Strega

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?

Simon Paynton wrote:
As far as accountability and free will go, I’d say that we all operate in an everyday world of “as-if” free will – we have a certain amount of agency over our actions – and we’re judged and held accountable on this as-if agency.

No, you feel you have a certain amount of agency. If you are sure there’s any agency at all, exp…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
Some will say, “But that’s nihilistic. That means there’s no point to anything. The child abuser, the family annihilator, the terrorist…they’re no better or worse than the hero or altruist or selfless caregiver.”

I don’t know what to tell you other than…”Yup! In a very real sense, we’re not the author of our actions, no matter…

[Read more]

Okay, Enco, but we do all that shit in the present, which appears to have no duration whatsoever.

It seems like everything we do is in a world defined by Zeno. You know, that paradox guy.

Simon Paynton wrote:
I think it makes more sense if we consider a structure of the universe as being one of deterministic cause and effect.  The proposal is that the universe, from start to finish, was formed in one go.  All events and timelines of objects’ spatial movements were put in place by this process that formed the block det…

[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
The notion that the big bang, the trillions of galaxies and septillions of planets, the inception and explosion of life forms on Earth or anywhere, the construction of the Pyramids and The Sphynx, the sinking of The Bismarck, and that time my cat destroyed my tablet by knocking a coffee mug onto it, as well as everything included in…

[Read more]