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New York teachers stunned to learn some students can’t read time on old clocks after phone ban comes into play
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2026
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The poor sods probably think time is quantized. But that's philosophically impossible, because that means time is like frames in a movie, but if time consist of a series of still frames, how do we get from one point in time to the next, and how do particles remember their direction or frequency?
Ergo time must be linear, but that too is philosophically impossible, because that creates problems with infinities. Meaning the theory of time must be incomplete as infinity is considered to be outside the valid range of a physics theory.
So time can be neither quantized or linear, but what other options are there?
I'll just have to acknowledge that just as Socrates realized, all I know is that I know nothing. I'm just very very confused, just like those students are over an old analogue clock.
Our theory of time (more specifically spacetime) is incomplete. Some theory's suggest it is a continuum while others suggest it is quantised. But as this discrepancy applies only at the Planck scale it is somewhat moot to how we experience time: our experience of time is linear and continuous. However clock is necessarily quantised but that is simply because it measures the passage of time in discrete steps. A clock is not time itself.
Absolutely.
Except if time is an emerging property of causality, then maybe it kind of is. Since all clocks are based on the causality that causes time to exist.
I love this take because it's the kind of thing only a handful of teenagers would ever think about, let alone understand, yet it speaks to an effect that underlies them all.
It's the kind of thing I'd say and people would go, "You're overthinking it." No, no if anything, you're underthinking it. Just because the idea doesn't occur to someone else doesn't mean it's not a valid extension of the thought. So it is here, with a train of thought that deviates from expectation, but that leaves one pondering nonetheless.
Time is a funny thing. If current theory holds through, it means that a photon traveling at the speed of light experiences everything in the same instant. It makes looking up at ancient stars feel all the more incredible, thinking that the photon that hits your retina already "experienced" that moment when it was first emitted millions of years ago.
I never thought of it that way, but yes that must be the logical conclusion. Time is indeed a funny thing, but when I think of it as causality, it kind of makes sense.