Let’s imagine a world where time machines are invented.
Hypothetically, what’s stopping anyone from travelling to the past, where the dollar is much more valuable, and buying things at a much lower price? What if you then go back to the present, sell those things at a higher price and repeat the cycle? And wtf would happen if everyone there started doing that?
You’re still imagining that there is some fixed universe playing out at constant time, and that we all just experience the echoes of this present in different orders. This isn’t what relativity says. Clocks traveling near the speed of light don’t just appear to slow down, they actually slow down.
Different regions of the universe don’t even experience the same flow rate of time. Someone living on a mountaintop experiences time faster than someone at sea level. And yet you cling to this fantasy of their being some universal “present.” You cannot have a universal present in a universe composed of different flow rates of time!
Which is EXACTLY the ONLY thing I said you can actually do.
You can slow down time locally. And for a photon it’s slowed down to a standstill.
That does not contradict ANYTHING I’ve claimed.
Yes, you recognize the fact, but you haven’t internalized its implications. You can only have a universal present in a universe of shared time. Ultimately, “the present” is something applicable to and that exists within the mind of a single observer.
One of the hallmarks of science is that different people can independently measure something and confirm its existence. If no two observers can ever agree on what constitutes “the present,” then how can “the present” be said to exist at all? It’s a fundamentally unscientific concept.
No, it’s an objective thing. No observation can be exactly “at the present”, I clearly explained that earlier, there are always delays, that doesn’t change the fact that like a photo is not the past being real, so it is far all observations. That doesn’t change the fact that there is an objective “present”.
Oh boy, yes I know that argument, and it’s a flawed argument IMO. It’s about definition. If we agree to meet somewhere at the same time, then when we meet we are at the present. There is no sane argument about that IMO. We perceive each other with a slight latency, but that does not prevent us from being together in the present.
To argue the present doesn’t exist is nonsense, and no more than a philosophical curiosity. Scientists absolutely work with a present too, and obviously compensate for latency.
I could ask the same question reversed: How can scientists compensate for latency to a degree they can measure gravitational waves, without an objective time frame, that requires acknowledgement of a present?