Want to Know What Time Is?

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The central issue I see with this argument is that it seems to assume time in the setup to the examples, or implicitly in the equation. For example:

For example, if a guy called Join Doe is traveling from Berlin to Moscow, there might be at least two bits of information about this:

John Doe is in Berlin

John Doe is in Moscow

How do we distinguish between the Berlin to Moscow case, and the Moscow to Berlin case? You mention this point later:

time does not really tell us if Johnny starts his journey in Berlin or in Moscow.

So I can accept the argument that Berlin,Moscow and Moscow,Berlin are the same amount of time - it stands to reason that doing the same thing in reverse order should take the same amount of time, which the information rule seems to capture. But this doesn't seem to square with the Minsk example:

it might even happen, because he is so very much in love with this girl, that he will never arrive in Moscow. In that case, the amount of time between departure and arrival is infinite.

Based on the previous example I would expect Berlin,Minsk,Moscow to be the same as Moscow,Minsk,Berlin, and this seems to hold up - but it doesn't seem consistent that Berlin,Minsk,Moscow is more time than just Berlin,Moscow and yet Berlin,Minsk is infinite.

It also looks to me like we have a problem with trying to integrate new kinds of information. For example, under this rule Berlin,Minsk,Moscow and Berlin,Paris,Moscow are the same amount of time - but when we look at the map we see Paris is farther away from Moscow than Berlin is. How do we account for this, under the rule?

[-]TAG7y20

How does this theory distinguish time from space? If I look at ever wider and wider regions of space, I can obtain more and more information. Similarly with scale... looking at things in finer detail makes more information available.

[-]etsim7y*20

As a few threshold considerations:

How do you determine what "information" is relevant? And at what level of detail? I could zoom in on any number of areas of inquiry about John's original "instantaneous" journey and come up with additional information until the cows come home. In doing so, it seems that the "time" conclusion would change based in what information I deem relevant.

As another big issue, I would ask what qualifies information as being "available". In other words, available to who?

It seems to me that your proposal gives ad hoc answers to these questions which fit your desired outcome.

More generally speaking, I think you need to fold a whole lot more subjectivity into a conception of time. In my view, time itself is a quale.

[-]countingtoten7y10

The first potential problem I see is that "information available" should be relative to an information-storage device like a human brain, whereas time in (my limited understanding of) physics is relative to a rock or other physical frame of reference. Those seem different.

If we try to remove that problem then we get a new one (which might exist anyway in a less acute form). When we take as our "given phenomenon" something large in spatial area, like 'the Earth at exactly 4:40 am EST in this frame of reference,' we find vastly more available information than we could have - even in principle, I would think - for many phenomena we would consider to take more time. So this definition doesn't seem to match the word.

[-]TAG7y00

It doesn't match a certain way of defining "information". But some people are quite happy with notions of information that aren't tied to a subject. You can reconcile the two by saying that objective information is potential subjective information.

[-]Slider7y10

If I study history with this view I would be moving events in time. There seems to be a lot of implicit assumtions that could go multiple ways needed to make it compatible with ordinary time phenomena.

There seems to be similarity with Zeno's arrows in that if each state is considered separately no movement occurs. Is this just a restatement of that view?

[-]Alexander Weinmann7y*00

Thanks very much for wonderful replies! There are not many places in the net where such articles can be published and are read! I am confident that my thoughts can only get less wrong, if they received some feedback. So you guys make me happy!

@ryan_b Do not look at maps or watches to understand time! It did not help in two milleniums. Since Einstein we live in space-time, and it does not make sense to talk about time without context. Imagine there were considerably more mass concentrated in Paris, then in Berlin. Very, very, very fat people for example! That would bend space-time, clocks would be slower in Paris, and Paris could indeed be nearer to Moscow than Berlin, considering all possible measurements.

@Slider Yes! It is a “playful” concept, full of details that needed to be ironed out. For now, I find it very interesting to ignore the fact that we experience time as directed. I tried to start with a new concept, completely independent of everday’s experience. How we experience time might be misleading. The whole phenomenon might be an illusion.

@etsim Yes, indeed! Subjectivity! Since Einstein, time depends on the relative speed you have compared to somebody else. – What information is relevant? When I wrote the article, I dared concentrating on the information about speed and position of “something”, say a particle. But that is plain physics, and I am not the right guy for such stuff. But I know about the uncertainty principle: Speed and location cannot be determined with the same accuracy at the same time. There is always uncertainty involved. Missing information? A missing understanding? I find these things very, very interesting and fascinating.

[-]bubblesort7y-10

What an inspiring thought. I love ideas like yours, mainly because I was taught philosophy at UCL in London UK. At the time Arnold Zuboff was a lecturer there and his ideas were as interesting as yours. I was there some time around 1992 or 3, I last spoke to him around 2004 maybe 2006. UCL may be able to put you in touch with him, as they did that for me. He is very good at discussing ideas such as yours in emails and on sites such as this. Let me assure you, Zuboff is a genius. Here is a paper he wrote regarding time and self identity https://philpapers.org/rec/ZUBMUA

I am fairly certain, and I hope I'm not wrong or embarrassing myself or him in some way but seriously, get his advice

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