On Time and Archaeology

[Arising_uk]

Nikolai,

Yes I do look in mirrors and I see an image - an image which is unique, fresh and ageless, but this is not through my contract with l'Oreal. The reason it is fresh is because I do not think about Fables of Time. ...

Or think of the fable that Time does not exist for you?

...The most common fable is that people start fresh faced and develop wrinkles over time. ...

And it is a fable because we start out as 'wrinkly' young things and develop into wrinkled old gits. At least the men do the women become wrinkled crones.

... In the mind's eye we conjure images of of our face without wrinkles and call them 'memories' - even though these images are pure inventions appearing in the here-and-now. We even rush ahead and follow the plot into the 'future'. Here we imagine ourselves as deeply wrinkled old men, but true to the plot, we maintain that these images 'have not happened yet' even though they are happening right now - in precisely the same way as the 'memories' are. Memories and predictions are the same thing - contemporaneous imaginings - but we just think they are different becaus that is their role in the story that is being told.

Ah! Understand 'here' I 'hear' something different. I take it that you are describing your current ability to understand 'ourselves' through a particular way of experiencing, i.e. your Zen meditation has given you excellent control over your internal representations(full or half-lotus?)? And as such has given you an outline of the structure of your thinking or thoughts? If so, then if you need a Zen master I cannot help you as I'm not. But my take from the physical orient is that it reminds me of an experience in kung-fooey, in that, we learn technique from form, essentially the 'art' is to learn to 'fall into' shapes/forms/positions, etc, normally taught by set Katas/Forms/Exercises... . Then when you 'spar' the job is to recognise what shape to fall into given a recognisable situation. A problem is that it is such a seductive game that the student becomes convinced that their technique will be effective in the outside world of violence, which is esssentially what they were training for, and it invariably does not. Why? Because the otherworld 'student' has not learnt the 'rules' and even worse had learnt the 'rules' the hard way by trial and error and as such only has things that work.

So my guess is that you need to dump all the content now and re-fill it with what you understand of sensation now. That way when you have to dump it again you can keep the stuff that works.

Everything happens in the atemporal now.

So I don't understand how you can have a 'timeless' 'now', given that 'now' is a construct of past/present/future? If you mean we could live in the 'now' or 'present' I'd be interested in what you mean by it and what techniques you'd propose to experience such an event.

Time is an illusion - or at least a fun little story we tell to ourselves. ...

No, its an 'illusion' if you believe that Time is anything other than part of what it is to be this thing that we are? My take is 'time' is part(maybe all) of what it is to be this finite thing.

...Your unwrinkled 'youth' is not something that 'happened'; it is something that happens every time you tell that tale.

My take is that you are not noticing 'difference' in your sensing and you have your abilities and capabilities 'pushed' too far out.

Two pieces of coal have different proportions of isotopes - after all nothing is identical in nature. Because we believe in time it must be the case that one piece of coal is older than the other - if only fractionally. We then look for characteristics that distinguish them and say that these differences are a product of ageing, or weathering as you call it. Actually, all we have is two objects that we perceive in the here and now - all the talk about age goes way beyond what is given and as such is completely unsubstantiated.

So now we are going for 'two pieces' of something? That these two pieces would have differing levels of radioactive material within them would make no difference as we are not measuring proportion between substances but a property of a substance within another. So if the thing was a piece of isotope with a teeny bit of coal attached and we had another way of measuring a piece of coals age then we could truly say that this isotope was 'that' age. But since we know and understand the decay-rate of the actual isotope, whats the point? So it matters not 'how much' isotope there is, just that there is.

If you look very carefully at all the old things you know, you will see that that their antiquity is only assumed through association with other 'old' things.

How are you 'looking' 'carefully' at these 'old' things?

There is nothing whose age is immediately and necessarily apparent, and so no foundation, no benchmark exists beyond our arbitrary designations.

Apart from 'looking really old'?

In other words, there is never a good reason to consider anything old at all (this argument is identical to that often used with truth, morality and a whole host of other things so I'm sure you are familiar with it). But, what we can say, indisputably, is that everything - our thoughts, perceptions, explanations - all happen NOW.

Of course there is no good 'reason' as its part of what being this thing with this time is, that we understand all to well the idea of past/present/future and 'old' as we are the 'thing' that 'defines/creates' 'it'? You say "NOW", tell me what that is then so I can 'experience' it?

Every act of measurement is a completely unique event, without precedent.

No, its not. Its exactly the recapitulation of an act of precedent. It is the confiormation of precedent and as such is why we can measure things.

You cannot measure the same thing twice in order to determine its age.

You have no need to? Once you've 'measured' its 'age' you can calculate without re-measurement.

If you think that you have measured this rock before, a week ago, then that is pure illusion.

It may be if you 'think it' but if you've actually measured the rock a week ago then its a fact as evidenced by the measurements.

...Even if you have a dated record sheet before you, then that sheet is as purely contemporaneous as the rock - neither have any historicity.

But they do? What do you think the 'dated record sheet' is?

Your comparison between them, and the conclusions you reach are all happening in the here and now.

Yes...but in the 'here and now' is the understanding that the data sheet is recording data from the here and gone?

If you consider our life span a 'fact' then you are likely to miss the argument.

If you think it not then you are likely to miss the point.

It is perfectly possible that your past is as much an invention as your average daydream.

I think this says that someone does not understand the difference but I'll accept that many 'day-dream' rather than access their past.

...As a psychologist one becomes acutely aware of just how deeply unreliable the memory is - by unreliable I mean, how it varies so much between people who are both of the belief that they experienced the same thing.

You talking about group therapy? If so then I think you are either misunderstanding what 'memory' is or are laying your own map over it.

None of these - what we perceive does not fit into any of of these categories. I know I use the term present, or here-and-now a lot, but I am aware that this term only makes sense with reference to past and future. This becomes easier to understand when you become comfortable with the idea that time might be a complete illusion and terms with temporal connatation must be avoided to save confusion.

Okay I'll believe you. You have the experience of a 'timeless time'. Now all you've got to do to convince me is tell me how you did such a thing so I can experience it myself, within my admittedly now short lifetime please?

[Metazoan]

Hi Nikolai,

I feel pretty much forced to conclude that time is an illusion so I agree that far. However, if I were of a different mind I do not think I would find your argument convincing.

If your friend had a daughter, it gets very tricky to exclude time without having a good explanation of where she came from.

So, what is your explanation of why I think I am writing this note in response to something that you think you wrote in the past but argue that it can only be experienced in your now? Hopefully I will experience your answer in a different now than the one that I am so certain that I am experiencing while writing this.

To exclude time I think you must show that it is either 1) inconsistent with perceived reality, or 2) unnecessary to explain perceived reality. If you attempt the former I think you are on a hiding to nothing. The latter simply requires an explanation of how perceived reality can be consistent with a static model.

Don't forget that I'm someone who believes that time is an artefact of perceived reality. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that your argument may need clarifying to appeal to a wider audience.

To my mind the problem is that you are arguing about time in the context of perceived reality which, on the whole, is demonstrably consistent with time existing. In effect demanding proof that time exists and implying that absence of proof is proof of absence.

In case I am just missing the point completely, how many 'now's do you think there are? Just one that you are experiencing now or an almost infinite number or...?

_________________

[Psychonaut]

An interesting notion that was covered in a metaphysics course was that of 'temporal solipsism'. It insisted that neither the past nor the future existed and not even a moving present, as in presentism. Only the very current present moment exists, in which the present moment is conceived, the past and the future and all features supposed therein are nothing more than illusions, perhaps created by something having a good old joke on us. This view does not necessarily raise its sceptical eyebrow at time itself, but at time for 'me'. Suppose we created a detailed computer simulation of the human mind. We might create a snapshot of a 'human' awareness. If it was properly such a representation of human awareness then it would contain within it a narrative of how it had come to be the way it was and how it will act in future, complete with memories of its formative events, and its hopes and aspirations of how it will react to them. In truth the events that formed it are the actions of scientists in a computer laboratory and completely alien to those which it supposes, and its future is to remain preserved like a fly in amber in this 'present' state for so long as it exists.

Such sceptical arguments may become more appealing and worrying as computer science advances. The grand joke being that people actually need an example shoved in their faces, quite often, before they have the scope to comprehend it. Idiots.

(Ofcourse, even IF we are presented with such a woeful creature and forced to question whether we ourselves are the same, we are left with no choice but to 'continue' as if we are not, as the possibility that we are does not inform our decisions; only the certainty that we are could be a guide, and even then it would be no guide, as there would be no future actions to be guided!)

[Arising_uk]

Hi Psych,
For me it would matter not what type of hardware the sim is running on as the thing that is being simmed is that of a finite process with sensors of its 'environment' and a memory, so things will happen that allow an 'experience' and the 'storage' and 'retrieval' of the 'experience', hence 'past', 'present' and 'future'. But personally I think being is past/present/future and it does not matter if its 'running' as a snapshot, although I do have trouble with the idea that anything that is a process can be 'run' 'statically' in any sense but get the idea that its all a sim as its my preferred fun metaphysic(Fredkin, et al). As such we can know when something is 'older' than it was as we are the measure of what 'getting older' is. Or some such.

[Psychonaut]

Unless your sim-makers decide to not attach you to any sensory data and choose just to give you the memory of it along with a snapshot encomassing the 'now'.

Bah, you imagine a sim then imagine that it runs your life precisely as you understand it to be? Scope; small.

[Metazoan]

Hi Psychonaut,

With regard to 'temporal solipsism' I am confused as to why there would be only one unique 'present moment' and not an infinite set of unique 'present moments'.

Surely, any particular moment is more likely to be a specific instantiation of a more general situation. To pick an arbitrary moment and say that it is the only possible solution feels like Goldilocks on acid.

Maybe it could be said of the computer simulation as long as you don't run it. But that is only like saying that there are an infinite set of different 'temporal solipsisms' possible (unless you can show that there is only one possible mind state that your simulation could be in to produce a valid mind). The programmer only has to look over his shoulder to spot this.

Or am I being an idiot? (Presents face for example shoving)


_________________

[Arising_uk]

Personally I think metaphysics is the 'small' thing in Philosophy now-a-days but if I was to think about the simulation idea then I'd think that they are not runing the calculation for 'us' at all.

But I'd be interested what this 'snapshot encompassing now' could be? What is meant by giving a 'memory'? And what are 'sensory data'? With respect to us that is?

[Psychonaut]

Hey Metazoan. The point of temporal solipsism is that it is being sceptical about all moments other than the one we are experiencing directly now.

There are those, though, who point their scepticism at the present. Can there really be a present? Is the smallest unit of time an instant (frozen tableau) or does it only make sense to speak of the moment (a tiny jump from A to B)? If it is the moment then the present can never be isolated..

There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.

Perhaps there really is NO time like the present..

[Metazoan]

Hi Psychonaut,

...'temporal solipsism'. It insisted that neither the past nor the future existed ..... Only the very current present moment exists,...

The point of temporal solipsism is that it is being sceptical about all moments other than the one we are experiencing directly now.

The first statement put me in mind of a hard core 'nowism' which, on reflection, seems to be something like Nikolai's position.

The second statement does not seem to deny other 'now's but isolates them by questioning the validity of making deductions about them.

The latter appears to me to be more credible than the first but I find myself having to place equal scepticism upon my evaluation of the existence of pasts, presents and futures. As I think this now exists in some sense, I feel bound to extend the courtesy.

I am reasonably comfortable in my perceived reality and do not feel the need to try and oust time or impugn spaces' right to exist within it. I could do with a little less matter in my reality though, as the cupboards always seem full when I need to put stuff away.

In the context of perceived realities, time does seem to have a lower limit of resolution, I think it is about 10^-33 seconds. Trying to separate past, future and present becomes impossible at this scale. I do not see any sharp jumps from A to B just a transition from A to B that passes through a situation when you cannot tell if it is A o'clock or B o'clock. 'Now' is very much out of focus and somewhere between a foggy before and a vague after.

Indeed, it is this and other small absurdities apparent in my reality that so irritate my mind that I have to work out what is going on. I reject the usual copouts and so seek a viewpoint that is less irritating to the mind while being both logical and consistent.

My current conclusions would indicate that my perceived reality exists 'logically' but not 'physically' and so, as my current viewpoint is of a static model, time is only perceptible as such from within my 'logical' perceived reality.

Unfortunately, exchanging my irritatingly flawed perceived reality with a model that translates the inexplicable 'flaws' into logical and consistent 'features' brings with it a requirement to let go of free will and causality and accept other very disturbing possibilities that far outweigh my original irritations. Can I have my money back please? The ride was great but the destination is somewhere I would very much like not to be. Someone else once had a tagline about a void, well, I stared into this void and it reached out and touched my soul.

Fortunately, as Jason points out, I could be wrong and, as far as I can see, it is completely untestable.

_________________

p.s. Thanks for putting me onto xkcd.

[Psychonaut]

A changing now which was once a past and is becoming the future, but wherein the past and future do not exist, is 'presentism'.

The temporal solipsism that I was suggesting would posit a static present moment that involves no change.

[duszek]

The past exists a little bit in the memory as a memory.
Which is not nothing if you consider an idea to be something.

Where does the future exist, I am not sure.

[Arising_uk]

...
In the context of perceived realities, time does seem to have a lower limit of resolution, I think it is about 10^-33 seconds. Trying to separate past, future and present becomes impossible at this scale. I do not see any sharp jumps from A to B just a transition from A to B that passes through a situation when you cannot tell if it is A o'clock or B o'clock. 'Now' is very much out of focus and somewhere between a foggy before and a vague after.

You saying its the Planck length? I can go with that but thought that was approx 1.6 X 10^-35? What do you mean by a "transition from A to B"? As if there is a 'smallest bit' of time then how could we tell that there is a 'passing' between these situations? Sorry if I've got the wrong-end.

What confuses me is that how small an event is makes no difference to past/present/future, as long as there are 'events' to us then there is a 'past', 'present', 'future'?

[Nikolai]

Hi Metazoan,

If your friend had a daughter, it gets very tricky to exclude time without having a good explanation of where she came from.

The notion of things like daughter's 'coming from somewhere' - that is having a history - is already presupposing that there is such a things as Time as well as things that endure through it. We are then forced to explain Time only because we have assumed it to exist in the first place. If we reject time we see that there is nothing in experience that necessarily suggests historicity whatsoever.

The irony is, of course, that even when we do assume time we end up with the same problem eventually. Always asking 'where things come from' leads to an infinite regress that halts only with the insertion of a quite arbitrary fiat.

To exclude time I think you must show that it is either 1) inconsistent with perceived reality, or 2) unnecessary to explain perceived reality. If you attempt the former I think you are on a hiding to nothing.

Reality can always be explained along a temporal continuum: At one end is the common sense view, which is under the aspect of time. This perspective holds that things exist and endure throughout time. When we see our laptop, we respond with familiarity and experience memories of it as it once was. These memories are artifacts of a previous reality.

The other end is what I am discussing in this thread and is perceiving things under the aspect of eternity. This is where perception of the present moment is taken as a unique event. Through this perspective, the uniqueness of the present becomes the most salient experience - contrary to the first perspective, which is all about familiairity. When uniqueness predominates, the feeling is all about uniqueness, and thus memories of the laptop do not really arise. As these memories are absent there is no accompanying awareness of the history of the laptop. Every moment is experienced as being so fresh as to be completely brand new - something that has arisen before your eyes spontaneously in the moment. Now whether this laptop perception is superceded by another perception is something missed by the experiencer. They are not perceiving any enduring object and so are not linking their perceptions up to make history.

Now both of these perspectives remain logical. Any given experience can be viewed as having aspects of familiarity and aspects of novelty - this is hard to disagree with. But the crucial point is that the sense of familiarity does not mean that the experience is identical to a past state. Things can be familiar and yet be subtly different from last time round.

So we have one set of people who are focussing on what is familar and another who focus on what is novel - and both of these are entirely legitimate and logical. Yet to one person Time is everywhere, and to the other Time is nowhere.

Needless to say, those who view reality as mostly novel and unique are those who spend a great deal of time attending to reality. They are people who spend vast amounts of time in silent observation of the present moment, and relatively little time thinking and conceptualising in order to make it familar and explicable. Eternity is the perspective of the monk and sage - people who have devoted their life to contentless contemplation and who have rejected thought and analysis.

Who is the more right in their perspective - the everday person or the monk - is a question that cannot be answered. It is however salutary to remind the everyday person that Time is just a function of their personal perspective, and that it cannot be assumed to have any necessary reality.

Having Time relegated thus is anathema to those interested in developing knowledge and science. And yet this is the way it is. The age and historicity of things are just subjective judgements - like beauty, goodness, taste, humour. An object has a history only insofar as we focus on the familiar, and ignore the novel.

Best, Nikolai

[Metazoan]

Hi Arising,

time does seem to have a lower limit of resolution, I think it is about 10^-33 seconds.

You saying its the Planck length? I can go with that but thought that was approx 1.6 X 10^-35?

Not the Planck length but a Planck second, but it is derived from the former. As I write offline I had to rely on my memory which is very bad. I have the memory of a goldfish; I would use it to upgrade my own but I can't remember where I put it.

The Planck second is the smallest useful lump of time and comes in at 5.4x10^-44 seconds. I knew it had the same digits in the exponent so I guessed. What is 540,000,000,000 between friends? the important thing is not the actual value but that the value exists.

What do you mean by a "transition from A to B"?

It was an attempt to interpret Psychonaut's: 'Is the smallest unit of time an instant (frozen tableau) or does it only make sense to speak of the moment (a tiny jump from A to B)? If it is the moment then the present can never be isolated..'

I was trying to make the point that it isn't either an instant or a tiny jump. There is no instant A o'clock, which is then followed by B o'clock somehow passing over half past A without it being half past A. As A comes within 5.4x10^-44 seconds of B they become essentially indistinguishable. Put another way A cannot be pinned down with any better accuracy than the gap between A and B.

This seems logical to me, if time was something that was infinitely divisible it would never get around to passing.

Of course, I am talking about time as I see it in my perceived reality. Time in the most general case may be a meaningless concept.

As if there is a 'smallest bit' of time then how could we tell that there is a 'passing' between these situations?

Hopefully I have been a little clearer now. There is no way to be sure of time passing until 5.4x10^-44 seconds have passed. After this time period it will be possible to measure changes in physical systems which will allow inferences to be drawn about time flowing.

Sorry if I've got the wrong-end.

If my writing is unclear then it is I who am at fault.

What confuses me is that how small an event is makes no difference to past/present/future, as long as there are 'events' to us then there is a 'past', 'present', 'future'?

In the context of my view from my perceived reality, experiments show I cannot distinguish events much shorter than 20mS (0.02 Seconds) Further to this the experiments show I appear to also have a built in latency corrector and event correlator working out to just less than 200mS which I presume evolved to compensate for processing lag between the various sense organs and actuators. I mention this because the above would seem to mean I have devices that smooth out my perception of time. I am not surprised that I struggle to see past, present and future for what they are.

What I am saying in the above is that events to us are about 20mS long. Things pass from the future into the present and then into the past over about 20mS or so, that is 370,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times longer than it takes things to happen. It is unlikely that our perception of time will be a good guide to understanding the nature of time.

Because I think I think, it leads me to think that it is not inconsistent to think that I think that I perceive time. However, for the same reason, I think time is no more real than anything else.

Another issue is that discussing time as if it exists reinforces the prejudice (that it does).

_________________

[Metazoan]

Hi Arising,

Ooops, I seemed to have lost a whole chunk out of my reply to you. Must have mixed up my zxcv.

What confuses me is that how small an event is makes no difference to past/present/future, as long as there are 'events' to us then there is a 'past', 'present', 'future'?

I see that there is great scope for confusion. I get very frustrated by the English language's attempts to be green and recycle words, using the same ones to mean contradictory things and its ability to allow sentences to be constructed that can mean many things. Even if you can get a sentence to be unambiguous you only have to change the context in which it is used to get tripped up.

In my perceived reality, time is smooth, flows at one second per second and there are undeniably events. From a classical viewpoint the only thing to worry about is that if time is smooth it gets a little difficult to see how it can actually pass. Also there is a little difficulty about how it got started or will end. In that context, time exists and the stated difficulties are either too big or too small to worry about as time obviously exists to me.

It is only when time is taken in the context of the two extremes does it seem to become questionable, but that is no different for space or matter.

The thing I find unconvincing about the current argument about time is the transfer of arguments valid in one context and using their conclusions in another context. To my mind it is akin to trying to explain the double slit experiment in the context of billiard balls or proposing measuring the size of the universe with a tape measure. The scales are too different and this universe is anything but Euclidian.

And so on to what I did post....

In the context of my view from my perceived reality, experiments show I cannot distinguish events much shorter than 20mS (0.02 Seconds) Further to this the experiments show I appear to also have a built in latency corrector and event correlator working out to just less than 200mS which I presume evolved to compensate for processing lag between the various sense organs and actuators. I mention this because the above would seem to mean I have devices that smooth out my perception of time. I am not surprised that I struggle to see past, present and future for what they are.

What I am saying in the above is that events to us are about 20mS long. Things pass from the future into the present and then into the past over about 20mS or so, that is 370,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times longer than it takes things to happen. It is unlikely that our perception of time will be a good guide to understanding the nature of time.

......