{"id":11,"date":"2003-01-30T16:37:55","date_gmt":"2003-01-30T21:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jetpen.com\/blog\/?p=11"},"modified":"2023-02-05T15:14:07","modified_gmt":"2023-02-05T21:14:07","slug":"timeless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jetpen.com\/blog\/2003\/01\/30\/timeless\/","title":{"rendered":"timeless – thinking outside the box"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I am sitting here in a Boeing 737 on the tarmac, as maintenance personnel check over the aircraft to determine why some indicator lights are showing a problem. What has been occupying my mind is the first few pages I’ve read of The End of Time – The Next Revolution in Physics<\/i> by Julian Barbour<\/a>. This book is a great example of thinking outside the box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barbour suggests that there is in reality no such thing as time. It is merely a figment of our misinterpretation of the facts, which result from the limited scope of our personal experiences. This idea is very provocative, because it goes against intuition and it seemingly contradicts everything we know to be true. There is something extremely violent and destructive in this notion. Just the possibility of setting fire to something that we hold as fundamental is exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is very serendipitous. My life’s work seems to revolve around creative thinking. One of my fundamental responsibilities is to think outside the box<\/i> to solve problems that are beyond the normal capacity of others. I must imagine what lies outside of common knowledge, and embrace possibilities that may be seemingly absurd or false, in order to discover that something out there is in fact precisely what must be true (or brought into reality). Thinking outside the box requires that in fact there is no box. Or perhaps that all those poor souls, who thought they were in the box, were actually floating outside a bubble. Or something much more bizarre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am sitting here in a Boeing 737 on the tarmac, as maintenance personnel check over the aircraft to determine why some indicator lights are showing a problem. What has been occupying my mind is the first few pages I’ve read of The End of Time – The Next Revolution in Physics by Julian Barbour. … Continue reading timeless – thinking outside the box<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-cosmology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t