Thanks, this is fascinating.
On 12/03/11 03:34, Stephen Paul King wrote:
fixing my typos
*From:* Stephen Paul King mailto:stephe...@charter.net
*Sent:* Friday, March 11, 2011 10:24 PM
*To:* everything-list mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com
*Subject:* Re: Implementing Machines
Hi Andrew,
The answer to the simple question that you see in all of this
detail leads to is, that at its core essence, Existence is Change
itself. Becoming is the fundamental ontological primitive, just as
Bergson argued. This is the result that Hitoshi discovered and
discussed in his Inconsistent Universe Paper in terms of the truth
value of the total Universe being in an infinite oscillation between
True and False. Bart Kosko also obtained a similar result in his
research on Fuzzy sets.
What Barbour really found is that there does not exist a universal
*/global /*standard of measure of this change. If there is no standard
for a measure then there is not a determination of definiteness for
the Total Change of existence and thus there is no global measure of
change. Since time can be defined in generic terms as a measure of
change, Barbour is correct in claiming that time as a global quantity
cannot exist.
What Barbour missed, as have countless others, is that/*local
measures of change can be defined*/. The fact that there is more than
one measure of entropy is a huge clue of this. Chris Hillman
http://www.google.com/url?sa=tsource=webcd=8ved=0CFcQFjAHurl=http%3A%2F%2Fkist.web.elte.hu%2Fdokumentumok%2FSurvey%2FINFORMACIOELMELET%2FHillman_entropy.pdfrct=jq=chris%20hillman%20entropyei=duZ6TefXBYnC0QG-zq3wAwusg=AFQjCNETdjj-Hv57uqqPDKsopCAfc5NHYwsig2=Y6eBWQsu5T6Y_VoCcwbD_gcad=rja
has mapped out some of this. The main reason, I believe, that this
fact continues to be overlooked is that people still insist on
thinking of time as a scalar numerical/geometric quantity. Yes, it can
be represented consistently as such, but we must not confuse a
representation with its referent! Time itself is not its representation.
Onward!
Stephen
But I still stick to my guns! Even if existence is change itself, and
becoming is the fundamental ontological primitive, there is still a
fundamental difference of logical type between static existence, a
specific state, however defined, and the time evolution of that state
into a different state. And, with respect to such change, only something
meta to any specific given state is in the position to encounter the
change of state. Mundane and hackneyed though the movie analogy may be,
it is apposite. Iteration is a nice simple to grasp example, but change
of any kind is a different kind of thing to a state, it is of
fundamentally different logical type.
Barbour is simply pointing out that all possible states of the world
exist 'already'. Just because local measures of change can be defined,
this does not address the difference in logical type. In the linear time
dimension of spacetime, Penrose essentially endorses Weyl's view. He
refers to the 4D reality past which our field of observation is
sweeping, just as Weyl says that Only to the gaze of my consciousness,
crawling up the life-line of my body, does the world fleetingly come to
life. These minds are addressing the fact that there is nothing in 4D
reality that can witness such a change.
Stepping back, all of the 4D reality complete with linear dynamics
changes on collapse. But again, there is nothing in any 4D reality that
can witness such a change, which is what Deutsch is saying /Nothing/
can move from one moment to another. To exist at all at a particular
moment means to exist there for ever.. So the same problem exists in
the quantum concept of time as exists in the linear time dimension of
spacetime. If one is defined by a state, physical or arithmetic, one is
not in a position to encounter change of that state, just as a portrayal
of an avatar in a frame of a movie cannot watch the movie. This is a
logical type issue. We are rather more complex than part of a 2D
picture, but that does not affect the basic issue. We are 4D avatars of
flesh and blood with onboard computers so complex and clever we are not
really clever enough to understand them, but, at any given moment, there
is still a specific state defining the avatar. Just as with the movie
frame, the change of the real life avatar can only be encountered from
outside the avatar. Obviously we seem very obviously to be the
experiencer inside the avatar, so it is natural to assume this is an
internal process, but this is a somewhat similar mistake to the Earth
centred cosmology. It just looks like that. But the experiencer is
necessarily 'outside' the sequence of frames, just as one is 'outisde'
the virtual reality one participates in venturing in second life. This
is all entirely in accord with Existence is Change itself, it's just
that it is Existence with a big E which encounters change! This is the
'true self' of
