From: Ken Clements (Ken@Innovation-On-Demand.com)
Date: Sat Dec 18 1999 - 19:13:28 MST
attached mail follows:
Madame Ubiquitous wrote:
>
> All right, let me shift a bit here and say that because the passage of time
> is an illusion, studies of physics, chemistry, etc. are meaningless, for the
> same reasons I expressed before, that motion and reaction require the
> passage of time. Now, you may argue that such things are based on _time_,
> not on the illusionary passage of time. I would answer, however, that this
> is inconsequential, in that the only access we have to time is our
> perception of it, and therefore, the only basis we have upon which to build
> concepts of motion and reaction is this perception. (This, by the way, is
> Kantian in flavor, in the sense of the real world and our perceptions of it
> being wholly separate identities) If our perception of time is a subjective
> illusion, then our sciences are based on such subjective illusions, and
> should therefore have their reality as such become rather suspect.
>
The history of science is replete with the dissolution of illusion (debunking).
Sometimes the illusions are very strong, and those who step up to do the debunking
are severely ostracized. As I look out my window I experience the sun rise in the
east and set in the west over a flat stationary town. Thanks to science, I know
that I am actually on the surface of a large spherical object that is rotating
while orbiting that sun. The flat-earth-center-of-the-universe illusion probably
had some coevolutional selection value while the gene/meme coevolution process was
developing the brains of our ancestors, whereas, it is hard to see how the idea of
the actual celestial configuration would have done so at the time.
Kant notwithstanding, we know about physical time by taking measurements. You
cannot directly experience relativistic time dilation, but scientists can (and did)
fly atomic clocks around and measure it. Perhaps you are going to argue that such
measurements prove that time passes, because, after all, you can start a stopwatch,
wait a while, and then stop it and look at the measurement. I agree that time as a
dimension gives us the ability to subtract the coordinates of any two point and get
the delta, thus time does have intervals, but that does not mean that something
passed along the interval.
Let me go back to my movie reel analogy. Suppose someone filmed the stopwatch
experiment above, and we have had the film developed and printed, and we are now
viewing it on a machine that lets us run it forward and backward. Each frame of
the film is a "now" when seen from inside the frame. Seen from our outside point
of view, each frame is just as good and any other, and there is no "now." The
delta t measured corresponds to the difference in frame numbers, and such
difference is not dependent on the speed the film is going through the viewing
machine, thus the difference in time is still there while the film is sitting in
the can.
The usual questions I get at this point are "Isn't that determinism?" and "If the
future has already happened, how come I can't remember it?" I am working on the
detailed responses for these, and I hope to publish them soon. The short answers
are "It depends on your definition of determinism." and "The mechanics of your
memory system are such that at any point (frame) you have access to the molecules
that have been formed by previous data, but not the ones that are in the successive
frames.
>
> You're mixing your qualifiers...or at least the ones which Dan seems so fond
> of: "now" would express something functional, while Experience would be of
> the spooky, ghost-in-the-machine variety.
Sorry for the confusion. I did mean Experience in the spooky usage. The "now" was
in reference to the subject we were discussing.
> But I digress :) Actually, you
> did something rather interesting in the first part of your email when you
> invoked the example of someone who has no memory, and therefore can have no
> perception of the passage of time. This may have been an unintended slip on
> your part, but you said such people were "stuck in a nonmoving 'now'." I
> find this interesting because it serves to reflect how central and
> unescapable "now" really is, in that even without a concept of time, that
> person would *still* have "now". "Now" has the property of always referring
> to the correct thing when I utter it. ("I" and "here" also has that
> property.) That is, to use the ubiquitous example, (Dan used a form of this
> earlier) let's suppose I were knocked unconscious and tied up and
> blindfolded in an cement box buried in the desert somewhere. Let us further
> suppose that when I woke, in addition to having no idea where I was or what
> time it was, I was also given severe amnesia by the blow to the head, and so
> therefore had no idea who I was and was not able to hold any memories, and
> so had no real perception of the passage of time. Despite all of this, I
> could still say "I am here now" in a meaningful and true fashion.
The "passage of time" and idea of "now" are each illusions that are closely
related. The illusion of the passage of time allows you to get over a basic
conflict with the illusion of "now". If you proclaim "I exist now." you may be
very sure you are correct. But then if later I ask you if that person (you) in the
past making that statement is correct, you may say "No, that was then, and this is
now." So, I wait a bit and ask you again, and you come back with "No, that then
was then, and *this* is now." I do not see why someone proclaiming his or her
existence is any less correct just because the point of observation is from a
subsequent frame in the movie.
>
> Now, I imagine you're going to say I didn't answer your question.
> You're quite right :) What distinguishes "now"? Why do I think that "now"
> exists? Excellent questions, so please forgive me for answering with an "I
> don't know." I'm tempted to start with something about subjective
> experience, but think that will lead us into problems :) So I'll continue
> to ponder and let you know if I come up with something. Meanwhile, I'd be
> interested to hear your comments on what I said above :) Suffice to say, my
> interest here isn't really centered on the nature of "now" but rather the
> nature of time and our access to it. Of which "now" is a part, sure, but
> not, I think, the only component.
>
Please take your time; I am quite interested in what you have to say about this, or
at least, I suspect that the person in the future who may be a continuance of me,
is now enjoying reading your reply.
-Ken
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