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