Re: The Time Deniers
On Fri, Jul 08, 2005 at 11:53:01AM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 06-juil.-05, ? 07:16, Russell Standish a ?crit : My reading of Bruno's work is that time is implicitly assumed as part of computationalism (I know Bruno sometimes does not quite agree, but there you have it). Thinking again on why you keep saying this, I can imagine, giving the inexhaustible richness of the combination of addition and multiplication in Robinson or Peano Arithmetic(*), that a case can be made that I assume time. But that time is neither physical time nor psychological time which are derived from numbers' relations. So I am just a physicalness-deniers, by which I mean no physical things are taken as primitive. Indeed I explain why comp makes the physicalness emerge from numbers' relations. I know this is a response to a rather stale post, but I'm still thinking of these topics. I think the equivalent of my TIME postulate in Bruno's case is interpreting Kripke semantics of his logic of knowledge as phenomenally real. It is what breathes the fire into the equations. Kripke semantics by itself is mere interpretation, but to say it is actually experienced must surely be an independent assumption. Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpJnoFs3ef6X.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
On Thu, Jul 21, 2005 at 02:30:47PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: Are there reason to believe that (physical, or local) time could have a scale invariant fractal dimension (between 1 and 2, bigger?) ? Does it make sense ? I don't know if this is relevant, but Laurent Nottale published a theory of fractal spacetime. Time in this theory had a fractal dimension of 2, but topological dimension of 1, ie quantum particles have a plane filling trajectory through spacetime. Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpw3cf4YkBzG.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Hal Finney wrote: Physicist Max Tegmark has an interesting discussion on the physics of a universe with more than one time dimension at http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/dimensions.html , specifically http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/dimensions.pdf . Wouldn't it be true that in the manyworld, every quantum branchings that is decoupled from other quantum branchings would in effect define its own time dimension? The number of decoupled branchings contained by the observable universe is very large. Linear time is only an illusion due to our limited perspective of the branching/merging network that our consciousness traverses. While our consciousness may spread over (experience) several OMs or nodes in that network, it can only perceive a single path through the network. George
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Le 21-juil.-05, à 08:33, George Levy a écrit : Hal Finney wrote: Physicist Max Tegmark has an interesting discussion on the physics of a universe with more than one time dimension at http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/dimensions.html , specifically http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/dimensions.pdf . Wouldn't it be true that in the manyworld, every quantum branchings that is decoupled from other quantum branchings would in effect define its own time dimension? The number of decoupled branchings contained by the observable universe is very large. Linear time is only an illusion due to our limited perspective of the branching/merging network that our consciousness traverses. I think so. And Tegmark paper is indeed interesting. While our consciousness may spread over (experience) several OMs or nodes in that network, it can only perceive a single path through the network. Comp entails by itself that we should be able to perceive, in some indirect way, the presence of the many bifurcating or differentiating orthogonal path by looking sufficiently close to our probable neighborhood. But then this is confirmed by the very existence of the MW interpretation of the quantum theory. Are there reason to believe that (physical, or local) time could have a scale invariant fractal dimension (between 1 and 2, bigger?) ? Does it make sense ? I guess we must wait progress in string theory, or loop gravity, or even comp (!) to solve a so difficult question ... Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
George Levy writes: Hal Finney wrote: http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/dimensions.html , specifically http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/dimensions.pdf . Wouldn't it be true that in the manyworld, every quantum branchings that is decoupled from other quantum branchings would in effect define its own time dimension? The number of decoupled branchings contained by the observable universe is very large. Linear time is only an illusion due to our limited perspective of the branching/merging network that our consciousness traverses. While our consciousness may spread over (experience) several OMs or nodes in that network, it can only perceive a single path through the network. Tegmark's idea of multiple time dimensions was more general than this. As with multiple space dimensions, you could travel about in the time dimensions. In relativity theory, there is a light cone that restricts which direction is forward in time. You can change your direction but are constrained to always be going forward relative to your light cone. This keeps you from turning around and going backwards in time, because you can't exceed the speed of light. However with 2 dimensional time the geometry is different and you actually go backwards in time. Your own personal clock goes forward but you can end up back before you started. I'll give you a mental visualization you might find useful and interesting. There is a conventional way to think of a light cone which is what gives it its name. Imagine a 2+1 dimensional universe, 2 spatial dimensions and 1 of time. To think of it, start with an x-y plane with the x and y axes. We'll call the y axis time, positive being upward. This is a 1+1 dimensional universe. Now imagine the lines x=y and x=-y, in other words the two lines running at 45 degrees and crossing at the origin. These can be thought of as the paths of light rays emitted by or received at the origin. Now imagine spinning the whole thing around the y axis, where the new z axis will be another spatial dimension. The crossed lines become a pair of cones that represent possible light beams being emitted from or received at the origin. These are called light cones. At each point in space we could imagine a pair of such cones existing, future and past. Objects are constrained in their movements to only be going upward, they have to stay within their light cones. Now for the variant, with a 1+2 dimensional universe: 1 spatial dimension and 2 time dimensions. Again we will start with the x-y plane, y is time, and we draw the crossed 45 degree lines. This time we spin around the x axis, to again produce two cones, but they are pointed right and left rather than up and down. In this model z is a time dimension like y, so we have 2 time dimensions. Now, objects again are constrained in their movements not to cross the cones, but the cones are pointed to the side rather than upward. This means that objects are not stuck inside the cones but are in effect outside of them and are able to move much more freely. You can see perhaps how an object could start at the origin, move in a loop in the y-z plane and return to the origin, all without ever passing through the cones. This is the nature of the 2-dimensional time explored by Tegmark. It is pretty different from the MWI. I would not say that the MWI has multidimensional time any more than it has 3 dimensional space. Technically the MWI all happens in one spacetime area, it is all superimposed and squashed together. There is merely a mathematical separation which occurs when states become decoherent, such that their future histories are causally independent. But technically they are still using the same space and time, they are just invisible to each other. Hal Finney
RE: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Jul 2005 09:54:55 -0400 Dear Chris, I hope to be able to convince you that the ideas that you express below do not yield a coherent narrative. But you must make up your own mind. There are so many assumptions being made that must be reconsidered... What is your background? - Original Message - From: chris peck [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 9:48 AM Subject: Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Hi Stephen; I suppose we can think of time as a dimension. However, there are provisos. [SPK] Did you happen to note that my post argued that the idea that time is a dimension can only be taken as true in an a posteriori sense? It is when we try to force the entirety of our notions relating to time to fit into the mold of an a priori given ordering of events that things run awry. How familiar are you with the details of quantum mechanics? Did you happen to know that the notion of an observable in QM has a complex value and that a real value only obtains after the multiplication of an observable with its complex conjugate? This operation of conjugation must involve the selection of some basis.. This makes the problem of a pre-existing Real value time to be, at least, doubly difficult. Complex numbers have no natural ordering, as opposed to the Reals, which do, because in general, complex numbers do not commute with each other. Only the very special subset of observables can be said to commute and thus can be mapped to some notion of a dimension that one can have translational transforms as functions. In order to have coherent ideas like time travel, a moving now like some flash-light beam that can be moved forwards and backwards, require such contorted mathematics that one can hardly argue that that is how Nature works. [CP] Time is not like x, y, or z in so far as we have no ability to freely navigate the axis in any direction we choose. We are embedded in time and it moves onwards in a single direction without anyone's consent. Furthermore, where it possible to move around in time all sorts of paradoxes would appear to ensue that just don't when I traverse the spatial dimensions. I'd appeal to an asymmetry between time and space, it is a dimension of sorts, but not one that can conceptually swapped with a spatial dimension easily. I don't think the a priori requirements for space will be necessarily the same as those for time. [SPK] All we seem to be able to control about time is its rate; we do this by accelerating things or, equivalently, changing their position with respect to gravitational gradients. On the other hand, the notion of free will - which some argue is purely an illusion- implies the ability to simultaneously consider some set of possible optional nows and chose one as the next. This is the locus of conflict between the determinism of the classical world and QM where it is said that God(s) play with Dice. How familiar are you with the nuances of Special and General Relativity? I am hardly proficient with the mathematics, but the big picture is very familiar to me - something to do with how a dyslexic thinks. ;-) [CP] Therefore, whilst our prior notions of space might be fairly complex, it seems to me that our a priori notion of time is in fact very simple. It is just the notion of succession. That time exists if there is a successor event to this event. I can imagine a succession of events that are repetitions of one another, and whilst I can agree that duration would not be measurable, that time might not be noticed, our a priori notion of time is not contradicted despite that. [SPK] The problem is that there can be no single unique succession of events! This is the point that I am trying to explain to you! Because observables obey such Principles as Heisenberg's Uncertainty, there can be to single a priori order of events that we can label with ever-larger Real numbers, starting at some Big Bang singularity point as our Zero. It is simply a mental picture that we carry around with us, part of our memories of precious events, all of the information of which is always and only in our present moment. BTW, this is something that the discussion of Observer Moments seems to be ignoring! A coherent notion of an OM must include some explanation of how one OM includes information about other OMs, which are its history within it. Is there some upper bound on the amount of information that any single OM can contain? [SPK] 'What is a clock if not an means to measure change?' [CP] A clock changes in order to measure time. Change is the measure of time, but is not necessary for time to occur. Changes do not occur just because time passes. Change is just necessary for measurement. I agree that time carries with it the possibility of change, but that is not the same
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Hi Chris, Thank you for a very interesting discussion of McTaggart's ideas, frankly after reading Huw Price's Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point,, I abandoned any hope of them being useful. My current favorite contender for an model of time is that of a perpetually ongoing computation; the universe is constantly computing what will happen next given some present state. I like this idea because it automatically explains the perception of a flowing present moment. To use an artistic analogy, the universe is a play whose acts are ab libbed as the actors interact with each other and not a book that was written in the beginning. Kindest regards, Stephen - Original Message - From: chris peck [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 3:05 PM Subject: RE: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Hi Stephen; Once again thanks for your comprehensive reply, Ive got a reply for one bit of it so far: snip I think im arguing for caution about McTaggart. I am trying really hard to argue for perhaps even more than local realism. I want the moving present, which we can not break free of, to be right at the center of our concept of time. I want the past to not exist, and I want the future to not exist yet. A (3+1) D block universe is comparable to a McTaggart B series. However, B series presuppose time! They are defined as temporal sequences. As events in 'before/after' order. They are derivable only, as far as I can see, by combining McTaggart C series - say real numbers, numbers that have a correspondence with points on an infinate line (which musnt be thought of temporally), with his A series (tensed facts: event e is past). A+C=B. So, A series (tensed facts or temporal token reflexives) are prior to B series (temporally sequenced series) just because they are used in the derivation of B series. McTaggart thinks this because he adopts as a premise the idea that change is necessary to time, and that a B-Series can not account for change only the A series can. The A Series embodies the 'moving present' he thinks, events are ordered as future, present and past. It is by associating this moving present with a C Series that he thinks a B Series can be derived. (note, that according to Kant time and space are a priori intuitions, back drops in which objects and events can sit. Following Kant we needn’t really agree with McTaggart about change. imho). However, as he points out, A series are defined in a circular way. An A series event can be future, past AND present. To say that event e is future also present and also past is just contradictory. The obvious complaint to McTaggart at this point in the argument is that event e is not future, past and present all at once. Event e is the future, will become the present and then become the past. Event e is not all those things (here it comes) at the same time! In order to overcome the inherent contradictions in the A-series, an A series has had to be invoked again, a meta A series if you like, and notice that this second invocation is subject to exactly the same criticism as before. We have a Meta e (Me) at which e is future, an Me at which e is present, an Me when e is past. A series now of temporally flowing meta es, each one of which are (at some time!!!) future, present or past. Clearly, the A series is obscuring our concept of time rather than elucidating it, and given the B Series is just (A+C) it can not make any sense either. Again, at this stage the illusory nature of the 'subjective time' is winning the argument. Having discarded the A Series as incoherent, and therefore the B series too because it is derived from the A series, the only thing we have left is the C-Series. Something we may metaphorically illustrate by real numbers, numbers that have a correspondence with points on an infinite line (which mustn’t be thought of temporally). Time then does not exist, but is properly concieved of as a dimenstion. Note, that it doesn’t follow from incoherence in the idea of a B Series, it follows from 1) regarding change as necessary to time, and 2) the A Series as more fundamental to the others (given it accounts for change). I want 'now' to be the fundamental concept in any theory of time. Not just subjective time, but real objective time. I don’t think appeals to token reflexives being more fundamental than before/after, or the necessity of change to time manage to establish the priority of the moving present over bloc universes, or C Lists such as real numbers. Thats why I make an appeal to something more intuitive. The A List as concieved by McTaggart may lead to incoherence, but nevertheless, we are embedded in the present. To meddle with its order is to conjure up paradox. Reality can not be like that. Best Regards; Chris. :) From: Stephen Paul King [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list
RE: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
chris peck wrote: Thats why I make an appeal to something more intuitive. The A List as concieved by McTaggart may lead to incoherence, but nevertheless, we are embedded in the present. To meddle with its order is to conjure up paradox. Reality can not be like that. But are you just expressing a personal intuition there, or do you think some actual logical paradox arises from the block time concept? Also, do you agree that to define a notion of a single universal present, we must privelege one relativistic reference frame over all others? If so, do you think this reference frame is only metaphysically preferred while agreeing with relativity's claim that no reference frame can be picked out as special by any actual physical experiment, or do you hope for a new theory of physics which actually picks out a physically preferred reference frame? Jesse
RE: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Physicist Max Tegmark has an interesting discussion on the physics of a universe with more than one time dimension at http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/dimensions.html , specifically http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/dimensions.pdf . In the excerpts below, n is the number of space dimensions and m the number of time dimensions, so when he writes m 1 he means more than one time dimension. Quoting Tegmark: : What would reality appear like to an observer in a manifold with more : than one time-like dimension? Even when m 1, there is no obvious : reason why an observer could not, none the less, perceive time as being : one-dimensional, thereby maintaining the pattern of having thoughts : in a one-dimensional succession that characterizes our own reality : perception. If the observer is a localized object, it will travel along : an essentially one-dimensional (time-like) world line through the (n + : m)-dimensional spacetime manifold. The standard general relativity notion : of its proper time is perfectly well defined, and we would expect this : to be the time that it would measure if it had a clock and that it would : subjectively experience. : : Needless to say, many aspects of the world would none the less appear : quite different. For instance, a re-derivation of relativistic mechanics : for this more general case shows that energy now becomes an m-dimensional : vector rather than a constant, whose direction determines in which : of the many time directions the world line will continue, and in the : non-relativistic limit, this direction is a constant of motion. In : other words, if two non-relativistic observers that are moving in : different time directions happen to meet at a point in spacetime, they : will inevitably drift apart in separate time directions again, unable : to stay together. : : Another interesting difference, which can be shown by an elegant : geometrical argument [10], is that particles become less stable when m : 1 : : In addition to these two differences, one can concoct seemingly strange : occurrences involving backward causation when m 1. None the less, : although such unfamiliar behaviour may appear disturbing, it would seem : unwarranted to assume that it would prevent any form of observer from : existing. After all, we must avoid the fallacy of assuming that the : design of our human bodies is the only one that allows self-awareness : : There is, however, an additional problem for observers when m 1, : which has not been previously emphasized even though the mathematical : results on which it is based are well known. If an observer is to be : able to make any use of its self-awareness and information-processing : abilities, the laws of physics must be such that it can make at least : some predictions. Specifically, within the framework of a field theory, : it should, by measuring various nearby field values, be able to compute : field values at some more distant spacetime points (ones lying along its : future world line being particularly useful) with non-infinite error : bars. If this type of well-posed causality were absent, then not only : would there be no reason for observers to be self-aware, but it would : appear highly unlikely that information processing systems (such as : computers and brains) could exist at all. Tegmark then goes into quite a technical discussion about solving the equations of physics given various ways of specifying initial values, the upshot of which is that if m 1 (i.e. more than one time dimension) observers would not be able to predict the state in the rest of the universe from their observations, which would seem to preclude the existence of observers. I'm not sure I fully understood this argument. However the earlier part is quite instructive in giving us a picture of how a universe could look that had multiple time dimensions. Any one entity would still have a single time line, but different ones might disagree about which direction the future was, and time loops would be possible. Personally I think this is a more serious problem than Tegmark's idea about prediction difficulties, although he seems to gloss over it as mere unfamiliar behavior. Nevertheless I think it is instructive to realize that multiple time dimension universes are a conceptual possibility even if they are unlikely to contain observers like us. Tegmark is implicitly writing within the block universe perspective which is generally adopted by physicists. Translating this into a flow of time view seems quite challenging and suggests that that viewpoint may not be as flexible in terms of deep understanding of the notion of time. Hal Finney
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Hi James;
Only mirrored back what you wrote first ..
Your search for symmetry is all encompassing!
'If the quantum paradigm'
There are plenty of them. At least two! Democritus vs. Anaxagorus. Newton
vs. Leibniz. Atomism vs. Holism. M-Theory vs. Bohm/Chew.
Concurrently, this implies that all systems that functionally extend from
symmetry breaking events must of necessity be 'dimensional'
There are many theories around positing more than three dimensions. Special
Relativity can be considered a 4 dimensional theory, M-Theory an 11
dimensional theory. They, I have noticed, are expressed as (3+1) or (10+1)
theories. The +1 is of course time. Clearly many physicists attracted by the
idea of time as dimension are nevertheless aware that in some sense time is
different.
But then, in what way is time asymmetric to space? You have no answer to
that.
There may be operational reasons why time travel is or is not possible - I
don't have any comments on the conjecture of time travel - my only
stance being that I state it is and would be improper to consider Time
as -not- being dimensional.
May I ask if you are as agnostic with regards to the possibility of walking
north and then south as you are with regards to moving forward and backward
in time? After all, space is a dimensional like time, isnt it? If I claimed
an ability walk in a circle, would you remain silent about that?
There are two ways in which time is not like space. I do not wake up to find
myself travelling haplessly north, however I do wake up and find myself
moving haplessly forward in time. Getting older and older by the plank
instant. Secondly, I cannot reverse the flow of time. I can of course
reverse freely my spatial vector.
Consider the manner in which relativistic theories freely interpret temporal
direction. Im thinking of Feynman diagrams interpreted as positrons moving
forward or electrons moving back in time. Formally these interpretations are
identical. To overcome the apparent absurdity of such a concept we dutifully
imagine space-time as a (3+1) continuum. As Broglie explains:
Everything for us that constitutes the past, present and the future is
given en bloc. Each observer, as his time passes, discovers so to speak, new
slices of space-time which appear to him as successive aspects of the
material world, though in reality the ensemble of events constituting
space-time exist prior to his knowledge of them.
Its an ugly piece of writing, with obvious connotations of times within
times not to mention a deeply deterministic conclusion. (I contrast
'deterministic' with 'indeterministic' here, rather than with 'free will').
Im increasingly uncomfortable with such a picture. However - and this is
the point I was trying to make last week - I do not think that one can
account for temporal/spatial asymmetry by appealing to token reflexive
statements. Contrary to McTaggart and Dummet, I do not think that a complete
description of the universe can be given without spatial token reflexives
('here', 'there', 'this', 'that'). Dummet's contention that one can conceive
of space without adopting a perspective must be one of the most contentious
statements in contemporary Philosophy of Time. I cant do it, and I suspect
that Dummet cannot do it either. Consequently the obvious difference between
temporal and spatial 'dimensions' is not captured. If one wants to escape
the bloc universe view and entertain something more dynamic, I really think
that such an approach falls flat.
No one must be more intuitive. What is true with regards to reflexives, as
Ive said in a different way, is that no contradiction follows from the
statement 'what was there is now here', whilst paradoxes emerge from
statements like 'what was past is now future'. Whilst it might be formally
correct to allow for directions in time, it must be just conditional on an
ideal rather than actual concept of time.
[c^2] is exactly an expression of the presence of 2 temporal dimensions
orthogonally configured, computing against a sheet region not a linear
one. [Rose(c)1995].
What then would it mean for two events to occur in temporally perpendicular
directions?
Regards
Chris.
From: James N Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: everything-list@eskimo.com
Subject: Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 12:11:01 -0700
Interleaving:
chris peck wrote:
Hi James;
Yes, you are definitely a conventional thinker Chris.
Im not sure what this line of argument has to do with the price of
peas,
but as I have said, it wouldnt be troubling to me to be considered
conventional. However, I do think you are being hasty in so far as Im
still
finding my feet with regards to many of the concepts and arguments on
this
forum. I dont consider myself to have a steadfast opinion one way or
the
other yet.
Only mirrored back what you wrote first ..
just let it go, not imortant
I
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Dear Chris,
A the risk of being a smart-alek, you answer your own question! The
difference between Spatial and Temporal dimensions is that the former is
such that movements can occur that are reversible without any involvement
with any kind of thermodynamic laws. Temporal movements are strongly
restricted by thermodynamics and causal restraints. Maybe we should be
asking why this is the case!
As to the notion of more than one temporal dimension: we have that exact
situation in the Many Worlds! Each path in the branching tree is a
history, having its own notion of time. The problem is that there does not
exist a preferred basis with which to define such paths in an unambiguous
way.
Kindest regards,
Stephen
- Original Message -
From: chris peck [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 1:44 PM
Subject: Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
snip
But then, in what way is time asymmetric to space? You have no answer to
that.
There may be operational reasons why time travel is or is not possible -
I don't have any comments on the conjecture of time travel - my only
stance being that I state it is and would be improper to consider Time
as -not- being dimensional.
May I ask if you are as agnostic with regards to the possibility of
walking north and then south as you are with regards to moving forward and
backward in time? After all, space is a dimensional like time, isn’t it?
If I claimed an ability walk in a circle, would you remain silent about
that?
There are two ways in which time is not like space. I do not wake up to
find myself travelling haplessly north, however I do wake up and find
myself moving haplessly forward in time. Getting older and older by the
plank instant. Secondly, I cannot reverse the flow of time. I can of
course reverse freely my spatial vector.
Consider the manner in which relativistic theories freely interpret
temporal direction. I’m thinking of Feynman diagrams interpreted as
positrons moving forward or electrons moving back in time. Formally these
interpretations are identical. To overcome the apparent absurdity of such
a concept we dutifully imagine space-time as a (3+1) continuum. As Broglie
explains:
Everything for us that constitutes the past, present and the future is
given en bloc. Each observer, as his time passes, discovers so to speak,
new slices of space-time which appear to him as successive aspects of the
material world, though in reality the ensemble of events constituting
space-time exist prior to his knowledge of them.
It’s an ugly piece of writing, with obvious connotations of times within
times not to mention a deeply deterministic conclusion. (I contrast
'deterministic' with 'indeterministic' here, rather than with 'free
will').
I’m increasingly uncomfortable with such a picture. However - and this is
the point I was trying to make last week - I do not think that one can
account for temporal/spatial asymmetry by appealing to token reflexive
statements. Contrary to McTaggart and Dummet, I do not think that a
complete description of the universe can be given without spatial token
reflexives ('here', 'there', 'this', 'that'). Dummet's contention that one
can conceive of space without adopting a perspective must be one of the
most contentious statements in contemporary Philosophy of Time. I can’t do
it, and I suspect that Dummet cannot do it either. Consequently the
obvious difference between temporal and spatial 'dimensions' is not
captured. If one wants to escape the bloc universe view and entertain
something more dynamic, I really think that such an approach falls flat.
No one must be more intuitive. What is true with regards to reflexives, as
I’ve said in a different way, is that no contradiction follows from the
statement 'what was there is now here', whilst paradoxes emerge from
statements like 'what was past is now future'. Whilst it might be formally
correct to allow for directions in time, it must be just conditional on an
ideal rather than actual concept of time.
[c^2] is exactly an expression of the presence of 2 temporal dimensions
orthogonally configured, computing against a sheet region not a linear
one. [Rose(c)1995].
What then would it mean for two events to occur in temporally
perpendicular directions?
snip
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
chris peck wrote: [c^2] is exactly an expression of the presence of 2 temporal dimensions orthogonally configured, computing against a sheet region not a linear one. [Rose(c)1995]. What then would it mean for two events to occur in temporally perpendicular directions? similar to what it means for there to be a real value square root of -1 or for an object to move in two or more orthogonal spacial directions 'at the same time' ; in some reimann transform or other, all linear motions can be figured as and only as a mono-dimensional motion. Regards Chris.
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Interleaving: chris peck wrote: Hi James; Yes, you are definitely a conventional thinker Chris. Im not sure what this line of argument has to do with the price of peas, but as I have said, it wouldnt be troubling to me to be considered conventional. However, I do think you are being hasty in so far as Im still finding my feet with regards to many of the concepts and arguments on this forum. I dont consider myself to have a steadfast opinion one way or the other yet. Only mirrored back what you wrote first .. just let it go, not imortant I feel able to raise objections which of course must seem naive to a seasoned expert. Whats more, so far I have been more impressed by the rigour of the posters on this board - I think the standard of writing is extraordinary, at times intimidating - than the 'unconventional' ideas that you think you are entertaining. I dont see many unconventional views, infact I see views that seem to have a long lineage reaching all the way back to Plato and beyond. To take one example, when Bruno speaks of Zombies with varying degrees of consciousness, I find it reminiscent of Leibnizs Monadology, not to mention the idea that the universe can be conceived as a purely mathematical entity, that extension can be done away with. Perhaps it is the possibility of time travel that sounds unconventional to you, but here again, its similar to Aquinas' discussion of whether angels can jump from a to b without traversing the points imbetween, isnt it? A blend of rationalism, idealism and scholastic thought then, but unconventional? Im not convinced about that, nor sure why it matters. So, let me ask you the straight fundamental question that rests at the heart of the topic of time (dimensional Or not dimensional). Is the universe operatively Abelian, or non-Abelian or co-Abelian? I'm leaning towards the idea that the universe is operationally non-Abelian. A state of the universe is a statistical result, so how we reverse the direction of time without invoking the idea of possible pasts is unclear to me. Perhaps you have the answer. Regards Chris. If the quantum paradigm is accurate, then it would be improper to identify the universe as functioning wholly Abelian or non-Abelain. Concurrently, this implies that all systems which functionally extend from symmetry breaking events must of necessity be 'dimensional' where Abelian simply refers to pre-broken symmetry relations and non-Abelian to post-symmetry broken relations ... where concurrency of pre- -and- post- is the rule of the day. And where it would be remiss of any one dealing with all these relations, to think of them in any way -except- fully and completely 'dimensional'; where the only distinction is the extent of packed and unpacked states present. This allows for classical evaluation of quantum phenomena, which heretofore has been a roadblock in computational and relational analysis. There may be operational reasons why time travel is or is not possible - I don't have any comments on the conjecture of time travel - my only stance being that I state it is and would be improper to consider Time as -not- being dimensional. And as an example, I state that even Einstein did not understand this aspect, one of the true points of his equation E=mc^2 being that [c^2] is exactly an expression of the presence of 2 temporal dimensions orthogonally configured, computing against a sheet region not a linear one. [Rose(c)1995]. Energy is a net abelian 3-dimensional compacture, even and in spite of being computationally expressed as a one-dimensional factor. The whole structure of mathematics is currently under-valuated in any full and complete 'dimensional' way. [Rose(c)1972] James
Re: The Time Deniers
Le 15-juil.-05, à 04:15, Hal Finney a écrit : Surely Chaitin's algorithmic information theory would not work; inputting a zero length program into a typical UTM would not produce the set of all infinite length bitstrings; in fact, I don't see how a TM could even create such an output from any program. The set of all bitstrings, S, cannot have null information content. Now, given that such information content are generally defined up to a constant, you could, by fixing some special purpose universal machine to make S information null. I don't think it is important, but a Pythagorean could appreciate. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Hi James; Yes, you are definitely a conventional thinker Chris. Im not sure what this line of argument has to do with the price of peas, but as I have said, it wouldnt be troubling to me to be considered conventional. However, I do think you are being hasty in so far as Im still finding my feet with regards to many of the concepts and arguments on this forum. I dont consider myself to have a steadfast opinion one way or the other yet. I feel able to raise objections which of course must seem naive to a seasoned expert. Whats more, so far I have been more impressed by the rigour of the posters on this board - I think the standard of writing is extraordinary, at times intimidating - than the 'unconventional' ideas that you think you are entertaining. I dont see many unconventional views, infact I see views that seem to have a long lineage reaching all the way back to Plato and beyond. To take one example, when Bruno speaks of Zombies with varying degrees of consciousness, I find it reminiscent of Leibnizs Monadology, not to mention the idea that the universe can be conceived as a purely mathematical entity, that extension can be done away with. Perhaps it is the possibility of time travel that sounds unconventional to you, but here again, its similar to Aquinas' discussion of whether angels can jump from a to b without traversing the points imbetween, isnt it? A blend of rationalism, idealism and scholastic thought then, but unconventional? Im not convinced about that, nor sure why it matters. So, let me ask you the straight fundamental question that rests at the heart of the topic of time (dimensional Or not dimensional). Is the universe operatively Abelian, or non-Abelian or co-Abelian? I'm leaning towards the idea that the universe is operationally non-Abelian. A state of the universe is a statistical result, so how we reverse the direction of time without invoking the idea of possible pasts is unclear to me. Perhaps you have the answer. Regards Chris. From: James N Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Subject: Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 23:35:01 -0700 Yes, you are definitely a conventional thinker Chris. The challenging point of view I express goes beyond the obvious qualia -differences- of space relative to time, and instead identifies certain similarities, that in turn identify how quantum mechanics and classical relativity can be unified. Interestingly, even Einstein missed this key aspect - of his own mathematics. So, let me ask you the straight fundamental question that rests at the heart of the topic of time (dimensional or not dimensional). Is the universe operatively Abelian, or non-Abelian or co-Abelian? James chris peck wrote: Hi James; You unfortunatly are making the same fatal-flaw mistake that all conventional thinkers I hope i am a 'conventional thinker'. It gives me reason to think im onto something, that ive got something right. That seems to be how things become conventional. spatial. You and all .. conflate commutative -and- non-commutative standards when analyzing dimensions. Im not sure I do. 'Let me pose this simple everyday definition that is typically laxly understood/applied, to see what you think:' I can feel a dreadfully non everyday definition approaching : Tenet JNR-01: every exponent is indicative of 'dimension(s)', not just positive integer exponents. You should decide whether this is conventional (everyday) or not. Im fairly sure you are attacking a straw man. We can just say that 'now' races towards the future rather than the opposite without us exerting any effort, whilst 'here' doesnt really move at all. Especially for a rock. At least the a priori notions of each spatial dimension dont involve change of position, but our a priori notion of time at least involves a change of time. If time has no arrow one way or the other, if there is no succession of events, then time stops. I am left wondering whether you know what I mean at all when I say that we are embeded in time in a way we are not in space. Its more the point that there is a direction to time rather than whether we characterise the direction one way or the other, or whether it can be flipped, or whether backwards in time need be or neednt be represented by positive integers. One way or the other, time moves on. And if it doesnt, everything stops. regards; Chris. From: James N Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Subject: Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 06:56:28 -0700 Chris, You unfortunatly are making the same fatal-flaw mistake that all conventional thinkers -even the outside the box inventive ones- continue to make: you cannot identify, distinguish, specify or apply - complete non-Abelian, non-commutative aspects
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Yes, you are definitely a conventional thinker Chris. The challenging point of view I express goes beyond the obvious qualia -differences- of space relative to time, and instead identifies certain similarities, that in turn identify how quantum mechanics and classical relativity can be unified. Interestingly, even Einstein missed this key aspect - of his own mathematics. So, let me ask you the straight fundamental question that rests at the heart of the topic of time (dimensional or not dimensional). Is the universe operatively Abelian, or non-Abelian or co-Abelian? James chris peck wrote: Hi James; You unfortunatly are making the same fatal-flaw mistake that all conventional thinkers I hope i am a 'conventional thinker'. It gives me reason to think im onto something, that ive got something right. That seems to be how things become conventional. spatial. You and all .. conflate commutative -and- non-commutative standards when analyzing dimensions. Im not sure I do. 'Let me pose this simple everyday definition that is typically laxly understood/applied, to see what you think:' I can feel a dreadfully non everyday definition approaching : Tenet JNR-01: every exponent is indicative of 'dimension(s)', not just positive integer exponents. You should decide whether this is conventional (everyday) or not. Im fairly sure you are attacking a straw man. We can just say that 'now' races towards the future rather than the opposite without us exerting any effort, whilst 'here' doesnt really move at all. Especially for a rock. At least the a priori notions of each spatial dimension dont involve change of position, but our a priori notion of time at least involves a change of time. If time has no arrow one way or the other, if there is no succession of events, then time stops. I am left wondering whether you know what I mean at all when I say that we are embeded in time in a way we are not in space. Its more the point that there is a direction to time rather than whether we characterise the direction one way or the other, or whether it can be flipped, or whether backwards in time need be or neednt be represented by positive integers. One way or the other, time moves on. And if it doesnt, everything stops. regards; Chris. From: James N Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Subject: Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 06:56:28 -0700 Chris, You unfortunatly are making the same fatal-flaw mistake that all conventional thinkers -even the outside the box inventive ones- continue to make: you cannot identify, distinguish, specify or apply - complete non-Abelian, non-commutative aspects to considerations of 'dimensions' - whether temporal or spatial. You and all .. conflate commutative -and- non-commutative standards when analyzing dimensions. You also ignore basic arithmetic definitions and pretend they hold no meaning, particularly when those definition standards arise in weakly discussed situations. Let me pose this simple everyday definition that is typically laxly understood/applied, to see what you think: Tenet JNR-01: every exponent is indicative of 'dimension(s)', not just positive integer exponents. James 13 July 2005 chris peck wrote: Hi James; I suspected that this part of my argument to Stephen would raise objections from other members of this board. 'Actually, this is not correct; but a presumption of experiential pre-bias.' It may be. Nevertheless, without the experience to hand at all, I maintain that the asymetry exists in the sense that my movement in spatial dimensions is second nature, movement in time - other than the apparantly inevitable next step forward - is theoretical at best. It is not something I can just do, I am in the 'now' in a stronger sense than I am 'here'. But, say time travel is possible, we have a futher asymetry in so far as the idea that time is a dimension in the same sense that x,y,z leads to paradoxes if we attempt to move around it. Spatial movement does not involve paradoxes. I think this is enough to establish an asymetry in nature rather than just experience. Regards Chris. From: James N Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com CC: Stephen Paul King [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 07:11:55 -0700 chris peck wrote: Hi Stephen; I suppose we can think of time as a dimension. However, there are provisos. Time is not like x, y, or z in so far as we have no ability to freely navigate the axis in any direction we choose. We are embedded in time and it moves onwards in a single direction without anyones consent. Furthermore, where
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
No, because I wasn't talking about artificially imposed orderings. One can always define a strict ordering by means of something like x y iff Re(x) Re(y) or Re(x)=Re(y) and Im(x)Im(y) However, the usual meaning of xy for x,y \in C is undefined, except for x,y real. I think the previous poster used the term natural ordering, I just dropped the adjective natural, as being unnecessary for the discussion. Cheer On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 12:15:01PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: Le 13-juil.-05, ? 06:02, Russell Standish a ?crit : Complex numbers indeed do not have an ordering (being basically points on a plane) So you pretend the axiom of choice is false. It is easy to build an ordering of the complex numbers through it. There is no ordering *which satisfies some algebraic desiderata*. But as a set, you can always ordered it (given that the axiom of choice is consistent with ZF). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgp5JvfdRkU0H.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 01:01:29PM -0400, Stephen Paul King wrote: Esteemed Prof. Standish, You're sounding German here: Sehr Geherte Herr Professor Standish. Its how they broke the enigma code, you know! At least I'm not the Very Estimated Professor Standish. Thank you for that correction. ;-) But you are missing the point that I am trying to make here! :_( I wasn't really missing the point, just not commenting on your point. I don't think it fair to combine a technical correction with a critique. I think you were trying to use the non-Abelian nature (lack of commutability) of observables to make some statements about ordering of events, however you were confusing this with the nonordered property of complex numbers. More seriously though, given that the experience of time is a 1st person thing, the ordering of observables is chosen, so there is a definite ordering to experienced time. My TIME postulate assumes this ordering, for example. Noncommutability of observables surely can only effect the possibility of ordering of 3rd person events, which I suspect nobody here has given much thought to (least of all, me). Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpxnWYV2ZrYI.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The Time Deniers
On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 04:20:27PM -0700, Hal Finney wrote: Right, that is one of the big selling points of the Tegmark and Schmidhuber concept, that the Big Bang apparently can be described in very low-information terms. Tegmark even has a paper arguing that it took zero information to describe it (but frankly I am getting pretty turned off on the zero information concept since several people here use it to describe completely different things, and if it really took zero information then there couldn't be more than one thing described, could it?). Tegmark does not say his model has zero information (at least not in the classic 1998 paper). His words were (pg 25 of my copy): In this sense, our ultimate ensemble of all mathematical structures has virtually no algorithmic complexity at all. Note, this is not zero, but simply small (at least compared with the observed complexity of our frog perspective). There is only one zero information object, and that is the set of all descriptions (all infinite length bitstrings). Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpG2L5SrWIg0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The Time Deniers
Russell Standish writes: On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 04:20:27PM -0700, Hal Finney wrote: =20 Right, that is one of the big selling points of the Tegmark and Schmidhuber concept, that the Big Bang apparently can be described in very low-information terms. Tegmark even has a paper arguing that it took zero information to describe it (but frankly I am getting pretty turned off on the zero information concept since several people here use it to describe completely different things, and if it really took zero information then there couldn't be more than one thing described, could it?). =20 Tegmark does not say his model has zero information (at least not in the classic 1998 paper). His words were (pg 25 of my copy): In this sense, our ultimate ensemble of all mathematical structures has virtually no algorithmic complexity at all. Note, this is not zero, but simply small (at least compared with the observed complexity of our frog perspective). Thanks for the correction. I was actually thinking of a different Tegmark paper, http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/nihilo.html, but I see on closer reading that he also says there that the algorithmic information content of our universe is close to zero but does not actually say it is zero. There is only one zero information object, and that is the set of all descriptions (all infinite length bitstrings).=20 Do you really think there is such a thing as a zero information object? If so, why do you have to say what it is? :-) Is this just an informal concept or is there some formalization of it? Surely Chaitin's algorithmic information theory would not work; inputting a zero length program into a typical UTM would not produce the set of all infinite length bitstrings; in fact, I don't see how a TM could even create such an output from any program. Hal Finney
Re: The Time Deniers
On Thu, Jul 14, 2005 at 07:15:02PM -0700, Hal Finney wrote: Do you really think there is such a thing as a zero information object? If so, why do you have to say what it is? :-) Is this just an informal concept or is there some formalization of it? Surely Chaitin's algorithmic information theory would not work; inputting a zero length program into a typical UTM would not produce the set of all infinite length bitstrings; in fact, I don't see how a TM could even create such an output from any program. Hal Finney Well I should point out I use a slightly different definition of information, which is the logarithm of the measure of the set of all bitstrings having a given meaning. Associating meaning with the output of a prefix Turing machine, this notion information is equivalent to KCS complexity, up to an additive constant (dependent on only the machine, not the message). With such a definition of information (which is more general than KCS complexity, but equivalent up to an additive constant when the latter is defined), only the set of all bitstrings has zero information. Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpvJS4wt7TUY.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 09:54:55AM -0400, Stephen Paul King wrote: How familiar are you with the details of quantum mechanics? Did you happen to know that the notion of an observable in QM has a complex value and that a real value only obtains after the multiplication of an observable with its complex conjugate? This operation of conjugation must involve the selection of some basis.. This makes the problem of a pre-existing Real value time to be, at least, doubly difficult. Complex numbers have no natural ordering, as opposed to the Reals, which do, because in general, complex numbers do not commute with each other. Only the very special subset of observables can be said to commute and thus can be mapped to some notion of a dimension that one can have translational transforms as functions. Tosh! I'm sorry, but you are demonstrating enormous ignorance of QM with these statements. 1) Observables are Hermitian operators. This means that their eigenvalues (which are the observed outcomes) are real valued (not complex valued as you seem to think), and so ordering of observed values is _not_ the problem you think it is. 2) Complex numbers indeed do not have an ordering (being basically points on a plane), however they do commute. For any two complex numbers x and y, xy=yx. Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpVGH54qeXw8.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Le 13-juil.-05, à 06:02, Russell Standish a écrit : Complex numbers indeed do not have an ordering (being basically points on a plane) So you pretend the axiom of choice is false. It is easy to build an ordering of the complex numbers through it. There is no ordering *which satisfies some algebraic desiderata*. But as a set, you can always ordered it (given that the axiom of choice is consistent with ZF). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Chris, You unfortunatly are making the same fatal-flaw mistake that all conventional thinkers -even the outside the box inventive ones- continue to make: you cannot identify, distinguish, specify or apply - complete non-Abelian, non-commutative aspects to considerations of 'dimensions' - whether temporal or spatial. You and all .. conflate commutative -and- non-commutative standards when analyzing dimensions. You also ignore basic arithmetic definitions and pretend they hold no meaning, particularly when those definition standards arise in weakly discussed situations. Let me pose this simple everyday definition that is typically laxly understood/applied, to see what you think: Tenet JNR-01: every exponent is indicative of 'dimension(s)', not just positive integer exponents. James 13 July 2005 chris peck wrote: Hi James; I suspected that this part of my argument to Stephen would raise objections from other members of this board. 'Actually, this is not correct; but a presumption of experiential pre-bias.' It may be. Nevertheless, without the experience to hand at all, I maintain that the asymetry exists in the sense that my movement in spatial dimensions is second nature, movement in time - other than the apparantly inevitable next step forward - is theoretical at best. It is not something I can just do, I am in the 'now' in a stronger sense than I am 'here'. But, say time travel is possible, we have a futher asymetry in so far as the idea that time is a dimension in the same sense that x,y,z leads to paradoxes if we attempt to move around it. Spatial movement does not involve paradoxes. I think this is enough to establish an asymetry in nature rather than just experience. Regards Chris. From: James N Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com CC: Stephen Paul King [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 07:11:55 -0700 chris peck wrote: Hi Stephen; I suppose we can think of time as a dimension. However, there are provisos. Time is not like x, y, or z in so far as we have no ability to freely navigate the axis in any direction we choose. We are embedded in time and it moves onwards in a single direction without anyones consent. Furthermore, where it possible to move around in time all sorts of paradoxes would appear to ensue that just dont when I traverse the spatial dimensions. Id appeal to an asymmetry between time and space, it is a dimension of sorts, but not one that can conceptually swapped with a spatial dimension easily. I dont think the a priori requirements for space will be necessarily the same as those for time. Actually, this is not correct; but a presumption of experiential pre-bias. While it is true that we can calculate negative spatial values and not identify negative temporal values easily - or at all in some cases - let me describe motion in this alternative way for you: 1. All action/motion is never a single dimension but instead, a net-vector. (be it spatially evaluated or temporally or both). therefore, it is quite possible to say that the impression of time as a positive single vector is masking its composite dimensional structure which it is really made of. 2. Negative spatial distances are calculation illusions, usable only because we can visually identify a sequence reversal and label the suquences alternatively - even though - in a relativistic universe, ALL actions and traversals of 'distance' are and can only be done ... positively. Negative dimension values are conditional computational handwavings. And again, even spatial traversals are net-vectors. A body in true motion through space is ALWAYS in a positive net-vector; the same as presumptively ascribed only to time. Therefore, Time can and undoubtably does have, internal dimesional structuring; contrary to the conventional view of it not. James Rose ref: Understanding the Integral Universe (1972;1992;1995) _ Want to block unwanted pop-ups? Download the free MSN Toolbar now! http://toolbar.msn.co.uk/
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Esteemed Prof. Standish, Thank you for that correction. ;-) But you are missing the point that I am trying to make here! :_( - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Stephen Paul King [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com; Lee Corbin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2005 12:02 AM Subject: Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 09:54:55AM -0400, Stephen Paul King wrote: How familiar are you with the details of quantum mechanics? Did you happen to know that the notion of an observable in QM has a complex value and that a real value only obtains after the multiplication of an observable with its complex conjugate? This operation of conjugation must involve the selection of some basis.. This makes the problem of a pre-existing Real value time to be, at least, doubly difficult. Complex numbers have no natural ordering, as opposed to the Reals, which do, because in general, complex numbers do not commute with each other. Only the very special subset of observables can be said to commute and thus can be mapped to some notion of a dimension that one can have translational transforms as functions. [RS] Tosh! I'm sorry, but you are demonstrating enormous ignorance of QM with these statements. 1) Observables are Hermitian operators. This means that their eigenvalues (which are the observed outcomes) are real valued (not complex valued as you seem to think), and so ordering of observed values is _not_ the problem you think it is. [SPK] Please notice the words observed outcome! This is my point! I am not talking about after the fact of an observational event - which is the intended application of Hermiticity -, I am talking about observables prior to the specification of the observational context of the particular observables. There is a big difference between how properties are defined in QM before and after the specification of a context within which a measurement and/or observation is made. BTW, this the what the whole controversy reqarding the collapse of the wavefunction! Prior to the measurement even, the possible properties of an object of observation are given by a superposition. After the fact, one obtains a single Boolean representable set of properties. When we are talking about the notion of Time, we must take this distiction into account! [RS] 2) Complex numbers indeed do not have an ordering (being basically points on a plane), however they do commute. For any two complex numbers x and y, xy=yx. [SPK] Well, it is the point that complex numbers do not have an ordering that is my point. I forgot my complex number algebra. ;-) I will let Wikipedia make my point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition *** Quantum superposition is the application of the superposition principle to quantum mechanics. The superposition principle is addition of the amplitudes of waves from interference. In quantum mechanics it is the amplitudes of wavefunctions, or state vectors, that add. It occurs when an object simultaneously possesses two or more values for an observable quantity (e.g. the position or energy of a particle). More specifically, in quantum mechanics, any observable quantity corresponds to an eigenstate of a Hermitian linear operator. The linear combination of two or more eigenstates results in quantum superposition of two or more values of the quantity. If the quantity is measured, the projection postulate states that the state will be randomly collapsed onto one of the values in the superposition (with a probability proportional to the amplitude of that eigenstate in the linear combination). The question naturally arose as to why real (macroscopic, Newtonian) objects and events do not seem to display quantum mechanical features such as superposition. In 1935, Erwin Schrödinger devised a well-known thought experiment, now known as Schrödinger's cat, which highlighted the dissonance between quantum mechanics and Newtonian physics. In fact, quantum superposition does result in many directly observable effects, such as interference peaks from an electron wave in a double-slit experiment. If two observables correspond to non-commuting operators, they obey an uncertainty principle and a distinct state of one observable corresponds to a superposition of many states for the other observable. *** Kindest regards, Stephen
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Hi James; You unfortunatly are making the same fatal-flaw mistake that all conventional thinkers I hope i am a 'conventional thinker'. It gives me reason to think im onto something, that ive got something right. That seems to be how things become conventional. spatial. You and all .. conflate commutative -and- non-commutative standards when analyzing dimensions. Im not sure I do. 'Let me pose this simple everyday definition that is typically laxly understood/applied, to see what you think:' I can feel a dreadfully non everyday definition approaching : Tenet JNR-01: every exponent is indicative of 'dimension(s)', not just positive integer exponents. You should decide whether this is conventional (everyday) or not. Im fairly sure you are attacking a straw man. We can just say that 'now' races towards the future rather than the opposite without us exerting any effort, whilst 'here' doesnt really move at all. Especially for a rock. At least the a priori notions of each spatial dimension dont involve change of position, but our a priori notion of time at least involves a change of time. If time has no arrow one way or the other, if there is no succession of events, then time stops. I am left wondering whether you know what I mean at all when I say that we are embeded in time in a way we are not in space. Its more the point that there is a direction to time rather than whether we characterise the direction one way or the other, or whether it can be flipped, or whether backwards in time need be or neednt be represented by positive integers. One way or the other, time moves on. And if it doesnt, everything stops. regards; Chris. From: James N Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Subject: Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 06:56:28 -0700 Chris, You unfortunatly are making the same fatal-flaw mistake that all conventional thinkers -even the outside the box inventive ones- continue to make: you cannot identify, distinguish, specify or apply - complete non-Abelian, non-commutative aspects to considerations of 'dimensions' - whether temporal or spatial. You and all .. conflate commutative -and- non-commutative standards when analyzing dimensions. You also ignore basic arithmetic definitions and pretend they hold no meaning, particularly when those definition standards arise in weakly discussed situations. Let me pose this simple everyday definition that is typically laxly understood/applied, to see what you think: Tenet JNR-01: every exponent is indicative of 'dimension(s)', not just positive integer exponents. James 13 July 2005 chris peck wrote: Hi James; I suspected that this part of my argument to Stephen would raise objections from other members of this board. 'Actually, this is not correct; but a presumption of experiential pre-bias.' It may be. Nevertheless, without the experience to hand at all, I maintain that the asymetry exists in the sense that my movement in spatial dimensions is second nature, movement in time - other than the apparantly inevitable next step forward - is theoretical at best. It is not something I can just do, I am in the 'now' in a stronger sense than I am 'here'. But, say time travel is possible, we have a futher asymetry in so far as the idea that time is a dimension in the same sense that x,y,z leads to paradoxes if we attempt to move around it. Spatial movement does not involve paradoxes. I think this is enough to establish an asymetry in nature rather than just experience. Regards Chris. From: James N Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com CC: Stephen Paul King [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 07:11:55 -0700 chris peck wrote: Hi Stephen; I suppose we can think of time as a dimension. However, there are provisos. Time is not like x, y, or z in so far as we have no ability to freely navigate the axis in any direction we choose. We are embedded in time and it moves onwards in a single direction without anyones consent. Furthermore, where it possible to move around in time all sorts of paradoxes would appear to ensue that just dont when I traverse the spatial dimensions. Id appeal to an asymmetry between time and space, it is a dimension of sorts, but not one that can conceptually swapped with a spatial dimension easily. I dont think the a priori requirements for space will be necessarily the same as those for time. Actually, this is not correct; but a presumption of experiential pre-bias. While it is true that we can calculate negative spatial values and not identify negative temporal values easily - or at all in some cases - let me describe motion in this alternative way for you: 1. All action/motion is never a single dimension
RE: The Time Deniers
Hal Finney wrote: Jesse Mazer writes: Hal Finney wrote: I imagine that multiple universes could exist, a la Schmidhuber's ensemble or Tegmark's level 4 multiverse. Time does not play a special role in the descriptions of these universes. Doesn't Schmidhuber consider only universes that are the results of computations? Can't we consider any computation as having an intrinsic causal structure? How would it be possible to write an algorithm that describes a Life universe where there's no time, where the t-axis is replaced by a z-axis, for example? Well, you could just replace the letter t with the letter z, but of course that wouldn't change the underlying nature of things. You might well say that there was still a time axis, just that it had a different name. But the bigger question is whether the order in which a universe is computed must match the concept of time within that universe. True, it isn't always necessary to compute things in the same order--if you're simulating a system that obeys time-symmetric laws you can always reverse all the time-dependent quantities (like the momentum of each particle) in the final state and use that as an initial state for a new simulation, and the new simulation will behave like a backwards movie of the original simulation. But since I don't have a well-defined mathematical theory of what it means for two computations to have the same causal structure, I'm not sure whether the causal structure would actually be any different if you computed a universe in reverse order. When I think of causal structure, I'm not really presupposing any asymmetry between cause and effect, I'm just imagining a collection of events which are linked to each other in some way like in a graph, but the links need not have any built-in direction--if two events are linked, that doesn't mean one event is the cause and the other is the effect, so the pattern of links could still be the same even if you did compute things in reverse order. From what I've read about loop quantum gravity, it's a theory in which space and time emerge from a more primitive notion of linked events, but I'm pretty sure it's not a time-asymmetric theory. Further, in our own universe there appears to be quite a bit of ambiguity about time ordering, and many different computational strategies will work equally well. Relativity theory shows that events either have a timelike separation, in which case it is clear which one is in the past, or a spacelike separation, which makes it ambiguous which one is farther in the past. True, but the only way for two events to be causally linked in relativity is if there is a timelike separation between them, and in that case all reference frames will agree about the order of the events. It was suggested here a while back that a Life universe could be computed using an algorithm which ran around somewhat randomly and made localized changes to cells in order to make them match the Life rules. Eventually this would converge to a stable and consistent Life universe. Any observers living in that universe would have a perceived direction of time that was very different from the actual order in which it was computed. Another way to do this might just be to have a computer generate *all* possible sequences of cell-changes over some finite number of steps and using a finite-sized board, and then check each one to see if it is obeying the rules of Life at each step, and throw out all those that don't. Is it possible that the causal structure of a program checking every cell at every step of a valid Life sequence is the same as the causal structure of actually computing that sequence from its initial conditions? Or that even if they're different, one causal structure contains the other, like a graph that contains another one as a subset? Again, without a well-defined notion of the causal structure of a given computation it's hard to be sure. Jesse
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
chris peck wrote: Im fairly sure you are attacking a straw man. We can just say that 'now' races towards the future rather than the opposite without us exerting any effort, whilst 'here' doesnt really move at all. Especially for a rock. At least the a priori notions of each spatial dimension dont involve change of position, but our a priori notion of time at least involves a change of time. If time has no arrow one way or the other, if there is no succession of events, then time stops. I am left wondering whether you know what I mean at all when I say that we are embeded in time in a way we are not in space. Its more the point that there is a direction to time rather than whether we characterise the direction one way or the other, or whether it can be flipped, or whether backwards in time need be or neednt be represented by positive integers. One way or the other, time moves on. And if it doesnt, everything stops. But there's no need to understand this in terms of time moving, we can just understand it in terms of our brains having different memories and anticipations of the future at different points along our worldline. Relativity poses severe problems for the idea that there is actually a single present moment which is constantly moving towards the future in some universal, objective sense. In relativity, simultaneity is relative, meaning that two events which happen at the same time-coordinate in one reference frame will happen at different time-coordinates in another reference frame, and relativity says that no reference frame is physically preferred over any other. I suppose you could still imagine that one reference frame is metaphysically preferred and thus has the true definition of simultaneity, even though there is no experiment you can do to find out which reference frame this is, but this view seems rather inelegant. For more on relativity and why it tends to favor the block time view over the moving present view, see this article by Paul Davies: http://tinyurl.com/dlo3v Jesse
RE: The Time Deniers
True, it isn't always necessary to compute things in the same order--if you're simulating a system that obeys time-symmetric laws you can always reverse all the time-dependent quantities (like the momentum of each particle) in the final state and use that as an initial state for a new simulation, and the new simulation will behave like a backwards movie of the original simulation. One problem with this in practice is that it seems that the information needed to specify the final state is far greater than the information needed to specify the original state, at least with physics like ours. In our universe, you could take a snapshot at some time that recorded all the particle motions in a brain. Then you could evolve it forward and produce the successive subjective experiences. However, I don't think the snapshot has to be completely detailed. Some sloppiness is acceptable. The brain is robust and you could change the details of thermal motions very considerably and the brain would still work fine. If you took a snapshot at the end and evolved it backward it would also work, in theory, but in practice it would not work unless every detail of every motion was precise to an incredible degree. (This is ignoring issues of QM state reduction and such, I'm basically considering a Newtonian clockwork here.) It's like, it's easy to come up with motions to scramble an egg; but to come up with motions to unscramble one will require absolute precision in every respect. The result is that the information requirements for specifying a final-state based simulation that includes an arrow of time are exponentially greater than the information needed to create a plausible initial-state simulation. If we then add the concept of measure based inversely on the size of the information description, we find that almost all measure of such simulations comes from initial-state based ones rather than final-state based. But since I don't have a well-defined mathematical theory of what it means for two computations to have the same causal structure, I'm not sure whether the causal structure would actually be any different if you computed a universe in reverse order. When I think of causal structure, I'm not really presupposing any asymmetry between cause and effect, I'm just imagining a collection of events which are linked to each other in some way like in a graph, but the links need not have any built-in direction--if two events are linked, that doesn't mean one event is the cause and the other is the effect, so the pattern of links could still be the same even if you did compute things in reverse order. From what I've read about loop quantum gravity, it's a theory in which space and time emerge from a more primitive notion of linked events, but I'm pretty sure it's not a time-asymmetric theory. My feeling is that causality, like time, is in the eye of the beholder. It's not an inherent or fundamental property. Rather, it is a way that we can interpret events in some kinds of universes. Completely chaotic universes (where every moment is random and uncorrelated with the next) would not have causality in any meaningful sense. Likewise for static universes. In fact I would suggest that causality only exists in our universe in areas where there is an arrow of time; that is, in areas which are far from equlibrium and where entropy is unusually low. The problem in equilibrium regions is that you can always look at things two ways. Suppose particle A collides with B and changes its course so that B collides with C. We can express this as that A causes B to hit C. But all the physics works just as well in the reverse direction, in equilibrium, so we could just as easily say that C caused B to hit A. Scerir has also posted some interesting paradoxes along these lines relating to QM. Suppose we have a photon that passes through a polarizer oriented at 20 degrees from vertical, then through one oriented at 40 degrees, and makes it through both. At the end we would say its polarization was 40 degrees. But what was it between the two polarizers? Conventionally we would say that the first polarizer made its polarization become 20 degrees and the second polarizer then changed the polarization to 40 degrees. But actually you can just as easily argue that the photon polarization was 40 degrees between the two polarizers. That interpretation works just as well, a sort of retroactive causality. As with time, my guess is that if we restrict our attention to observers like us, of a type we can comprehend, then automatically we are going to pick out information systems that have a notion of time, an arrow of time, and hence a sense of causality. Not all systems have these properties, but some do, and all the ones that we would identify as observers fall into that category. Hal Finney
RE: The Time Deniers
Hal Finney wrote: True, it isn't always necessary to compute things in the same order--if you're simulating a system that obeys time-symmetric laws you can always reverse all the time-dependent quantities (like the momentum of each particle) in the final state and use that as an initial state for a new simulation, and the new simulation will behave like a backwards movie of the original simulation. One problem with this in practice is that it seems that the information needed to specify the final state is far greater than the information needed to specify the original state, at least with physics like ours. In our universe, you could take a snapshot at some time that recorded all the particle motions in a brain. Then you could evolve it forward and produce the successive subjective experiences. However, I don't think the snapshot has to be completely detailed. Some sloppiness is acceptable. The brain is robust and you could change the details of thermal motions very considerably and the brain would still work fine. If you took a snapshot at the end and evolved it backward it would also work, in theory, but in practice it would not work unless every detail of every motion was precise to an incredible degree. (This is ignoring issues of QM state reduction and such, I'm basically considering a Newtonian clockwork here.) It's like, it's easy to come up with motions to scramble an egg; but to come up with motions to unscramble one will require absolute precision in every respect. The result is that the information requirements for specifying a final-state based simulation that includes an arrow of time are exponentially greater than the information needed to create a plausible initial-state simulation. I've sometimes thought that if uploads are ever created, and can be run in a simulation with time-reversible fundamental laws, it would be very interesting to take a snapshot at the end of a simulation and do the trick of reversing everything, but with a tiny perturbation--the simulation might appear to behave like a reversed version of the original run for a little while, but then the butterfly effect would probably kick in and the upload's psychological arrow of time would *reverse* in the middle of the simulation. What would this feel like subjectively, from the upload's point of view? Obviously he wouldn't have a memory of experiencing everything backwards, but it still would be interesting to interview the upload about it afterwards. For example, what would happen if the reversal of the upload's psychological arrow of time happened at the same moment that the entropic arrow of time reversed in the simulated physical world around the upload, and at that moment pieces of a vase were rushing together to reassemble, but instead failed to meet up exactly and just broke apart again? The upload should have a memory of seeing the vase fall, but at the moment it landed it might appear to behave very strangely, assuming the upload didn't just perceive himself blacking out at that moment. If we then add the concept of measure based inversely on the size of the information description, we find that almost all measure of such simulations comes from initial-state based ones rather than final-state based. And perhaps something like this could help explain the low-entropy big bang, which is apparently the source of the arrow of time in our universe and yet doesn't have any agreed-upon explanation by physicists. It would certainly be interesting if even a complete theory of quantum gravity didn't explain it, so that the only remaining option would be either intelligent design or some sort of meta-physical explanation in terms of a multiverse with different types of universes having different measure. But since I don't have a well-defined mathematical theory of what it means for two computations to have the same causal structure, I'm not sure whether the causal structure would actually be any different if you computed a universe in reverse order. When I think of causal structure, I'm not really presupposing any asymmetry between cause and effect, I'm just imagining a collection of events which are linked to each other in some way like in a graph, but the links need not have any built-in direction--if two events are linked, that doesn't mean one event is the cause and the other is the effect, so the pattern of links could still be the same even if you did compute things in reverse order. From what I've read about loop quantum gravity, it's a theory in which space and time emerge from a more primitive notion of linked events, but I'm pretty sure it's not a time-asymmetric theory. My feeling is that causality, like time, is in the eye of the beholder. It's not an inherent or fundamental property. Rather, it is a way that we can interpret events in some kinds of universes. Completely chaotic universes (where every moment is random and uncorrelated
RE: The Time Deniers
Jesse Mazer writes: I've sometimes thought that if uploads are ever created, and can be run in a simulation with time-reversible fundamental laws, it would be very interesting to take a snapshot at the end of a simulation and do the trick of reversing everything, but with a tiny perturbation--the simulation might appear to behave like a reversed version of the original run for a little while, but then the butterfly effect would probably kick in and the upload's psychological arrow of time would *reverse* in the middle of the simulation. What would this feel like subjectively, from the upload's point of view? Obviously he wouldn't have a memory of experiencing everything backwards, but it still would be interesting to interview the upload about it afterwards. For example, what would happen if the reversal of the upload's psychological arrow of time happened at the same moment that the entropic arrow of time reversed in the simulated physical world around the upload, and at that moment pieces of a vase were rushing together to reassemble, but instead failed to meet up exactly and just broke apart again? The upload should have a memory of seeing the vase fall, but at the moment it landed it might appear to behave very strangely, assuming the upload didn't just perceive himself blacking out at that moment. That's a cool problem. I've given it some thought and here is what I came up with. The short answer is that as we are running backwards, due to the chaotic nature of the physics, the transition from an accurate backwards one to a locally disrupted one will be nearly instantaneous. The divergence from the original forwards run will grow exponentially, meaning that if you have set it so that it kicks in after say -5 seconds, then at -4. seconds everything would still look normal. Then, once you had divergence in a specific location, I think the effects would spread out at the speed of sound. We are relying on every atom moving the opposite of what it did before, and atoms generally move at the speed of sound, so as soon as one starts misbehaving it will kick its neighbors, which will kick their neighbors, and the disruption will spread at that speed. Once the disruption has occured then I think you are right that time will effectively start forward again, and probably take a different path than it did the first time through. This would imply then that subjectively there are two paths, the one we ran the first time, and the one which resulted from the alteration. They would subjectively diverge at the point where the butterfly effect kicked in during the reverse run. The transition would be subjectively instantaneous, with the whole brain flipping in a millisecond or less from backwards to forwards motion. From the measure perspective, I'd say that the first half that was shared has measure 1, the second half that got run twice (once forward, once backward) had measure 2, and the alternate second half would have measure 1. And perhaps something like this could help explain the low-entropy big bang, which is apparently the source of the arrow of time in our universe and yet doesn't have any agreed-upon explanation by physicists. It would certainly be interesting if even a complete theory of quantum gravity didn't explain it, so that the only remaining option would be either intelligent design or some sort of meta-physical explanation in terms of a multiverse with different types of universes having different measure. Right, that is one of the big selling points of the Tegmark and Schmidhuber concept, that the Big Bang apparently can be described in very low-information terms. Tegmark even has a paper arguing that it took zero information to describe it (but frankly I am getting pretty turned off on the zero information concept since several people here use it to describe completely different things, and if it really took zero information then there couldn't be more than one thing described, could it?). My feeling is that causality, like time, is in the eye of the beholder. It's not an inherent or fundamental property. Rather, it is a way that we can interpret events in some kinds of universes. Completely chaotic universes (where every moment is random and uncorrelated with the next) would not have causality in any meaningful sense. Likewise for static universes. But if such a chaotic universe is computable, then for those of us watching the computation from the outside, the read/write head of the Turing machine is still obeying regular laws, in terms of when it decides to flip a particular bit or change its internal pointer-state or move from one location on the bitstring to another...if it's possible to define a mathematical notion of causal structure for any particular algorithm, I would think it would be possible to apply it to *all* algorithms. But perhaps no such mathematical notion of causal structure will be
RE: The Time Deniers
Hal Finney writes Lee Corbin writes: Hal Finney writes Can we imagine a universe like ours, which follows exactly the same natural laws, but where time doesn't really exist (in some sense), where there is no actual causality? You yourself have already provided the key example in imagining a two dimensional CA where the second dimension can be taken as y instead of t. Okay, but perhaps I wasn't quite clear. I meant this to be a two dimensional CA that was completely self-contained, a universe of its own. It is not something that is embedded in our own universe or any larger structure. It is a self-contained mathematical/physical object with its own set of natural laws, just as we imagine our own universe to be. It's pretty hard to imagine how being embedded would change anything. The laws would still be there, no? (And by laws, of course, we mean patterns whose description has lower KC.) My point was that whether we label the two dimensions x and t or x and y shouldn't make any difference in the properties of that universe. It still has the same fundamental structure. Changing the names only changes how we describe it, not what it is. That seems clear. So I don't see this as an example of what I described above, a universe which matches another in its laws of physics but where one has causality and the other does not. That is, not unless someone would claim that it makes a difference whether the 2nd dimension is named y or t. Perhaps you could address the biggest stumbling block that perhaps I still have: continuity. I'll even go out on a limb and suggest that *continuity* is really what bothers a lot of people. A lot of us (e.g. Jesse Mazer) are quite okay with, say, a program that uses the rules of Life to give rise to a conscious entity. But we get really squeamish when someone talks about just using the static, instant descriptions--- the generations of Life as depicted on, say, 2D grids. Even if you have big a pile of such descriptions---trillions and trillions of them---we point out that these snapshots are only frozen instants, where the real meat was the continuous process (that so happened to use the Rules). Lee P.S. I thought UD was Universal Dovetailer, but now you mean Universal Description. We've got to get cautious using the acronyms, or be sure, as you did here, to say what you mean in a post. P.P.S. Stephen Paul King was one of those who kept bringing up the distinction between a *description* of something and the thing itself. With what I have written above, I see a connection now.
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
[SPK] Oh no, I am not a time denier. I am arguing that Change, no, Becoming, is a Fundamental aspect of Existence and not Static Being. ...Try this idea: We do NOT exist in a single space-time manifold. That structure is a collective illusion - but still a reality- that results from the coincidental synchrony of our individual observables. We -in ourselves, are not classical entities, we are quantum. It is our observations that are classical. This is the lesson that Everett discovered within QM and people have for the most part not yet understood. Tom: This makes it sound like there's no such thing as (ontological) existence. I, for one, believe in Being as fundamental in some sense, and yet not necessarily in the sense of a physicalist space-time manifold. Also, we can look at being as (roughly) the integral of change, and change as the derivative of being, without having to first call either of them more fundamental, and without calling time fundamental. Just different ways of looking at things from different perspectives to get slices of a picture of reality. Tom
RE: The Time Deniers
Lee Corbin writes: Perhaps you could address the biggest stumbling block that perhaps I still have: continuity. I'll even go out on a limb and suggest that *continuity* is really what bothers a lot of people. A lot of us (e.g. Jesse Mazer) are quite okay with, say, a program that uses the rules of Life to give rise to a conscious entity. But we get really squeamish when someone talks about just using the static, instant descriptions--- the generations of Life as depicted on, say, 2D grids. Even if you have big a pile of such descriptions---trillions and trillions of them---we point out that these snapshots are only frozen instants, where the real meat was the continuous process (that so happened to use the Rules). One point of my example was that if you think of the Life universe as existing in and of itself, as a Platonic entity, pure information, there is really no difference between these views. This thread talks about time deniers and I might be one, but from my perspective it seems that many people are time mystics. They see a special role for time that goes beyond its mere presence as part of the laws of physics of a universe. I imagine that multiple universes could exist, a la Schmidhuber's ensemble or Tegmark's level 4 multiverse. Time does not play a special role in the descriptions of these universes. Some universes will have properties that are similar to what we think of as the passage of time; others will have nothing that would be recognizably like time; and yet others will have some aspects that are similar to time passing but not quite the same. Does a pure Life universe have a time coordinate? In a way, it does. Or you can just as easily see it as a stack of grids. Is there really a difference, if the laws of physics are the same in both cases? Alternative sets of Life rules will cause every grid in that stack to be the same, or equivalently, will cause each successive instant to have the same state. Does that universe have time? Even in the case of Life, there are other ways to create the stack of grids (or equivalently, succession of states) than to start with some initial conditions and evolve forwards. You could start with some final conditions and work your way backwards. Or you could start in the middle and work outwards. Wolfram considers computational systems (in my view, simple universes) which get defined via successive approximations in much this way. Do such universes have time? There is no unambiguous answer. Tegmark in one of his papers considers universes with two or more time dimensions. Can you wrap your mind around that? Doesn't the potential existence of such universes suggest that the notion of process vs static-state is too simple? What would a 2D-time process be like, vs a 1D-time process like what we are used to? Could we imagine universes with fractal time dimensions, like the fractal space dimensions which are sometimes explored? These considerations lead me to the view that there is nothing special about time, that it is merely a useful way of looking at some universes. Probably the fraction of universes (or more generally, information objects) that have a notion of time that is very similar to our own is small. Now, certainly it seems that consciousnesses like ours, anything that we would recognize as a conscious entity, will involve a notion of time similar to what we use. We are bound up with the idea of time and so if we see a consciousness in a Life universe, whether we think of it as a stack of cells or as a succession of states, it will seem to that consciousness that time is passing. But this is largely a selection effect of our own anthropomorphic biases. We only see consciousnesses that perceive time passing because those are the only kinds of informational entities that we can think of as conscious. P.S. I thought UD was Universal Dovetailer, but now you mean Universal Description. We've got to get cautious using the acronyms, or be sure, as you did here, to say what you mean in a post. Actually it is Universal Distribution but I didn't want to write that out in detail every time I used it. Maybe I will write UDist in the future to help remind people that no doves were harmed in creating this concept. P.P.S. Stephen Paul King was one of those who kept bringing up the distinction between a *description* of something and the thing itself. With what I have written above, I see a connection now. For an informational object, a sufficiently precise description is equivalent to the object itself, in my view. And I am considering an ontology where everything is an informational object. Hal Finney
RE: The Time Deniers
Hal Finney wrote: I imagine that multiple universes could exist, a la Schmidhuber's ensemble or Tegmark's level 4 multiverse. Time does not play a special role in the descriptions of these universes. Doesn't Schmidhuber consider only universes that are the results of computations? Can't we consider any computation as having an intrinsic causal structure? How would it be possible to write an algorithm that describes a Life universe where there's no time, where the t-axis is replaced by a z-axis, for example? Tegmark in one of his papers considers universes with two or more time dimensions. If this universe is computable, it can be simulated by an algorithm that can run in a universe with only one time dimension. Perhaps the algorithm would go back and forth between simulating time increments in different directions, like how a regular computer can simulate a parallel computer. Jesse
RE: The Time Deniers
Jesse Mazer writes: Hal Finney wrote: I imagine that multiple universes could exist, a la Schmidhuber's ensemble or Tegmark's level 4 multiverse. Time does not play a special role in the descriptions of these universes. Doesn't Schmidhuber consider only universes that are the results of computations? Can't we consider any computation as having an intrinsic causal structure? How would it be possible to write an algorithm that describes a Life universe where there's no time, where the t-axis is replaced by a z-axis, for example? Well, you could just replace the letter t with the letter z, but of course that wouldn't change the underlying nature of things. You might well say that there was still a time axis, just that it had a different name. But the bigger question is whether the order in which a universe is computed must match the concept of time within that universe. It is true that for universes like ours, it seems difficult to compute them in any way other than starting at the past and working our way into the future. In that case, the order of computation is the same as the within-universe time axis. However it might be dangerous to generalize and to assume that this is always the case, or that one can go so far as to define the concept of time within a universe to be the order in which things were computed. It is not difficult to come up with universes that can be computed in a different order than the natural within-universe direction of time. Even our own universe appears to be time-symmetric at the micro-scale. The only reason we have an arrow of time is apparently because the universe was created in a special low-entropy state. A universe without such a special state at one end could be computed in either direction. Or we could start in the middle and compute forward and backward from that point. Or maybe we could even compute it sideways, taking a particular timelike line as the initial conditions. Further, in our own universe there appears to be quite a bit of ambiguity about time ordering, and many different computational strategies will work equally well. Relativity theory shows that events either have a timelike separation, in which case it is clear which one is in the past, or a spacelike separation, which makes it ambiguous which one is farther in the past. It was suggested here a while back that a Life universe could be computed using an algorithm which ran around somewhat randomly and made localized changes to cells in order to make them match the Life rules. Eventually this would converge to a stable and consistent Life universe. Any observers living in that universe would have a perceived direction of time that was very different from the actual order in which it was computed. However although this is possible, I think it is likely that any high-measure universe containing observers like us will pretty much have to be computed in the past-to-future direction of time. That seems to be the best way to specify a universe like ours with simple initial conditions, using a simple algorithm. So I imagine that in practice, for most universes that we are interested in, it will be correct to identify subjective (within-universe) time with computational ordering. But this is not true in general. Tegmark in one of his papers considers universes with two or more time dimensions. If this universe is computable, it can be simulated by an algorithm that can run in a universe with only one time dimension. Perhaps the algorithm would go back and forth between simulating time increments in different directions, like how a regular computer can simulate a parallel computer. Yes, but there is still a difference between two time dimensions and one, just as there is a difference between two spatial dimensions and one. An interesting question is whether there would be any algorithms possible in a universe with two dimensional time that would run fundamentally faster than in a universe with one dimensional time. I don't understand the concept well enough to address that. But if so, a being who evolved in such a universe might deny that one dimensional time observers could exist, that such a limited notion of time would be rich enough to support the computational complexity necessary for life and intelligence to exist. Hal Finney
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Dear Tom, I do not understand how you arrived at that conclusion! I am arguing that Existence - the Dasein of Kant - is independent of space-time; space-time is secondary. I would like to better undertand your idea being as (roughly) the integral of change, and change as the derivative of being. I don't have a mental picture of what this statement means. Kindest regards, Stephen - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 12:25 PM Subject: Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension [SPK] Oh no, I am not a time denier. I am arguing that Change, no, Becoming, is a Fundamental aspect of Existence and not Static Being. ...Try this idea: We do NOT exist in a single space-time manifold. That structure is a collective illusion - but still a reality- that results from the coincidental synchrony of our individual observables. We -in ourselves, are not classical entities, we are quantum. It is our observations that are classical. This is the lesson that Everett discovered within QM and people have for the most part not yet understood. Tom: This makes it sound like there's no such thing as (ontological) existence. I, for one, believe in Being as fundamental in some sense, and yet not necessarily in the sense of a physicalist space-time manifold. Also, we can look at being as (roughly) the integral of change, and change as the derivative of being, without having to first call either of them more fundamental, and without calling time fundamental. Just different ways of looking at things from different perspectives to get slices of a picture of reality. Tom
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
[SPK] Oh no, I am not a time denier. I am arguing that Change, no, Becoming, is a Fundamental aspect of Existence and not Static Being. ...Try this idea: We do NOT exist in a single space-time manifold. That structure is a collective illusion - but still a reality- that results from the coincidental synchrony of our individual observables. We -in ourselves, are not classical entities, we are quantum. It is our observations that are classical. This is the lesson that Everett discovered within QM and people have for the most part not yet understood. Tom: This makes it sound like there's no such thing as (ontological) existence. I, for one, believe in Being as fundamental in some sense, and yet not necessarily in the sense of a physicalist space-time manifold. Also, we can look at being as (roughly) the integral of change, and change as the derivative of being, without having to first call either of them more fundamental, and without calling time fundamental. Just different ways of looking at things from different perspectives to get slices of a picture of reality. Dear Tom, I do not understand how you arrived at that conclusion! I am arguing that Existence - the Dasein of Kant - is independent of space-time; space-time is secondary. Tom: OK. I was looking at your statement about change being fundamental, and not being. I would like to better undertand your idea being as (roughly) the integral of change, and change as the derivative of being. I don't have a mental picture of what this statement means. Kindest regards, Stephen Tom: By alluding to a mathematical analogy, I was just showing that change and being are two equally legitimate perspectives of reality. The state of something is an accumulation of all of the changes that it has gone through (given an initial condition), and change is just the difference between states. Tom
RE: The Time Deniers
Stathis writes I wasn't very clear in my last post. What I meant was this: (a) A conscious program written in C is compiled on a computer. The C instructions are converted into binary code, and when this code is run, the program is self-aware. (b) The same conscious program is written in some idiosyncratic programming language, created by a programmer who has since died. He has requested in his will that the program be compiled, then all copies of the compiler and all the programmer's notes be destroyed before the program is run. Once these instructions are carried out, the binary code is run, and the program is self-aware as before - although it is difficult or impossible for an outsider to work out what is going on. (c) A random string of binary code is run on a computer. There exists a programming language which, when a program is written in this language so that it is the same program as in (a) and (b), then compiled, the binary code so produced is the same as this random string. Is this nonsense? No, not to me. All that seems to be making perfect sense. Is (c) fundamentally different from (b)? If not, doesn't it mean that any random string implements any program? Well, this is obviously a very *special* random string! :-) But no, (c) is fundamentally the same as (b). But perhaps I can help make your point (though I'm not sure what your point is). It may be that there is some sequence of 1's and 0's that when run on a machine performs some operation (say it implements a conscious friend), but which is not the compiled output of *any* human readable code. Vernor Vinge in A Fire Upon the Deep mentioned some Beyond technology that didn't seem to be modular: it was just spaghetti from our viewpoint. This is of a kind---in my opinion---with the weird 322 King+Rook+Bishop vs. K+N+N chess ending which evidently isn't made up of any concepts or building blocks: all one has is a series of bewildering chess positions that *just by sheer chance* it seems lead to checkmate. (Normally in chess, any process that leads to checkmate does so for clear reasons. Not this. It's just a set of random looking arrangements of pieces that get closer and closer to checkmate.) Of course, taken literally, your last sentence is false: it is *not* (of course) true that any random string implements a program. We might not know what it says, but if the program is self-aware, then by definition *it* knows. Yes, I think so. Whether it's the result of a compilation, or it's just a raw machine code that is self-aware (and, say passes the Turing Test), then he seems just as good as you or me. Sorry, but where are you going with this? :-) Lee
RE: The Time Deniers
Jesse writes So again, is it enough to look at the natural laws of our universe in order to decide whether the consciousnesses within it are real? Or do we need more? Can we imagine a universe like ours, which follows exactly the same natural laws, but where time doesn't really exist (in some sense), where there is no actual causality? I have trouble with this idea, but I'd be interested to hear from those who think that such a distinction exists. For me, it's not that I think it's meaningful to imagine a universe just like ours but without causality, rather it's that I think causality is probably important to deciding whether a particular system in our universe counts as a valid instantiation of some observer-moment, and thus contributes to the measure of that observer-moment (which in turn affects the likelihood that I will experience that observer-moment in the future). But here you use the word system. Isn't that by definition a process (obeying, for example, in our universe the Schrödinger equation)? I wouldn't know, in other words, what kind of system would *not* be a valid instantiation of an observer-moment if it actually computed a sequence of states that emulated a person. I think if you run a simulation of an observer, and record the output and write it down in a book which you then make thousands of copies of, the static description in all the books most likely would not have any effect on the measure of that observer, since these descriptions lack the necessary causal structure. Yes, I'd agree. When you use the word static then I get the picture. A warehouse full of stacks of paper with symbols written on it for example. But it's not *doing* anything. I sort of vaguely imagine all of spacetime as an enormous graph showing the causal links between primitive events, with the number of instantiations basically being the number of spots you could find a particular sub-graph representing an observer-moment embedded in the entire graph; the graphs corresponding to the physical process that we label a book would not have the same structure as graphs corresponding to the physical process that we label as a simulation of a particular observer. Here I am not sure that I am following you. Let's say somewhere in spacetime we have a spot, as you say, where we could find a particular sub-graph representing an observer moment. But a book COULD NOT have the same kind of structure? (If the answer is yes, then I'm following you. Lee
Re: The Time Deniers
On Mon, Jul 11, 2005 at 03:48:48PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: (c) A random string of binary code is run on a computer. There exists a programming language which, when a program is written in this language so that it is the same program as in (a) and (b), then compiled, the binary code so produced is the same as this random string. Is this nonsense? Is (c) fundamentally different from (b)? If not, doesn't it mean that any random string implements any program? We might not know what it says, but if the program is self-aware, then by definition *it* knows. The space of all binary strings is vastly larger than the space of strings constituting a valid program, and the space of aware (AI) programs is again a tiny subset. It's a pretty sterile (and very rugged) fitness landscape. The probability of finding a nontrivial program by pure chance is about the same as a pebble in Gobi hopping through a fluke in Brownian noise. (More abstract machines can be more forgiving, in regards of what is well-formed). -- Eugen* Leitl a href=http://leitl.org;leitl/a __ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE signature.asc Description: Digital signature
RE: The Time Deniers
Stathis Papaioannou writes: (c) A random string of binary code is run on a computer. There exists a programming language which, when a program is written in this language so that it is the same program as in (a) and (b), then compiled, the binary code so produced is the same as this random string. I don't know what you mean by random in this context. If you mean a string selected at random from among all strings of a certain length, the chance that it will turn out to be the same program functionally is so low as to be not worth considering. But ignoring that, here is how I approach the more general problem of whether a given string creates or instantiates a given observer. I made a long posting on this a few weeks ago. In my opinion it follows simply from assuming the Universal Distribution (UD). In this model, all information objects are governed by this probability distribution, the UD. One way to think of it is to imagine all possible programs being run; then the fraction of programs which instantiate a given information object is that object's measure. So to solve the problem of whether your program instantiates an observer is a two step process. First write down a description of the information pattern that equals that observer. More specifically, write the description of the information pattern that defines that observer experiencing the particular moments of consciousness that you want to know if your program is instantiating. Doing this will require a much stronger and more detailed theory of conciousness than we now possess, but I don't think there is any inherent obstacle that will keep us from gaining this ability. The second step is to consider your program's output and see if it is reasonably similar to the information pattern you just defined. The simplest case is where the output is identical. Then you can say that the program does instantiate that consciousness. However it could be that the program basically creates the same pattern but it is represented somewhat differently. How can we consider all possible alternate ways of representing an information pattern and still let them count, without opening the door so wide that all patterns count? The solution follows rigorously from the definition of the UD. We append a second interpretation program to the first one, the one which ran the putative conscious program. This second program turns the output from the first one into the canonical form we used to define the conscious information pattern. The concatenation of the two programs then outputs the pattern in canonical form and we can recognize it. The key point now is that the contribution to the measure of the observer moments being simulated is, by the definition of the Universal Distribution, based on the size of the program which outputs the information pattern in question. And the size of that program will be the size of its two component parts: the first one, that you were wondering about, which may have generated a consciousness; and the second one, which took the output of the first one and turned it into the canonical form which matched the OM pattern in question. In other words, the contribution which this program makes to the measure of a given observer's experience will be based on the size of the program (smaller is better) and on the size of the interpretation program which turns the output of the first program into canonical form (again, smaller is better). Obviously a sufficiently large interpretation program can turn any output into what we want. The question is whether a small one can do the trick. That is what tells us that the pattern is really there and not something which we are forcing by our interpretation. Standard considerations of the UD imply that the exact nature of the canonical form used is immaterial, however it does matter how precisely you need to specify the information pattern that truly does represent a set of conscious observer moments. That second question is a matter of psychology and as we improve our understanding of consciousness we will have a better handle on it. Once we do, this approach will provide an in-principle technique to calculate how much contribution to measure any given program string makes to any given conscious experience. Most importantly, this follows entirely from the assumption of the Universal Distribution. No other assumptions are needed. It is a simple assumption yet it provides a very specific process and rule to answer this kind of question. Hal Finney
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Hi Stephen; I suppose we can think of time as a dimension. However, there are provisos. Time is not like x, y, or z in so far as we have no ability to freely navigate the axis in any direction we choose. We are embedded in time and it moves onwards in a single direction without anyones consent. Furthermore, where it possible to move around in time all sorts of paradoxes would appear to ensue that just dont when I traverse the spatial dimensions. Id appeal to an asymmetry between time and space, it is a dimension of sorts, but not one that can conceptually swapped with a spatial dimension easily. I dont think the a priori requirements for space will be necessarily the same as those for time. Therefore, whilst our prior notions of space might be fairly complex, it seems to me that our a priori notion of time is in fact very simple. It is just the notion of succession. That time exists if there is a successor event to this event. I can imagine a succession of events that are repetitions of one another, and whilst I can agree that duration would not be measurable, that time might not be noticed, our a priori notion of time is not contradicted despite that. 'What is a clock if not an means to measure change?' A clock changes in order to measure time. Change is the measure of time, but is not necessary for time to occur. Changes do not occur just because time passes. Change is just necessary for measurement. I agree that time carries with it the possibility of change, but that is not the same. It cannot be both necessary and just possible, and the notion of change being a possibility entails that there is no contradiction in the notion of time in which there is no change. As to how we extract notions of transitivity from series of events, I would imagine it similar to how we extract notions of causation from sets of constant conjunctions. 'Does a history include values that can be associated with either of McTaggart's A or B series?' There is a strong argument to suppose it can be. The B series seems to carry all the information needed to judge truth conditions of reflexive statements such as 'event E is past' (from the A Series). The statement is true so long as it is occurs after event E. A B Series can then at least take a part in our conception of a history. What is needed is a sense of 'now'. A change of time rather than a change in time, a succession of events. So temporal becoming has to be invoked somehow - but also, it shouldnt be identified with conscious experience, there is no requirement for transitivity 'within the frame' so to speak. The danger with associating temporal becoming with our personal experience of time is that it is this that appears to deny time. To conclude that our experience of time is somehow fundamental to time itself, is to deny time exists when there is no observation of it. Are you not open to the charge you are levelling at others? Are you not at least partially a time denier? I accept that in a sense we always imagine time from a temporal perspective, that we can not leap out of the temporal view so to speak, but whether that should lead to a conclusion that makes experience of time fundamental is not so clear. I prefer to think that temporal becoming is in some way an objective property of time. I think of it as conceived by Aristotle, as the now that stays the same, as 'what is now' changes. We experience time as we do with a future past and present, because of the way time in fact is. Where I think computational models might break down regards what process they invoke to run the B series in order to stamp each event with future, now and past, - what is their incarnation of 'now' - and whether the adoption of such a process involves a pernicious infinite regress. regards Chris. From: Stephen Paul King [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: chris peck [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: everything-list@eskimo.com Subject: Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 11:26:45 -0400 Dear Chris, Thank you for this post! Interleaving... - Original Message - From: chris peck [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 7:34 AM Subject: Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Hi Stephen; I have a couple of quesitions. [SPK] Emulations involve some notion of a process and such are temporal. The idea that a process, of any kind, can occur requires some measure of both transitivity and duration. The mere *existence* of a process only speaks to its potential for occurrence. Im not quite sure what you mean by this. Possibly you mean that to coherently describe time it isnt enough to have laid out in succession a series of moments, or events, described by real numbers or however. There must also be something running through the series in order for the concept of time to make any sense. If you like
RE: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Hi James; I suspected that this part of my argument to Stephen would raise objections from other members of this board. 'Actually, this is not correct; but a presumption of experiential pre-bias.' It may be. Nevertheless, without the experience to hand at all, I maintain that the asymetry exists in the sense that my movement in spatial dimensions is second nature, movement in time - other than the apparantly inevitable next step forward - is theoretical at best. It is not something I can just do, I am in the 'now' in a stronger sense than I am 'here'. But, say time travel is possible, we have a futher asymetry in so far as the idea that time is a dimension in the same sense that x,y,z leads to paradoxes if we attempt to move around it. Spatial movement does not involve paradoxes. I think this is enough to establish an asymetry in nature rather than just experience. Regards Chris. From: James N Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com CC: Stephen Paul King [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 07:11:55 -0700 chris peck wrote: Hi Stephen; I suppose we can think of time as a dimension. However, there are provisos. Time is not like x, y, or z in so far as we have no ability to freely navigate the axis in any direction we choose. We are embedded in time and it moves onwards in a single direction without anyones consent. Furthermore, where it possible to move around in time all sorts of paradoxes would appear to ensue that just dont when I traverse the spatial dimensions. Id appeal to an asymmetry between time and space, it is a dimension of sorts, but not one that can conceptually swapped with a spatial dimension easily. I dont think the a priori requirements for space will be necessarily the same as those for time. Actually, this is not correct; but a presumption of experiential pre-bias. While it is true that we can calculate negative spatial values and not identify negative temporal values easily - or at all in some cases - let me describe motion in this alternative way for you: 1. All action/motion is never a single dimension but instead, a net-vector. (be it spatially evaluated or temporally or both). therefore, it is quite possible to say that the impression of time as a positive single vector is masking its composite dimensional structure which it is really made of. 2. Negative spatial distances are calculation illusions, usable only because we can visually identify a sequence reversal and label the suquences alternatively - even though - in a relativistic universe, ALL actions and traversals of 'distance' are and can only be done ... positively. Negative dimension values are conditional computational handwavings. And again, even spatial traversals are net-vectors. A body in true motion through space is ALWAYS in a positive net-vector; the same as presumptively ascribed only to time. Therefore, Time can and undoubtably does have, internal dimesional structuring; contrary to the conventional view of it not. James Rose ref: Understanding the Integral Universe (1972;1992;1995) _ Want to block unwanted pop-ups? Download the free MSN Toolbar now! http://toolbar.msn.co.uk/
RE: The Time Deniers
Again travel has forced me to take an absence from this list for a while, but I think I will be home for several weeks so hopefully I will be able to catch up at last. One question I would ask with regard to the role of time is, is there something about time (and perhaps causality) that goes over and above the equations or natural laws that control and define a given universe? Let us imagine a Cellular Automaton based universe; for simplicity, let it be a 1-dimensional CA such as those studied in detail in Wolfram's book. We have an x dimension and a t dimension, and some rules which are the natural laws of that universe. A sample rule might be s[x,t+1] = s[x,t] XOR (s[x-1,t] OR s[x+1],t]). This means that the state at position x and time t+1 is the exclusive-or of the state at the previous time (s[x,t]) and the OR of the left and right neighbor states. In other words, a cell reverses its state if either of its neighbors is on. Wolfram investigates all 256 possible rules which determine a cell's next state from the previous state of the cell and its two neighbors. Some lead to surprisingly complex patterns and it is conceivable that such universes might even be complex enough to allow life and consciousness to evolve. So we have a notion of time, t, and space, x. The question is this. If we don't *call* it time, does that change things? Suppose we have a universe with 2 spatial dimensions, x and y. But it is governed by the same rule: s[x,y+1] = s[x,y] XOR (s[x-1,y] OR s[x+1],y]). Here I have replaced t in the rule above by y. Does this make a difference? I think we will agree that it does not. Changing the letter t to the letter y does not change the fundamental nature of this universe. It only changes how we describe it. Then we can ask, is this rather abstract description of the universe, in terms of its natural laws, enough for us to know whether the consciousnesses that exist in it are really conscious? Or do we need to know more? Do we need to know details about how the universe was created (whatever that means!)? Do we need to know if there is a flow of causality in this universe? My answer is that the natural laws ought to be enough. If we can find a reasonable interpretation (defined rigorously as a mapping whose information content is significantly smaller than the pattern itself) of a pattern in the universe as something that we would consider a conscious observer in our own universe, then we would be right to say that this CA universe has consciousness. (More precisely, that this CA universe contributes measure to these instances and kinds of conscious observers.) I don't think it makes sense to demand more information than the natural laws (like, what kind of universal-computer is running to interpret these laws, what algorithm it uses, how sequential is it, is it allowed to backtrack and change things, etc.). The laws themselves define the universe. The two are, in a sense, equivalent. That is all the information there is. The laws should be, in fact they must be, enough to answer the question about whether the consciousness which appears in such a universe is real. That's how it appears to me. In our own universe, we too have natural laws that relate to space and time. One such law is from Newton: d2x/dt2 = Force/Mass (i.e. F=ma). Relativity and QM have their own laws that refer to x, y, z, and t. Generally, t is treated differently than the other coordinates, which are all treated the same. But obviously we could substitute some other letter, say q, for t and it would not make a difference. A universe with quime instead of time would be the same. So again, is it enough to look at the natural laws of our universe in order to decide whether the consciousnesses within it are real? Or do we need more? Can we imagine a universe like ours, which follows exactly the same natural laws, but where time doesn't really exist (in some sense), where there is no actual causality? I have trouble with this idea, but I'd be interested to hear from those who think that such a distinction exists. Hal Finney
RE: The Time Deniers
Hal Finney writes Can we imagine a universe like ours, which follows exactly the same natural laws, but where time doesn't really exist (in some sense), where there is no actual causality? You yourself have already provided the key example in imagining a two dimensional CA where the second dimension can be taken as y instead of t. If we can find a reasonable interpretation... of a pattern in the [this CA] universe as something that we would consider a conscious observer in our own universe, then we would be right to say that this CA universe has consciousness. I would be VERY HAPPY to abandon my belief that somehow time is special. It's very annoying to suspect myself of simply having a failure of imagination, in that I could not---as Einstein perhaps did---see our 4-D block universe as just any old 4-D continuum. But I encounter a runaway reductio that smashes up my attempt to *believe*. Okay, so suppose we have a book one trillion times as large as Wolfram's (or as big as we need to have), and we cut out all the pages and line them up so that we have a two dimensional layout that is recognizably a conscious entity. This now, as you know, no longer exhibits any *time* at all; it is a succession of frozen states, that is, each horizontal line of the CA is, as you describe, connected to the next only by..., only by what? Well, it seems that it is *we* who spot the connection. We guess and then accept that there is a rule that associates each horizontal line with the next one. Not so simple as the rule you give (i.e., s[x,t+1] = s[x,t] XOR (s[x-1,t] OR s[x+1],t]), of course, but nonetheless entirely objective after we see it. We can call it time---or not---, just as you also point out. (I will later claim that what is missing is the underlying continuous machinery, but to do so right now would be to miss the point of your argument.) So we have this sequence of horizontal lines which are connected by a rule. The input to the rule is line N and the output is line N+1. Indeed, I am tortured by the resemblance to quantum states: we seem in our own comfy universe to have a succession of states connected only by the Schrödinger equation. One interesting point about this two dimensional consciousness is that it's not clear (to me) whether it needs to persist in our time. That is, would it make any difference if we destroy this large two dimensional map? On the one hand, since it seems to be independent of time, the answer would be no, but on the other, what if Hal Finney and Wei and whoever, is right about UDs and measure, and destruction of the 2-D layout makes it harder to find when all the OMs are being counted up by Heaven? I don't know. But anyway, for me, the horrid reductio always kicks in at this point: what should it matter if these 1-D lines composing the layout are scattered in space? What does it matter if they're chopped up? Is it really only the case that they're harder to find? That they're less manifest in Everything? It's too hard to believe. Do we not need a *continuous* parameter? Are we not back with Zeno wondering how the arrow can move if it's just in a succession of instants? It seems to me that Zeno would have been right for any *finite* number of locations (or instants), and there would have been no such thing as true motion. Lee
RE: The Time Deniers
Hal Finney wrote: So again, is it enough to look at the natural laws of our universe in order to decide whether the consciousnesses within it are real? Or do we need more? Can we imagine a universe like ours, which follows exactly the same natural laws, but where time doesn't really exist (in some sense), where there is no actual causality? I have trouble with this idea, but I'd be interested to hear from those who think that such a distinction exists. For me, it's not that I think it's meaningful to imagine a universe just like ours but without causality, rather it's that I think causality is probably important to deciding whether a particular system in our universe counts as a valid instantiation of some observer-moment, and thus contributes to the measure of that observer-moment (which in turn affects the likelihood that I will experience that observer-moment in the future). I think if you run a simulation of an observer, and record the output and write it down in a book which you then make thousands of copies of, the static description in all the books most likely would not have any effect on the measure of that observer, since these descriptions lack the necessary causal structure. I sort of vaguely imagine all of spacetime as an enormous graph showing the causal links between primitive events, with the number of instantiations basically being the number of spots you could find a particular sub-graph representing an observer-moment embedded in the entire graph; the graphs corresponding to the physical process that we label a book would not have the same structure as graphs corresponding to the physical process that we label as a simulation of a particular observer. Of course, as I've discussed with you earlier, I'd also speculate that the appearance of an objective physical universe (the graph representing all of spacetime) somehow emerges from a more basic theory that assigns both absolute and conditional measures to every possible observer-moment (each represented in my visual picture by a sub-graph). Jesse
RE: The Time Deniers
I wasn't very clear in my last post. What I meant was this: (a) A conscious program written in C is compiled on a computer. The C instructions are converted into binary code, and when this code is run, the program is self-aware. (b) The same conscious program is written in some idiosyncratic programming language, created by a programmer who has since died. He has requested in his will that the program be compiled, then all copies of the compiler and all the programmer's notes be destroyed before the program is run. Once these instructions are carried out, the binary code is run, and the program is self-aware as before - although it is difficult or impossible for an outsider to work out what is going on. (c) A random string of binary code is run on a computer. There exists a programming language which, when a program is written in this language so that it is the same program as in (a) and (b), then compiled, the binary code so produced is the same as this random string. Is this nonsense? Is (c) fundamentally different from (b)? If not, doesn't it mean that any random string implements any program? We might not know what it says, but if the program is self-aware, then by definition *it* knows. --Stathis Papaioannou From: Lee Corbin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Subject: RE: The Time Deniers Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 15:42:49 -0700 Stathis writes Lee Corbin writes: But it is *precisely* that I cannot imagine how this stack of Life gels could possibly be thinking or be conscious that forces me to admit that something like time must play a role. Here is why: let's suppose that your stack of Life boards does represent each generation of Conway's Life as it emulates a person If a stack of gels like this amounts to the conscious experience of an entity, then it certainly wouldn't hurt to move them farther apart... Next, we alter the orientations of the gels... So, for me, since it is absurd to think that either vibrating bits of matter (an example Hal Finney quotes) or random patches of dust (Greg Egan's theory of Dust) can actually give runtime to entities, then I have to draw the line somewhere. Where I have always chosen is this: if states, no matter now represented, are not causally connected with each other, consciousness does not obtain. If you remember Egan's dust theory in Permutation City, you probably also remember that he did the same manipulations of a computation running in time as you suggest doing with the Life board stacks in space. Do you not think a computation would work if chopped up in this way? If you are speaking of the earlier part of the Greg Egan novel (which I claim to entirely understand) then no, he did not isolate a person's experiences down to *instants*. He would run a minute's worth now, a minute's worth then, and mix them up in order. But! The only causal discontinuities were *between* the successive sessions (each session at least a minute long---but I'd be happy with a millisecond long). The idea that any computation can be implemented by any random process, given an appropriate programming language (which might be a giant lookup table, mapping [anything] - [line of code]) is generally taken as being self-evidently absurd. Not sure I understand. Since you are talking about a *process*, then for my money we're already half-way there! (I.e., the Time Deniers have not struck.) Suppose that we have a trillion by trillion Life Board and the program randomly assigns pixels for each generation. Then, yes, I guess I agree with you: we have achieved nothing: the random states are admittedly connected by causal processes (your machine is an ordinary causal process operating in *time*), but nothing intelligent is being implemented. It's not even implementing a wild rain-storm. (Of course, the Time Deniers, as I understand them, would be perfectly happy to let this machine run for 10^10^200 years, and then identify (pick out) a sequence of apparently related states, in fact, a sequence that seemed to be you or me having a conscious experience. They'd be quite happy (many of them at least) to say that once again Stathis or Lee had been implemented in the universe and had had some conscious experience (i.e. OMs). The argument goes that that the information content of the programming language must contain all the information the random system is supposed to be producing, so this system is actually superfluous. This means we have won no computational benefit by setting up this odd machine. I'm following so far. However, the programming language is only there so that the machine can interact with the environment. If there is no programming language and no I/O, the machine can be a complete solipsist. You've lost me, sorry. Could you explain what you mean and where you are going here? This might occur also if some future archaeologist finds
RE: The Time Deniers
Jesse Mazer wrote: You might say that in the last example the states were causally connected, while in the first they were not. But why should that make any difference, especially to a solipsist? If one believes in psychophysical laws (to use Chalmers' term) relating 3rd-person patterns of causality to 1st-person qualia, then perhaps non-causally-connected descriptions of an algorithm would not increase the measure of the corresponding 1st-person experiences (and if you believe in a single universe as opposed to a multiverse where every causal pattern is instantiated somewhere, then certain possible 1st-person qualia might not be experienced at all if the corresponding causal pattern wasn't instantiated somewhere in spacetime). There are two types of causal relationships here: that between physical states and mental states, and that between different physical states. I was suggesting that the former relationship should still hold regardless of how the physical states come about. Incidentally, David Chalmers has written a paper discussing these very ideas, available on the net: http://cogprints.org/226/00/199708001.html --Stathis Papaioannou _ Sell your car for $9 on carpoint.com.au http://www.carpoint.com.au/sellyourcar
Re: The Time Deniers
Dear Bruno, The duality that I am considering is that proposed by Vaughan Pratt. It is NOT a substance dualism. It is more a process dualism. Please see the ratmech paper for an explanaition. It is found here: http://boole.stanford.edu/pub/ratmech.pdf http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/pratt95rational.html Kindest regards, Stephen - Original Message - From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything-List List everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2005 12:44 PM Subject: Rép : The Time Deniers The same can be said with Stephen dualism. If it is not a dualism of substance, then a case in favor of a dualism in comp can be made, and this despite the immaterialist background.
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Hi Stephen; I have a couple of quesitions. Emulations involve some notion of a process and such are temporal. The idea that a process, of any kind, can occur requires some measure of both transitivity and duration. The mere *existence* of a process only speaks to its potential for occurrence. Im not quite sure what you mean by this. Possibly you mean that to coherently describe time it isnt enough to have laid out in succession a series of moments, or events, described by real numbers or however. There must also be something running through the series in order for the concept of time to make any sense. If you like, there must be a 'now' - a temporal position of sorts - in which raw sensory experience - audio and vision perhaps - comes together synaesthetically into a coherent perspective and is then consigned to memory. Put another way, there are many strips of film one could thread through a projector but until one does so the well ordered sequence of frames remains static, time is not realised in any coherent way in a film until it is shown. I think that if this is what you mean (or close) i'ld like to add my support to you're objection. However, you might mean that there must be some sense of duration and transitivity within each individual moment. If you like, a series of events (frames, real numbers) which individually have no duration (or sense of transition) can not therefore collectively be considered to obtain such properties. I disagree with that. duration and transitivity can obtain accross a span of events, and to be strict I dont undestand the requirement for change at all. 'Time, from what I have studied so far, involves two distinct notions: a measure of change and an order of succession.' I can see that time involves an 'order of succession'. I dont see that time is a 'measure of change', if by that you mean that time depends on change to exist. I can concieve an infinate universe consisting of a solitary glove over time, a universe in which there are moments but no change. Awareness of time might not be possible in the absense of change, but that is not the same thing as time not existing. Moreover, it seems odd to insist - if you are insisting - that events (frames, real numbers) change rather than the just the substances which characterise the event itself. In boiling water, the water (substance) changes temperature, the event at which all the water has passed temperature 'd' requires no inherent 'becoming' to make sense temporally, it just needs to 'identify' the state of the water at that time, doesnt it? regards. Chris. From: Stephen Paul King [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything-List everything-list@eskimo.com Subject: Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 13:37:05 -0400 Hi Pete, - Original Message - From: Pete Carlton [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything-List everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 1:12 PM Subject: Re: The Time Deniers On Jul 6, 2005, at 9:08 AM, Stephen Paul King wrote: There is a huge difference in kind between existing and emulating. Existing is atemporal by definition since existence can not depend on any other property. Emulations involve some notion of a process and such are temporal. The idea that a process, of any kind, can occur requires some measure of both transitivity and duration. The mere *existence* of a process only speaks to its potential for occurrence. Kindest regards, Stephen But isn't the use of time as the dimension along which things vary (or are 'processed') a somewhat arbitrary choice? [SPK] Please notice that the identification of time with a dimension involves the identification with each moment in time with some positive Real number. Thus the entire set of moments is identified with R^+. The problem with this identification is that the notion of a well ordering, an a priori aspect of the Real numbers, is not necessarily a priori for moments of time. AFAIK, the paradoxical nature of McTaggart's A and B series follows from a neglect of this issue. Time, from what I have studied so far, involves two distinct notions: a measure of change and an order of succession. The idea that it is merely a dimension and related to the dimensions of space, as considered and promulgated by Minkowski, requires the assumption of classical physics and strict local realism. We know (I would hope!) that the former assumption is flawed, but the second is still being debated. [PC] I've wrote to the list before about a Game of Life simulation in which, instead of running the states of the automaton forward in time, erasing the previous state with the subsequent state, you simply place the subsequent state on top of the previous state (i.e., you have black disks for live cells, and white disks for dead cells, and you pile them up as you go..). If the automaton includes an SAS, would you
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Dear Chris, Thank you for this post! Interleaving... - Original Message - From: chris peck [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 7:34 AM Subject: Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension Hi Stephen; I have a couple of quesitions. [SPK] Emulations involve some notion of a process and such are temporal. The idea that a process, of any kind, can occur requires some measure of both transitivity and duration. The mere *existence* of a process only speaks to its potential for occurrence. Im not quite sure what you mean by this. Possibly you mean that to coherently describe time it isnt enough to have laid out in succession a series of moments, or events, described by real numbers or however. There must also be something running through the series in order for the concept of time to make any sense. If you like, there must be a 'now' - a temporal position of sorts - in which raw sensory experience - audio and vision perhaps - comes together synaesthetically into a coherent perspective and is then consigned to memory. Put another way, there are many strips of film one could thread through a projector but until one does so the well ordered sequence of frames remains static, time is not realised in any coherent way in a film until it is shown. I think that if this is what you mean (or close) i'ld like to add my support to you're objection. [SPK] What you seem to be considering is the distiction between 1st and 3rd person aspects! The ...laid out in succession a series of moments, or events, described by real numbers or however is the 3rd person: The view from the outside of time. The 1st person aspect is: running through the series in order for the concept of time to make any sense. This is the view from the inside in the sense that at any given present moment - 'now'- an observer (that has the capasity of making a report) will find itself within an experience. What ever the means are considered to generate that experience, what does not change here is that the any observer will have a 1st person experience of something and within that experience there will be some means of distinguishing the overall content of that experience and some sense of somehow being seperate from it. It is this seperateness that, I believe, connect the 1st and 3rd person aspects and this is where the inside and outside framing obtains. One way of thinking of this is to consider a video game that is set up so that on can switch between seeing the computer generated scene, as one moves around, from the point of view of where the eyes are to the point of view of a camera floating overhead. What remained the same in the switching? [CP] However, you might mean that there must be some sense of duration and transitivity within each individual moment. If you like, a series of events (frames, real numbers) which individually have no duration (or sense of transition) can not therefore collectively be considered to obtain such properties. I disagree with that. duration and transitivity can obtain accross a span of events, and to be strict I dont undestand the requirement for change at all. [SPK] No, if we are taking the notion of a moment to an infinitesimal slice. It seems that in our eagerness to mathematize everything in sight, we neglect the consequences that obtain. Numbers by themselves do not naturally code for the operations on those numbers. We can arbitrarily assign some number to +, -, etc. as we find in Goodel numbering, but this is not natural, it must be assigned by hand! Thus we find ourselves in the predicament of having to account for where the notions of duration and transitivity come from. As to the requirement of change, I am claiming that we must have some prior notion of change, at least the potential to change, in order to have a coherent notion of transitioning from one frame, number, Observer Moment, Time capsule, or whatever. Even is we are going to use numbers, the simplest of the ideas here, we have to have some change between the numbers themselves as some quantity to relations between the numbers. The mere existence of quantities is not sufficient to include both the numbers themselves and the relationships between them (the latter including the operations on the numbers). Figuratively, somewhere somehow, there must be included some form of change. [SPK] 'Time, from what I have studied so far, involves two distinct notions: a measure of change and an order of succession.' [CP] I can see that time involves an 'order of succession'. I dont see that time is a 'measure of change', if by that you mean that time depends on change to exist. I can concieve an infinate universe consisting of a solitary glove over time, a universe in which there are moments but no change. Awareness of time might not be possible in the absense of change
RE: The Time Deniers
Lee Corbin writes: But it is *precisely* that I cannot imagine how this stack of Life gels could possibly be thinking or be conscious that forces me to admit that something like time must play a role. Here is why: let's suppose that your stack of Life boards does represent each generation of Conway's Life as it emulates a person. (That Conway's Life can compute anything was discovered more than 25 years ago; one may think of it as just a computer program, but with an especially appealing visual format in which each state is perfectly apparent.) If a stack of gels like this amounts to the conscious experience of an entity, then it certainly wouldn't hurt to move them farther apart. So, whereas you may be visualizing them less than an inch apart, we may move them without affecting anything to lightyears apart. Next, we alter the orientations of the gels randomly. Finally, we see that no particular gel needs to be physically continuous with itself---cutting them in half and dispersing them among the galaxies changes nothing. In fact, just what kind of changes could the stack suffer and *not* be conscious? (If one buys into Wei Dai's or other descriptions of how Universal Dovetailers or other devices (timeless or not) implement actual universes, then it can be argued that separating the gels like this cuts down on the measure of the OMs they're emulating. It's very much as though the effort required to located the scattered gels (or scattered atoms making up the gels) contributes to them being less manifest in some way. But I didn't think that you were going there.) So, for me, since it is absurd to think that either vibrating bits of matter (an example Hal Finney quotes) or random patches of dust (Greg Egan's theory of Dust) can actually give runtime to entities, then I have to draw the line somewhere. Where I have always chosen is this: if states, no matter now represented, are not causally connected with each other, consciousness does not obtain. If you remember Egan's dust theory in Permutation City, you probably also remember that he did the same manipulations of a computation running in time as you suggest doing with the Life board stacks in space. Do you not think a computation would work if chopped up in this way? The idea that any computation can be implemented by any random process, given an appropriate programming language (which might be a giant lookup table, mapping [anything] - [line of code]) is generally taken as being self-evidently absurd. The argument goes that that the information content of the programming language must contain all the information the random system is supposed to be producing, so this system is actually superfluous. This means we have won no computational benefit by setting up this odd machine. However, the programming language is only there so that the machine can interact with the environment. If there is no programming language and no I/O, the machine can be a complete solipsist. This might occur also if some future archaeologist finds an ancient computer running an AI, but there is no manual, no terminal, no keyboard, and nobody knows how it is programmed any more. If the archaeologist could figure out how to power up this computer, wouldn't the AI be implemented as per usual? You might say that in the last example the states were causally connected, while in the first they were not. But why should that make any difference, especially to a solipsist? --Stathis Papaioannou _ Sell your car for $9 on carpoint.com.au http://www.carpoint.com.au/sellyourcar
Re: The Time Deniers
Hi John: I will be unable to reply for several weeks. Hal Ruhl At 06:16 PM 7/7/2005, you wrote: Dear Hal, let me know if my (naive) worldview on Stephen's question is compatible with what you wrote (below): (to1: I don't know what to do with all possible because it is far beyond any idea we may have. Unless we restrict the 'all' to whatever we can think/know of). to2: In the inherent and incessant DYNAMISM (as you wrote random? and I still do assign random to our ignorance to find order in cases called 'random') - - to resolve the inherent incompleteness (ie. relax the stress, as I like to word it): any BEING must represent a snapshot of an inevitable and transitional BECOMING - from and into. That is in my 'wholeness' worldview. Totally interconnected, interinfluencing, interresponsive dynamism. to 3: Boundaries are constituting the 'models' of 'Somethings', restricting the observer (which I identify as ANYTHING/EVERYTHING that accepts information) from viewing the totality. I call such diversion from the wholeness a reductionism: reducing the observation into a boundary-enclosed model view. So in such case a BEING is acceptable as partial to the model. I think this agrees with your 'states' being above-model entities, as you said: passing through the boundaries. to 4: I don't 'speculate' into reductionist detail-viewings (I have trouble enough with the wholistic formulations and once I slip into the cop-pout laxness of reductionist thinking, I lose grounds). However the width of boundaries you mention comes handy in the current problem I have on my agenda: How come that in the wholistic ie. unlimitedly interconnected world certain items are more connected than others - sort of a natural basis for model-formation? George Kampis lately called such differentiation (in evolution-thinking) a depth of the connection. I tried an ideational closeness but this is too primitive a metaphor. It emerged from my Karl Jaspers F. paper (2004) of Networks of Networks where the infinitely outbranching unlimited network systems still form networks and not a boundariless free floating 'grits'. Closeness came in from a visualization of interconnected networks, through how many can one get to a distnat item, which itself of course is also a network on its own. --Ideas appreciated. -- (Forgive me to burden you with my ongoing topic of so far unsolved speculations). John Mikes - Original Message - From: Hal Ruhl [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 3:31 PM Subject: Re: The Time Deniers Hi Stephen: At 03:03 PM 7/7/2005, you wrote: Dear Hal, Which is primitive in your thinking: Being or Becoming? Stephen Let me try it this way: 1) All possible states preexist [Existence]. 2) The system has a random dynamic [the Nothing is incomplete in the All/Nothing system and must resolve the incompleteness - this repeats endlessly] that passes states from the outside to the inside of an evolving Something [There are many [infinite] simultaneously evolving Somethings - due to the repeats] [Becoming]. 3) The boundaries of the Somethings bestow instantations of reality to states as they pass through the boundary [Being]. 4) The width of the boundary determines the pulse width of Being over the dimension of closely coupled states [continuity etc.] Hal Ruhl -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.323 / Virus Database: 267.8.10/43 - Release Date: 07/06/05
Re: The Time Deniers
Dear Hal, Please forgive my delay in replying. - Original Message - From: Hal Ruhl [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 3:31 PM Subject: Re: The Time Deniers Hi Stephen: At 03:03 PM 7/7/2005, you wrote: Dear Hal, Which is primitive in your thinking: Being or Becoming? Stephen Let me try it this way: 1) All possible states preexist [Existence]. [SPK] I state this in a more all encompasing way: Existence (Dasien) Exists. 2) The system has a random dynamic [the Nothing is incomplete in the All/Nothing system and must resolve the incompleteness - this repeats endlessly] that passes states from the outside to the inside of an evolving Something [There are many [infinite] simultaneously evolving Somethings - due to the repeats] [Becoming]. [SPK] OK, then it would seem that you take Becoming as fundamental, subordinate only to Existence, to give rise to dynamic of the system. Being then is the case where the dynamic/evolution has the form of a fixed point: x = f(x). 3) The boundaries of the Somethings bestow instantations of reality to states as they pass through the boundary [Being]. [SPK] Here you are identifying the boundaries as the Being aspect. Could this boundary notion be the complement of the fixed point aspect? If we look at the topological requirements for the existence of a fixed point in some collection of points/states/phases/whatevers, we find that a boundary is required. Thus, tentatively, my proposal passes muster. What do you think? 4) The width of the boundary determines the pulse width of Being over the dimension of closely coupled states [continuity etc.] [SPK] I have a problem with the idea that a boundary can have a width. How can that which differentiates the inside of a collection/set/class/category from its complementary outside have a width, unless we are assuming some kind of fuzzy set? I am not dismissing the idea out of hand, but I would appreciate some elaboration of this idea. Kindest regards, Stephen
RE: The Time Deniers
Stathis writes Lee Corbin writes: But it is *precisely* that I cannot imagine how this stack of Life gels could possibly be thinking or be conscious that forces me to admit that something like time must play a role. Here is why: let's suppose that your stack of Life boards does represent each generation of Conway's Life as it emulates a person If a stack of gels like this amounts to the conscious experience of an entity, then it certainly wouldn't hurt to move them farther apart... Next, we alter the orientations of the gels... So, for me, since it is absurd to think that either vibrating bits of matter (an example Hal Finney quotes) or random patches of dust (Greg Egan's theory of Dust) can actually give runtime to entities, then I have to draw the line somewhere. Where I have always chosen is this: if states, no matter now represented, are not causally connected with each other, consciousness does not obtain. If you remember Egan's dust theory in Permutation City, you probably also remember that he did the same manipulations of a computation running in time as you suggest doing with the Life board stacks in space. Do you not think a computation would work if chopped up in this way? If you are speaking of the earlier part of the Greg Egan novel (which I claim to entirely understand) then no, he did not isolate a person's experiences down to *instants*. He would run a minute's worth now, a minute's worth then, and mix them up in order. But! The only causal discontinuities were *between* the successive sessions (each session at least a minute long---but I'd be happy with a millisecond long). The idea that any computation can be implemented by any random process, given an appropriate programming language (which might be a giant lookup table, mapping [anything] - [line of code]) is generally taken as being self-evidently absurd. Not sure I understand. Since you are talking about a *process*, then for my money we're already half-way there! (I.e., the Time Deniers have not struck.) Suppose that we have a trillion by trillion Life Board and the program randomly assigns pixels for each generation. Then, yes, I guess I agree with you: we have achieved nothing: the random states are admittedly connected by causal processes (your machine is an ordinary causal process operating in *time*), but nothing intelligent is being implemented. It's not even implementing a wild rain-storm. (Of course, the Time Deniers, as I understand them, would be perfectly happy to let this machine run for 10^10^200 years, and then identify (pick out) a sequence of apparently related states, in fact, a sequence that seemed to be you or me having a conscious experience. They'd be quite happy (many of them at least) to say that once again Stathis or Lee had been implemented in the universe and had had some conscious experience (i.e. OMs). The argument goes that that the information content of the programming language must contain all the information the random system is supposed to be producing, so this system is actually superfluous. This means we have won no computational benefit by setting up this odd machine. I'm following so far. However, the programming language is only there so that the machine can interact with the environment. If there is no programming language and no I/O, the machine can be a complete solipsist. You've lost me, sorry. Could you explain what you mean and where you are going here? This might occur also if some future archaeologist finds an ancient computer running an AI, but there is no manual, no terminal, no keyboard, and nobody knows how it is programmed any more. If the archaeologist could figure out how to power up this computer, wouldn't the AI be implemented as per usual? In the first sentence here, the archaeologist finds the machine running. Now, for me, if it's truly implementing an AI, then the AI may still be having a great time working on the Riemann Hypothesis, and I don't see why it's important if it's a solipsist or a hermit. In the second sentence, I infer that the machine is not powered up. Yes, then, if the archaeologist finds the right AC input voltage and gets it going, then we have the first case (i.e. sentence one), and the AI would be implemented as usual. You might say that in the last example the states were causally connected, while in the first they were not. But why should that make any difference, especially to a solipsist? By matters to a solipsist, you are referring to the AI himself or to an outsider? As for me, the states of a running process are by definition causally connected (this is what process) means to me, but then, yes, the states reached could be a sort of random hash as you were speaking of earlier. In that case, then it might as well be a succession of frozen states, or dust between the galaxies, or whatever, in terms of (not) being able to emulate a conscious
Re: The Time Deniers
Hi Stephen: I will not be able to fully respond for a few weeks. The idea of Being having a pulse width in the dimension of closely coupled states such that several successor states simultaneously have a degree of Being is new to my understanding of my model but still inherent in my model and went unnoticed by me for awhile. In partial response to your post using the picture of a boundary having width was a quick way of picturing the idea - it may not be the best. Yours Hal Ruhl At 04:56 PM 7/8/2005, you wrote: Dear Hal, Please forgive my delay in replying. - Original Message - From: Hal Ruhl [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 3:31 PM Subject: Re: The Time Deniers Hi Stephen: At 03:03 PM 7/7/2005, you wrote: Dear Hal, Which is primitive in your thinking: Being or Becoming? Stephen Let me try it this way: 1) All possible states preexist [Existence]. [SPK] I state this in a more all encompasing way: Existence (Dasien) Exists. 2) The system has a random dynamic [the Nothing is incomplete in the All/Nothing system and must resolve the incompleteness - this repeats endlessly] that passes states from the outside to the inside of an evolving Something [There are many [infinite] simultaneously evolving Somethings - due to the repeats] [Becoming]. [SPK] OK, then it would seem that you take Becoming as fundamental, subordinate only to Existence, to give rise to dynamic of the system. Being then is the case where the dynamic/evolution has the form of a fixed point: x = f(x). 3) The boundaries of the Somethings bestow instantations of reality to states as they pass through the boundary [Being]. [SPK] Here you are identifying the boundaries as the Being aspect. Could this boundary notion be the complement of the fixed point aspect? If we look at the topological requirements for the existence of a fixed point in some collection of points/states/phases/whatevers, we find that a boundary is required. Thus, tentatively, my proposal passes muster. What do you think? 4) The width of the boundary determines the pulse width of Being over the dimension of closely coupled states [continuity etc.] [SPK] I have a problem with the idea that a boundary can have a width. How can that which differentiates the inside of a collection/set/class/category from its complementary outside have a width, unless we are assuming some kind of fuzzy set? I am not dismissing the idea out of hand, but I would appreciate some elaboration of this idea. Kindest regards, Stephen
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
On Jul 6, 2005, at 10:37 AM, Stephen Paul King wrote:PC:But isn't the use of time as the dimension along which things vary (or are 'processed') a somewhat arbitrary choice?[SPK] Please notice that the identification of "time" with a "dimension" involves the identification with each moment in time with some positive Real number. Thus the entire set of moments is identified with R^+. The problem with this identification is that the notion of a well ordering, an a priori aspect of the Real numbers, is not necessarily a priori for moments of time. AFAIK, the paradoxical nature of McTaggart's A and B series follows from a neglect of this issue.PC:I think Natural numbers suffice here, but I may be wrong (my background is molecular biology, not math). SPK: Time, from what I have studied so far, involves two distinct notions: a "measure of change" and an "order of succession". The idea that it is merely a dimension and related to the dimensions of "space", as considered and promulgated by Minkowski, requires the assumption of classical physics and strict local realism. We know (I would hope!) that the former assumption is flawed, but the second is still being debated.I recognize that time is different than space. But it strikes me as at least problematic that time must be assumed to have properties which space does not in order for consciousness to exist. To me, consciousness is nothing special - just one kind of pattern (one that supports robust predictions from the intentional stance) among many. I think that pattern can exist in a natural number. The intentional stance (a philosophical view of Daniel Dennett) is key to my views here, so I'll have to expound on it later. [SPK] Please notice in your example that the automata had to be implemented by some process in order to render the results. The resulting "checker board" like picture is a result of the process, it can not be said to have one pattern or some other prior to and absent the computational process. Where would a SAS "fit" into the automata? What would its Observer Moments include?You have a good point here; in the example as I gave it, a temporal process comes first, the result of which is then instantiated in a 3d-structure at a single time. But I think it would be possible to surmount this objection with the use of a lookup table. You could have a lookup table large enough to calculate the next N steps all at once, for any N - and then it's a matter of setting N large enough to calculate a block of the automaton that *would have* sufficed to produce a noticeable length of experience by the SAS, had the process been calculated for one step at a time. Of course, now you can ask where the the lookup table came from -- and it looks like it must have been generated by a temporal process...Well at any rate, I am trying to glean some conclusions from the existence of the stack after it has been created by whatever process - after all, if a simple algorithmic process is capable of generating it, it already exists in Platonia, at very high measure. This example assumes a strong Platonism for its conclusions - but I think it does go some way toward approaching the problem of how the real numbers (or in this case, I think, even the natural numbers) can give rise to observers, time, consciousness, etc. Some of those numbers can be interpreted as a Game of Life containing one or more SASs (and I'll assume the question of where the SAS fits into it answered already, by the fact that UTMs can be impemented in the Game of Life, and these UTMs must include ones that can pass the Turing Test. Many references exist for this claim which you will find if you google ["game of life" "turing machine"]).Best regardsPete
Re: The Time Deniers
Le 06-juil.-05, à 07:16, Russell Standish a écrit : On Tue, Jul 05, 2005 at 06:47:40PM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote: There have been many, many investigations of this idea. It may not be an exaggeration to say that the main theme of this list has been a pursuit of the idea. But Stephen Paul King gives a very appropriate name to all the sponsors of these ideas, from Bruno and Russell, all the way to Julian Barbour: the time- deniers. I hate it when someone introduces a new term I don't understand. What, pray, are time deniers? Is it related at all to the material jeans are made out of? Actually - I suddenly realised what you have just said, and so I left the previous passage in for a little light relief. I find it amazing that you claim I deny the existence of time. Au contraire, it is something I explicitly assume. My reading of Bruno's work is that time is implicitly assumed as part of computationalism (I know Bruno sometimes does not quite agree, but there you have it). The true time deniers on this list are those favouring the ASSA - Jacques Mallah, Saibal Mitra, etc. I never worked out your position Lee? Mmmhhh To be frank I can hardly imagine someone more ``time denier than me! Unless by time you mean consciousness, in the spirit of Brouwer. But even that *time* is not postulated, I do think I (re)obtain it trough the theaetetus' move (this is debatable, sure). Of course I am a physical-time denier (like Einstein, at least when he told his friend Besso that time is an illusion for us physicist). But I am all the same a space denier, and a whatever physical primitive-denier. I think (through comp) that the whole of physics is secondary, emergent on the atemporal-aspatial relation between numbers (even natural numbers). Comp does not need time, it needs the notion that each natural numbers has a successor. This is enough to study atemporal succession of computing states. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: The Time Deniers
Hi Lee: At 09:47 PM 7/5/2005, you wrote: snip Where I join you (in failing to understand) is what happens as the OM becomes of zero length. I did not say *the limit as it becomes zero*, I said zero. It's almost as though some people take this as license to suppose that time is not a necessary ingredient or even that time does not exist: snip The dynamic I speak of in my approach can give instantations of being to the preexisting states in many ways. For example: isolated states, all states a universe contains simultaneously, and clusters of states that would be closely coupled in a succession string of states. As being moved within the system the last example would be like a pulse of being with some non zero pulse width over the dimension of successor states for a particular universe. This might be a model for consciousness, thinking, continuity, observation, time, etc. Hal Ruhl
Re: The Time Deniers
Dear Hal, Which is primitive in your thinking: Being or Becoming? Stephen - Original Message - From: Hal Ruhl [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 2:57 PM Subject: Re: The Time Deniers Hi Lee: At 09:47 PM 7/5/2005, you wrote: snip Where I join you (in failing to understand) is what happens as the OM becomes of zero length. I did not say *the limit as it becomes zero*, I said zero. It's almost as though some people take this as license to suppose that time is not a necessary ingredient or even that time does not exist: snip The dynamic I speak of in my approach can give instantations of being to the preexisting states in many ways. For example: isolated states, all states a universe contains simultaneously, and clusters of states that would be closely coupled in a succession string of states. As being moved within the system the last example would be like a pulse of being with some non zero pulse width over the dimension of successor states for a particular universe. This might be a model for consciousness, thinking, continuity, observation, time, etc. Hal Ruhl
Re: The Time Deniers
Hi Stephen: At 03:03 PM 7/7/2005, you wrote: Dear Hal, Which is primitive in your thinking: Being or Becoming? Stephen Let me try it this way: 1) All possible states preexist [Existence]. 2) The system has a random dynamic [the Nothing is incomplete in the All/Nothing system and must resolve the incompleteness - this repeats endlessly] that passes states from the outside to the inside of an evolving Something [There are many [infinite] simultaneously evolving Somethings - due to the repeats] [Becoming]. 3) The boundaries of the Somethings bestow instantations of reality to states as they pass through the boundary [Being]. 4) The width of the boundary determines the pulse width of Being over the dimension of closely coupled states [continuity etc.] Hal Ruhl
Re: The Time Deniers
Dear Hal, let me know if my (naive) worldview on Stephen's question is compatible with what you wrote (below): (to1: I don't know what to do with all possible because it is far beyond any idea we may have. Unless we restrict the 'all' to whatever we can think/know of). to2: In the inherent and incessant DYNAMISM (as you wrote random? and I still do assign random to our ignorance to find order in cases called 'random') - - to resolve the inherent incompleteness (ie. relax the stress, as I like to word it): any BEING must represent a snapshot of an inevitable and transitional BECOMING - from and into. That is in my 'wholeness' worldview. Totally interconnected, interinfluencing, interresponsive dynamism. to 3: Boundaries are constituting the 'models' of 'Somethings', restricting the observer (which I identify as ANYTHING/EVERYTHING that accepts information) from viewing the totality. I call such diversion from the wholeness a reductionism: reducing the observation into a boundary-enclosed model view. So in such case a BEING is acceptable as partial to the model. I think this agrees with your 'states' being above-model entities, as you said: passing through the boundaries. to 4: I don't 'speculate' into reductionist detail-viewings (I have trouble enough with the wholistic formulations and once I slip into the cop-pout laxness of reductionist thinking, I lose grounds). However the width of boundaries you mention comes handy in the current problem I have on my agenda: How come that in the wholistic ie. unlimitedly interconnected world certain items are more connected than others - sort of a natural basis for model-formation? George Kampis lately called such differentiation (in evolution-thinking) a depth of the connection. I tried an ideational closeness but this is too primitive a metaphor. It emerged from my Karl Jaspers F. paper (2004) of Networks of Networks where the infinitely outbranching unlimited network systems still form networks and not a boundariless free floating 'grits'. Closeness came in from a visualization of interconnected networks, through how many can one get to a distnat item, which itself of course is also a network on its own. --Ideas appreciated. -- (Forgive me to burden you with my ongoing topic of so far unsolved speculations). John Mikes - Original Message - From: Hal Ruhl [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 3:31 PM Subject: Re: The Time Deniers Hi Stephen: At 03:03 PM 7/7/2005, you wrote: Dear Hal, Which is primitive in your thinking: Being or Becoming? Stephen Let me try it this way: 1) All possible states preexist [Existence]. 2) The system has a random dynamic [the Nothing is incomplete in the All/Nothing system and must resolve the incompleteness - this repeats endlessly] that passes states from the outside to the inside of an evolving Something [There are many [infinite] simultaneously evolving Somethings - due to the repeats] [Becoming]. 3) The boundaries of the Somethings bestow instantations of reality to states as they pass through the boundary [Being]. 4) The width of the boundary determines the pulse width of Being over the dimension of closely coupled states [continuity etc.] Hal Ruhl -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.323 / Virus Database: 267.8.10/43 - Release Date: 07/06/05
RE: The Time Deniers
Russell writes I find it amazing that you claim I deny the existence of time. Au contraire, it is something I explicitly assume. My reading of Bruno's work is that time is implicitly assumed as part of computationalism (I know Bruno sometimes does not quite agree, but there you have it). Sorry. Now, I mean by Time Deniers those who (for example Julian Barbour) believe that time doesn't really exist, but can be reduced to configuration spaces or bit strings, or perhaps other things. The essential ingredient---I'm guessing here---is that time is *not* an independent quantity, not really an independent parameter. The true time deniers on this list are those favouring the ASSA - Jacques Mallah, Saibal Mitra, etc. I never worked out your position Lee? The Absolute Self-Sampling Assumption---I have not followed all the threads here, and don't know for sure all that this entails. As for my position, I admit that it now seems to me that I'm a kind of dualist compared to those I call the time deniers: because I still cling to the idea that time has an independent existence (or, equivalently, cannot be reduced to other quantities). As I wrote earlier with regard to one species of time-denier: I am still at the point where I cannot quite imagine how a huge nest of bit strings (say all the real numbers between 0 and 1) manages to (in stasis) emulate all possible conscious experiences of all possible entities. But I still have an open mind. Now this neologism is only a temporary expedient until I find out the categories established by people who've thought about this for years; I don't intend for it to gain any usage. Lee
Re: The Time Deniers
Hi Lee, To split a hair... ;-) - Original Message - From: Lee Corbin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2005 9:47 PM Subject: The Time Deniers snip I am still at the point where I cannot quite imagine how a huge nest of bit strings (say all the real numbers between 0 and 1) manages to (in stasis) emulate all possible conscious experiences of all possible entities. But I still have an open mind. I don't have a problem with that statement given that in principle: 1) There is at least one Real number that is Identical to the bitstring (of an algorithm) that IF implemented would render a simulation that is Identical to some particular conscious experience. 2) All possible conscious experiences have a simulating/emulating/rendering algorithm that is isomorphic to some Real number. I do have a problem with the Time Deniers in that I find their postulation that the mere ab initio existence of the Real Numbers, ala Mathematical Platonism, is sufficient to necessitate the unassailable fact (1st person for me - incorrigibility!) that I am having a conscious experience of typing these words on my computer. There is a huge difference in kind between existing and emulating. Existing is atemporal by definition since existence can not depend on any other property. Emulations involve some notion of a process and such are temporal. The idea that a process, of any kind, can occur requires some measure of both transitivity and duration. The mere *existence* of a process only speaks to its potential for occurrence. Kindest regards, Stephen
Re: The Time Deniers
On Jul 6, 2005, at 9:08 AM, Stephen Paul King wrote: There is a huge difference in kind between existing and emulating. Existing is atemporal by definition since existence can not depend on any other property. Emulations involve some notion of a process and such are temporal. The idea that a process, of any kind, can occur requires some measure of both transitivity and duration. The mere *existence* of a process only speaks to its potential for occurrence. Kindest regards, Stephen But isn't the use of time as the dimension along which things vary (or are 'processed') a somewhat arbitrary choice? I've wrote to the list before about a Game of Life simulation in which, instead of running the states of the automaton forward in time, erasing the previous state with the subsequent state, you simply place the subsequent state on top of the previous state (i.e., you have black disks for live cells, and white disks for dead cells, and you pile them up as you go..). If the automaton includes an SAS, would you say its experiences are instantiated only at the moment of laying down the disks, or are they instantiated permanently? Here the state of the system varies with the Z coordinate, rather than the time coordinate - but is this relevant? And if so, why?
Re: The Time Deniers and the idea of time as a dimension
Hi Pete, - Original Message - From: Pete Carlton [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Everything-List everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 1:12 PM Subject: Re: The Time Deniers On Jul 6, 2005, at 9:08 AM, Stephen Paul King wrote: There is a huge difference in kind between existing and emulating. Existing is atemporal by definition since existence can not depend on any other property. Emulations involve some notion of a process and such are temporal. The idea that a process, of any kind, can occur requires some measure of both transitivity and duration. The mere *existence* of a process only speaks to its potential for occurrence. Kindest regards, Stephen But isn't the use of time as the dimension along which things vary (or are 'processed') a somewhat arbitrary choice? [SPK] Please notice that the identification of time with a dimension involves the identification with each moment in time with some positive Real number. Thus the entire set of moments is identified with R^+. The problem with this identification is that the notion of a well ordering, an a priori aspect of the Real numbers, is not necessarily a priori for moments of time. AFAIK, the paradoxical nature of McTaggart's A and B series follows from a neglect of this issue. Time, from what I have studied so far, involves two distinct notions: a measure of change and an order of succession. The idea that it is merely a dimension and related to the dimensions of space, as considered and promulgated by Minkowski, requires the assumption of classical physics and strict local realism. We know (I would hope!) that the former assumption is flawed, but the second is still being debated. [PC] I've wrote to the list before about a Game of Life simulation in which, instead of running the states of the automaton forward in time, erasing the previous state with the subsequent state, you simply place the subsequent state on top of the previous state (i.e., you have black disks for live cells, and white disks for dead cells, and you pile them up as you go..). If the automaton includes an SAS, would you say its experiences are instantiated only at the moment of laying down the disks, or are they instantiated permanently? [SPK] Please notice in your example that the automata had to be implemented by some process in order to render the results. The resulting checker board like picture is a result of the process, it can not be said to have one pattern or some other prior to and absent the computational process. Where would a SAS fit into the automata? What would its Observer Moments include? [PC] Here the state of the system varies with the Z coordinate, rather than the time coordinate - but is this relevant? And if so, why? [SPK] Pete, the fact that you are plotting the successive states of the system along some Z is what is relevant, not the particular symbol used, Z or t, or x, or whatever. The resulting graph is the *result* of a process. It is not PRIOR to it. Kindest regards, Stephen
RE: The Time Deniers
Pete writes But isn't the use of time as the dimension along which things vary (or are 'processed') a somewhat arbitrary choice? I've wrote to the list before about a Game of Life simulation in which, instead of running the states of the automaton forward in time, erasing the previous state with the subsequent state, you simply place the subsequent state on top of the previous state (i.e., you have black disks for live cells, and white disks for dead cells, and you pile them up as you go..). If the automaton includes an SAS, would you say its experiences are instantiated only at the moment of laying down the disks, or are they instantiated permanently? Here the state of the system varies with the Z coordinate, rather than the time coordinate - but is this relevant? And if so, why? My answer is: because the layers in your stack of Life states are not connected causally. There is no information flow. (I realize that by those phrases I am begging the question of why. In fact, it is still one of the most amazing and perplexing questions I know of.) But it is *precisely* that I cannot imagine how this stack of Life gels could possibly be thinking or be conscious that forces me to admit that something like time must play a role. Here is why: let's suppose that your stack of Life boards does represent each generation of Conway's Life as it emulates a person. (That Conway's Life can compute anything was discovered more than 25 years ago; one may think of it as just a computer program, but with an especially appealing visual format in which each state is perfectly apparent.) If a stack of gels like this amounts to the conscious experience of an entity, then it certainly wouldn't hurt to move them farther apart. So, whereas you may be visualizing them less than an inch apart, we may move them without affecting anything to lightyears apart. Next, we alter the orientations of the gels randomly. Finally, we see that no particular gel needs to be physically continuous with itself---cutting them in half and dispersing them among the galaxies changes nothing. In fact, just what kind of changes could the stack suffer and *not* be conscious? (If one buys into Wei Dai's or other descriptions of how Universal Dovetailers or other devices (timeless or not) implement actual universes, then it can be argued that separating the gels like this cuts down on the measure of the OMs they're emulating. It's very much as though the effort required to located the scattered gels (or scattered atoms making up the gels) contributes to them being less manifest in some way. But I didn't think that you were going there.) So, for me, since it is absurd to think that either vibrating bits of matter (an example Hal Finney quotes) or random patches of dust (Greg Egan's theory of Dust) can actually give runtime to entities, then I have to draw the line somewhere. Where I have always chosen is this: if states, no matter now represented, are not causally connected with each other, consciousness does not obtain. Lee
