Examining time's effect on determinism
- Papus79
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Examining time's effect on determinism
The sense I get is that action, really movement at all whether of physical objects or thought (whether that's many neurotransmitters, something more, or something other), rely on time as their backdrop and carrier of motion.
The consequence of that for me - any individual moment, call it a plank second for a stable basis, seems like it should be completely stable. If you could flip through a range of plank seconds, say ten, forward and backward like you were shuffling a deck of cards, each of those plank seconds should either be a) exactly the same or b) different only at the background radiation level but the same at the macro level, really the relevant range where we live. That strongly suggests to me absolute determinism, in that to replay five seconds a minute, or an hour of your life over repeatedly would be the only absolutely or near absolutely perfect reiteration you could have of any motion because the causes, assuming we're starting from the same universe at the start, will have identical causes, potentials, and environmental states at least at the macro level.
The area where I have to admit some ignorance; I've often heard on physics shows arguments made that if you're moving toward a place millions of lightyears away that place is, right then and there, simultaneusly, hundreds of years in the future and if you turn your back and move away from it that same place is hundreds of years in the past. I really haven't digested the implications of that aside from either that it's a flaw in a theory that has yet to be cooked out or that its an effect that would be somehow completely subjective only to that individual somehow (which would suggest some remarkable things about consciousness and the depth and breadth of individual universes). I still don't see where that would effect my conception of time and motion because no matter how far in the future or in the past different places are getting sent you're still an agent of causes beyond yourself and they'd be happening happening exactly that way based on the causes that flow through you.
I don't mean to get into conversation about free will here because I've been in so many conversations across the internet where people maintained that determinism and free will had nothing to do with each other (I tend to think the use of words in that case is a bit skewed but that's my own opinion).
What I'm really interested in is seeing if anyone here has a conception of time, within the scientific lit, that challenges this or even just given sets of facts from the scientific lit that blow this out of the water. if I'm wrong on this I'd like to learn something imminently useful about the fundamentals that I perhaps may not possess at the moment.
Thank you!
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
I want to start by saying I'm not going to not acknowledge determinism and free-will's relations with each other. As quantum mechanics has proven that free-will does exist. But I also believe that determinism and free-will work hand in hand. Why? Because determinism works through concentrated behaviorism, which then makes it absolute. While free-will deals with the cognitive, which when concentrated, makes it absolute. And both are very existent. It's a choice of life, of what you want to work with. Where you are from, and where you want to go.
With that said, my perspective on time, is that all gradations of matter. Whether it be aether, or energy, makes up what we may call existence itself. Now the existential usage of the idea of time, just imagine as though existence had a consciousness. And time is existence infinitely reflecting itself.
- Papus79
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
What do you refer to by "this"? You use it in every sentence of your last paragraph, yet it is unclear to me whether you refer to your own proposition or to the theory of relativity or to the discrepancy between the two. "This" points to an unknown antecedent.Papus79 wrote: What I'm really interested in is seeing if anyone here has a conception of time, within the scientific lit, that challenges this or even just given sets of facts from the scientific lit that blow this out of the water. if I'm wrong on this I'd like to learn something imminently useful about the fundamentals that I perhaps may not possess at the moment.
Thank you!
-- Updated 2017 March 10th, 6:28 am to add the following --
I appreciate that logic and reality means nothing to you, a deeply religious person.Solatic wrote:To be honest, my perspective of time is sort of a religious one. Imagine time as an entity, and the keeper of that entity as the archangel Gabriel. But that's just my natural thought. Anyways, on toward the discussion!
I want to start by saying I'm not going to not acknowledge determinism and free-will's relations with each other. As quantum mechanics has proven that free-will does exist. But I also believe that determinism and free-will work hand in hand. Why? Because determinism works through concentrated behaviorism, which then makes it absolute. While free-will deals with the cognitive, which when concentrated, makes it absolute. And both are very existent. It's a choice of life, of what you want to work with. Where you are from, and where you want to go.
With that said, my perspective on time, is that all gradations of matter. Whether it be aether, or energy, makes up what we may call existence itself. Now the existential usage of the idea of time, just imagine as though existence had a consciousness. And time is existence infinitely reflecting itself.
But according to Christianity, free will does not exist.
There is a proof to show that. This is how it goes:
God is infinitely smart, and knows everything. Therefore he knows the future. He knows exactly what you are going to do tomorrow, or the day after or next year or ten years from now. If you don't accept this, you are not a Christian or a religious person who accepts the Bible.
If it is known what you will do tomorrow, then the choices you make tomorrow will be predetermined. You will choose whether to wear the red sox or the blue sox, but God knows today that you will wear the blue sox tomorrow. So when you make your choice tomorrow, you can't BUT choose the blue sox, because God knows and it can't be altered.
Ergo, you don't have a choice, you don't have free will, it is only an illusion to you that you do.
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
-- Updated March 10th, 2017, 9:05 am to add the following --
I respect that, but because it's minimal does not mean it does not exist at all.Papus79 wrote:The one thing I'll say about free-will and it's about all I really want to - it seems like people really mean it in terms of un-coerced agency, ie. that you were able to practice all of your available options to the best of your ability and chose the one that suited you best rather than being under such a heavy tax from external stressors that you're forced to act immediately or according to another agent's will and possibly without any respect to your own best interest. That definition of free will leaves it highly variable as your free-will, lets say, would be considered much higher when planning which of twenty possible places in town you might want to go out to lunch at and five minutes later your free-will could contract to almost nothing if you're at a red light with cars on either side of you and have someone behind you coming in at 50 mph with no sign of stopping.
Either way, perhaps, we should return to the subject of time?
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
The issue is that God KNOWS what you will do tomorrow. Not that He commands you or guides you (although that is possible too); but that he has pre-knowledge of everything, because he is omniscient. Not necessarily wise, or infinitely wise, but infinitely knowledgeable.
So go through the mental exercise again, I beg you. This is worth your while, because it will change your stance on free will for ever, amen.
God knows the future. If the future is known, it is impossible to change it. There is only one action each of us can take in matters of choices, and that action is known already. If it's known, then you may have an illusion of making a choice, but there is no such thing, because if you truly freely chose something, then it would be free of God's foreknowledge, which it is not.
Think about it... please.
- Papus79
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
Well, I'm not even calling it minimal. I hope people's options are as maximal as possible, they have better lives that way.Solatic wrote: I respect that, but because it's minimal does not mean it does not exist at all.
What I would argue is that the whole thing is 100% deterministic. I know we're dealing in fuzzy terms when we get to free will or try to talk about free will vs determinism but it comes back to the basis that you don't craft your own personality from the bottom up, some combination of your biology and experiences crafts both your likes and dislikes, and you discover the rules of your own mind and biology as you mature which tends to draw the shape of the container of who you can be in the future. It's not that a person can't have radical changes of belief, just that there's really nothing about that which is spontaneous. The importance of acknowledging a subconscious mind is that other parts of you are thinking even when the construct that you'd identify as 'I' doesn't seem to be. Inputs are always getting digested that are too incomplete for you to have a full-on conscious thought about which is why you can have a night loaded with dreams or why you can experience what you'd swear is an epiphany or intuition about something complex or abstract going on around you that you couldn't quite put your finger on or pin down up until that point.
-- Updated March 10th, 2017, 6:13 pm to add the following --
Actually I was talking about an obscure American rapper! I just forgot to capitalize or add the apostrophe in his name.-1- wrote:What do you refer to by "this"? You use it in every sentence of your last paragraph, yet it is unclear to me whether you refer to your own proposition or to the theory of relativity or to the discrepancy between the two. "This" points to an unknown antecedent.Papus79 wrote: What I'm really interested in is seeing if anyone here has a conception of time, within the scientific lit, that challenges this or even just given sets of facts from the scientific lit that blow this out of the water. if I'm wrong on this I'd like to learn something imminently useful about the fundamentals that I perhaps may not possess at the moment.
Thank you!
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
The problem with the common train of belief, and my beliefs, is that many people claim God to be omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. I disagree with these terms. I do believe He is infinitely wise, albeit though that is on the standard of His Morality that He hung as a law just as gravity. What is the opinion of God, toward time? I cannot remember where in the bible where He says, "I care not for time." It's not knowledge that He takes action through, it's wisdom. Wisdom which is to discern prophecy through the golden rule. Discern, which is to tell the difference. Prophecy, law and grace exacting the teachings of consequence. Golden rule, which says to love the Lord God with all that you have and to love your siblings of this world as yourself. Knowledge in itself is corrupt, because nothing learned without experience gains anything toward life. Wisdom teaches that life learned through experience gives us contentment through strife or peace. Hence how you have the tree of life, which is essentially knowing nothing without fear. While the more knowledge you know, the philosopher realizes, he knows nothing at all. Solomon himself bears witness, with much wisdom, is much grief and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.-1- wrote:Dear Solatic, whether God interferes with person's lives is not an issue here. You made a mistake commonly made by those who try to criticise the logic.
The issue is that God KNOWS what you will do tomorrow. Not that He commands you or guides you (although that is possible too); but that he has pre-knowledge of everything, because he is omniscient. Not necessarily wise, or infinitely wise, but infinitely knowledgeable.
So go through the mental exercise again, I beg you. This is worth your while, because it will change your stance on free will for ever, amen.
God knows the future. If the future is known, it is impossible to change it. There is only one action each of us can take in matters of choices, and that action is known already. If it's known, then you may have an illusion of making a choice, but there is no such thing, because if you truly freely chose something, then it would be free of God's foreknowledge, which it is not.
Think about it... please.
If time is knowledge, and the tree of knowledge corrupts as much as power itself corrupts. And time itself, God cares nothing about. Then how can he be all-knowing? Why would God be something He hates? As knowledge breeds pride, God Himself is not proud. He might be a jealous God, but He is not proud.
You know what the biggest lie of all of creation is? Is that death exists. What I am trying to allude to, is not the idea that free-will is the most significant thing to life. But rather to think that free-will is not the illusion, but physicality itself is. If time is existence being conscious and infinitely reflecting itself. Then every one of us, is God's dream. Google Mesmeric Revelation - Edgar Allan Poe, and you'll see what I am saying.
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
Yah, I've heard of him... he is a super-wealthy Christmas caroler who deals in drugs and shoots people down in packed auditoriums. "I rap you this, I rap you that, I rap all your presents" is his opus magna.Papus79 wrote: Actually I was talking about an obscure American rapper! I just forgot to capitalize or add the apostrophe in his name.
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
I agree, time = motion, ergo frequency as expressed very clearly with the common sine-wave topology ^v\/\/v^Papus79---The sense I get is that action, really movement at all whether of physical objects or thought (whether that's many neurotransmitters, something more, or something other), rely on time as their backdrop and carrier of motion.
"stable" = integrity, irrespective of how short lived. Ex mesons{ two quarks } are very short lived, but have stable integrity as a particle or unit set of particles for what ever length of time.The consequence of that for me - any individual moment, call it a plank second for a stable basis, seems like it should be completely stable.
Temporal time is both experience and conceptual{ metaphysical-1 }.What I'm really interested in is seeing if anyone here has a conception of time, within the scientific lit, that challenges this or even just given sets of facts from the scientific lit that blow this out of the water. if I'm wrong on this I'd like to learn something imminently useful about the fundamentals that I perhaps may not possess at the moment.Thank you!
Moment is a length of time, irrespective of how short and stems from motion and associated with mojo, motor, momma, money--- time is money ----move, etc.
A trajectory is never straight i.e. it is is always being pulled this way or that way by gravity.
A trajectory may reach a peak of almost being straight and will make a sharp angular change of direction to compensate for its approaching of true straightness.
Or it may make many ultra-micro, minor adjustments to compensate for never being purely straight trajectory.
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
Papus79 wrote:
I totally believe that too.The sense I get is that action, really movement at all whether of physical objects or thought (whether that's many neurotransmitters, something more, or something other), rely on time as their backdrop and carrier of motion.
Papus79 wrote:
We need to have an objective view of this condition. Let’s assume we are talking about a system in which every element can only exist within a given coordinate composed of three variables: x, y, z. In any given moment, any entity must contain a particular value for each of these valuables. That’s the way I interpret “exactly the same” or “different only at the background radiation level.”If you could flip through a range of plank seconds, say ten, forward and backward like you were shuffling a deck of cards, each of those plank seconds should either be a) exactly the same or b) different only at the background radiation level but the same at the macro level, really the relevant range where we live. That strongly suggests to me absolute determinism, in that to replay five seconds a minute, or an hour of your life over repeatedly would be the only absolutely or near absolutely perfect reiteration you could have of any motion because the causes, assuming we're starting from the same universe at the start, will have identical causes, potentials, and environmental states at least at the macro level.
So, entity 1 (x1, y1, z1) is in an identical position as is entity 2 (x1, y1, z1), but entity 3 (x5, y4, z2) is in a different position (or condition of existence). What you mean by “macro level” is described by (X, Y, Z). Thus, entities can have various positions but they can NEVER go beyond the macro level. So they can never have a variable such as P or N, but only X, Y, Z. Each entity can repeat its former condition (but I don’t know how to theoretically prove it!)
Papus79 wrote:
So an individual includes some elements (variables) and they move on in time and can undergo change. OK. So we have the premises. Your ultimate conclusion addresses determinism.I know we're dealing in fuzzy terms when we get to free will or try to talk about free will vs determinism but it comes back to the basis that you don't craft your own personality from the bottom up, some combination of your biology and experiences crafts both your likes and dislikes, and you discover the rules of your own mind and biology as you mature which tends to draw the shape of the container of who you can be in the future.
In one of my discussions in this Forum, I once mentioned the problem of uncertainty concerning the validity of deterministic systems. There are some problems here:
- I definitely accept the limitation of variables (x, y, z), but I have not really found any justification to believe that the future condition of a given entity is predetermined without being perfectly (100%) predictable. If something is determined, then it must be fully
predictable.
- As implied above, I have no justification to demonstrate that an entity can ever return to any of its former conditions (coordinates). How can we conceptualize that in the movement of time? If it’s problematic to repeat a former condition, how could it be deterministic? In fact, it looks like a continual sequence. Yet, our memory (as you call it a function of consciousness) makes the impression of causality.
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
I'm not sure I follow your argument but in relativity, spacetime is such that time measured along different trajectories is affected by differences in either gravity or velocity (time dilation). So a clock that is closer to the gravitational mass, appears to go more slowly than a clock that is more distant from the mass. Relativity also tells us that moving clocks run more slowly as their velocity increases. And the faster the relative velocity, the greater the magnitude of time dilation as there is no such thing as absolute motion in relativity. So this would appear to argue against your point that any individual moment is completely stable.Papus79 wrote:The consequence of that for me - any individual moment, call it a plank second for a stable basis, seems like it should be completely stable. If you could flip through a range of plank seconds, say ten, forward and backward like you were shuffling a deck of cards, each of those plank seconds should either be a) exactly the same or b) different only at the background radiation level but the same at the macro level, really the relevant range where we live.
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
This is true for any fermion and boson.
Human, as structural-stable-integrity, has structural-stable-integrity beginning at conception and ending with death.
A photon's speed-of-radiation is a constant to all observers relative speeds, ergo it appears to exist within, and without{ beyond }, time.
This is a paradox or conundrum.
In addition the above, photons( EMRadiation } have a frequency ^v^v set that are at 90 degrees to each other.
So it appears that space- time dilation, or contraction, the frequency is shortened or lengthened.
So space-time dialation or contraction has three associated aspects in regards to photon{ EMRadiaiton }
1} speed/velocity = a constant--- 670,616,629 million miles per hour
2} frequency = a variable,---...~~~vvv/\/ \ / \/\vvv~~~
3} observer/clock--- ( @ ) or as ( * * )
H,mm another cosmic three-ness I had not yet considered.
I have an answer for entanglement but not for this above conundrum. ( * ? * )
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- Papus79
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
I'm not sure that it does actually. You're saying that time has some complex and seemingly liquid attributes. That clearly does make things more complex to analyze but I don't think that causes any separation in the relationship between time and our actions.Bohm2 wrote: I'm not sure I follow your argument but in relativity, spacetime is such that time measured along different trajectories is affected by differences in either gravity or velocity (time dilation). So a clock that is closer to the gravitational mass, appears to go more slowly than a clock that is more distant from the mass. Relativity also tells us that moving clocks run more slowly as their velocity increases. And the faster the relative velocity, the greater the magnitude of time dilation as there is no such thing as absolute motion in relativity. So this would appear to argue against your point that any individual moment is completely stable.
-- Updated March 19th, 2017, 12:06 am to add the following --
That's the downside of language I suppose. It also raises the question - is anything really random per say or is it just that complex that we can't make sense of it? In the later case we'd just be encountering the state of human knowledge rather than an actuality.Philo_soph wrote: - I definitely accept the limitation of variables (x, y, z), but I have not really found any justification to believe that the future condition of a given entity is predetermined without being perfectly (100%) predictable. If something is determined, then it must be fully
predictable.
I think that's a different category of problem - along the lines of 'we aren't gods' so hitting reset or rewind on the universe isn't an option. About all we can do is try to replicate processes in miniature and see how they behave, hoping to capture a meaningful enough segment of the whole with enough redundant attempts. That also I suppose goes back to the state of human knowledge.Philo_soph wrote:- As implied above, I have no justification to demonstrate that an entity can ever return to any of its former conditions (coordinates). How can we conceptualize that in the movement of time? If it’s problematic to repeat a former condition, how could it be deterministic? In fact, it looks like a continual sequence. Yet, our memory (as you call it a function of consciousness) makes the impression of causality.
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Re: Examining time's effect on determinism
The subject of time is one of the great controversies in physics and philosophy.Bohm2 wrote:I'm not sure I follow your argument but in relativity, spacetime is such that time measured along different trajectories is affected by differences in either gravity or velocity (time dilation). So a clock that is closer to the gravitational mass, appears to go more slowly than a clock that is more distant from the mass. Relativity also tells us that moving clocks run more slowly as their velocity increases. And the faster the relative velocity, the greater the magnitude of time dilation as there is no such thing as absolute motion in relativity. So this would appear to argue against your point that any individual moment is completely stable.Papus79 wrote:The consequence of that for me - any individual moment, call it a plank second for a stable basis, seems like it should be completely stable. If you could flip through a range of plank seconds, say ten, forward and backward like you were shuffling a deck of cards, each of those plank seconds should either be a) exactly the same or b) different only at the background radiation level but the same at the macro level, really the relevant range where we live.
I think for starters our common conception of time (which is basically Newtonian) that of some universal constant cosmic clock ticking away at a uniform rate is wrong. Time in that sense does not exist is an illusion.
In fact I do not think time as any of absolute independent entity exists. Time is rather a derivative concept from change, flux, flow. Our measurements of time are all based on some underlying process (the turning of the earth), the changing of the seasons, the swinging of a pendulum, the oscillations of a crystal, or the vibrations of a cesium atom. These processes are fundamental and time is derivative. Furthermore the rate at which these processes take place is affected by gravitation and acceleration and so the rate at which clocks based on these processes keep time is affected by these factors.
There is no universal now, for non causally related events, there is no universal simultaneous.
Now lots of physics texts will state that the past, the present and the future all already exist in some kind of frozen, static or iron block universe.
I do not believe that for a moment, but neither do I believe in the reality or independence of time. What I do believe is the universe is a process not an object and change is fundamental, it is a coming becoming, not a fixed being.
See IIya Prigogine " The End of Certainty" for a readable discussion of time and determinism, the irreversibility of far from equilibrium disappative process.
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