Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion • Hacker News Board

Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion

#51

Post by 7373737373 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:25 PM UTC

dqpb wrote: post #41

hunta2097 wrote: post #5

I live by a couple of (vaguely related) principles: a) Consciousness is just your brain trying to anticipate the future. b) Your brain compresses (normalises?) repetition in memories. So even if day to day events happen at normal speed, the years seem to fly by when you reflect on them. If your life seems to be flying-by then maybe you need more novelty.

I would argue that consciousnes is just the feedback loop of the brain sensing itself

Because consciousness is unitary (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory), it would be intuitive if all consciously accessible information converged at a single physical location. In this theory, simple feed-forward networks aren't conscious.

From what I've read about ego-death, it doesn't seem necessary to consciously sense the self-concept, which would be self-awareness.

Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion

#52

Post by EGreg » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

7373737373 wrote: post #4

The word 'illusion' should be removed from every dictionary. It's one completely unspecific, indeterminate and misleading word and most subjects or patterns of discourse in which it appears have the same properties. The title of this post also reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime Just searching for "* is an illusion" returns - consciousness - choice - spacetime - the world - physical reality - certaint…

The map is not the territory.

To say something is an illusion means that something is a map that doesn’t match the territory.

But it assumes there IS a territory to map! While often simultaneously denying its existence. That’s the contradiction.

Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion

#53

Post by ZeroFries » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #20

egjerlow wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would your brain need consciousness to anticipate the future? A computer, which has no consciousness, would be able to do the same.

Consciousness is how the algorithm feels from inside.

You can reproduce any algorithm with a sufficient group of people. For example, using a person as a node in a feed-forward neural network doing digit recognition. Suppose each person called the next layer in the network with the results of their calculation, until the last layer spit out a value of a digit between 1 and 9. At what point in that process does qualia arise? What is its shape and texture, and why?

Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion

#54

Post by Circuits » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC

As a coworker of mine would say: "A watched pothead never toils." I have always found it amusing when people talk about time's existence. It has always seemed like a ruler or a measuring stick; t = d/v, to me. Some people disagree as to it's existence but I think perhaps the problem isn't with our concept of time but with our definitions of existence.

Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion

#55

Post by vinceguidry » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

davebryand wrote: post #37

vinceguidry wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Illusion can be tricky to understand, but not impossible. It means that the referent is not the same as the representation. When something isn't an illusion, it means the referent is the same as the representation. We have different words for different kinds of illusion. I can show you an actual, physical chair, or a picture of a chair. The first is not an illusion, while the second is. You watch a real television sh…

An enlightened yogi, Hindi, or Buddhist would say that the physical chair is also an illusion.

Enlightened yogis can misunderstand the concept just as easily as Westerners.

Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion

#56

Post by ZeroFries » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

hunta2097 wrote: post #5

I live by a couple of (vaguely related) principles: a) Consciousness is just your brain trying to anticipate the future. b) Your brain compresses (normalises?) repetition in memories. So even if day to day events happen at normal speed, the years seem to fly by when you reflect on them. If your life seems to be flying-by then maybe you need more novelty.

Sorry to be blunt, but that's not a very good response to the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Unfeeling matter becomes feeling when its changes are related to the future? How does that work?

Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion

#57

Post by Falling3 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

egjerlow wrote: post #13

hunta2097 wrote: post #5

I live by a couple of (vaguely related) principles: a) Consciousness is just your brain trying to anticipate the future. b) Your brain compresses (normalises?) repetition in memories. So even if day to day events happen at normal speed, the years seem to fly by when you reflect on them. If your life seems to be flying-by then maybe you need more novelty.

Why would your brain need consciousness to anticipate the future? A computer, which has no consciousness, would be able to do the same.

Who said our brains _needed_ consciousness to anticipate the future? The only claim I've seen is that it's (part of?) the particular mechanism our brains happen to use. This is akin to asking why birds need to flap their wings to fly when we have airplanes that can fly with fixed wings.

Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion

#58

Post by jasim » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:32 PM UTC

When his great Italian friend Michele Besso died, Einstein wrote a moving letter to Michele’s sister: ‘Michele has left this strange world a little before me. This means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction made between past, present and future is nothing more than a persistent, stubborn illusion.’

... ...

Many times in the past we have realized that it is our immediate intuitions that are imprecise: if we had kept to these we would still believe that the Earth is flat and that it is orbited by the sun.

Our intuitions have developed on the basis of our limited experience. When we look a little further ahead we discover that the world is not as it appears to us: the Earth is round, and in Cape Town their feet are up and their heads are down.

To trust immediate intuitions rather than collective examination that is rational, careful and intelligent is not wisdom: it is the presumption of an old man who refuses to believe that the great world outside his village is any different from the one which he has always known.

-- Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rovelli

Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion

#59

Post by wwarner » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

It's interesting, because usually people/physicists that space is the emergent thing, and time is the fundamental dimension. I'm also glad that people are trying to reduce the number of dimensions rather than adding to them.

Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion

#60

Post by dqpb » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 2:36 PM UTC

7373737373 wrote: post #51

dqpb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that consciousnes is just the feedback loop of the brain sensing itself

Because consciousness is unitary (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory ), it would be intuitive if all consciously accessible information converged at a single physical location. In this theory, simple feed-forward networks aren't conscious. From what I've read about ego-death, it doesn't seem necessary to consciously sense the self-concept, which would be self-awareness.

I wouldn't put much weight behind ego death