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I took advanced physics in college. An easy way to understand time as only a human construct is the following. Time is a measure of distance between objects. Those distances are always changing so there is no "set in stone" type of time in reality.
Oh, look at Mr. "I took advanced physics" over here! I didn't go beyond first-year uni-level physics, so basically, when stuff like this comes out, I'm like "that's cool." No bearing on my life at all, but it's fun to read new theories.
Oh, look at Mr. “I took advanced physics” over here!
It also works much like space, only a single dimension. And similar to space, the distance between two points on a line can change if the line is stretched without affecting the distances of things around it necessarily, the distance between to places in time can change locally through time dilation.
So take a piece of elastic and an piece of paper. Draw a line on the elastic and an equal length line on the paper. Take two small windup toys or some other thing that can move in a straight line at a steady pace and that both move at the same speed. And put one on the paper and one on the elastic. Now imagine that the toys or whatever can only look down, directly at the line and points (i.e. they're one dimensional).
Normally, both will reach the end of their lines at the same time. But stretch the elastic and run them again and one reaches the end faster than the other. There's been no break in the line and the points weren't changed and they're both still moving the same speed, but the space that the elastic one exists in has been stretched or "bent".
Not the best analogy exactly for understanding the concept itself, but understanding that there's often an underlying thing that usually remains unobserved or in the case of time dilation or bending 3D space, something that is not observable by humans (or the toys) is what to take away. What we perceive is only a small part of what exists. We can only see the effects those things have on space and time to prove that they must exist.
That’s interesting. I like that analogy.
That you can say those ditances are changing means time exists, in that analogy.
I'm not saying advanced physics is wrong (that's beyond my pay grade), just that analogy falls apart.
You can't have "motion" without time, at least at the macroscopic level. Subatomic, shit gets weird.
That’s why I said “set in stone” time. Like how most people envision time as a clock.