Some Thoughts on Time by Matthew P. Kolasinski

Matt,

That's an interesting, well written and concise history of the evolution of the concept of time. As you seem to be, I've come at this discussion from the perspective of seeking the foundations on which our complex reality is based and it can be much more interesting and informative than just following the daily news, which can be very heavy, while not being very filling.

Out of this, one of my other primary interests is also "alternative economics." Here are some essays I've written on the topic;

http://www.exterminatingangel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=203&Itemid=118

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/reverse-shock-doctrine/

This repeats some ideas of the previous, with some additional insight;

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/20/18219/4119?new=true

Here is the only author I've found thinking along the same terms of currency as a public utility, though she doesn't get into bottom up community banking, but just national banks:

http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/monetary-proposal/

It seems most alternative currency models are local currencies. This worked well when the economy was localized, but we have a long way to fall to get back to that stage. That's why the distinction between the monetary system and the banking system needs to be clarified, as we need a top down national currency, with a bottom up banking system.

Regards, John

Hi Matt,

your essay represents elegantly the aspects of time which theoretical physicists have unfortunately forgotten as the reality has been gradually replaced with models of reality. Time is much more than fourth space-time coordinate, the geometric time. What we perceive is subjective time. It correlates strongly with the geometric time, at least in our western wake-up consciousness, but is definitely not identical with it. Otherwise we would not have the arrow of time. Unfortunately this difference has been systematically neglected by most of theoretical physicists.

One important aspect you make clear is the evolution of the experience about time. The time scale of planned action and memory has been increasing during biological and cultural evolution. Also meditation practices do the same at the level of individual. What this really means is a fascinating problem for a physicists willing to do consciousness theory.

Hi John,

thank you for your comments. i'm glad you liked it. reading yours, i thought you might.

i'm sure it would be fun to get into a chat about econ. with you, but i think i want to try to stick to the topic at hand here.

i will look at the links you've provided. it might be a little while before i can get around to them though. i will try to get back to you on that.

thanks again,

matt

Hello Mr. Pitkänen,

wow. thank you very much for your comments.

yes, the time scale of future directed thought in both distance and scope does appear to be increasing.

it will be interesting to see if we hit any biological limits there. it seems to be increasingly a distributed process, with some curious side effects. evolving organically, there's no central planning, no one person knows what's going on. but things seem to work out. very curious. :-)

there's a handful of serious scientists looking into some aspects of consciousness that i'm aware of from my own personal interests. Russell Targ's one. you might find the paper at www.espresearch.com/espgeneral/doc-SpeedOfThought.pdf interesting. maybe just a curiosity; it's more toward classical than your involvements seem to be.still, looking at other's well done creative endeavors can often spark inspiration in one's own. provides contrast... ;-)

but the physical dynamics of the actual interface between consciousness and experienced reality, to the best of my knowledge, remains entirely uncharted territory.

thank you again,

matt.

If the increasing time scale is identified as time scale of memory and planned action the limits in my private TGD Universe would not be limited so severely by biology as we are used to believe also the size of organism of course loosely correlates with this time scale.

The physical dynamics between consciousness and experienced reality is indeed uncharted territory and one can make only guesses. The fact that 96 per cent of matter is unknown dark matter allows a lot of room for theorizing.

Magnetic body carrying dark matter is the ontological novelty, which acts as intentional agent in TGD based model of life using biological body as a motor instrument and sensory receptor. Maxwell's electrodynamics has no room for magnetic bodies. EEG would represent electromagnetic communications to the magnetic body and control signals from it to biological body. From wave length of EEG one can deduce the size of the layer of magnetic body using EEG for its purposes: 7.8 Hz corresponds to Earth's circumference so that our magnetic bodies would have astrophysical size. Only the fact that sensory input is from nearby environment and from our biological body would create the illusion that we are nothing but our biological bodies. Libet's findings that sensory data is frzction of second ole finds explanation in this framework: it takes sometime for sensory data to be communicated to magnetic body.

The evolution of magnetic bodies would distinguish between us and our cousins having almost identical genome and biology. Cultural evolution would be evolution of magnetic bodies.

Best Regards,

Matti

Matt,

Yea, economics is definitely off topic, though I find the same convective cycle of expanding energy and collapsing structure motivating economic and political processes, as it describes the various physical disciplines.

As for this dichotomy describing consciousness, that elemental essence of being, manifested in our physical brain, travels with the energy, from past to future, while the mind is the structure of events receding/collapsing into the past, as the energy manifesting it breaks down and radiates away. I went into this on Carlo Rovelli's thread that "The right brained parallel processor amounts to a thermostat, in its measuring and reacting to the energies of the moment, while the left brained serial processor amounts to a clock, in that it analyses the sequential cause and effect of events."

I've been reading the other entries here and finding that the sampling affords an opportunity to elucidate what I had intended with, "...may reflect more of the subjective human context from which it arose than an objective reality."

With hardly a glance, it can be seen from the diversity of even this small sampling of work here the extent to which personal experiences, what people have been exposed to, what they have selected from those experiences as matters of personal taste, cultural background influences and personal motivations have all conspired to shape "objective perceptions".

This offers an example of what had been intended here with the observation that concepts are significantly shaped by the context from which they arise.

"Objectivity" appears to be largely illusory.

The greatest challenge facing science today may not be the acquisition of meaningful data, data interpretation, or a coherent modeling of a description of the observed data, so much as that the exploration is being conducted by human beings within very human contextual settings.

A significantly deeper understanding of the nature of what it is that is conducting the exploration and its relationship to that exploration would appear to be called for.

Matt Kolasinski

10 25 08

Matt,

Life is the journey.

Hello John,

re:

Life is the journey.

lol, yes. :-)

"what a long strange trip..." as the song goes.

suspecting this to be a seriously conservative estimate of the situation.

matt

Matt,

Religion is determined to prove life has meaning and science is determined to prove nature isn't an illusion.

Perhaps they are both wrong.

Life doesn't have meaning because meaning is static and reductionistic, while reality is dynamic and wholistic.

Nature is an illusion because motion is the basis of form, not the other way around.

A life is like a sentence in the larger story. It takes what came before, adds a little and passes it on. Destination is just punctuation.

Regards, John

Matt,

(from Chris Kennedy's thread;)

"if:

-'time/space'

and:

-'time' emerges from velocity,

then:

-'space'_______________________

i'll leave you to fill in the blank.

coming to suspect that matter arises from the same source."

There is the vacuum and there are fluctuations. Dimensions and volume describe the vacuum. Time and temperature describe the fluctuations.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16095-its-confirmed-matter-is-merely-vacuum-fluctuations.html

To quote the last line;

"So if the LHC confirms that the Higgs exists, it will mean all reality is virtual."

Hello again John,

i just left a post at your site on this, hadn't noticed the post here at the time.

thanks again.

matt.

Matt,

The ones having a problem with it seem to confuse "confirmed," with "proven."

(Separate tests showing the same result confirm it, they don't prove it, since a third test might have a different result.)

I most liked the response from the guy who said he just found out his savings were illusionary, now he finds out everything else is too.

It would be very interesting if the mainstream press latches on to the story; 'Scientists theorize reality is an illusion. Economists confirm it.'

MR MATT KOLASINSKI:

PLEASE REVIEW MY ANSWER TO YOUR INTERESTING COMMENTS IN

THE ESSAY TIME PARADOXES.THANKS.JOSE CURIEL

Matt,

I just left you another response on my thread. Sorry for the delay.

CJ

Dear Matthew,

Your essay presents a broad vision on time, from a historical and cultural perspective, to various concepts of time in practice, in psychology or in physics. Interesting the connection between the French Revolution and the Thermodynamics. I liked the explanation of some aspects of time you provide via patterns.

Best regards,

Cristi Stoica

hello Christi,

thanks for your comments.

re: Thermodynamics and the French Revolution,

there's an interesting study of this, the approach to which it would be desirable to extend to much of science, to pay attention to the cultural context which gives rise to, nurtures and not infrequently colors concepts.

see:

The Two Principle Laws of Thermodynamics

A Cultural and Historical Exploration

by J. H. van den Berg

Trans. by Bernd Jager, David Jager &Dryer Krugen.

Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, PA

thanks again,

matt.