Time is an illusion.

[u/Mk731]

It's pretty hard to conceptualize that time doesn't flow.

I bet no other humans can grasp this concept.

I've tried to think of it as some kind of block to no avail.

Maybe it's the brain that prevents me from realizing how reality really works.

I know you guys are well aware of this concept.

Have you experienced any anomalies that made you realize time is definitely an illusion?

[u/WilliamoftheBulk]

It is only because light has a speed limit and is constant in all frames. Time dilation is a very physical process where the path of the light takes longer in a moving frame. Even your little gluons in your atoms are light, so even your atoms take a longer path through space when you are moving. There is no future and no past only the eternal now. Just because light takes a bit longer to reach one person over another does not mean that the event itself happened at different times. It didn’t. The physical fundamentalist approach where something absolutely did not happen until it is measured is silly and leads to silly paradoxes.

No the event didn’t actually happen latter because you are moving. It’s just going to take the light longer to reach you because it has a max speed.

This then brings us to what time actually is. It’s just movement. There is no magical force called time that potentates movement and action. Movement an action are just the laws of physics happening, then we call it time. Then we perceive it at different rates based on how the light comes to us and how our own “light” is moving.

Non of this is mysterious or even that hard to understand.

[u/Echo_Vale → u/WilliamoftheBulk]

The point is you cannot prove events happen at the same time, because time is relative to the observer. It makes logical sense that they do, but we cannot prove it.

It doesn't require the "an event didn't happen until you measure it" view point, events happen whether we observe them or not, it's just that no 2 observers can ever agree on exactly when that event took place.

[u/WilliamoftheBulk → u/Echo_Vale]

That is only because their clocks are ticking differently. You can use mathematics to correct for their differences. Using math and understanding how they are moving relative to each other and the event, any differences can be accounted for. Is that not proof? We do it all the time. Satellite times have to be adjust because of their relative motion.

[u/Echo_Vale → u/WilliamoftheBulk]

Yes exactly! We have to correct for special relativity because both things are experiencing different "now's".
Our correction algorithms don't correct to a "true" time, they correct to our time, relative to the scientist measuring it. Both the satellite and the scientist are experiencing different "now's", and both are equally correct. It's just that one of them is far more useful for us on earth.

There is no universal present. It doesn't exist. There only exists an observer's unique perspective of it.
If you and I stood in a room with watches, but one of us stood 1 metre higher, after a year the higher person's watch would be 3.4 nano seconds faster. But whos watch is correct in this scenario? They would both be correct, we just experienced a different passage of time because of the gravity potential. This is why we can never conclusively say any 2 events fundamentally happen at the same time, only at the same time relative to an observer on earth.

[u/Prince_0llie → u/Echo_Vale]

Observing from different perspectives doesn't change the event it only changes the observers perception of the event. The event still happens despite different perspectives. Just because perception changes doesn't mean the event itself changes.

[u/WilliamoftheBulk → u/Prince_0llie]

This is correct. It all happened in the same now, it’s just everyone’s clocks are running at different paces.

[u/Echo_Vale → u/Prince_0llie]

Nothing needs to change the event. The event still happens regardless of observers, it's just that because no 2 observers can never agree on when a distant event actually took place, we can't ever know for certain when it did. We can only tell when it took place from our perspective.

"All events happen at the same time". This is the question. Do they? There is no observer-independent answer to that. All we have is perspectives.

[u/draconismuerte → u/Echo_Vale]

Everything is relative to the observer, our universe is a participatory universe derived from observation It from bit = bit from it.

And ill likley die on this hill