Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site umcp-cs.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!seismo!rlgvax!cvl!umcp-cs!speaker From: speaker@umcp-cs.UUCP Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: All this talk of "time" Message-ID: <5721@umcp-cs.UUCP> Date: Mon, 5-Mar-84 18:46:03 EST Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.5721 Posted: Mon Mar 5 18:46:03 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 6-Mar-84 04:12:34 EST References: <2571@azure.UUCP>, <483@pyuxn.UUCP> Organization: Univ. of Maryland, Computer Science Dept. Lines: 28 Its interesting to look at time according to this model. A person (or deity) could coceivably run the flatland plane forwards and backwards in flatland time (along his 3rd dimension) and view the flatland Universe at any point in space and any instant in time as a static state. Time in the intuitive sense doesn't exist in this model. There is no 'flow' or causality... only a series of states that are given an instant of reality. Problem I have with this model is... How do the flatlanders perceive time... or anything if existance is merely a set of states? How are these states (intersections of the flatland with the tube) enabled to give them any sense of awareness? That is to say... what distinguishes the flatland plane from the rest of the already-created series of states? Without this mechanism... everything would actually exist all at once... that is to say, all times existing at once. To the flatlanders this would not be true, since they percieve only one plane of time at a time. Right... got that? - Speaker