Tadpole wrote:
Not really, this is again perception versus reality, in the reality of the real world they were a split second apart. The person who is stationary only perceived them as simultaneous.
I don't think this is correct. The person on the train sees it as different timed events because the light takes slightly longer to reach him from the pole further away than the one he is travelling towards. if anything, it is the stationary person who sees the correct order of events. However, even this is wrong, there is no `reality of the real world` and that is the point, there is only perception. When you say "the star in the sky is long gone, but we only percieve to be there because the light took so long to reach us" I think this may be incorrect (possibly correct if time works differently) The star both exists and doesnt exist, I dont mean via process of quantum mechanics, but that space IS time, thus there is no Now. Past is a location in space, as is the future. Like I said, what is the equation in physics to describe the present moment as an actuality? I dont think there is one, because a moment in time is a definition made by our consciousness that percieves itself in time. If you can find the point in space where you can be seen on earth as a child and and alien in the right here and now is observing that, then you are simultainiously both here and there at the same time. I think your previous analogy of the film real is closer to how time works. Perhaps we percieve ourselves to be a single point of reference in time and space when in actuality our lives are more like a film real that has unravelled over time and space. In a film real all the shots exist all at the same time, but we only see the story when it is played in a linear sequence from beginning to end observing one frame at a time.