
A New Refutation of Time (1947) [pdf] - gwern
https://www.gwern.net/docs/borges/1947-borges-anewrefutationoftime.pdf
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barce
There is no refutation in this piece. Borges stated that he would use
Leibniz's Theory of Indiscernibles, which holds that objects cannot differ in
name alone, but then never mentions Leibniz again. I feel this piece is often
given to philosophy students to find out who is really BSing in class or who
has really understood the essay form where you state your thesis and then
defend it. Thank you OP for reminding me of the days of my youth.

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nabla9
Philosophy of time is interesting but hard to follow subject.

My current interest was ignited by quantum cosmology that leads to the
decoherent histories approach to quantum mechanics where history of a system
can be described as additive sum of all possible histories.

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-consistent-
histories/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-consistent-histories/)

~~~
theoh
There was a vogue in the first half of the last century for writing
speculative things involving time, generally with little physical basis. I
think it was a new idea in those years to theorize and think formally about
time. It's less compelling to us now. We think we understand it.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreality_of_Time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreality_of_Time)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Experiment_with_Time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Experiment_with_Time)

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stareatgoats
Time seems to me beyond our comprehension beyond the most trivial intuitive
level; defined as numbers, a fourth dimension or recursively by some itself
timy concept will not do. But claiming that does not exist has to employ some
paradigm outside our normal concept of it, perhaps something purely literary?

Anyhow, bookmarked and saved for a rainy day, thanks!

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bobthechef
What a load of nonsense. If time did not exist, then change would be
impossible. If you remove time, you would have to claim things like "I am
standing and I am not standing" which is a contradiction.

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barce
You did not read the whole text. The author affirms that time is a river, and
that he is this river. Moreover, the text is written poorly on purpose to mask
people like you. He mentions that his argument is based on Berkeley and
Leibniz, and mentions Leibniz only once. I laughed at this genius joke of his
affirming Leibniz's indiscernibles. There should be a hacker news where people
who do not read what is linked are banned permanently.

