Complex Numbers

The Final Countdown

For this final Creation Saturday, write about something that’s in its final countdown.

Okay, let's get this inevitability out of the way.



Yeah, couldn't resist. I'm betting I'm not the only one to post that, but if I have to have the earworm, so do you.

So... something that's in its final countdown...

Wouldn't that be... everything?

I mean, far be it from me to be a downer

Who am I kidding? That's, like, my defining personality trait

, but everything ends. Even the universe itself is slowly dying.

A countdown, though, is all about time. I've been seeing a lot of articles lately smugly asserting that time is an illusion.

This is, of course, bullshit. Oh, maybe it's an emergent property of other processes, but so is consciousness, and if that's an illusion, then everything is. And since it's perfectly clear that not everything is illusory, then to use the word "illusion" to describe it stretches the definition of "illusion" past the point of usefulness.

Now, sure, our perception of time can be modified. Time appears to pass more quickly, for instance, the older we get. Time spent doing something boring seems to go by less quickly than time spent doing something we enjoy. These two observations appear mutually incompatible, because, obviously, life is more boring as we get older - always fewer new experiences to absorb. So, yeah, but that's not an observation about time but about our perception of it. Disregarding relativistic effects that have only tiny effects on our daily lives, time can be measured to a high degree of precision.

And that's the polar opposite of an illusion: something that, regardless of our wishes or desires, acts in the same way in all commonly encountered situations.

A word about relativistic effects, though: Yes, someone traveling at close to the speed of light will have a different reading on their clock. This effect has been measured and observed, and is uncontroversial. But, again, it doesn't affect what time we have to get up in the morning. It has some bearing on things like GPS satellite clocks and ultra-precise scientific measurements, but if we agree to have lunch at noon, and you show up at 12:30 claiming time is an illusion, that's the last time we have lunch.

So why do these reports like to breathlessly call time an illusion? Well, because to a scientist, the only "real" effects are those not tied to a particular frame of reference. For example: centripetal force is considered real, while its buddy centrifugal force is dependent on reference frames so it's called imaginary. And yet, if you've ever been on a whirligig (or as I like to call it, a kiddy catapult), to you, the observer, centrifugal force is very real. Anyway, since the passage of time is dependent on frame of reference, it is, in a sense, not real. And a lot of science reporters seem to have been taken in by Buddhist philosophy.

Bottom line: time is real, everything is dying, and we're all in the final countdown.