You never see the present—you only see the past
January 30, 2019 12:14 PM   Subscribe

“What time is the Super Bowl?” It’s the question on everyone’s mind this time of year. We know this because millions across the globe type this seemingly simple question into their internet search engine of choice, and thousands of websites (including this one) publish a story purporting to provide the answer. But these responses merely scratch the surface of much deeper issues and larger truths. To truly comprehend the scope of the question, and the problems it involves, we need a deeper understanding of just what “time” is... and what it isn’t. What Time Is the Super Bowl? We Asked Theoretical Physicist Carlo Rovelli
posted by everybody had matching towels (27 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Warming up my beans. Looking for a plate.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:27 PM on January 30, 2019 [4 favorites]


If, on Sunday, the Patriots score the winning touchdown on the game’s final play, snapping the ball in the last possible moment before the time has run out, but the light signal showing this reaches the referee and the cameras after the time has run out, is the score valid?

That would be just like Tom Brady, wouldn't it? Cheating using the speed of light.

Anyways, there was a story on my local news this week about a guy driving his pickup truck who hit an owl, and the owl got stuck in the front grill of his truck. It was perfectly fine, apparently, and they were able to get it out and release it after some help from fish & wildlife officers. My kids were really impressed by all the pictures and video that was taken of the owl and correctly identified it as a Great Horned Owl.

I was not that impressed, and told them that I was hoping for a Superb Owl and that I only pay attention to Superb Owls this time of year.
posted by nubs at 12:36 PM on January 30, 2019 [3 favorites]


Time is an illusion. Kickoff time institutionally so.
posted by dannyboybell at 12:39 PM on January 30, 2019 [2 favorites]


It would have been cool to have asked a philosopher about this instead of asking a physicist to do philosophy at an undergrad level.
posted by Kwine at 12:41 PM on January 30, 2019 [4 favorites]


Well, duh, kickoff is at Jeremy Bearimy.
posted by Etrigan at 12:46 PM on January 30, 2019 [12 favorites]


It would have been cool to have asked a philosopher about this instead of asking a physicist to do philosophy at an undergrad level.

Why do we remember the past and not the future? Do we inhabit time or does time inhabit us? What does it mean that time "flies by?" Where does it go when it flies? Have you ever looked at your hands? I mean, really looked at them?
posted by thelonius at 1:04 PM on January 30, 2019 [8 favorites]


I would've also accepted an answer from Paul Eggert. It would be more interesting than you might expect if you haven't read through the timezone database files.
posted by clawsoon at 1:08 PM on January 30, 2019 [1 favorite]


There's a story about an event pitting major league baseball batters against professional softball pitchers. The batters were unable to hit well-thrown softball pitches, though they were slower. This is because they simply cannot see a baseball or a softball in flight. More precisely, they can only see it too late.

In order to hit a baseball you have to be able to predict where it is likely to be based on watching the pitch. The flight through the air is mostly irrelevant. Baseball players have little to no experience with softball pitches and can't read the pitch.

Subjectively, it's all different. You do see the ball, though too late. And you explain your actions based on what the ball actually did... though you did not actually know that soon enough. After enough practice there is enough consistency between expectation and results that this illusion is compelling. The experience of "now" is a strange mix of extrapolations from the past and also, because our reaction times are also slow, expectations of our responses that have not already occurred. This is fused into a largely fictitious experience of "now."

Everything we experience is something that has already happened. We need to respond in the now but literally cannot. So our brains create an illusion of "now" based on projections from the past and expectations of the near future. But it isn't "real."

A major function of the brain is to let us live slightly in the future, where we have more advantages. Over time we've been able to see further into the future, although with less and less precision. The cost of this is increasingly complex models of "how things work" that we take as reality but are at best approximations.

(Quite aside from all the cool relativity stuff, that is. That happens at timescales way to small for our meat machines to directly grasp. But it's still fun to think about!)
posted by sjswitzer at 1:09 PM on January 30, 2019 [11 favorites]


Next up, what the definition of "is" is, featuring philosopher Bill Clinton.
posted by Quindar Beep at 1:10 PM on January 30, 2019 [1 favorite]


Ah, here's a good introduction to the timezone database that I mentioned: A literary appreciation of the Olson/Zoneinfo/tz database.
posted by clawsoon at 1:19 PM on January 30, 2019


This reminded me of one of my favourite passages from Roger Ebert's writings:

When Jericho has the Millennium Eve timetable explained to him, including the requirement that the Prince of Darkness do his dirty deed precisely between 11 p.m. and midnight, he asks the very question I was asking myself: "Eastern Standard Time?'' The answer, Jericho is told, is that the exact timing was meticulously worked out centuries ago by the Gregorian monks, and indeed their work on this project included, as a bonus spinoff, the invention of the Gregorian calendar.

Let's see. Rome is seven hours ahead of New York. In other words, those clever monks said, "The baby will be conceived between 6 and 7 a.m. on Jan. 1, Rome time, but that will be between 11 p.m. and 12 a.m. in a city that does not yet exist, on a continent we have no knowledge of, assuming the world is round, and there are different times in different places as it revolves around the sun, which of course it would be a heresy to suggest.''

posted by The Card Cheat at 1:21 PM on January 30, 2019 [9 favorites]


Um, there's another thing people type into their search engines.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:01 PM on January 30, 2019 [4 favorites]


Time is an illusion. Kickoff time institutionally so.

Kinda like the start time for a show at a DIY venue
posted by entropone at 2:08 PM on January 30, 2019 [1 favorite]


The Super Bowl is neither Super, nor a Bowl. Discuss.
posted by nubs at 2:08 PM on January 30, 2019


I thought it already happened, I was in a conversation last weekend when someone asked me about it and I answered in the past tense about not having watched it and nobody corrected me. I don't even feel foolish about it, just disappointed there's a hump to get over I thought we'd already done got over.
posted by GoblinHoney at 2:17 PM on January 30, 2019 [3 favorites]


Right now the game exists in two states - the Patriots won, or the Rams won. What we get on Sunday is the opening of the Schrodinger's Box of the game, at which point our observation of the game will determine the outcome.
posted by nubs at 2:30 PM on January 30, 2019 [3 favorites]


You never see the present—you only see the past, because light takes time to get to your eyes.

Absolutely. Plus, with the amount of pageantry and other crap they always have at the beginning of these things, I think you're looking at more like 6:35 at best.
posted by Copronymus at 2:40 PM on January 30, 2019 [2 favorites]


But more importantly, What Time Is Love?*
*my standard response to anybody asking "What Time Is..." anything
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:02 PM on January 30, 2019 [1 favorite]


“What time is the Super Bowl?”

Soon.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 4:13 PM on January 30, 2019


My company shifted its customary four-day work week next week from M-Th to Tu-F, so that people don't have to worry about making it to work the next morning and instead can be hung over peacefully at home. This means I get a four day weekend.

Not caring one whit about the Super Bowl, I intend to take advantage of the situation by hiking up to Zealand Hut on Saturday, which is open in self-service mode for the winter, spending all Sunday exploring the area around Mt Guyot—up past Zeacliff, over Guyot, and on to the Bonds or maybe the Twins—and then returning on Monday. I figure that on this particular weekend, in that particular area, I'll probably have a pretty wild expanse of talus and tundra all to myself. And at night I can return to a nice sturdy AMC hut situated above a frozen waterfall, where the caretaker will have a fire going in the wood stove, a bunk I can use, and a kitchen I can make use of as well. It's gonna be good.

I bet the caretaker at Zealand has the game playing on the radio.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:03 PM on January 30, 2019


The beans live longer than the plate.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:15 PM on January 30, 2019


"What time is the Super Bowl?"

Oddly enough, I just got back from a brief motorbike excursion in town to learn the answer to that question. The answer is 7:30 AM on Monday.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 11:46 PM on January 30, 2019


It would have been cool to have asked a philosopher about this instead of asking a physicist to do philosophy at an undergrad level.

Everything that Carlo Rovelli discusses in the OP is physics. That is, if you put questions like 'what is time anyway' aside, we know how the nuts and bolts of it work through experiment.
posted by memebake at 2:48 AM on January 31, 2019


What does it mean that time "flies by?"

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 2:59 AM on January 31, 2019


Anytime I want my head to get a bit twisty about time and put a smile upon my face all I need do is consider:

Zeno's Arrow Paradox


If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.
— as recounted by Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b5

In the arrow paradox, Zeno states that for motion to occur, an object must change the position which it occupies. He gives an example of an arrow in flight. He states that in any one (duration-less) instant of time, the arrow is neither moving to where it is, nor to where it is not. It cannot move to where it is not, because no time elapses for it to move there; it cannot move to where it is, because it is already there. In other words, at every instant of time there is no motion occurring. If everything is motionless at every instant, and time is entirely composed of instants, then motion is impossible.

Whereas the first two paradoxes divide space, this paradox starts by dividing time—and not into segments, but into points.
posted by dancestoblue at 7:19 PM on January 31, 2019


And I just love the name Zeno, and if ever I get another pooch I think I'll give it the name Zeno. My red Doberman -- Rusty, The Wonder Dog -- she was nothing if not about fifteen paradoxes, and she was constantly in motion, yet always present, her eyes liquid golden and brown, filled always with festive joy.
I was her third "owner" (as if *anyone* could ever own Rusty, The Wonder Dog) or she certainly would not have had the name "Rusty" put upon her intelligence and grace and beauty and style and her just all-around greatness.
posted by dancestoblue at 7:34 PM on January 31, 2019


Back when the maximum number of blades on a disposable razor was in the transition between three and four, I posited Zeno's Infinite Razor, where the first blade cuts the hair in half, then the second one cuts that hair in half, etc. For some reason, Gillette was not interested.
posted by Daily Alice at 8:36 PM on January 31, 2019


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