= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
TheAncientGeek comments on Why is the A-Theory of Time Attractive? - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (89)
Do you think there can be an equivalence between a theory that says time passes,and one that says it doesn't?
There are lots of dual theories of things. Esp. in math. Think about geometry: In triagulation you can describe areas by their borders or by the centers. Voronoi triangulation converts vetween the 'views'. Implementations of both approaches have different performance characteristics.
How is that applicable to this particular case?
A theory of time which models time as changing will use entities to represent 'now' and 'change'-events, whereas a static-time theory will designate entities to points in time. The former is better suited to answer questions about now (and implementations built upon that will be faster on this kind of query) whereas the latter is better suited to answer questions about fixed points in time or compare these (and implementations based on this will be faster on these operations).
But that isn't a duality in the mathematical sense, because there is no translation of change tfrom the dynamic scheme to the static scheme: it's "horses for courses".
Yes, in a vaguely comparable way that a different "theory" says the tree in the forest makes no sound, and another says that it does. The verbal problem in your example would center on "passes".
Do you think there is an equivalence in this case?
I dunno, are we talking about A-theory, or presentism, and which version? I'm ready to agree that there are at least some ways of formulating A-theory that don't have a B-equivalent.