Required Reading: Asymptotes, Zeno's Paradoxes, Infinite Divisibility, On the Present
Preface: Last week, I went on about how there was no way of pinpointing any moment in time accurately, because accurate measurements require infinitely smaller increments. It is a dynamic relationship which means that truly accurate measurement of anything at all is impossible.
While it seems obvious that events do happen, and must have begun to happen at some point; any attempt to figure out at which point an event actually occurs only tells us the times when the event was or wasn't happening.
The starting point for an event is always a moment that we get close to, but never meet; a sort of asymptote (remember calculus, kids?). For convenience sake, I'm applying the concept of asymptotes to any thing that gets close to, but never reaches a given measure (anything that approaches zero or infinity). Asymptotes imply infinity in that no matter how close a curve gets to an axis, it will never intersect with it because of the infinite divisibility of the space between them.
The fact that accurate measurements for beginning and end points are asymptotic (see what I did there?) suggests that each event has either always been occurring, never occurred, or is actually one event that has no beginning or end; an infinite event. The best guess of anyone as to the starting point of an event is defined by when it did not commence, as opposed to the moment that it did - because we'll never figure out what that moment is.
It’s important to note that here, as in Zeno’s original Arrow and Dichotomy paradoxes (remember the required reading?); the infinite divisibility of both space and time seems to preclude movement (or in this case, commencement of events). However, as in all of Zeno’s paradoxes, we know from experience that despite the fact that from one moment to the next, there is no way of knowing exactly when something started moving and where it moved to, the fact is that it does start moving, and does move somewhere.
Here is a possible explanation for this problem: Just as objects in space do not displace space by existing in it (they are the space they occupy - more on this in a few weeks), objects and events in time do not displace time. Basically, what I'm saying is that space and time are absolute - not relational (these are fancy philosophy terms). We estimate when the beginning and end of events happen, in terms of time. The unity and identity of each event is maintained no matter how many divisions are made in the duration between those beginning and end points - just as objects maintain their form from one point in space to another. No matter how many arbitrary divisions we make in time, an event maintains its duration, just as an object maintains its size no matter how small the increments that we measure it with are.
So, the interpretation of the present as being a relative estimate rather than an exact point is a useful fiction, which allows us to distinguish between relative (and inaccurate) starting points and relative end points in time or space.
Are relative time and space a valid substitute for knowing exact values? My position is that, technically, we can't tell the difference in our every day life, and the problem doesn't really have any noticeable effect on us as it is.
On the other hand, the indeterminacy of one of the fundamental elements of human perception is at once puzzling and intriguing. What does it mean, on a subconscious level, that events never actually start happening?
Next Week: On Simultaneity in which I dance around the idea of whether or not two things can happen at the same time, when one thing can barely seem to happen in the first place.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
On the present:
Required Reading: Infinity, Infinite divisibility, Zeno's paradoxes
Prelude - The following propositions and notes are based largely upon extrapolations and inferences I made from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (and certain of his followers) and the rationalist metaphysics described in the Ethics of Baruch Spinoza. There are elements of this philosophy that seem like science fiction, or don't seem plausible. It is the nature of metaphysics that concrete proof is not likely to exist.
The present is not a single point in time.
This is because time is infinitely divisible into smaller parts. The divisions we make within time are arbitrary, such as 365 days per year, 24 hours per day, 60 minutes per hour, 60 seconds per minute. Seconds divide into centiseconds, milliseconds, nanoseconds, picoseconds, and so on. These divisions are not inherent in time, and could easily have been different.
You could make an infinite number of divisions in time, be they infinitely smaller or infinitely larger. As a result, any attempt to pinpoint the present to an exact point in time is practically impossible. By any human standard, that exact moment has already become the past by the time it is perceived. For that reason, it's convenient for us to think of the present as an approximate value of time; a relative duration.
For example, you might think of today as the present, but one day is a pretty large increment of time by human standards. One day has the capacity to be divided into several smaller parts - but the same is applicable to minutes, and any other measurement. The upshot is that any attempt to describe the present in human terms becomes a clumsy “the present is now, now, now, now, now, now, now, etc.” This is to say that the present is transitory. This moment; this present is already past.
By that same token, if the present is past before we fully perceive it, then the present has a firm grounding in the future, though, admittedly, it does not extend forward very far. To explain: the perception of the present as being a duration of time rather than a specific point means that the duration includes both a moment that has already happened and a moment that is about to happen. Without that anticipatory element, the duration would only be past.
The result, if you can keep up, is that the present is both the past and the future at once, so far as our perception is concerned – it sits on the fence, so to speak.
Obviously our brains can't even conceive of the infinitesimally small increment of time that would be required to actually pinpoint the present. This is made worse by the fact that such an increment would be getting infinitely smaller (because the smaller it is, the more accurate). The result being that a measurement could never actually be made, because the increments we measure with would always be getting smaller and smaller, and never actually reach the point.
Even if humans had the capacity to experience a nanosecond as though it were an hour or a day or a year, that nanosecond itself is infinitely divisible into infinitely smaller increments, such that pinpointing the present cannot be possible. In other words, the present, as anything other than a broad, relative duration (like we normally perceive it), cannot exist.
Next Week: On the paradox of infinite divisibility in which I try to deal with getting from here to there without any idea of where and when here and there actually are...
Prelude - The following propositions and notes are based largely upon extrapolations and inferences I made from the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (and certain of his followers) and the rationalist metaphysics described in the Ethics of Baruch Spinoza. There are elements of this philosophy that seem like science fiction, or don't seem plausible. It is the nature of metaphysics that concrete proof is not likely to exist.
The present is not a single point in time.
This is because time is infinitely divisible into smaller parts. The divisions we make within time are arbitrary, such as 365 days per year, 24 hours per day, 60 minutes per hour, 60 seconds per minute. Seconds divide into centiseconds, milliseconds, nanoseconds, picoseconds, and so on. These divisions are not inherent in time, and could easily have been different.
You could make an infinite number of divisions in time, be they infinitely smaller or infinitely larger. As a result, any attempt to pinpoint the present to an exact point in time is practically impossible. By any human standard, that exact moment has already become the past by the time it is perceived. For that reason, it's convenient for us to think of the present as an approximate value of time; a relative duration.
For example, you might think of today as the present, but one day is a pretty large increment of time by human standards. One day has the capacity to be divided into several smaller parts - but the same is applicable to minutes, and any other measurement. The upshot is that any attempt to describe the present in human terms becomes a clumsy “the present is now, now, now, now, now, now, now, etc.” This is to say that the present is transitory. This moment; this present is already past.
By that same token, if the present is past before we fully perceive it, then the present has a firm grounding in the future, though, admittedly, it does not extend forward very far. To explain: the perception of the present as being a duration of time rather than a specific point means that the duration includes both a moment that has already happened and a moment that is about to happen. Without that anticipatory element, the duration would only be past.
The result, if you can keep up, is that the present is both the past and the future at once, so far as our perception is concerned – it sits on the fence, so to speak.
Obviously our brains can't even conceive of the infinitesimally small increment of time that would be required to actually pinpoint the present. This is made worse by the fact that such an increment would be getting infinitely smaller (because the smaller it is, the more accurate). The result being that a measurement could never actually be made, because the increments we measure with would always be getting smaller and smaller, and never actually reach the point.
Even if humans had the capacity to experience a nanosecond as though it were an hour or a day or a year, that nanosecond itself is infinitely divisible into infinitely smaller increments, such that pinpointing the present cannot be possible. In other words, the present, as anything other than a broad, relative duration (like we normally perceive it), cannot exist.
Next Week: On the paradox of infinite divisibility in which I try to deal with getting from here to there without any idea of where and when here and there actually are...
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Drinking human tea
It seems to me
that used bathwater
is simply human tea.
Human tea
would be
caffeine-free.
So, what do you do with a first blog post, anyway? Write a mission statement?
How 'bout I just write some words, and then we'll talk about what happened when I'm done.
For the last year or so, I've been sitting at work, mourning my university lifestyle. Not so much the social aspect, because, as you will no doubt discover, I have no social skills and not much interest in cultivating them. I am an asshole.
What I've been missing is learning things.
"Mein gott! What kind of crazy talk is this?" you ask, because you're German.
Well, mein Liebling, the truth is, in my field of study - Philosophy, I was actually learning stuff that mattered to me. Stuff that explains... the sorts of things that normal people accept at face value. My favourite subject was metaphysics, and as can be assumed from the name, it talks about the way things work, rather than getting bogged down with all that boring math crap.
So, for the past year, I have been trying to stimulate my brain in an otherwise mind-numbing office environment by surfing wikipedia. I had already been harbouring dreams of publishing some kind of compendium of "all the things that I know to be true," - something in the style of those 18th and 19th century philosophers who thought they were all that and a bag of carp (many of them had moustaches!).
Why would I want to do that, when others had done it already? Well, as it turned out (and here's one of the reasons that I am not a social animal), "all the things that I hold to be true" are radically divergent from all the things that everyone else thinks to be true.
So, combining wikipedia's information and my deductive reasoning, sometime last year I started writing that compendium, so that others could read it and summarily be converted to my way of thinking - or, you know, tell me to fuck off.
Here's the point I've not been coming to: I'm going to start posting hunks of that compendium to this blog. Up to this point, it has been languishing in a 30 page Word file on a USB key. Soon it will be stagnating in the void that is the Internet.
For your better understanding, here is a basic rundown of the way that these posts will work:
1. The title - This will generally take the form of "On blank:" denoting that a) i will be discussing something, and b) that something will be blank.
2. Required reading - This will usually be a wikipedia link, or a link to a previous entry that you'll want to read in advance, so you know what the heck I'm talking about. I will try not to use this much, and actually explain new stuff as I go.
3. The words -I will do my best to describe "the things that I hold to be true." It won't be very academic. I'm not just restating other people's ideas. I am forcing their ideas to have sex, and then running off with their babies. I've done my best to translate academic language into English. Sometimes, it'll be something heavy like religion, other times it'll be something dumb like why I sometimes think I hear music when I'm standing in a crowd. I've also got pages and pages about time travel. I'm a geek.
4. Recommended reading - this will be the stuff to read if you're hardcore. I'll list books you should read if you really want to get up to your ears in junk that I barely scratch the surface of.
Feel free to poke holes in my ideas. I'm only posting this stuff on the recommendation of someone else.
that used bathwater
is simply human tea.
Human tea
would be
caffeine-free.
So, what do you do with a first blog post, anyway? Write a mission statement?
How 'bout I just write some words, and then we'll talk about what happened when I'm done.
For the last year or so, I've been sitting at work, mourning my university lifestyle. Not so much the social aspect, because, as you will no doubt discover, I have no social skills and not much interest in cultivating them. I am an asshole.
What I've been missing is learning things.
"Mein gott! What kind of crazy talk is this?" you ask, because you're German.
Well, mein Liebling, the truth is, in my field of study - Philosophy, I was actually learning stuff that mattered to me. Stuff that explains... the sorts of things that normal people accept at face value. My favourite subject was metaphysics, and as can be assumed from the name, it talks about the way things work, rather than getting bogged down with all that boring math crap.
So, for the past year, I have been trying to stimulate my brain in an otherwise mind-numbing office environment by surfing wikipedia. I had already been harbouring dreams of publishing some kind of compendium of "all the things that I know to be true," - something in the style of those 18th and 19th century philosophers who thought they were all that and a bag of carp (many of them had moustaches!).
Why would I want to do that, when others had done it already? Well, as it turned out (and here's one of the reasons that I am not a social animal), "all the things that I hold to be true" are radically divergent from all the things that everyone else thinks to be true.
So, combining wikipedia's information and my deductive reasoning, sometime last year I started writing that compendium, so that others could read it and summarily be converted to my way of thinking - or, you know, tell me to fuck off.
Here's the point I've not been coming to: I'm going to start posting hunks of that compendium to this blog. Up to this point, it has been languishing in a 30 page Word file on a USB key. Soon it will be stagnating in the void that is the Internet.
For your better understanding, here is a basic rundown of the way that these posts will work:
1. The title - This will generally take the form of "On blank:" denoting that a) i will be discussing something, and b) that something will be blank.
2. Required reading - This will usually be a wikipedia link, or a link to a previous entry that you'll want to read in advance, so you know what the heck I'm talking about. I will try not to use this much, and actually explain new stuff as I go.
3. The words -I will do my best to describe "the things that I hold to be true." It won't be very academic. I'm not just restating other people's ideas. I am forcing their ideas to have sex, and then running off with their babies. I've done my best to translate academic language into English. Sometimes, it'll be something heavy like religion, other times it'll be something dumb like why I sometimes think I hear music when I'm standing in a crowd. I've also got pages and pages about time travel. I'm a geek.
4. Recommended reading - this will be the stuff to read if you're hardcore. I'll list books you should read if you really want to get up to your ears in junk that I barely scratch the surface of.
Feel free to poke holes in my ideas. I'm only posting this stuff on the recommendation of someone else.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
