Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't put much weight behind ego death
I don't understand. Do you think its necessary to have a self-concept in order to exist intrinsically?
What do you mean by "exist intrinsically"?
Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion
101–110 of 195 posts
Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand. Do you think its necessary to have a self-concept in order to exist intrinsically?
What do you mean by "exist intrinsically"?
There being a subjective perspective, having qualia, sentience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience
Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion
#103The 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…
Words aren't used because they are in the dictionary, they are in the dictionary because they are used.
Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion
#104When 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 intuition…
"Dr. Manhattan: There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet." -Alan Moore, Watchmen
To me, this idea looks like we have a set of measurements of things (X, Y, Z, T) and a function F that maps from the set of measurements to a future set of measurements. You can generate the future from the past. You could take the view that all these measurements exist, and we just can't see them (well) because we are only able to jump from Tnow to F(Tnow). In other words, we exist in one place and one time at a time.
Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion
#105I find this quote fascinating: "What I think that means is there is no holy era of time. It emerged. If, in the distant future, we find ourselves in a universe where all the stars have burned out, and all the black holes have evaporated, and all the radiation has been diluted by the dark energy that expanded our universe, and all we have is some very cold bath of photons here and there—basically thermal equilibrium;…
I think it’s quite the stretch.
By the same token, if I let my coffee thermo reach thermal equilibrium and don’t touch it, can I claim I’ve built a machine that stops time?
Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
illusion - noun, an instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience.
A misinterpretation always requires a context, or direction. Its use implies the existence of a 'true interpretation'. The word illusion doesn't give either, it just signifies that there is one. But then I have to ask, how can a subjective experience be something truly or falsely interpreted?
There's all sorts of optical illusions. If you're seeing a color that isn't in the image, then your subjective experience is that of an illusion. Perceptual illusions are where the term originates.
Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion
#107I 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 also often consider that each day I wake up as an observer to a linked list of time, that exists independently of me yet to me "only" in my mind. As our eyes and ears are sensitive to fine vibration around us, so it seems that consciousness is sensitive to time.
Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion
#108I find this quote fascinating: "What I think that means is there is no holy era of time. It emerged. If, in the distant future, we find ourselves in a universe where all the stars have burned out, and all the black holes have evaporated, and all the radiation has been diluted by the dark energy that expanded our universe, and all we have is some very cold bath of photons here and there—basically thermal equilibrium;…
I'm not an expert, but I don't think that quote is quite right. There is still a notion of time, there is just no notion of a direction of time. For example, if you go deep into empty space, then one patch of space looks just like the next one. That doesn't mean there is no longer a physical concept of space. Similarly, just because one point in time doesn't look very different from the next, doesn't mean that there…
Speaking of this, does anyone know of an explanation for why the direction in spacetime in which entropy decreases is parallel to the time dimension (the one with a different sign in the relativistic metric) of spacetime?
Maybe I'm missing something, but I've never seen a link made between the two.
Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion
#109I 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.
Thinking of your brain as a story-fitting machine also explains a lot. Everything we perceive our brain tries to fit into a narrative structure
Very Jungian/Jordan Peterson-esque thought that I think makes a lot of sense in understanding ourselves. Also reminds me of the book The Righteous Mind.
We exist to measure ourselves in an ocean of complexity, with infinite recursion in self-awareness.
Re: Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Illusion" is perfectly well defined: it is a perception that does not correspond to any objective reality outside your brain.
The problem is, that just punts the issue down to what is considered objective reality. If that's in contention, as in this specific case, then referring to things as illusory can be ambiguous. I happen to disagree with the comment you are responding to, but I do accept that the term illusion is often used ambiguously, especially in relation to notions of objective and subjective reality.
Yeah, but illusion was one of the foundations upon which philosophy got started. People noticed that things were not always as they seemed, and this started a lot of questioning about the nature of things, perception and the mind.