Paradox

To explain this paradox, time will mean the medium through which change occurs.

Through the Parade Analogy, it can be shown to be logically impossible for time to be infinite:
Say that you and numerous fellow men were marching due north on a completely flat plane at a steady rate of 1mph. You have no clue how long you've been marching, or where you came from. For all you know, you've been marching forever. One day, you and your fellows come across a jet, and you decide to take this jet due south at an amazing speed of 1000mph. The question is, will you come to the starting point of the parade?
The answer must be yes, because the answer cannot be no. If you, with your 1000mph jet plane, never reach any kind of starting location at all, even travelling just short of forever, then how could you and your friends have possibly marched in the opposite direction at a slower speed?

However, if, at any one point, there is no change occuring, how can change suddenly start to occur without another change to trigger that change? There would have to be an infinite series of change.

And with that, I have a paradox on my hands. Change must be infinite, yet change cannot be infinite.

Any explanations?

This is a paradox of distance, not time, and it's not a paradox either. Time isn't circular.

I'm not assuming time to be circular. However, the paradox can apply for a timeline just as well as a distance. It must always take a finite number of years to go from Time A to Time B.

At 1/4/2010 6:01:52 PM, mongeese wrote:
I'm not assuming time to be circular. However, the paradox can apply for a timeline just as well as a distance. It must always take a finite number of years to go from Time A to Time B.

Except time doesn't go from point to point. Time doesn't have points. Time is abstract.

Is time so abstract that a series of changes cannot be said to lead the universe from one definite state to another?

The problem with analogies is that the simpler the analogy, the easier it is to get caught up in its simplicity and make ignorant conclusions on complicated topics.

Let's put a Parade center at the start. After the parade marches for 100 miles, the center still exists. After the parade marches for 500 miles, the center still exists. After the parade enters the jet plane, the center still exists, so the center will eventually be found.

After one moment in time, the moment prior ceases to exist. Plain and simple. It is as if though in an empty and vast flat plane, marchers are spawned under the assumption that they have already marched for some unknown time. In this case, yes, the jet plane will never find the original point.

You seem to think infinity is a specific quantity.

@Kleptin: The point is to show that any two points on a time ray must be a finite distance from each other. Time travel isn't necessary to bring this point accross.

@RR: How so?

I just started a debate that one could travel a finite distance for an infinite amount of time. If you look at the debate it will be easier to understand what I mean.

At 1/4/2010 6:01:52 PM, mongeese wrote:
It must always take a finite number of years to go from Time A to Time B.

I think that the theory of relativity disagrees.

You can go forward in time on Earth by going away fast and coming back.

For example,
Earth time at departure: 2009
Earth time at return: 3009
Time of Travel: 25 years