Philosophy Now Forum

To Voice of Time: What is your reaction to the following?

I think your theory may be related to ideas in statistical theory in which the aim is to find a point or locus of points with a least average distance (or least average squared distance) from a given set of points. This is similar to your idea of "least-disparity", I think. In the case of three points on a line, corresponding to the durations of your three processes, if the choice is restricted to one of the three points, that would be the middle point. In a way, the middle point serves to "represent" the other two.

So a possible solution to my example of three processes, one with drips, another with notes, and the third with puffs, is to take the duration of the process of the woman playing notes as the "least-disparity" process, since it's duration fell between the durations of the other two processes, and agree that its duration reflects or represents the durations of the other two processes.

Another technique you might check out as possibly related to your thought-experiments on time is "Cluster Analysis", or "Clustering". It examines data points (e.g. collections of durations of time) and tries to group them into clusters in which the members in a given cluster are "more like" each other than they are like members of other clusters. Two of its applications are pattern recognition and image analysis, and if time durations were the inputs, this might suggest to you that the technique might yield "intuitive" solutions to problems of time duration that don't rely on an outside reference, such as a clock.

Thanks for the topic, V of T, and I hope you haven't felt too harassed by my questions and attempts to understand your thought-experiment. I hope you see that I'm trying to understand it and trying to suggest interpretations in clear language, to the best of my own background and perspective. I think you've made a good effort to get at some fundamental ideas about (local) time that get away from the traditional reliance upon clocks.

Mike Strand wrote:To Voice of Time: What is your reaction to the following?

I think your theory may be related to ideas in statistical theory in which the aim is to find a point or locus of points with a least average distance (or least average squared distance) from a given set of points. This is similar to your idea of "least-disparity", I think. In the case of three points on a line, corresponding to the durations of your three processes, if the choice is restricted to one of the three points, that would be the middle point. In a way, the middle point serves to "represent" the other two.

So a possible solution to my example of three processes, one with drips, another with notes, and the third with puffs, is to take the duration of the process of the woman playing notes as the "least-disparity" process, since it's duration fell between the durations of the other two processes, and agree that its duration reflects or represents the durations of the other two processes.

Another technique you might check out as possibly related to your thought-experiments on time is "Cluster Analysis", or "Clustering". It examines data points (e.g. collections of durations of time) and tries to group them into clusters in which the members in a given cluster are "more like" each other than they are like members of other clusters. Two of its applications are pattern recognition and image analysis, and if time durations were the inputs, this might suggest to you that the technique might yield "intuitive" solutions to problems of time duration that don't rely on an outside reference, such as a clock.

Thanks for the topic, V of T, and I hope you haven't felt too harassed by my questions and attempts to understand your thought-experiment. I hope you see that I'm trying to understand it and trying to suggest interpretations in clear language, to the best of my own background and perspective. I think you've made a good effort to get at some fundamental ideas about (local) time that get away from the traditional reliance upon clocks.

Mike

Well said though pointless ,sorry 3 pointsless.
It was a save in that cluster analysis is a tool i use in generalism. My balliwick/ method of thought.

Time is. it has no stop points to take measure
It is a process that cannot be 'paused'. within it all happens. gravity is em is.
It is however a variable
It processes at different rates. dependent on deltaV. But gravity and EM do not change.
rules within rules.. and atheists say it's all random... my ass

With enough money [say a years GNP of planet earth] i can send you forward in time 10 [subjective]years. but when you come home it is 2112 on earth.
you have lived 10 . the world you left lived 100.

time

prill

-----------------------------------

time for a G and T.

With that amount of money, I would keep it and enjoy living in the traditional arrow of time.

Voice of Time: Hope you get the "time" to comment on my previous post.

in a few days perhaps. Right now I'm tired of time. Difficult projects like this makes it hard to progress in my philosophy-book, which has preference over side-projects.

The Voice of Time wrote:in a few days perhaps. Right now I'm tired of time. Difficult projects like this makes it hard to progress in my philosophy-book, which has preference over side-projects.

Ah yes One's "Critique of pure reason"
If time is a difficult project. Well.

Good luck with the book.

Mike Strand wrote:To Voice of Time: What is your reaction to the following?

I think your theory may be related to ideas in statistical theory in which the aim is to find a point or locus of points with a least average distance (or least average squared distance) from a given set of points. This is similar to your idea of "least-disparity", I think. In the case of three points on a line, corresponding to the durations of your three processes, if the choice is restricted to one of the three points, that would be the middle point. In a way, the middle point serves to "represent" the other two.

So a possible solution to my example of three processes, one with drips, another with notes, and the third with puffs, is to take the duration of the process of the woman playing notes as the "least-disparity" process, since it's duration fell between the durations of the other two processes, and agree that its duration reflects or represents the durations of the other two processes.

Another technique you might check out as possibly related to your thought-experiments on time is "Cluster Analysis", or "Clustering". It examines data points (e.g. collections of durations of time) and tries to group them into clusters in which the members in a given cluster are "more like" each other than they are like members of other clusters. Two of its applications are pattern recognition and image analysis, and if time durations were the inputs, this might suggest to you that the technique might yield "intuitive" solutions to problems of time duration that don't rely on an outside reference, such as a clock.

Thanks for the topic, V of T, and I hope you haven't felt too harassed by my questions and attempts to understand your thought-experiment. I hope you see that I'm trying to understand it and trying to suggest interpretations in clear language, to the best of my own background and perspective. I think you've made a good effort to get at some fundamental ideas about (local) time that get away from the traditional reliance upon clocks.

I'll address each paragraph by number and then I'll add a rather more meaty, less technical and more different explanation than before:

1) In an associative-thought-way I think it sounds nice, but I don't think a line-segment could represent it my theory, at least I can't understand how it could without putting restraints on the interpretation that would complicate it.

2) Only if she indeed finishes in-between. This is something you'd have to see for yourself however, and isn't found in the formality.

3) Like 1) this one also sounds well associatively. I do have problems understanding it though somehow (I reckon I know what you mean but I haven't heard the use of the term "cluster theory" as far as I can remember). A weakness remains in that I wouldn't know how to convert algebra into cluster theory and couldn't therefore possibly answer your question thoroughly.

4) Harassment isn't a word I would use here. I get tired because you give me a lot to go through in my head with, logic especially, but it's not too bad, continue if you want

In the end I'd like to tell you that an easier explanation which I now came up with is that given you were to head out into space. You live there for 50 years. Back on earth the time has past 60 years. You use the same clock, yes, this time I allow you to think with clocks. Because the clocks were supposed to be the same, there clearly is a distortion as to which unique clock-process you choose to wield, if you went even further out into the galaxy and found a black hole and managed to stay there for a while, your time had only past 30 years. Clearly there is here a least-disparity in that if you choose to stay only the little distance off the earth, you'd only get a time-distortion of 20 and 10 years, while if you went to the black hole or on earth you'd have a disparity of 30 and 20 for the black whole and 30 and 10 for earth. The problem about this example, a minor problem but big for me personally, is that this happens also right in front of you! Not only galactic distances, but straight in front of you! And in theory, but practically not very feasible, you can calculate the relationships of the different objects of your world to find which one is distorted the least, has the least disparity in relation to its fellow objects (processes).

Let me give you a phenomenological-epistemological example: first, would you agree that time, is not a variable, that the variable of math called time is only a kind of representation, and that real time, is actually the "flow of change", the sum of all changes happening in the world. This means that when I look out into the world and I see these objects, these objects caught in the flow of change, these processes (whether they appear timeless or not, as in I can't spot the change, is irrelevant. Imagination knows that my piece of bread contains huge sums of organisms, although I can't see them they are there and they are causing differentiation of moments, or change as that term means).

When we watch the clock, we are seeing the digits (for instance in a digital clock) differentiate, change. Then we look at the world and watch it. The clock is order, the world is chaos. Order because the clock is like a circle we can walk in our minds and never get anywhere but the place we started or stopped. Chaos because all the processes breaks down, wither away, slowly but surely, we know it, even if we don't always see it, and we would move our minds out of the way of these processes' endings, and we would stop watching them, retreating back to our clock, our eternal circle of truth. Watching the clock we'd see a world which followed patterns of adherence to the logical circle, or patterns atop of the pattern of movement in the clock. We can't use the chaotic processes because either they don't differentiate or they differentiate so soon we'd have to jump to another process to keep track of the world-in-relation. But, if we were to try and use some of these differentiating processes, focus on them, you'd see that you'd experience a rate of change different than a clock. Because this experience is faster, everything in relation to it would occur slower, not only by comparison, but actually they would happen slower in that they would happen less because your mind is busy with keeping track of the rapid differentiation. Now, watch another process, a timelessly-appearing process, like a building, standing still and never changing. Here you would see how fast everything else is happening, because the building can't satisfy your capacity to track differentiation you'd use more to capture other differentiation. Now using all these three different types: a timelessly-seeming building, a clock, and a rapidly differentiating process like hail for instance, you'd find that depending on which of them you choose to focus on, you'd loose some by not tracking the other. If you track the clock, here in-between, you'll loose a lot of surrounding focus, but not so much as when you track hail. When you track the building however, you'd gain a lot of surrounding focus. Now, think about this: if you have such a need to focus, doesn't the universe also need to focus? Does the universe add all things simultaneously or does it focus on changing, differentiating, things in specific parts of its content at a time? Obviously when you look around you you'll see that one thing is changed before another, and hence the universe as you and your fellows see it is focusing.

The clock is meant to represent the universe. However, what if the clock is humbug and that really the universe has a much better measure device process which, when watched by us individuals, is not distorted so much in the eyes of the universe. That is: the universe is treated here as a person, but fairly so, and what I'm here essentially am saying is that if you have one focus, and another person which represent not only you but all things around you; have a different focus, shouldn't you be focusing the processes focused by the other person which is most close to the average object of focus for that person? The thing which has the least-disparity of receiving focus compared to its fellow objects.

Now, have I made things clearer or further complicated things?

Thanks, Voice of Time!

I have a few off-the-cuff comments here, but I'll have to study your ideas in more carefully in order to give you a better response.

First, using the idea of change, or the "flow of change" to represent time is a good one, and other writers have mentioned this idea, and it has a place to play, I think, in coming up with a more intuitive sense of time.

Second, consider clocks based on atomic vibrations. These vibrations occur rapidly (faster than hail), and we can aggregate or group them to form nanoseconds, seconds, minutes hours, days, years centuries -- whatever unit of measure we wish -- for comparison with the changes we are observing. Some changes, like the beats of a hummingbird's wings, may require nanosecond groupings. But I'm not sure if this is fully in line with your ideas.

Third, your allowing clocks as another representation of flow of change is reasonable. The changes in the clock are reflected in the movement of the hands or the changing digits that are displayed. A clock is just like another process that goes through change, and hence itself reflects time in an intuitive sense, as well as in its strict "bookkeeping" sense.

soooo, ever read the thing thoroughly? problems getting through it?

The Voice of Time wrote:if c (longest) = M, and b (middle) and a (shortest), then b = longest and a = shortest, in other words, it has changed which one is the longest!

?
if c (longest) = M, then b and a are shorter than c, and it has not changed which one is the longest?

In a race, a(the quickest runner) can never overtake c(the slowest), since the pursuer must first reach b(the point whence the pursued started), so that the slower must always hold a lead.

fluctuation of thinking, languages, ideologies.
newest maps are old and now is never.

Mark Question: this got nothing to do with Zeno's Time Paradox.

The change occurring in the mentioned is the result of who's the longest in comparison to its fellow members when you change the structure of the set of members but retain the set itself.

Hi again, Voice of Time. You wrote

soooo, ever read the thing thoroughly? problems getting through it?

I did just read it again, and I confess it's not all clear to me. It did remind me, however, of special photographic techniques.

In time-lapse photography, photos of an object are taken only every hour, or day, for example. When projected one after the other, say 10 each second, it makes a flower look like it's blooming rapidly. Taking this idea further, say, photographing your building once every 10 years, you might see it deteriorate and crumble. Or you might suddenly see a new building in its place, if the camera missed it's demolishment and the building of a new structure.

A good movie camera can take many, many photos per second. If these are projected a few per second, you get slow-motion photography of, for example, a play in football, making it easier to see what happen in a contested play (was the player's foot out of bounds when he caught the ball, or not?).

I think the clock or camera or other time-related device (even the part of the brain) you use depends on the phenomenon being studied. To show the formation of the Grand Canyon, or the growth of a tree, calls for a different "frequency of looks" than to show the pattern traced in the air by a hummingbird's wings.

If this is at all related to your idea, maybe you could use this photography analogy to explain your idea further. Otherwise, I'm sorry for my lack of understanding.

you still missed it.

I'll try to shorten it as compact as remotely possible:

You want to find out which process the universe is focusing on giving the most average amount of change to (flow of change), so that you'll have the best "middle" between all the different time distortion fields.

Thanks again, V of T! I appreciate your patience.

The "process the universe is focusing on" -- does this refer to the basic "engine" that is powering or causing the unfolding of the universe?

There are the processes that define the birth, life, and death of stars and galaxies, which cover billions of years. There are atomic and subatomic processes that cycle billions of times a second. There are geological processes on planets, as well as the formation of planets and their histories. There is the evolution, history, and extinction of particular species of life, a process that may not be central to the universe if we assume "life" is rare in the universe.

Should I take an average of some sort over various of these processes? Which ones, and how should they be weighted in taking the average. Then of what use is this average? Maybe use the average as the new unit of time to measure the duration of all processes?

Assuming this is your idea, I have reservations about it. Would the new time unit be useful for comparisons of duration? For example, the average time running the mile may be about 4 minutes, but this would not necessarily be useful as the unit of time to measure duration of a given run. The time unit used in Olympic races is (I think) a hundredth of a second. It was chosen, however, as a reasonable unit to distinguish differences. The implication is that, if two runners finish at the same time to the nearest hundredth of a second, their actual times are the same for all practical purposes.

Do these questions help you see a way to further clarifications?

I'll try again. Think of the Universe, with capital U, as opposed to the universe, which is just the sum of things. The Universe is a huge monster with a an enormous gun, and which is outside of time and space. However, in some mystic way, he fires his gun on random locations of the universe, and when he hits, a change happens. When he goes "ratatatataa" with his gun, that's creating a flow of change.

What you want to find out, is at what location he fires an average of shots, because then, when you compare that location, or process, since the location would form the shape of both an object and a process, at that location, you would have the least amount of distortion, because compared to every other location fired on, this one receives on average the least "loss of correct measure due to the distortion of time". A time field is here just an area with some tendencation of some boundary, let's say between 2-6 fantazillion shots from the gun, value, which gives that time field a unique signature of general time distortion. Giving it an inherent value, which tells us if going into that time field will give a big plus of time-acceleration compared to other time fields, or a big minus of time-acceleration.

Figuring out the average, the one average location, of the entire universe, does not yield much, because the usefulness of finding an average is not in the location, but in its comparison to other locations (think objects or processes if that helps), because when you find a good average, you don't have to worry so much about distortions elsewhere, because your time field is not so different from other time fields. Now excuse me if the word "field" confuses you because I don't really know how to use it myself, but think of it as meaning a boundary of "space".

On this account probably more useful than the average of the universe is the average on a planet, in a city, in a solar system, in a big desert, in a galaxy, or in your house. Simply because the time field of some location vast distances from your location doesn't matter that much to you.

V of T, you wrote:

Figuring out the average, the one average location, of the entire universe, does not yield much, because the usefulness of finding an average is not in the location, but in its comparison to other locations (think objects or processes if that helps), because when you find a good average, you don't have to worry so much about distortions elsewhere, because your time field is not so different from other time fields. Now excuse me if the word "field" confuses you because I don't really know how to use it myself, but think of it as meaning a boundary of "space".

On this account probably more useful than the average of the universe is the average on a planet, in a city, in a solar system, in a big desert, in a galaxy, or in your house. Simply because the time field of some location vast distances from your location doesn't matter that much to you.

Then let's go with the average of your city Oslo. Maybe you could show us how to calculate this average (the data required, and a formula), and how to use the result, or what it means.