Time

Is time a 'real thing' or is it only a useful idea created by human minds?

I think in physics, it's treated as a physical thing (spacetime), yet some philosophers have said that time is not real.

Is there a simple answer to this question, and if so, what is it?

My personal explanation is that time is mankind's way of explaing the fact that all the events in the universe do not happen at once.

Your question is too vague.

Go read about causality, thermodynamics, and the arrow of time.

Philosophically, time is not very well defined. We all accept that there is a dimension called time and that time moves in one direction. Time is the dimension that allows differentiation between one event and the next. Without it, there could be no events. It isn't an arbitrary thing, like time zones or reference frames, due to this necessity.

However, we cannot be sure about how time "behaves." We naively believe that time moves forward at the same pace for everyone, but this may not be the case. Time, like some things, is noumenal in nature, meaning that our perception of it occurs by virtue of it. We cannot perceive it from the outside. If time passed half as fast for you as for me, there would be NO way of telling, because it dictates how we perceive things.

"We all accept that there is a dimension called time and that time moves in one direction."

I don't.

>>5

By "we", he meant people who aren't idiots

As far as I can tell, time is much like space: You can divvy it up, mete it out, and mark things by it, but not much else.

>>6
OH SNAP

>>4

"We naively believe that time moves forward at the same pace for everyone..."

No we don't.

yeah time goes far faster for us flies.

>>10

Think about relativity for a moment.

Time can be looked at in two ways.  You can consider time as the quantative measure of hours, minutes, etc. That "time" is really just a measure for something that fundamentally exists like space, which we quantify with distances.  I doubt that any of you will ever truely understand time in its own right.  However, I shall explain it anyway.  Time is what allows things to happen on the standard X,Y,Z graph of space.  It removes the "concept of spontaniety." (Einstein,7) Basically time is the measurement of why light is emitted at a star but is percieved as an external stimulus here years later.

Don't call me gay, but I need some mary jay!

Marijuana MUST be legalized.