That's the special relativity interval; it's used to determine the potential relationships between two events by determining if light could have passed from point 0 to 1 in the time between two events in two (potentially) different locations. It can be considered a lower bound on the amount of time that can pass between two events before they can be considered to be causally related, or an upper bound on the amount of space that separates two events, or, more generally, the boundary relationship between the two.
Or, to be more concise, it's a boundary test; it's not describing a fundamental law of the universe, although it can be used to test if the laws of the universe are being followed.
Which leads to the question - what boundary is it testing, and why does that boundary matter?
Strictly speaking, as Eliezer points out, we could do away with time entirely; it doesn't add much to the equation. I prefer not to, even if it implies even weirder things I haven't mentioned yet, such as that the particles five minutes from now are in fact completely different particles than the particles now. (Not that it makes any substantive difference; the fifth dimension thing already suggests, even in a normal time framework, we're constantly exchanging particles with directions we're only indirectly aware of. And also, all the particles are effectively the same, anyways.)
That aside, within a timeful universe, change must have at least two reference points, and what that boundary is testing is the relationship between two reference points. It doesn't actually matter what line you use to define those reference points, however.
If you rotated the universe ninety degrees, and used z as your reference line, z would be your special value. If you rotated it forty five degrees, and used zt as your reference line, zt would be your special value. (Any orthogonal directions will do, for these purposes, they don't have to be orthogonal to the directions as we understand them now.)
Within the theory here, consciousness makes your reference line special, because consciousness is produced by variance in that reference line, and hence must measure change along that reference line. The direction the patterns propagate doesn't really matter. Z makes as good a line for time as T, which is just as good as ZT, which is just as good as some direction rotated twelve degrees on one plane, seven degrees on the next, and so on.
Which is to say, we make time special, or rather the conditions which led to our existence did.
It doesn't actually matter what line you use to define those reference points, however. [...] Within the theory here, consciousness makes your reference line special [...] The direction the patterns propagate doesn't really matter.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Can you describe a real or hypothetical experiment that would have different results depending on whether or not time is an artifact of consciousness?
A few notes about the site mechanics
A few notes about the community
If English is not your first language, don't let that make you afraid to post or comment. You can get English help on Discussion- or Main-level posts by sending a PM to one of the following users (use the "send message" link on the upper right of their user page). Either put the text of the post in the PM, or just say that you'd like English help and you'll get a response with an email address.
* Normal_Anomaly
* Randaly
* shokwave
* Barry Cotter
A note for theists: you will find the Less Wrong community to be predominantly atheist, though not completely so, and most of us are genuinely respectful of religious people who keep the usual community norms. It's worth saying that we might think religion is off-topic in some places where you think it's on-topic, so be thoughtful about where and how you start explicitly talking about it; some of us are happy to talk about religion, some of us aren't interested. Bear in mind that many of us really, truly have given full consideration to theistic claims and found them to be false, so starting with the most common arguments is pretty likely just to annoy people. Anyhow, it's absolutely OK to mention that you're religious in your welcome post and to invite a discussion there.
A list of some posts that are pretty awesome
I recommend the major sequences to everybody, but I realize how daunting they look at first. So for purposes of immediate gratification, the following posts are particularly interesting/illuminating/provocative and don't require any previous reading:
More suggestions are welcome! Or just check out the top-rated posts from the history of Less Wrong. Most posts at +50 or more are well worth your time.
Welcome to Less Wrong, and we look forward to hearing from you throughout the site.
(Note from orthonormal: MBlume and other contributors wrote the original version of this welcome message, and I've stolen heavily from it.)