Time?

[BAndrew]

Well no. Event A occured at a time t1 and an event B occured at a time t2. The events happened and time exists, but nothing tells you that time flows.

Even if Event B did not follow from Event A, would you say that all events are not related to any other event? If not, then what do you mean by "flows"? If math is to allow for variables because not everything is constant, then it should be recognized that time flows.

Definetely one event happened before the other. What I mean with "flows" is the notion that time ‘flows’; that time goes by. It is hard to deny the feeling that this is what happens, but having a ‘gut’ feeling about something, however strong that feeling is, is not enough in science. In our everyday language we say that ‘time passes’, ‘the time will arrive’, ‘the moment has gone’ and so on. But if you think about it, all motion and change must, by definition, be judged against time. This is how we define change. When we wish to describe the rate of a certain process we either count the number of events in a unit of time, such as the number of heart beats per minute, or the amount of change in a unit of time, such as how much weight a baby has put on in one month. But it becomes nonsensical to try and measure the rate at which time itself changes since we cannot compare it with itself. People often jokingly state that time flows at a rate of one second per second. This is clearly a meaningless statement since we are using time to measure itself. To clarify this, how would we know if time were to suddenly speed up? Since we exist within time and measure the duration of intervals of time using clocks which, like our internal biological clocks, must presumably speed up also, we would never be aware of it. The only way to talk about the flow of (our) time is to judge it against some external, more fundamental, time.
But if an external time against which we could measure the rate of flow of our own time did exist then we would only be pushing the problem further back rather than resolving it. Surely if time by its nature flows, then why should this external time not flow also? In which case we are back to the problem of needing a further, even more fundamental, time scale against which to measure the rate of flow of external time, and so on in a neverending hierarchy.

Just because we are unable to talk about a rate of flow of time does not mean that time does not flow at all. Or maybe time is standing still while we (our consciousness) are moving along it (we are moving towards the future rather than the future coming towards us). When you look out of the window of a moving train and observe fields rushing by you ‘know’ that they are standing still and that it is the train that is moving. Likewise, we have the strong subjective impression that the present moment (what we call now) and an event in our future (say next Christmas) move closer together. The time interval separating the two moments shrinks. Whether we say that next Christmas is moving closer to us or that we are moving closer to next Christmas amounts to the same thing: we feel that something is changing. So how come most physicists argue that even this idea is not valid?

Strange as this may sound, the laws of physics say nothing about the flow of time. They tell us how things like atoms, pulleys, levers, clocks, rockets and stars behave when subjected to different forces at certain instants in time, and if given the status of a system at a particular moment the laws of physics provide us with the rules for computing its likely state at some future time. Nowhere, however, do they contain a hint of flowing time. The notion that time passes, or moves in some way, is completely missing in physics. We find that, like space, time simply exists; it just is. Clearly, say most physicists, the feeling we have that time flows is just that: a feeling, however real it may seem to us.

What science is unable to provide at the moment is an explanation for where this strong sense we have of passing time and a changing present moment comes from. Some physicists and philosophers are convinced that there is something missing in the laws of physics. I will not go as far as to say that I subscribe to this view, but I do believe we will only make progress when we have a better understanding of how our own consciousness works, and hence why we feel the passage of time.

I should mention that no less an authority than Einstein himself held the view that the flow of time is illusory and even expressed it when trying to console the bereaved widow of a close friend of his, stating that she should take comfort in the knowledge that the present moment is no more special than any other in the
past or the future; all times exist together.

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It is predictable because as I said before. they are still stranded by the laws of physics. this laws can be calculated and have a predictable outcome.

That doesn't make it predictable. And no they don't have a predictable outcome.