No Time (repost)

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I just don't have enough time right now. My off-chain life and job just leaves me with too little time to make really good posts lately. I'm relatively lucky that I have a whole lot of useless knowledge because of a lifetime of interest for anything to do with science, science-fiction, philosophy, economy, nature and anything else that tickles my curiosity.


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Time, Losing Time, Clock - source: publicdomainpictures.net

So, today a short pause to stand still and reflect on that mysterious dimension of time. Scientists have had an evolving understanding of time throughout history. Many ancient cultures saw time as something cyclical, something we can all relate to I think because we also are still under the influence of this cyclical aspect through the returning seasons, sunrises and sunsets.

Ancient Greeks didn't see "eternity" as an infinite amount of time: that was covered by the cyclical nature, as that already lacks a beginning or end. Eternity for them was something "outside of time", and was the place where Gods reside, but also abstract things like geometrical shapes and mathematical laws.

Also in the universe according to Newton, time and space were everlasting, unchangeable and exist apart from each other; they are the stage on which the play of our existence occurs. The earth, sun and planets will keep revolving no matter what happens in our lives, for we are not part of the stage and we cannot influence it in any way. Eternity was now seen as an infinite amount of time, with infinite time in the past and infinite time yet to come. Time and space were apart from us, and together with Calculus Newtonian science introduced linear time as opposed to the cyclical view of time our earlier ancestors had.

This changed again with Albert Einsteins theory of general relativity in which time and space were merged and could be influenced by objects or rather by gravity. Spacetime and all stuff in it became the stage! This also gave birth to spike in deterministic thinking as Einsteins spacetime is seen as a sort of space-time block or loaf in which all time that has ever been and will ever be is already contained. This is the universe in which you could know the future, by applying the laws of cause and effect, if only you were intelligent and all-seeing enough to know the current position and speed of every atom in existence. The future is already set and flows from purely "previously" existing causal conditions.


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This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a galaxy cluster, SDSS J1038+4849, that appears to have two eyes and a nose as part of a happy face. Image credit: NASA/ESA - "Those eyes are actually very bright galaxies, and the smile lines are, in reality, arcs caused by an effect known as strong gravitational lensing." - source: jpl.nasa.gov

Thank God or your preferred object of praise for free will and the discovery of quantum mechanics. In this most recent scientific revolution the not deterministic universe of before Einstein has a chance to gain popularity again. Theoretical physicists and other scientists are hard at work to develop a theory of quantum gravity, and it is one of the many fields within quantum mechanics that shows time to be once again separate from the rest of the universe:

A conceptual difficulty in combining quantum mechanics with general relativity arises from the contrasting role of time within these two frameworks. In quantum theories time acts as an independent background through which states evolve
source: Wikipedia

Time is a strange thing and a wonderful concept to theorize about. We experience it on a mainly physical level. There definitely was a past, and in the present I'm typing this post and after the typing something exists that didn't exist before, so in the present the future is created, but the future is only known after it's happened... The one thing that's appealing from Einstein's explanation of space-time, is that all time is personal, and your experience of time is dependent on where you are and at what speed you're moving and to what gravitational forces you are exposed. If I leave now in a rocket-ship and travel close to the speed of light, time slows down drastically for me; if I travel for years, hundreds of years in earth time, before I return, I will have aged only a few years possibly, but everyone I've ever known will be long dead.

There are so much more things to explore about time, such as the "arrow of time" that can only point in one direction, so we can only grow older and can't move freely in the fourth dimension like we can in the three dimensions of space; this has to do with entropy, or the second law of thermodynamics that says, roughly, that everything tends to a configuration of maximal randomness. Everything eventually becomes chaos, like if you build a sand-castle, that takes energy, because the grains of sand have to be in one of very few configurations for them to resemble a castle, where there are many possible configurations, more random configurations to resemble just a heap of sand... Argh... entropy is hard to explain...

And I'm out of time ;-) I hope off-chain life will be more forgiving in the near future. I still hope this little expose about the only really scarce thing in all our lives was somewhat enjoyable and informative. See you all tomorrow! Cheers!


Entropy and the Arrow of Time


Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy!


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Chaos is very hard to explain, and in terms of regular understood commonly used language, it tends to be connoted negatively.

From remembrance I see the picture of ink being dripped into a glas with clear water. Where and when is chaos happening to arrive? Is it, after the water and the ink have merged so much so as now the water carries the same color all over? Is chaos the state of affairs where differences cannot be made distinct (or visible)? In the state where ink and water have not already mixed themselves, can this be described as order? Is order distinction, is it separation, is it unification?

People wanted to approach the term "chaos" differently and did so. I do not understand the expressions of physics but have a better and for me easier entrance from other disciplines like music, poetry, art and so on. While maybe physisists and other natural scientists may object to the fact that people can come to the same conclusions through totally different methods, the artist himself may accept that right away. So, I guess, an open remaining scientist contains also a lot of artistic interest or talent within him or her.

For me, to look at a formerly by me connoted negative term like "chaos" and ask myself what could be positive about it, already changed my way of thinking. If I can change that, I can already change many other things of which I might have built up a hardened opinion about. In this way, I look at the deep rooted convictions in the realm of medicine, as well. To question my deepest roots of convictions can be frightening but at the same time, it can be liberating in doing so.

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Chaos is very hard to explain, and in terms of regular understood commonly used language, it tends to be connoted negatively.

Hard to explain? That depends. I can make it simple and say that chaos is the opposite of order. And the connotation, positive or negative, depends on the type and kind of order we compare it to. I can easily imagine a kind of order compared to which chaos is to be preferred; some accelerationists think that way... In fact we define all things by what they are not; we know what's a chair because it's not a table or a space-ship. We also know that we've evolved to crave order; pattern-recognition is one our prime talents, so much so that we seek patters everywhere, sometimes to our detriment, but mostly to our advantage.

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Hard to explain? That depends.

Indeed, it depends :)

I can make it simple and say that chaos is the opposite of order. And the connotation, positive or negative, depends on the type and kind of order we compare it to.

Making it simple is a matter of your will, is it not?
What are the "things" which might exist out of the reach of comparable objects? You cannot possibly know, right?

What are "accelerationists"? I don't understand.

we define all things by what they are not; we know what's a chair because it's not a table or a space-ship.

:D HaHa, yes, true.

We also know that we've evolved to crave order; pattern-recognition is one our prime talents, so much so that we seek patters everywhere, sometimes to our detriment, but mostly to our advantage.

Here we end up again what one means with chaos and order. What my advantage or detriment is, might be for you something different. So, I am unable to say if I count amongst what you call "some" or "most".

Let me show why I said, it's hard to explain for me.

One might think there is only one way to organize a library. So that the "dumbest" can come in and search for a book title. We sort our libraries here with the authors name within the sections which are sorted by themes like "philosophy", "travel" etc..

Chaos could be defined where, when people come in and search for a certain theme or interest, they cannot make sense of the presented order. Like, just putting all the authors randomly into shelves and not caring about how the people decide or put the books back in the shelf.

To see people being relaxed about such a situation, it would require that someone

  • is not in a hurry
  • does not look for something specifically but randomly
  • likes to have more than one experience at the time
  • likes to be surprised
  • must not read for the purpose of earning money or another given task of duty
    etc. - you get the idea

Would this be chaos in a final state? For, when people randomly put up and down what they find, nobody will ever find again what he once found?
Is a library just one space which cannot be seen as separated to other spaces?

If you take the "universe" instead of a "library", what do you think about the ability to make sense to what is presented to us as order and chaos? What you learned and observe about the universe you could compare to how you arrange books in a library. You could decide to clean it up and start to order those books and make it a collection about knowledge. Outside the realm of the library though there are other spaces, other matters etc. etc.

You cannot tell whether the universe indeed is presenting itself ordered or chaotic, for we have no chance to find that out, ultimately. What we don't know, we cannot take into our thought processes. Factors (reference points) unknown to us, don't appear on our radar, we remain unable to step out of our existence as an earthly being. So, what do we do? We decide on matters undecidable. Humans tend to fill the blanks with an "x" or give those blanks a name, like "dark matter" etc.

If you accept for a moment that pattern recognition works in the same way that you deal with what you think to know "is there" and shows you a certain pattern, this same pattern might be distorted or false by the fact that we don't know all the factors but only those we (want to) make sense of. To make sense of the knowns is a matter of will and invention. For one it's awesome and mind blowing, for the other it's not relevant and for the next one it's frightening.

Ultimately there is no way for us to explain the universe, it's an interesting philosophical question but as Einstein is mentioned to have said: "On the bottom of the petri-dish you see God". A poet might have said "the Universe consists of burned almonds" (Alan Watts used this expression). This is not a form of verbal explanation but something which gives a taste of the inexplicable, because it causes irritation, if not laughter.

Explanation, as I see it, is not an ultimate tool, either.

The brightest minds have dealt with the matter over the course of hundreds and thousands of years. Still, I think, we are lost in explanations.

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You cannot tell whether the universe indeed is presenting itself ordered or chaotic, for we have no chance to find that out, ultimately.

But we can tell. At least to the extent that we recognize the order of the universe in accordance to the order our pattern-seeking nature has discovered. There will always be unknowns, thank the heavens for that, but we need, for our basic survival, order in the model of the universe we build in our mind. We can't escape this, so trying to argue otherwise is fruitless. Recognizing faces is something we're very good at, it's simply how we've evolved. Consequently we see face-patterns literally everywhere; our mind needs only two dots and a line to see a face. We see patterns in space and in time, we have no choice in the matter; the cadence of day and night, and of the seasons, are patterns essential to our survival. I hate the calendar and the clock, I feel restrained in my freedom by them, but on the other hand I'm fully aware of the fact that there's no possible way we would have evolved without them.

...this same pattern might be distorted or false...

That doesn't matter though. Like I said: we have no choice in the matter.

For one it's awesome and mind blowing, for the other it's not relevant and for the next one it's frightening.

Again: that doesn't matter. And what's more, I'd say that it's awesome, mind blowing and relevant for almost all of us. Without our pattern-seeking behavior we wouldn't have the wheel, engines or the computers we're currently using to have this conversation.

Your comparison to a library is on point. And I'll say this: the reader who is not in a hurry, does not look for something specifically but randomly, likes to have more than one experience at the time, likes to be surprised and must not read for the purpose of earning money or another given task or duty will also be just fine in a library that's ordered in a way that leads me efficiently to the material I'm specifically looking for. Just like I can choose to ignore the clock and calendar, this visitor of the library can choose to not mind the presented order.

Explanation, as I see it, is not an ultimate tool, either.

The brightest minds have dealt with the matter over the course of hundreds and thousands of years. Still, I think, we are lost in explanations.

I feel the opposite. Explanation is an ultimate tool. Not the only one, but one we sorely need. And I don't think we're lost in explanations, but in individualist fundamentalism. What we're lost in, is the idea that there's no such thing as universal truth, that there's only 7.5 billion individual truths; this kind of culminated in the Trump press-secretary talking about "alternative facts". And in millions embracing QAnon conspiracy theories as their personal truth. Now, don't get me wrong here and think that I'm not keeping open the possibility that we're all just brains in vats connected to a virtual-world creating machine. Maybe consciousness comes before tangible reality; we ultimately can not know, like you've said several times there will always be gaps, even in the patterns we're forced to recognize by our minds. But, and I'll repeat it, that doesn't matter because we have no choice but the accept the model of the universe as it is presented to us by our inner eyes. And we can rest assured in the knowledge that this model is one that has allowed us to survive and prosper for hundreds of thousands of years.

I've dug up an old post of mine from three years ago and reposted it yesterday; I believe that does a better job at explaining how I feel about the other side of this medal. Have a peek at it here if you're interested :-)

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Hm ... I see you are using the term "we" a lot. Have you tried to speak in the "I"- (or "you") form more extensively? I noticed that this changes the form of how I think and express myself. I try to avoid the "we" form as much as I can, but I fail sometimes in doing so.

There will always be unknowns, thank the heavens for that, but we need, for our basic survival, order in the model of the universe we build in our mind. We can't escape this, so trying to argue otherwise is fruitless.

I welcome it that you say, thank the heavens for the unknowns. :)
What I don't think I need for my immediate survival is to find order in the proverbial universe. It's a philosophical question for me on which I can contemplate or take my time to deal with - while others provide me with the basics ;-)

The base for my survival is food and shelter and at least a minimum of human company. But only temporarily. The rest comes on top of it. Cultural integration, social meaning and so on - makes us human. Looking up in the skies and ask myself what live means, I find very different from looking up in the skies and appreciate the sheer space and momentum of this experience of the vastness and inexplicability of the universe.

It can become quite a trap to think about the meaning of live, for one can get lost in thoughts instead of simply living this life.

I can sit in a car and curse the traffic. I also can sit in the car and appreciate that it transports me from here to there. Both happens, both is reality.

What we're lost in, is the idea that there's no such thing as universal truth, that there's only 7.5 billion individual truths; this kind of culminated in the Trump press-secretary talking about "alternative facts".

Oh, I SEE. NOW it becomes more clear to me, what you are opposing. :) Some call this nihilism or give it other names, "post something". Of course, there is a truth. But the moment you want to formulate it, put it into language or written maximes or manifestations, you lose the very essence of what you would "truly" like to express. You know the moments of truths as much as I know them. They appear not in scientific papers, they appear in art and encounters with living beings and nature, if you ask me.

Maybe this anecdote reflects it better (telling it from memory):
Two monks sit silently on a mountain top. Suddenly one of them says: "Look at the majesty of the magnificent mountains, the beauty of the landscape, the grace of the flying eagle!" The other: "It's all true. I just wish you hadn't said anything."


I have not read yet the linked post. Maybe later. Thank you.

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Had a good laugh with that:

enjoy :)

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LOL!! Thanks for that: that was AWESOME ;-)

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Very welcome.

that was AWESOME ;-)

HaHa!

Watch one of the full shows online. There is one he gave in Sweden, I guess. It's hilarious!

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one thing i truly believe about Time is that it "measures" our existence on this planet, awesome read! thanks for sharing your article! 😁
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https://d.buzz

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Thanks so much for the kind words my friend, but awesome I am not ;-) If you want to know what's awesome, look at the video posted in the reply by @erh.germany :-D

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