every explanation of quantum mechanics except the very simple (null interpretation) of MWI, but I know people tend to disagree on that.. well, I've got occam's razor on my side, at least.

[Granite26]

watch it turn out to be something so incredibly simple that everyone who ever worked on it cries out in dismay when they hear it 

Or something that the human brain just isn't capable of 'getting' (like dogs aren't capable of 'getting' calculus)