When does the future begin?

[Molinaro]

Is the future something real or is it just a concept? For that matter, is a concept something real?

[andyandy]

all of spacetime exists - time has no flow. Therefore none of the above :)

[Tricky]

Now.

[rikzilla]

Well in 1980 I dropped acid with some friends at a Journey concert in Offenbach. During the concert everyone in the crowd seemed to be dancing around in slow motion, yet my friends and I were moving at a normal rate of speed. It ocurred to us all that we were actually about 3 or 4 seconds in the future while the rest of the crowd was still in the past.




I guess you had to be there.
-z

[Freethinker]

Now.

No, that was the past. The future begins now! No wait..NOW! Dang future keeps turning into the past on me.:bwall

[Marquis de Carabas]

The future begins the instant I get my flying car.

[Tricky]

No, that was the past. The future begins now! No wait..NOW! Dang future keeps turning into the past on me.:bwall
Which reminds me of why the Steve Miller Band writes the stupidest lyrics of any group.

"Time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin' into the future."

Idiot. It slips into the past.

And don't even get me started on "Take the Money and Run".

[Tricky]

The future begins the instant I get my flying car.
We already have flying cars. It's the "landing cars" we need to work on.
http://images.chron.com/photos/2007/06/11/6640088/311xInlineGallery.jpg

[l0rca]

all of spacetime exists - time has no flow. Therefore none of the above :)

Actually, I don't know if I would claim so surely that 'spacetime exists' if you're referring to a General Relativity-esque manifold of spacetime. I can think of at least some philosophical barries between that theory and it having exact implications on real truth.

Also, we don't need to think about time as a dimension in order to reason its day-to-day comprehension is an illusion. Considering time as simply the comparison of the phenomena of changing distances reveals the illusion as well. We then consider the "future" as nothing more than estimated foresight of where phenomena will arrive in comparison to other phenomena in referance to other organized and predictable comparisons. The "past" then becomes where objects were remembered to be, or recorded to be, in referance to each other.

[toddjh]

The future began in 1997.

[Overman]

Reminds me of a great They Might Be Giants song....

You're older than you've ever been
and now you even older...
and now you even older...
and now you even older...

[MelBrooksfan]

The children are our future.

[shemp]

I agree with Johnny Rotten, there's no future.

[Fnord]

The furture is a dream.
The present is an illusion.
The past is a memory.

Maybe not.

[BenK]

It's gonna be the future soon. (http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songdetails/The%20Future%20Soon)

[bjornart]

Reminds me of a great They Might Be Giants song....

You're older than you've ever been
and now you even older...
and now you even older...
and now you even older...

And now you're older still!


The future doesn't exist, the past doesn't exist, and I'm not too sure about the present.

[Yiab]

What's the smallest fraction bigger than 0?
That's your answer.

[Loss Leader]

I'm going with whatever theory of time they had on Quantum Leap.

[Tanstaafl]

Okay, I just couldn't resist having a Spaceballs moment:
-----------------------------------------------------

Dark Helmet: What the Hell am I looking at?! When does this happen in the movie?!
Col. Sandurz: Now! You're looking at "now," sir. Everything that happens now is happening "now."
Dark Helmet: What happened to "then?"
Col. Sandurz: We passed it.
Dark Helmet: When?
Col. Sandurz: Just now. We're at now "now."
Dark Helmet: Go back to "then."
Col. Sandurz: When?
Dark Helmet: Now.
Col. Sandurz: Now?!
Dark Helmet: Now!
Col. Sandurz: I can't.
Dark Helmet: Why?
Col. Sandurz: We missed it.
Dark Helmet: When?
Col. Sandurz: Just now.
Dark Helmet: When will "then" be "now?"
Col. Sandurz: Soon.

[Kilgore Trout]

time isn't holding us / time isn't after us
time isn't holding us / time doesn't hold you back
time isn't holding us / time isn't after us
time isn't holding us /
letting the days go by
once in a lifetime

[andyandy]

Actually, I don't know if I would claim so surely that 'spacetime exists' if you're referring to a General Relativity-esque manifold of spacetime. I can think of at least some philosophical barries between that theory and it having exact implications on real truth.

Bring me your philosophy and let's fight! :)

Based on that which we know about the laws of physics, and leaving to oneside solipsism, and sidesteping the philosopical minefield of "existence" we should conclude that spacetime exists and that time has no flow. How about that?

[slingblade]

The future is born in that precise moment just before you draw your next breath.






I dunno. It sounded nice. :p

[Molinaro]

A bunch of interestingly nice answers is just what I was expecting to find as replies.

[Jon.]

Well in 1980 I dropped acid with some friends at a Journey concert in Offenbach. During the concert everyone in the crowd seemed to be dancing around in slow motion, yet my friends and I were moving at a normal rate of speed. It ocurred to us all that we were actually about 3 or 4 seconds in the future while the rest of the crowd was still in the past.

I guess you had to be there.
-z

What were you thinking? Don't you know how bad that stuff is for you?












Journey, I mean.
The acid, meh, whatever.:D

[Loss Leader]

Colonel Sandurz: That's too early. Prepare to fast-forward!
Video Operator: Preparing to fast-forward!
Colonel Sandurz: Fast-forward!
Video Operator: Fast-forwarding, Sir!

[Tanstaafl]

At my age, life is always fast-forwarding... :(

[JoeTheJuggler]

Right . . . now! No--wait a sec. . .now!

No--now!

Er. . .now!

[Piscivore]

The future began in 1997.

August 29th, 1997?

[Darth Rotor]

Is the future something real or is it just a concept? For that matter, is a concept something real?
The future happens just after you reach it.

DR

[Molinaro]

Not just before?

[Brattus]

How come time doesn't stop when your watch breaks?

[l0rca]

Bring me your philosophy and let's fight! :)

Based on that which we know about the laws of physics, and leaving to oneside solipsism, and sidesteping the philosopical minefield of "existence" we should conclude that spacetime exists and that time has no flow. How about that?

Spacetime the manifold that contains all matter?

If yes, then briefly (I know General Relativity), why should we consider spacetime existing? And you mean existing = real in itself, I assume.

EDIT: Philosophical minefield of existance? I hope that's not a bias against all of ontology. Just because this is the JREF board doesn't mean that some of us actually understand philosophy. ;)

[Hokulele]

And once again, from a surf shop t-shirt:

The past is frozen, the future is vapor, the moment is liquid.

[Tanstaafl]

and what, about 86 proof? :D

[skeptifem]

"CHILDREN ARE TEH FUTURE" was not a poll option :(

[Hokulele]

and what, about 86 proof? :D


With little paper umbrellas.

[andyandy]

Spacetime the manifold that contains all matter?

If yes, then briefly (I know General Relativity), why should we consider spacetime existing? And you mean existing = real in itself, I assume.




that is what the evolution of physical thought has been - from

Newton who believed that space is an entity and accelerated motion was not relative

Leibeniz and Mach who believed that space was not an entity, and held relationist positions

to Eintsen who believed space and time are individually relative and spacetime is an absolute entity.

Einstein did argue that spacetime had no existence independent of its metric (ie the mathematical device that gives distances in spacetime) - so that if one were to remove everything, including the metric, spacetime would not be a something, but that spacetime should be taken as a manifold [spatial area] together with a metric which solves his [Einstein's SR/GR] equations - thus in mathematical language metrical spacetime is something.

The question is, how to regard spacetime if not through terms of existence?

[l0rca]

Einstein did argue that spacetime had no existence independent of its metric (ie the mathematical device that gives distances in spacetime) - so that if one were to remove everything, including the metric, spacetime would not be a something, but that spacetime should be taken as a manifold [spatial area] together with a metric which solves his [Einstein's SR/GR] equations - thus in mathematical language metrical spacetime is something.

I'm not really sure how this gives much relevance to demonstrating the existance of spacetime. Personally, I think spacetime most probably exists, though not in the sense than Einstien would have it -- I think matter can exist without a spacetime manifold.

The question is, how to regard spacetime if not through terms of existence?

It's not possible to do with a traditional theory of Relativity, but I don't see how we should regard the mathematical nature of that theory as proof of real things.

To "put my cards on the table":

Relativity does not describe the intimacy and mechanic(s) involved between the interractions of spacetime and matter -- it describes what happens in macrocosmic terms, yes, but it doesn't tell us the causality of it. QM was supposed give some insights into this, but sadly it hardly has. We also have no way of directly observing spacetime and matter interactions. We rely on the mathematical predictions to validate it. That's not good enough to prove something exists.

Some versions of Quantum Loop Gravity are starting to give us a glimpse to the fundamental relation spacetime and matter has, as well as String Theory. But both redefine spacetime and matter as phenomena made of the same stuff -- here we see spacetime not so much as a container for reality as much as it is a 'primordial soup' of energy. This further brings up questions (of course, their answers may make the questions seem foolish) about the origin of spacetime and matter -- perhaps these 'manifolds of reality' turn out to be inevitables of the backdrop of complete nothingness, where spacetimes, or strings, have evolved in order to contain and govern matter in referances similar enough to each other to enable causality.

[dglas]

The future is what I used to talk about in the past before the present stole away my hope for it.

[D'rok]

Is the future something real or is it just a concept? For that matter, is a concept something real?Depends if you are talking about cosmological time or human historical time. All that sciencey stuff just confuddles me, so here's a perspective on time and the future from philosophy:

Hobbes, in Leviathan, calls it prudence:
The present only has a being in nature; things past have a being in the memory only; but things to come have no being at all, the future being but a fiction of the mind, applying the sequels of actions past to the actions that are present; which with most certainty is done by him that has most experience, but not with certainty enough.
Kojeve, in his interpretation of Hegel, uses the same definition to illustrate human historical time:
The Time that Hegel has in view, then, is human or historical Time; it is the Time of conscious and voluntary action which realizes in the present a Project for the future, which Project is formed on the basis of knowledge of the past.

Now, man essentially creates and destroys in terms of the idea that he forms of the Future. And the idea of the Future appears in the real present in the form of a Desire directed toward another Desire - that is, in the form of a Desire for social Recognition. Now, Action that arises from this Desire engenders History. Hence there is Time only where there is History.

Therefore, Time (that is, historical Time, with the rhythm: Future --> Past --> Present) is Man in his empirical - that is, spatial - integral reality: Time is the History of Man in the World. And indeed, without Man, there would be no Time in the World.
So the future begins whenever a desire begins. The future arrives whenever that desire is brought into the present through the prudential historical action that creates Time. The future ends when History ends - i.e., when all desiring resulting in historical action is complete. At that point, both Time and History have ended. There is no more future or past, just the eternal Now. There is no action, no desire; there is merely behaviour in Eternity, and Being in nature.

Nonsense, I know....but fun nonsense.

[Mashuna]

The future is born in that precise moment just before you draw your next breath.






I dunno. It sounded nice. :p

It did sound nice, however it made me hold my breath until I went dizzy :faint:

[blobru]

The future is a fuzzy subset of events which haven't begun.

When an event like dinner begins, it ain't future no mo'.

Trick question! :spanksheepicon ;)

[.13.]

Based on that which we know about the laws of physics, and leaving to oneside solipsism, and sidesteping the philosopical minefield of "existence" we should conclude that spacetime exists and that time has no flow. How about that?

If time has a flow then the future is illusion because there is no future since time is still flowing in the present. But if all of the spacetime exists then the future exists (past and present also). Our future is the time (maybe I should say spacetime) coordinates we are heading towards. What do you think?

[Marquis de Carabas]

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/812466fe3bdba9f1.jpg

[Soapy Sam]

There are any number of potential futures.

One of which we are about to realise.

[Molinaro]

There are any number of potential futures.

One of which we are about to realise.

And how long from now would that be? ie: "about to" :boggled:

[Gertrude]

The future is constantly starting. This is all it ever does: begin. And it does so in the present.

At least for everyone and its local clock. The moment we envision two different clocks at two different places, 'future' and 'time' as an absolute concept lose validity. There only remains a bunch of different time scales, different futures and pasts, all describing the same events, waiting to be seen by the observer with the right velocity/acceleration.

ETA: Well, I don't know if they really are 'waiting' or if they arise with the observer, but the principle is there.

[andyandy]

Relativity does not describe the intimacy and mechanic(s) involved between the interractions of spacetime and matter -- it describes what happens in macrocosmic terms, yes, but it doesn't tell us the causality of it. QM was supposed give some insights into this, but sadly it hardly has. We also have no way of directly observing spacetime and matter interactions. We rely on the mathematical predictions to validate it. That's not good enough to prove something exists.

Some versions of Quantum Loop Gravity are starting to give us a glimpse to the fundamental relation spacetime and matter has, as well as String Theory. But both redefine spacetime and matter as phenomena made of the same stuff -- here we see spacetime not so much as a container for reality as much as it is a 'primordial soup' of energy. This further brings up questions (of course, their answers may make the questions seem foolish) about the origin of spacetime and matter -- perhaps these 'manifolds of reality' turn out to be inevitables of the backdrop of complete nothingness, where spacetimes, or strings, have evolved in order to contain and govern matter in referances similar enough to each other to enable causality.

i've just read a bit on QLG - and it does sound quite interesting, but certainly in the speculative realm at the moment. The idea that space might have discrete node data points in a kind of lattice between nothingness in particular. I don't know if such a universe would be regarded as discerete or continuous - the nodes would be discrete but the surrounding nothingness continuous....whereas string theory provides a discrete model of spacetime - built around strings of possible planck length.....

however, it's not clear (to me) where the postulated extra dimensions for ST fit into our concepts of spacetime existence - if one idea is correct, and we're a 10D universe effectively floating around in the 11th dimension, what is the 11th dimension made of? More space, or nothingness punctuated by floating universes? Who knows :)

[andyandy]

If time has a flow then the future is illusion because there is no future since time is still flowing in the present. But if all of the spacetime exists then the future exists (past and present also). Our future is the time (maybe I should say spacetime) coordinates we are heading towards. What do you think?

The fact that all physical laws that we know of uphold time-reversal symetry - ie can be performed in either direction suggests that we should abandon concepts of time "flow" - indeed, if we do accept the concept of the spacetime loaf as existing then all events indeed exist within that spacetime framework. If we look as to why we see a direction in which time's arrow points, then the second law of thermodynamics appears to give one solution - ie the universe is simply moving from a highly ordered low entropy state to a progessively more disordered and higher entropy state....

[l0rca]

i've just read a bit on QLG - and it does sound quite interesting, but certainly in the speculative realm at the moment. The idea that space might have discrete node data points in a kind of lattice between nothingness in particular. I don't know if such a universe would be regarded as discerete or continuous - the nodes would be discrete but the surrounding nothingness continuous....whereas string theory provides a discrete model of spacetime - built around strings of possible planck length.....

however, it's not clear (to me) where the postulated extra dimensions for ST fit into our concepts of spacetime existence - if one idea is correct, and we're a 10D universe effectively floating around in the 11th dimension, what is the 11th dimension made of? More space, or nothingness punctuated by floating universes? Who knows :)

I could certainly lend more of my speculations out on the issue of how multiple dimensions 'got here', or at least how their existence is easily included into the main idea, but it's probably best to wait until I'm less drunk. If you want I will -- tomorrow.

For now, all I'm suggesting with what I said is the how hardly 'certain' we should be to regard time as a dimension. If we can think of space as a primordial soup of energy, then the role of time fades back into its special relativity role, with the three dimensions of space only needed to explain the manifold warps that comprise the meat of General Relativity.

[chriswl]

I'm not really sure how this gives much relevance to demonstrating the existance of spacetime. Personally, I think spacetime most probably exists, though not in the sense than Einstien would have it -- I think matter can exist without a spacetime manifold.
I think the important distinction, for the purposes of this thread is between two views:

1) Only the present exists. The past is no more, the future is yet to be.

2) Everything that has ever existed or ever will exist can simply be said to "exist". We can imagine events laid out according to their time of occurance, representing time as another dimension, orthogonal to space dimensions.

The latter conception of time (sometimes called "block" time) was possible even with Newtonian physics, but was arguably little more than a semantic point.

However, relativity shows us that our concept of "now" varies with our state of motion, thus creating problems for the idea that the past is gone forever and the future does not yet exist. And the accompanying "rotation" of our t=0 axis with respect to space seems to indicate that space and time are fundamentally the same kind of thing.

We can see that the apparent directionality of time is an artifact of the arrangement of matter in the early universe - its extreme low entropy state. This is analogous to the way the arrangement of matter in our part of the universe (our place on the surface of a massive object) gives an apparent directionality to the "up/down" dimension that has no fundamental basis in the laws of physics.

[JimBenArm]

The future just isn't what it used to be...

[Delusions_O_Grandeur]

The future never begins. It's a sequence of events that will occur but have no yet occured. Anything that begins now, is in the present.

Likewise, the past never ends.

I shouldn't dwell on time for too long without my physics books at hand; I will turn back into a believer before you know it.

[l0rca]

I think the important distinction, for the purposes of this thread is between two views:

1) Only the present exists. The past is no more, the future is yet to be.

2) Everything that has ever existed or ever will exist can simply be said to "exist". We can imagine events laid out according to their time of occurance, representing time as another dimension, orthogonal to space dimensions.

The latter conception of time (sometimes called "block" time) was possible even with Newtonian physics, but was arguably little more than a semantic point.

Though I didn't make the point specifically, I thought I implicated: I'm interested in only arguing what can be most truly said, without ambiguity or trope, about time. So semantic quibbles aren't my interest, nor are ways to talk about time abstractly.

And the accompanying "rotation" of our t=0 axis with respect to space seems to indicate that space and time are fundamentally the same kind of thing.

It doesn't seem to indicate it: General Relativity treats time as a dimension just like space. I'm not arguing what GR says. I've read the books.

But nominalism stands strong on this one: we can regard time as not a dimension and feasibly arrive with the same results of prediction so long as we consider the manifold of space to have the needed warping properties -- time no longer needs to be regarded as a real manifold, although abstractly in GR it is a good exercise to treat it as a 'dimension' in regards to measuring changes of differences in space manifolds -- or distances without manifolds. But try using time manifolds in QM and you hit the wall at light speed.

The real consequence to this sort of thinking is that if time is not a dimension, "places in time" become only figures of speech, and talking about the future and the past only makes sense in reference to the fact that "going back in time" is only possible if you force all matter back to where it previously was, which isn't actually revisiting the past at all. "Going forward in time" retains the same level of figurativeness that Special Relativity assigns it.

The point, going back to how you regarded your #2 idea, is that conjectures of time as a dimension are still arguably semantical (and mathematical), and it doesn't make sense to absolutely claim time as a dimension until the causality of it on matter is reached. If we reach a point where we do things with "the time dimension" that can only be reasonably explained if time was a dimension in itself, then I'll yield to absolute claims about time.

[Beerina]

When I was younger, I thought the future would involve flying cars. How young and foolish I was.

Now I await the sexbots. No, don't worry. She won't be my slave. She'll be my Mistress.