The arrow of time.

Yesterday's post about time was both confusing and fascinating. Here's another fascinating thing about time: it only moves in one direction.

The arrow of time points toward entropy. Things tend to get more disorganized. That's why scrambled eggs don't seem to reassemble themselves or divers jump out of the water and land on the side of the pool completely dry.

But why does time's arrow point in one direction? I don't know. You can argue that it needs to point this way in order for there to be a cause-and-effect relationship between events and things.

Yet I heard that from a purely mathematical angle, it doesn't matter which way time flows. Physicists' calculations work both forwards and backwards.

There may be other parts of the universe where time flows backwards. Or perhaps in the vast multi-verse, there are universes that exist in which time flows backwards. We just can't see them.

I think it would be cool if, at the end of the universe, time reversed itself and ran backward until the big bang again. Then our bodies would reform and be resurrected and we'd live until we got smaller and smaller and eventually disappeared inside our mother's bellies.

What is time?

Time is the duration between events.

An interesting question is why is there a duration between events? Why doesn't everything happen at once?

If everything happened at once then the universe would be created, evolve and die out all at the same time.

That seems impossible. Chemical reactions take time. Eating takes time. Moving takes time.

On the other hand, thanks to Einstein, we know that time itself is relative. The faster something travels, the less time it experiences compared to something else travelling slowly.

So if you travelled at the speed of light, everything around you would appear to happen all at once. You wouldn't see any duration between events. People would be born, live and die in the same instant.

Interestingly, to them you would appear ageless and unchanging.

The more I think about time the more my brain starts to hurt.

This pregnancy is going much faster...

I was telling Cindy how much faster this pregnancy seems to be going. It's only months away before we have another child. That blows my mind. I keep telling her we need to set up the car seat and buy a stroller, but she's more laid back than me.

Why is time going so much faster this time around? I have two theories:

1) We're distracted by Jake. He takes up so much time and energy right now that we don't often sit around and day dream about the future. When Cindy was pregnant with Jake, we had nothing else to do except day dream about the future (and buy a house and move to Maple Ridge). So time went by much slower.

2) We told people later this time around. Which means people have spent less time asking us questions or talking about this pregnancy. This makes it seem like it's happening so fast.

My commute went form one hour to ten minutes, and I'm still just as rushed in the morning.

Parkinson's Law states that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. I've noticed this for sure in the mornings when Jake and I get ready for work/school.

A month and a half ago my commute went from an hour plus to ten minutes. Meaning, I'd have an extra hour in the morning to get ready.

I'm just as rushed as I was before. Actually, not quite. I'm slightly more relaxed, but the difference is very slight. It doesn't feel like I have an extra hour.

Why? Because each task I do to get Jake ready stretches out until the hour is filled up.* This isn't intentional. It just happens.

Parkinson's Law applies everywhere, most interestingly at work. For example, these last two days at work I've had almost nothing to do. When I did get work it took me all day to do it.

I'm much more productive when I have lots to do and very little time to do it. I speed through my work and the days go by much, much faster.

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* When you have a kid, there is no such thing as rushing. The more you try to rush, the slower you get. This is called "Kid Time". Estimate how long it would normally take you to do something, triple it, and that's Kid Time.

Time gets faster as we get older, but what if it was the opposite?

As we get older, time seems to fly faster and faster. When I was a kid summer holidays lasted FOREVER. Now summer feels like 3 weeks. Imagine when I'm 95! A summer will feel like a day!


What if this was the opposite? What if time went by slower and slower as we got older, and flew by when we were kids? I think that would be worse.


Children lead the best lives. Everything is done for them. They play all day. They don't have to worry about money. They laugh a lot. If this went by in a blink of an eye, they'd miss out on the best times of their lives.


Meanwhile, getting older kind of sucks. If time slowed every year it would mean a sort of slow, extended agony. If you were really old and really sick, imagine how much worse you would feel if every day felt like a month.


"Come on kill me now!" you'd scream. "Time hurry up and go by so I can die!" Some people already feel like that.