/sci/ - Science & Math

>>6917247
>What do you think of Barbour's idea that time is an illusion?

I (and probably the majority) of physicists are not familiar with him. From a quick Google:

>"Barbour: Time-less physics time as we perceive it, does not exist as anything other than an illusion"

This could be true. However, it is kind of trivial sematics. It is a meaningless philosophical circle-jerk. For instance, we know "color" (example red), is an "illusion" (in his sense). Yet, we don't go around acting like faggots saying it is an "illusion". Color merely being a completely understood byproduct of our senses, that doesn't corresponding to any fundamental property of the universe, doesn't mean we should call color an "illusion", does it? Instead what we do is say color isn't "fundamental". But, yeah, we could call it an illusion. It is sematics.

>Barbour cont: "a number of problems in physical theory arise from assuming that it does exist"

[citation needed]

In GR we do indeed disregard "time". It is useful to do for certain calculations. So, I am not exactly sure what problem Barbour has, but indeed we can and do disregard time if need. Maybe, there are other "systems" that could be better modeled without time (like GR). Barbour kind of needs to prove it though, instead of just assuming it.