Magic_Man
02-23-2007, 11:17 AM
I read a book a while back where the author asked people how they imagined time (I think it was "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten"). Most had never really thought about it, but when pressed admitted that they did have some sort of unconscious visualization. Some people imagined years as a staircase, with the future being ahead and up, and the past behind and down. Others imagined time like a numberline, and many had a sort of nonlinear view, where recent past and close future years were more widely spread out and distinguished than ones farther away. I personally imagine the years in a similar nonlinear arrangement, on a number line. My point of focus is always the present year, and I can imagine the number line scrolling past if I'm thinking about a past event.
Now I'm curious as to how people imagine SPACETIME. In a recent post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=9255926&page=0&vc=1) , metric describes death as the "boundary to the little region of spacetime defining your existence," which makes me think he's visualizing it in some way. Thinking about life in this way, along with numerous contemplations on time travel, and what it means to be omniscient, have lead me to a little visual aid that I use. I imagine spacetime as a giant rectangular box floating in black space. I see it like a very fine mesh wireframe, so I can see through to sections on the inside. Time goes in the long direction, while my position in space is located along the height and depth. Thus, my life is represented by a smaller box inside the big box. This helps me to visualize things like the distortion of spacetime, how an omniscient being might view cause-and-effect, what happens in certain time-travel paradoxes, etc. Thinking about it just now, I think I'm going to modify my visual aid so that it is more like a giant cone, with my experiences being a smaller cone inside of it. Of course, this is the typical "light cone" that physicists think about frequently, but when it's stretched out, (or when you only view certain sections of it), it looks more like a box to me, and we've yet to discover whether the far end of it is another point or infinitely flat.
Anybody else think about stuff like this?
Now I'm curious as to how people imagine SPACETIME. In a recent post (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=9255926&page=0&vc=1) , metric describes death as the "boundary to the little region of spacetime defining your existence," which makes me think he's visualizing it in some way. Thinking about life in this way, along with numerous contemplations on time travel, and what it means to be omniscient, have lead me to a little visual aid that I use. I imagine spacetime as a giant rectangular box floating in black space. I see it like a very fine mesh wireframe, so I can see through to sections on the inside. Time goes in the long direction, while my position in space is located along the height and depth. Thus, my life is represented by a smaller box inside the big box. This helps me to visualize things like the distortion of spacetime, how an omniscient being might view cause-and-effect, what happens in certain time-travel paradoxes, etc. Thinking about it just now, I think I'm going to modify my visual aid so that it is more like a giant cone, with my experiences being a smaller cone inside of it. Of course, this is the typical "light cone" that physicists think about frequently, but when it's stretched out, (or when you only view certain sections of it), it looks more like a box to me, and we've yet to discover whether the far end of it is another point or infinitely flat.
Anybody else think about stuff like this?