What is 'Real'?

[Regiomontanus]

Not necessarily. Hawking showed that time actually had a beginning. That beginning was at the moment of the Big Bang.
Prior to the Big Bang there was an existent singularity, "outside" of time.

Found somewhere perhaps, though even that somewhere cam be hard to make meaningful to us, but a moment of no duration does not define what time is. An infinite multitude of moments of no duration will do no better in defining time. Add any number of moments of no duration together and all's you'll get is a moment of no duration.
"Consecutive instants"? Consecutive to what? Cause and effect get a bit tricky at the quantum level. Physics is having a very hard time determining why we seem to perceive an "arrow of time" in which things can be defined as consecutively related phenomena. Physics has yet to answer the mysteries of the directionality of entropy. This so called flow to time breaks down at the quantum level. From the point of view of physics, the future is as real and existent as the past and present. It is only the "flow of our awareness" that delineates the past, present, and future.
It should also be noted that change can be of no duration. It can be instantaneous, as when an electron jumps from one state to another for instance.
We are equipped to perceive macroscopically. At this level we are deluded into believing we are experiencing causes in reality instead of merely the effects of realistic causes. We perceive the pictures movement. We don't perceive the flipping pages giving us the delusion of that movement.
Realistically it may be that past, present, and future are collectively a moment of no duration having simultaneous existence.

Not exactly. The singularity was real yet was the originator of space and time not a subject of those things.

I don't think this is correct. As presented above. Nothing in science bars a real singularly unique entity's existence which has no interaction with other real things since none exist other than itself. Science indicates that Space and time as we know them in our universe both had beginnings -or at least the phenomena we've labeled with those terms - whereas there is no indication that their originator did. The singularity existed in neither space nor time as we define them.
What space is, is not so easily described. What space does is a little easier to define with such tools as Einstein and the quantum crew developed. And so it is with time.

Since you mentioned gods, let me attempt to explain what is meant by the Christian God being outside of time...
All created creatures in this universe experience time sequentially as their sentience becomes aware of moments of no deration which that sentience passes through. The "direction" of that passage is dictated and sustained by God. That would be defined as being within and subject to a sensory flow of time.
This would be in contrast to God's sentient awareness of all of time at once - past, present, future - as a single instantaneous realistic moment. Yet...in comparison to the singularity of the Big Bang we say that God while aware of and simultaneous experiencing all of existence is not itself subject to its restrictions - that is restrictions of awareness of or ability within time and space but is instead the originator of those things.
Nothing in science precludes God from being able to exist prior to the beginnings of time or space as we have come to define those things.
We don't so much exist "in" time but instead we become aware of reality in a dictated sequence.

"Not necessarily. Hawking showed that time actually had a beginning. That beginning was at the moment of the Big Bang.
Prior to the Big Bang there was an existent singularity, "outside" of time."

No offense intended, but your statement is wrong for a few reasons.

First off, SH *proved* no such thing.

But anyway, singularities are essentially a word used to mask our ignorance of the physics in certain circumstances (the energies and densities involved here).

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Define 'real'.

Sabrina Ionescu's jumpshot.
Real, legit, impressive, impactful...call it what you will.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Real: That which is immutable.

Hmm...I'm not sure I follow. To some degree I do, but as with most definitions of real, it breaks down at a certain level of precision.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Hmm...I'm not sure I follow. To some degree I do, but as with most definitions of real, it breaks down at a certain level of precision.

Where does it break down?

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Where does it break down?

Well...is the English language real? It's certainly not immutable, although the concept of language and our modes of communication is I suppose.
Guppies are real, but also have evolved, both in a 'macro' sense and more recently in an observable 'micro' sense.
(Whilst I don't see the distinction between the two, I'm just using it to differentiate between degrees of change)

So, ultimately I suspect I'm misunderstanding your meaning, which is what I mean at certain levels of precision.
Perhaps you'd see guppies as real because we experience them in a consistent way, which is kinda mostly true, but ultimately not quite true.

Dunno. I'm certainly not trying to say you're wrong, just that I might be misunderstanding the manner or degree to which you're applying 'immutable'.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Well...is the English language real? It's certainly not immutable, although the concept of language and our modes of communication is I suppose.
Guppies are real, but also have evolved, both in a 'macro' sense and more recently in an observable 'micro' sense.
(Whilst I don't see the distinction between the two, I'm just using it to differentiate between degrees of change)

So, ultimately I suspect I'm misunderstanding your meaning, which is what I mean at certain levels of precision.
Perhaps you'd see guppies as real because we experience them in a consistent way, which is kinda mostly true, but ultimately not quite true.

Dunno. I'm certainly not trying to say you're wrong, just that I might be misunderstanding the manner or degree to which you're applying 'immutable'.

From my perspective, the only thing that doesn't change is that which is aware...the witness-consciousness. Everything it is aware of is in a perpetual state of change, and therefore, in my opinion, not real. It only appears real because based on the perspective of waking consciousness.

In a state of deep sleep, there is no guppy, no English language...it's an awareness of absence of what is perceived in waking consciousness to be real.

I was in a dream last night as I slept, and I deposited a million dollars in my bank account from my lottery winnings I had won earlier in the dream. To my dream character, I was able to touch the money and walk into the bank. From the dream perspective, the money and bank were objectively real. I know this because my daughter was with me in the bank and saw both the bank and the money. Sadly, when I woke up this morning, I went on the Chase app to check my balance, and that million dollars that was so real in my dream wasn't there. When I'm done posting this, I'll have to call my daughter to see if she has any idea what might have happened to it.

What is real is a matter of one's perspective based on their current state of consciousness.

Except English speaking guppies. I'm pretty sure they're real.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Prior to the Big Bang there was an existent singularity, "outside" of time.

I've already explained why the concept of existing outside of time is incoherent to me. You've just restated the incoherent sentence without addressing my argument.

Incidentally, I don't consider time to have begun with the expansion of our universe any more than it began with my conception. That's when time began for me. My T=0 was not the beginning of time. Likewise, if there's a multiverse spawning bubble universes, for example, their T=0's are not the beginning of time.

There likely is no such thing as the beginning of time unless something can come from nothing without any change, since change implies time - a before and after state - and that only happens in time. This is also an incoherent idea in my opinion. Verbs imply relationships ("equals," for example) and changes in relationships. The latter require time, and that includes being, thinking, and acting.

In any event, for me, to be real is to exist in some place at some time and to be able to interact with other real things. If one says that something is not in time, he's also telling me that it can be found nowhere. It's an idea with no external referent, that is, fiction.

"Consecutive instants"?

Yes, a nonzero duration of time.

 

[setarcos]

No offense intended, but your statement is wrong for a few reasons.

No offense taken. If I am wrong, then I am wrong. Thanks for at least showing some curtesy.

First off, SH *proved* no such thing.

This seems like a strong opinion of yours. I cannot deny that human beings have very rarely "proven" anything. Theories are theories because by their very nature they cannot ultimately be proven but only be probabilistically correct against being disproven or until disproven.
Hawking "apparently" showed the logicality of presuming a beginning to space and time at the Big Bang.
A cursory perusal of the relevant literate shows as much. But without taking a trip down the rabbit hole of presenting the advanced mathematics and physical theories involved in Hawking's determination -a mere distraction here rather than a help in understanding- here for example is a popular presentation for us laymen by a prominent cosmologist that was a close collaborator with Hawking for many years....
From Thomas Hertog's book...
On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory.

2. There’s nothing before the Big Bang because there was no time.​

We often think of the Big Bang as some sort of explosion that happened in a space that already existed. However, that isn’t quite correct. It looks like the Big Bang is not just an explosion, but a much more fundamental beginning: namely the beginning of time.

“The Big Bang does not have a cause because there is no prior time available for causality to be possible.”

The idea that time had a beginning in a big bang was championed in science during the early 1930s; it goes back to the work of the Belgian priest-astronomer Georges Lemaître. Yet, somewhat ironically, Albert Einstein famously rejected the idea of a big bang, because it reminded him of Christian dogma. Lemaître was a priest, which I presume didn’t help. But eventually, Hawking and Roger Penrose proved Lemaître right, suggesting that the universe was not made in time but with time. It is as if we finally found something without a cause; the Big Bang does not have a cause because there is no prior time available for causality to be possible.

Ever since, the origin of time has been the cornerstone, but also the Achilles’ heel of big bang cosmology. How exactly could time pop into existence?

singularities are essentially a word used to mask our ignorance of the physics in certain circumstances (the energies and densities involved here).

Okay? Our current understanding of physics dictates that singularities exist and prior to the Bang of the Big Bang our universe was in such a state. That we are ignorant of the fundamental processes and potential meaning of where the physics and math takes us does not preclude its existence. We use words to label phenomenon we currently do not understand all the time.
So I guess I don't understand your relevant point here?

Here's a relevant quote from an article from Scientific American...
MAY 24, 2023
6 MIN READ

"The Universe Began with a Bang, Not a Bounce, New Studies Find"​

"In particular, the big bang model of the universe begins with a singularity—a point that appeared out of nothing and contained the precursors of everything in the universe in a region so small that it had essentially no size at all. The idea is that the universe grew from the singularity and, after inflation, settled into the more gradually expanding universe we see today. But singularities are problematic because physics, and math itself, doesn’t make sense when everything is packed into a point that’s infinitely small. Many physicists prefer to avoid singularities."

 

[setarcos]

I've already explained why the concept of existing outside of time is incoherent to me. You've just restated the incoherent sentence without addressing my argument.

My point is that a "thing" which produced an effect existed prior to time and space becoming existent themselves.
That we cannot coherently make sense of such a thing isn't relative. What is relative is that a "real" thing - in that it effected reality - existed "outside" of the time and space that we have attempted to describe.

I don't consider time to have begun with the expansion of our universe any more than it began with my conception. That's when time began for me. My T=0 was not the beginning of time. Likewise, if there's a multiverse spawning bubble universes, for example, their T=0's are not the beginning of time.

Then you are not describing the time physics is attempting to study as it relates to physical reality.
It matters little when you or others first became aware of your existence in time. You didn't alter times realistic potential. The balance sheet was zero before you and zero after you. The only thing that altered was your awareness in time.
IF the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics is true it also still doesn't matter. Those other universes according to the theory would be completely isolated from ours. Their own beginnings and what caused those beginnings would also preexist prior to the beginning of their own time.

There likely is no such thing as the beginning of time unless something can come from nothing without any change

Well the current thinking in physics says otherwise. That is a legitimate mystery at the heart of our universe. That is what if anything predated the Big Bang and what made a change in the state of existence and how that predates even time and space? My personal belief is that God - while itself unchanging in its essence was the cause of the change in reality. That something came from God and the change was in the beginning of a relationship - creation with God and those constituents which make up that creation with each other.

since change implies time - a before and after state - and that only happens in time.

The before was God. The after was a change in reality in which there was God and creation. Time and space began at the moment of creation. Prior to that there was nothing changing. God was God was God.
The best current concept of time is described as a change in entropy. That change in entropy can be of no duration like when an electron jumps states. Nothing changed in the electron but the state its in. The electron was in one state and then it was in another. Once the conditions initiating the change in state are in place that change is instantaneous. In other words it doesn't take place "in time" since that change is of no duration.
I hypothesize that we are consistently living in the past because our awareness lives "in time" by creating the delusion that there has been a continuously smooth transition from one change in reality to the next. By the time we become aware of one moment of no duration it has already passed to the next. How far we live in the past depends on how fast we become aware of what has already passed. That is how WE perceive change in time. In reality change takes place through moments of no duration. That is "outside" of time as we perceive it.
According to the so called laws of physics the future is as real as the past and present. I don't thing reality is changing as we think of change. I think our sentience is "moving" through reality and that movement gives us the delusion of change. The end result I suppose being the same from our perspective.

If the entirety of the universe consisted of only one electron then we couldn't say that that electron existed in time since there would be nothing else to compare the entropic state of that electron to. We'd have an existent electron "outside" of time as physics describes it. Now suppose another electron popped into existence from some unknown cause. Now we have the beginnings of time and space since we can calculate the spatial and entropic states of those electrons in relation to each other. One might ask why that unknown cause couldn't be said to be "in time" along with the first electron? Because there was no change in the entropic state between that electron and the unknown cause of the second electron. There was no spatial reference between them either any more than between the electron and the math describing its circumference or lack thereof.
So...change does not dictate what time is. Change of no duration can take place like change that takes place on the quantum levels of reality. Things can exist that have no discernible spatial dimension like those of the so called point particles. So spatial dimension is not necessary for change to take place. Ergo change can take place outside of space and time but that change may be a delusion of the limitations of our awareness. This universes past, present, and future may be indistinguishably real all in one realistic moment of no duration. Of course this is pure speculation and I may be full of hot air here I'll admit. But....
I think reality could give two hoots how you actually experience it.

Verbs imply relationships ("equals," for example) and changes in relationships

Verbs are constructs of language which is used as an attempt to describe how we experience reality. It has its uses for our survival and productivity at the macroscopic level but our language breaks down when attempting to make sense of how reality really behaves. That's why our language can seem paradoxical when describing phenomena in quantum theories.

Yes, a nonzero duration of time.

Lets hyperbolize for arguments sake....
If I can move from point A to point B and that action takes no duration. In other words in an instant. And likewise from point B to C and C to D etc. up to point Z. Tell me, what duration would have taken place by the time I've moved from point A to point Z through these "consecutive instants"?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

My point is that a "thing" which produced an effect existed prior to time and space becoming existent themselves.

And my point is that it makes no sense referring to existence outside of time. You can keep repeating it, but it doesn't become sensible because one does. cause and effect have a temporal relationship. If something caused something else, time passed.

IF the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics is true it also still doesn't matter. Those other universes according to the theory would be completely isolated from ours.

Irrelevant. They would each have a T=0 related to the multiverse's timeline. The analogy to individuals still pertains. We each began to exist (T=0) as an individual organism at some point on the world timeline.

If the entirety of the universe consisted of only one electron then we couldn't say that that electron existed in time since there would be nothing else to compare the entropic state of that electron to.

If there were no other reality apart from a single electron, to say that it exists is to say that it passes from was to is, and for as long as it continues to exist, to will be.

If I can move from point A to point B and that action takes no duration.

You're not talking about movement if you don't have a from time and place followed by a to time and place. Without time, there is no motion nor any other kind of change.

 

[setarcos]

And my point is that it makes no sense referring to existence outside of time.

It doesn't have to make sense to you. Quantum mechanics doesn't make "sense" to anyone. Feynman said...nobody understands quantum mechanics. Because our rational brains are at their limits of sensibility with these phenomena.
Imagine how limited our rationality is when trying to understand reality. For instance try and describe what it would be like experience the boundary of our universe and the limits of its current expansion. I mean really...what is it expanding in? What was our universe surrounded by when it was in a state of singularity?

cause and effect have a temporal relationship. If something caused something else, time passed.

That's how we experience reality on our macroscopic level. At the quantum level cause and effect are a little murky and quite a mystery.
We experience causes first then effects because of the macroscopically perceived "arrow" of time. However the reversibility of the laws of physics at the microscopic level make those experiences time reversible as well. In quantum mechanics the effects of ones actions can dictate what causes the results of the experiment. If were talking microscopic states its as possible that the broken egg caused the unbroken egg to fall off the table as it is that the falling egg was the cause of the egg to break. Our macroscopic state has our awareness experiencing a directionality to cause and effect but no one knows why the macroscopic and microscopic states don't seem to be symmetrical.
Physics does not distinguish between the realness of the present and the realness of the past or future. The laws of physics treat the past, present, and future as if they are all real at the same "time".
Why we remember the past and not the future seems absurdly obvious but it is a real question asked by physicists that begged to be answered. The ONLY reason we presume effects "follow" causes is because of the apparent directionality of entropy from low to high which gives us a "phenomenological real-life" perceived "arrow" of time. Why we perceive time passing between cause and effect and we perceive a cause always preceding an effect is not a deeply engrained product of the nature of time. It is a feature of the limitations of our perception of our environment. Research....Boltzmann on entropy, "The Past Hypothesis" as well as Lohschmidt's Reversibility Objection.

On another note how much time do you think passed between whatever caused the singularity to expand and its effect - the actual beginning of that expansion? In order for the cause of the expansion to precede the effect which is that expansion that cause would have to have been "timeless" another way of saying "outside of time" IF space and time began at t=0 expansion.

They would each have a T=0 related to the multiverse's timeline.

The point is...there is no "multiverse timeline". What would such a timeline be keeping track of? Hours, minutes, days, years? And what would those durations be in relation to? Those are all arbitrary indicators of our own perception of entropic change. A perception that is localized to our own environment. There is no "time" before the big bang because there was no entropic change prior to it. Any entropic change to these other universes would be isolated to those other universes. Each of those universes would be a truly closed system. There is no such thing as the "total" entropic state of the multiverse according to that theory. It isn't a real thing. It is a label given for the set of all possible universes.

We each began to exist (T=0) as an individual organism at some point on the world timeline.

Your talking about a specific change in the entropic state of the universe. That's it. That's all you can say. Relevant specifically to when you came into existence in relation to other already existent things perhaps but that is totally irrelevant to what time is, how we perceive time, and whether or not anything can predate the existence of what we consider to be time. Your "time" may be perceived as important to you but it certainly isn't important to what time is.
So I guess I'm not sure what your point is here.

If there were no other reality apart from a single electron, to say that it exists is to say that it passes from was to is, and for as long as it continues to exist, to will be.

And how do you measure the duration before it came into existence? And how do you measure the duration from that point to when it ceases to exist? Time and duration are macroscopic experiences.
Think about how we measure time. We measure time through relationships. How long is a second? How long a minute etc. All our measurements are relative to our ability to recognize differences in relationships. But what if an object exists but doesn't change until it does. How do we measure the duration between nothing changing and then change?

Without time, there is no motion nor any other kind of change.

*We've already discussed the beginnings of time and space with the Big Bang. Prior to the Big Bang the singularity existed. Since space and with it time began with the Big Bang the duration between the singularity and whatever initiated its expansion in a Big Bang was zero. It would have been and instantaneous change of state. To say it was in a changeless state for a duration before it changed states would be meaningless. We could say it was that way for a quadrillion years or a zeptosecond it wouldn't matter. It would be meaningless to assign duration.
**The collapse of a quantum wave for all intents and purposes appears to be instantaneous.
***Quantum entanglement appears to be instantaneous (Einstein's spooky action at a distance)
So, at least for now seems that there are things which can change without duration.

You're not talking about movement if you don't have a from time and place followed by a to time and place.

This is a thought experiment since change of no duration hasn't been proven specifically only hypothetically from the initial condition of the universe. Note, it hasn't been proven impossible either and is suspected possible as the examples I've given indicate. So...I didn't mean specifically a spatial movement. Of course Einstein for one married space to time literally not simply relationally. So movements through space/time seem to be a bit tricky and nonsensical to our macroscopic perceptions. Can we pop through spatial distances while expending no duration doing it? That to my knowledge has not been definitively settled and is currently debatable. Can space/time dimensions be twerked somehow to allow for such things without violating the inviolable speed of light limit? I'm not sure if anyone knows. Is it impossible? I'm not sure anyone knows that either. If someone reading this has some data concerning such things I'd be interested to see it is all I can say. Anyways....
If A changed to B and B to C without duration between either change then its just as well to say that A changed to C instantly. Time is a macroscopic quality of reality. To us we acknowledge a duration to A's existence not by A's change specifically, since A doesn't change until it does, but by by changes in A's environment. Since A jumped to B and B to C but each without duration we can only acknowledge A's immediate change to C at which point A's apparent duration ceased since we are creatures with very narrow awareness of the present not the entirety of the past through to the future. What happened to B then? Since the changes were immediate and of no duration, to us B never existed. It wasn't time dependent like our perception is. But B does exist. A is dependent upon B to change to C in some connected manner. Perhaps these B's, what ever they would be, are the missing pieces to the TOE? There is no theoretical reason ,that I know of, why change of no duration cannot happen. Indeed if Hawking was correct for one it did happen when the initial conditions changed that caused the Big Bang.
If there is any annoying typos or errors in my grammar please forgive me. I'm getting terrible with editing.