How is motion possible??

Study the following picture, then read.

A E D C B F

I am walking from wall A to wall F, but in order to do so, i have to reach point b first which takes 6 seconds, but to do so i have to reach point C halfway there which takes 3 seconds... this goes on infinitely. to move from one wall to another you would have to reach an infinite amount of "check points" each taking some amount of time, whether large or small, added up with an infinite amount of other times, it should take infinite time to reach wall F from wall A making it impossible to move. yet we can

 

No. If it takes 9 seconds to walk from A to F then and distance between those points takes a fraction of that time.

Just as getting 10% off one shirt doesn't mean you get 10 for free an infinnite number of distances does not equal an infinite time, your logic is, bluntly stupid...

 

its one of the great mindfucks of mathematics.

you just have to remember that it only takes an infinite amount of checkpoints if you keep designating your checkpoints in smaller and smaller distances. If you chose a discrete checkpoint distance, then you will reach your goal.

but if you define your checkpoints as an infinitely small value (which cannot be discrete) there will be an infinite number of them between you and any destination.

the same problem is seen in the tortoise vs hare race.

lets say the tortoise starts 10 metres ahead of the hare, and the hare goes 10 times the speed of the tortoise.

well in order for the hare to catch up to the tortoise, it has to first catch up that 10 m, butin that amount of time, the tortoise has gone 1 m. by the time the hare has caught up that one metre, the tortoise has gone 10 cm. by the time the hare has caught up the 10 cm, the tortoise has moved ahead 1 cm. by the time the hare catches up that 1 cm, the tortoise has gone ahead 1 mm, and this continues forever and it seems like the hare can never beat the tortoise.

but you have to realise that it goes on forever because your frame of reference shrinks like an inverted hyperbola.

its like it you got a film reel with infinite frames per second and filmed the hare passing the tortoise and winning, but as you watched it, you slowed down the film slower and slower forever. if you did this, it could appear that the hare never beats the tortoise but that is because you are manipulating the flow of time in your simulation.

mathematics is just a simulation too

 

d=(10+t)-10t

d is the distance between the two animals. t is the time elapsed. it doesn't matter what units of speed we are using the formula is the same.

at time 0 seconds, there is 10 m between the two. At one second, there is one meter between the two (tortise ahead). at two seconds there is 8 meters between the two (in this case the hare is ahead)...

The math formula you used only works if the hare cannot pass the tortise, but he can so you won't end up with that sort of solution that you get.

 

i believe your bluntly stupid. if there are an infinite number of distances, it does mean an infinite amount of time because each distance requires SOME time, it can be a hundred billionths of a second, but times infinity... its still an infinite amount of seconds. unless your telling me you can freeze time, THEN move, your wrong.

 

Well it seems we are at an impass.

I guess there an be no infinity. Or existence is an illusion.

which is more simple. A human being being wrong about the nature of time and more specifically "infinite time" or that our entire existence is an illusion?

I think Zeno is wrong about "infinite time". Any sort of time that is measured has to have a beginning and an end by the very nature of how we measure time. Same with distance. No measurement can be infinite, it can be indefinite, but not infinite.

 

your fucking retarded. i am not suggesting our movement is a mere illusion. i am asking how it is possible, if you look at it deeply, it is impossible. and uh... DUH! obviously no time we can measure is infinite, you simply cannot grasp the concept..forget it, save your idiocy for another thread. thanks.

 

Well Zeno's paradox, which is the paradox that you are using was used by Zeno to suggest that this is an illusion.

Did you post this because it was complex, or did you post it because you believed it?

I am sorry I came off as a tard in my first post, but afterwards I did try to engage in an intelligent discussion. I enjoy philosophy, not as much as religious theory, but I still enjoy it. If you do want to debate this inteligently further, lets...

 

i posted it because its just interesting. most people don't think deeply about everyday activities and such. i do not believe in this theory

 

Yeah. I mean I get it, and I do think that some philosophy has its place, but this kind of stuff just irks me the wrong way..

Problems resolved?

 

In time, the world is in the ultimate state of OPTOMISM.

Liebnitz would mean that there could be nothing ugly in the world without it already being considered through Time, no? So just consider your Life without the objects around you through time. Awful, so awful that it makes anything, anything through time, the ultimate goodness.

 

sorry, I thought I made it pretty clear in my post but maybe it was hard to understand.

infinities are not absolute. you can have infinities that are 'bigger' than other infinities. though bigger is not a good word. other words that sort of work are that some infinities are 'faster' than others, or some infinities are 'more scalar' than others. however, the nature of these infinities only ever becomes apparent when you divide one by another, and cancel out the 'infinite' part of the infinity

just because there are an infinite number of things does not mean that they take up infinite amount of space.. and just because there are an infinite amount of time slots in any period of time, does not mean that they take forever to occur. the reason is that the length of each time slot shrinks to an infinitely small length and thus the infinity is cancelled out (an infinite amount of an infinitely small amount generally ends up being a discrete value)

 

Sorry, I was misunderstood too. By optomism I believed in the virtue of your discussion for the sake of the moral of unresolved purpose in the presence of Time.

Aristotle who instead of Zeno believed motion itself had a purpose was the 0ne who believed 'Motion is Possible'.

 

stonerbill. when you can clearly explain to me how you can go about "canceling out infinity" when it pertains to time. please do so. i understand your arguement that the required time to move will become smaller and smaller, however, no matter how small any number is, times infinity. it is infinity.

 

I guessing he's stoned arty:

 

Aye I stumbled onto this paradox one time while stoned as well. Since any number divided by infinity equals zero, and one can sum up time as a series of infinitely short events, you can divide a second into infinite parts and time grinds to a halt.

The problem with our argument though, is of course that time does not behave as a series of arbitrarily small bursts of motion. Time is a continuous flow and any scale used to measure time is placed there by man for points of reference. You can't divide time by infinity because time IS infinity.

This means motion is possible, but full human knowledge of everything that happens in any given set of time is impossible, because we cannot have the knowledge of infinity (due to the fact that our lifespans are not infinite to learn this knowledge). Thus the universe is behaving on a higher level than our minds can comprehend.

Mindfucks are fun

 

[There is a logic leap in my 2nd paragraph so I need to add these lines: A human could spend his whole life dividing up any given set of time and not reach infinity. Similarly, all humans in existence spending their entire lives dividing up a piece of time would still reach only an arbitrarily large number. So we may only divide time by an arbitrarily large number. Infinity divided by 2 is still infinity, and infinity divided by an arbitrarily large number is still infinity. Finally, infinity is infinity (a continuous and all encompassing flow) not a large number of bits and pieces that add up to infinity. That is to say you can't add to or take away from infinity.]