A Different Perspective on the Existence of Time: Thought as the smallest Unit of Time

in #philosophy7 years ago

Sometimes a change in perspective is all that is required to know and understand the world. Some questions drive people crazy. Sometimes they lead people to believe in ridiculous fantasies. Scientists used to be tried in court for witchcraft. When people first encountered printed Bibles, they thought it was the works of the devil because each copy was similar to the other. That was actually the whole point of printing. It was an act of making perfect clones. People shouldn't have bothered with writing stuff faster. They could have made a machine that make exact copies of something.

The concept of time is something that even scientists can't wrap their minds around. But we can't solve these problems with the state of mind and kind of thinking that created these problems in the first place. Scientific knowledge is a mere instrument. It doesn't necessarily contain objective truths about the universe.

Instrumentalism is a view in philosophy of science that claims scientific theories are merely useful tools for predicting phenomena instead of true or approximately true descriptions of the physical world. Instrumentalism can best be understood as a position against scientific realism
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Instrumentalism

For additional reading please visit https://steemit.com/philosophy/@vimukthi/2-thought-experiments-to-forever-change-the-way-you-look-at-the-world-philosophy-discussion where I talk about "Constructive Relativism" which is like a far more developed and advanced evolution of Instrumentalism. I've expanded the discussion on this post: https://steemit.com/philosophy/@vimukthi/chintana-the-socio-psychological-force-that-guide-the-fate-of-nations-cultures-and-all-sorts-of-groups-an-explanation-of-the


Time is an interpretation - What you see on a Screen


You laptop/ PC/ Tab/ Mobile screen does not receive an image like that of a projector. What it receive is a set of electrical impulses which are read as "1"s and "0"s. I've given my inputs some time ago at various places. I'm going to quote some of them.

Time only exist as a concept. Any any given moment there are things that has happened (Eg: Yesterday) and the things that has not happened but is set to happen (Eg: Tomorrow or the ringing of an alarm)
When somebody is refereeing to time, it's actually a chronology. The things we see are not the things that exist but things that are processed by the mind. Eg: A color blind person sees differently. An animal sees differently.
The colors are a construct based on the wavelength of light(Electromagnetic Waves). The time is a construct based on chronology.
Colors don't exist but electromagnetic waves does. Time doesn't exist but chronology does. It's like the water in a mirage. The water isn't there but the process that make it appear so exists.

Are you looking at a GIF?


You can check out the file extension. That's not what I'm trying to point out. If you take your phone and pause a video and show it to a person, how is that person going to determine whether it's a paused video or an image? Let's take things further. What if the above image is a GIF and what if you edit a video to play with a freeze frame and show it to a person? Just think about that for a moment.

We don't perceive a flow of time unless something have changed. If fact "Time" is change itself.
Show me the Present and I'll show you the Past.
You can never capture a present. You have things that has happened and things that has not yet happened. Past-Present-Future is a mental classification that has great utility like our economic activities. Where does cryptocurrencies get their value? They don't really have any value. Some individuals are willing to exchange another something for something like Dash, PIVX, NEM. An electronic medium of exchange is useful. Making a distinction of Past and Future has immense value.

Thought as the smallest unit of Time


One could say time is infinitely divisible. I used to be around this idea too as a kid. It made a lot of sense. But I could see no origin...... a cause and effect of the existence of time. That's when I understood that I was trying to draw a box while being inside of a box. You can divide any number by any large number and still get a value. But that is an already existing piece of time.

Source

Without 2 different thought instances there can be no perception of time. You can't measure the length of a point. You can't measure the width of a 1 Dimensional object. In the same way you can't measure a duration of time in a single thought instance.

"What is the All? Simply the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect & ideas. This, monks, is called the All. Anyone who would say, 'Repudiating this All, I will describe another,' if questioned on what exactly might be the grounds for his statement, would be unable to explain, and furthermore, would be put to grief. Why? Because it lies beyond range."
-https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn35/sn35.023.than.html

Try to simulate being blind and explain me the experience. I want you to describe the difference between the two kinds of sensory perception of being blind and not blind. How does your senses feel while you are blind and while you are not blind?



What if the blackness get replaced by any of the above 3 colors? What if we hack someone's nervous system to make sure it only feed one Wavelength (color) into the brain via electric impulses? Would it be any different from the simulated blindness of yours? Without change, there are no thought instances. Without thought instances, there is no time. This is an extremely simple and elegant explanation of what time is. I see no holes in my understanding and this is what I stand by.

Transitioning from Chess to Go


This is what my simple metaphysical explanation does. Chess is a more complex game. Go is rather simple. There have been chess games running on those old PDAs for decades. But the current pinnacle of Artificial Intelligence research was making a computer be a champion at Go. It's honestly an inch deep and mile wide Vs a mile deep and inch wide scenario. I'm not exaggerating. Do your own research into the two games.

A radical difference in the way of thinking does force us into a whole new paradigm and this time (accidental pun) we can rely on no equipment. In certain meditation texts I've read that meditating upon the subject of time leads to the understanding of the nature of the universe. The thing is that the Universe is HUUUUGGEE. So don't let the thinking make you go mad :-)

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As we change our point of view, what appears as "real" to us will also change. A changing world cannot ultimately be "real", for the definition of "real" is that of a self-perpetuating state, hence changeless. We have been eternally dreaming..

Time itself is an illusion, a thought-made construct. We can think(!) about past and future but when we stop thinking we realize that there is only this moment. What adds on to our illusion of there being a past and future, however, is the fact that we tend to transfer old, outdated thought patterns into the present moment. We give meaning dependent on the meaning we gave in the past.

You nail once again with the "past, present, future mental classification".
We are very much on the same page!:)

Best simple explanation of anthroprocentric (or biocentric) view I ever saw on this topic
but when there was no human/individuum there is still entropy and so there is change...but no time of course.

resteem

I have a slight pet peeve when it comes to calling it anthroprocentric/ biocentric. It is the perception of the beings that count whether those beings are human or something else. You can't swim in a pool without water. It is the consciousness that count when it comes to perception.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vij%C3%B1%C4%81na#Sense-base_derivative

interessting concept im biased as scientist and your biased as Buddhist but I think our Models are not to different, because this looks like the standard modell of perception. Thank you I will reed it more in depth because Im researching perception models. But there also Models like the Model of Maturana wich differs from this one.

Truth has no owner. When I first came across Quantum Information Theory it did come across like Buddhism spoken in Math. It's like different languages.

This was a very interesting read. What is complicated, as you mentioned, is that time is infinitely divisible, but for humans it is discretized to a second. For other organisms it might be discretized to other amounts. Flying insects for example operate at the time scale of milliseconds. That is why it is very hard to catch a fly. It has a different mental time scale and so it can adjust to a threat much faster than a human would take to catch it.

But then on a completely different scale, time appears to be a phenomenon-- especially as it pertains to 'thought instances'. Different people think on different time scales. Some people like to think slowly. Others like to think quickly and in some cases more fuzzily, because we might be limited to a common human baseline. But thoughts are mere fluid beings with an imprecise nature. How would you define a single thought? They are more like simultaneous threads. Wanted to share some of my thoughts.

Great article!

It's really hard to define what a thought is. It's like asking what a "color" is. You can show some colors or just give some technical gibberish like different electro-magnetic wavelengths getting interpreted by the brain etc.

They are more like simultaneous threads.

Nope. No 2 thought instances exist simultaneously in a single mind. The rapid succession might give us the illusion of multi tasking. But only one happens at a time.

Flying insects for example operate at the time scale of milliseconds.

This is part of the evolution. I do think humans can achieve this level or even higher levels of sensitivity through training. Take martial art for an example.

Thanks for your thoughts :-)

on the other hand they did actually measure the gravitational waves that Einstein predicted, so that is pretty cool.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/gravitational-waves-einstein-s-ripples-spacetime-spotted-first-time

And they made a particle travel back in time.

http://www.cosmicscientist.com/physicists-send-particles-of-light-into-the-past-proving-time-travel-is-possible/

The way black holes operate reminds me of whirlpools that are omni-directional.

A photon is an odd thingy. It has no mass. They exhibit properties of both waves and particles. What they've done with CTC and photons isn't really time travel. It's more like a delayed choice (AKA Quantum Eraser Effect) The first thing I thought of when I saw your link was the "No impact self contained decisions". Basically there is a rock on the street. Does it matter how you cross it? You can go left, right or jump. There is only a negligible possibility that this would affect anything to cause a long existing effect/Butterfly effect.

The article tries to gain views through simplistic/reductive terminology. It's more like a re-collapse of a wave function. It's like reloading a level with randomized elements. Only possibilities exist until you observe it. Quantum Eraser is basically a present re-observation that change the future consequences of a past action. It's like a Bitcoin double spend. All zero confirmation BTC Tx are double spendable.

You can only change self contained events. That's why the experiment was theoretically done on a Closed timelike curve
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/07/20/quantum-experiment-shows-how-time-doesnt-exist-as-we-think-it-does-mind-altering/

This is fascinating

“If we attempt to attribute an objective meaning to the quantum state of a single system, curious paradoxes appear: quantum effects mimic not only instantaneous action-at-a-distance, but also, as seen here, influence of future actions on past events, even after these events have been irrevocably recorded.” – Asher Peres, pioneer in quantum information theory

It reminded me of this experiment:

A 2001 study by Leonard Leibovici used records of 3,393 patients who had developed blood infections at the Rabin Medical Center between 1990 and 1996 to study retroactive intercessory prayer.[24] To compound the alleged miraculous power of prayer itself, the prayers were performed after the patients had already left the hospital. All 3,393 patients were those in the hospital between 1990 and 1996, and the prayers were conducted in 2000. Two of the outcomes, length of stay in the hospital and duration of fever, were found to be significantly improved in the intervention group, implying that prayer can even change events in the past. However, the "mortality rate was lower in the intervention group, but the difference between the groups was not significant." Leibovici concluded that "Remote, retroactive intercessory prayer was associated with a shorter stay in hospital and a shorter duration of fever in patients with a bloodstream infection." Leibovici goes on to note that in the past, people knew the way to prevent diseases (he cites scurvy) without understanding why it worked. In saying so, he suggests that if prayer truly does have a positive effect on patients in hospital, then there may be a naturalist explanation for it that we do not yet understand. After many scientists and scholars criticized this retroactive study,[25] Leibovici stated in 2002 that the "article has nothing to do with religion. I believe that prayer is a real comfort and help to a believer. I do not believe it should be tested in controlled trials."[26] The study has been summarised as being "intended lightheartedly to illustrate the importance of asking research questions that fit with scientific models."[27]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer#Retroactive_intercessory_prayer

Thanks a huge lot for the share.

"mortality rate was lower in the intervention group, but the difference between the groups was not significant."

This is pretty much what I expected. There are things that cannot be changed. But there are other things that can be altered without making a mess. One can never travel byond dependent origination. But one can bend it. History/past exist in retrospect. when we change the final effects, the past those effect project will change.

Thanks again for the link!

they didn't find a large enough effect in terms of mortality for it to be statistically significant in their sample but they did find that

Two of the outcomes, length of stay in the hospital and duration of fever, were found to be significantly improved in the intervention group, implying that prayer can even change events in the past.

That's what I meant by

But there are other things that can be altered without making a mess.
History/past exist in retrospect. when we change the final effects, the past those effect project will change.

Awesome Content.

Thank you for your upvote and the witness vote!!!

My pleasure!

In his book 'The Stuff of Thought' I remember Steven Pinker positing that human temporal consciousness is also not continuous but consists of discrete quanta of roughly 3-second intervals, which is about the same period for the decay of certain short-term memories.
00eb35d8078c3bb2aab6910c8798a6d0.jpg

Thanks for sharing.

I got lost somewhere in the middle but I appreciate your perspective. I try to live my life simply. Without pondering on the mysteries of the universe. I have one goal on earth. To be happy

Thank you for stopping by. Don't miss on the mysteries of the universe. They can be great stuff to think about and work your brain.

You keep expanding my understanding to wilder horizon... Thanks for posting

You are welcome!

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This is a cool addition. Thank you and Good Luck :-)

Resteemed upvoted

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