Steve Dustcircle

I have so much more to write on this. I will try over the weekend. Just finalizing a project for work tomorrow, so maybe Sunday.

I’m at the surface level of these philosophies and physics, trying to look in. Is this just one loaf of bread, or is the next slice still unpredictable due to quantum probabilities/improbabilities? Do the ends of the loaf connect, looking more like a donut? In a many-worlds view, do an infinite number of future slices bifurcate into an infinite…[Read more]

Some more thoughts……The human concept of Time is difficult to shake off. It feels intuitive but this is only because we feel an innate sense of Time because we have evolved a hard-wired temporal sensitivity. Marking the seasons and changes in the weather helped us survive. We even have a circadian rhythm to a natural light-dark cycle (as do all…[Read more]

Almost. In the block universe, things absolutely do happen. Stars explode or conversations happen. But these only happen locally (within regions of spacetime). What does not happen is a global update of reality.  Another way of putting it (I am also explaining it to myself as I write this) is that nothing happens to the Universe as a whole but…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
The block universe gives an unbelievable account of experience. If you take it seriously, nothing actually happens, however experience consists of a cluttered stream of experiences.

Yet, we travel through spacetime at the speed of light.  So, the block universe could exist.  But I am still unable to connect the “self” with “now”.

The block universe gives an unbelievable account of experience. If you take it seriously, nothing actually happens, however experience consists of a cluttered stream of experiences.

That the account of experience it gives is counterintuitive and implausible can be explained in terms of the unreliability of experience.Nevertheless, the entire…[Read more]

The senses are a poor source of evidence. Our senses tell us that the world is colorful. In fact, color is in the brain, not the external world. We experience gravity as a force. We know it’s not. We experience deja vu which is a well known trick of the mind that seems real.

Some years after my mother died, I was standing on a street corner…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Fellow Unbelievers: Trump tells Iranian protesters against Islamist tyranny that “Help is on the way” two weeks after the uprising starts and after anywhere from 12,000 to 20,000 Iranian citizens are dead. I’d say time and agency are pretty damn real. Can you relate?

The problem of agency regarding free will isn’t about…[Read more]

Time “marches on,” “flies,” “waits for no one” are not ontology. They are just descriptors of how humans feel but not how the Universe works.

Here are my thoughts on “Time and Momentum”.  It is not Time…but Momentum that counts. Without the latter, i.e. relational events, the former is not required. Time would not have been conceived of w…[Read more]

“Now” is already gone the moment you say it. The instant you think now, neural processing time in your brain has already elapsed so the concept of “now” is reconstructed after the fact. “Now” immediately becomes a memory, not an event. The Andromeda Paradox destroys the idea of a universal cosmic present. Even two people standing a meter apart do…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:
No, you feel you have a certain amount of agency.

What I’m saying is, we treat ourselves and each other as if we have agency, whether we “really” do or not. It’s on this level that we’re held accountable.

See, you can’t talk about agency without implying agency where there really is none. And I mean you you,…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
No, you feel you have a certain amount of agency.

What I’m saying is, we treat ourselves and each other as if we have agency, whether we “really” do or not.  It’s on this level that we’re held accountable.

How long is now?