Let’s Talk Time, Space & AI｜XPANSE 2024

Re AIs:

Like a lot of people who should know better, Anthony Aguirre seemingly can’t quite really understand how human beings have constructed computers, and how human beings have programmed AIs, and how human beings are actually in control of AIs, so his unsophisticated views on AIs don’t bear repeating.

However, Heather Gallagher seems to have a more realistic, sophisticated view of AIs: (12:18) “having talked to computers my whole life and knowing literally what's going on in the insides of it …”.

But nice to know that Anthony Aguirre is (16:24) “…staunchly pro-human, like many of my favourite people are human, so I'm in favour of humanity sort of staying in charge and sticking around”.

I imagine that Heather Gallagher’s expression indicated that she was bemused by all this nonsensical AI talk. And, in fact, she immediately looked away when Anthony Aguirre started going on about (19:37) “…the open letter that we released like a year ago calling for a pause on giant AI experiments …“.

They ask: “What is Time?” But how one views time depends on how one views the world. And this is Anthony Aguirre’s view of time and the world:

• (2:36) “I've come to believe that this [what is time?] is not a question that has an answer; that nature does not owe us an answer".
• (3:40) “… once we let go of the feeling that there is a way that reality is, it's enormously freeing and I think that's true of time”.

However, despite what he says, Anthony Aguirre DOES have a view of the nature of the world, which led to his conclusions about the nature of time, and his view of the world seems to be essentially similar to “View 1” below.

Here are 2 contrasting views of the nature of the world (where the mathematical structure of the world is thought of in terms of categories, relationships between the categories, and numbers that apply to the categories):

View 1:
The world is a mathematical system where the mathematics became matter, and this is a world where the mathematics rules matter. Of course, there are problems with this view of the world:

• What created the very particular and distinctive mathematical structure?
• Why is the structure moving?
• Given physics’ equations with their delta symbols, which seek to symbolically represent number movement in the mathematical structure, how does the world know/ discern that the numbers have in fact changed?
• In any case, the delta symbols in the mathematical equations imply that: a) a separate time category/ dimension would be unnecessary and superfluous; and b) the delta symbols also imply that time has no inherent direction.

View 2:
The world is a standalone self-sufficient thing, that created and knows its own mathematical structure, and where small parts/ particles of the world initiate movement in the structure by jumping their own numbers, and whereby other numbers then change due to the relationships between the categories.

View 2 paints a picture of an inherently creative and conscious world, where the creativity and knowledge/ consciousness belong to the small parts/ particles of the world. In this view of the world:

• Time is a separate metric category, representing a single true fact, i.e. the knowledge that numbers have changed, where this knowledge is possessed by the small parts/ particles of the system.
• This knowledge, being anchored in the small parts/ particles of the world, means that time has an inherent direction.

Re Time:

Physicists have failed to address the issue of the difference between a set of equations and a viable moving system.

Despite the fact that a physicist occasionally pops up and points out that there is a problem, seemingly most physicists are not even dimly aware that there is a difference between a set of equations and a viable moving system.

It is the non-measurable logical connectives that make the difference between a set of equations and a viable moving system.

Not that non-measurability should be a problem, because real-world numbers are not measurable (they are the result of measurement) and the real-world laws of nature are not measurable (they are inferred, as a result of scientific experiment and measurement).

It is not possible to figure out what “time” could be, without taking account of the difference between a set of equations and a viable moving system, i.e. without taking account of the logical connectives that are necessary if you want to have a viable moving system, and without taking account of what aspects of the world these logical connectives might represent.

Lorraine Ford
(continued)

Just like man-made mathematics can’t exist without the consciousness and agency of mathematicians, the real-world mathematical system can’t exist without a knowledge/ consciousness aspect and a creative/ agency aspect, and these aspects can be symbolically represented by the above-mentioned logical connective symbols.

But unlike manmade mathematics which merely manipulates man-made symbols, in the real-world mathematical system there is a one-way direction to change, due to “quantum number jumps” which are actually the creation of new numbers, and the assignment of these numbers to the categories (e.g. the position category), BY matter jumping its own numbers.

I.e. “quantum number jumps” are the creation of new structure in the world. And this creation of new structure, by individual matter entities, is a one-way ratchet. (Because of these “number jumps”, other numbers then change, due to the (law of nature) relationships between the categories.)

This creation of new structure by matter is different to the knowledge/ consciousness/ experience of change by matter. The experience of change is the experience of time, and the experience of time is the experience of the one-way direction of number change for the categories.