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The moral of the story is that the spontaneous question that arises on its own is often not the question that should be asked, but rather itself be questioned and tested.

How do you mean, that discussing the idea of time is irrelevant, or that we won’t agree on the intuitions the word brings to both our minds and thereby anything we were to mutually agree on would be useless and void? Looks like the thread is officially dead at this point but still curious.

That the question has no real answer we can find right now is true, though it was only asked because it seems like something implicitly agreed on, the fact that there is something that does happen. That modifying some thing ‘x’ makes ‘y’ change, like a falling and gravity relation, from the first we ‘find’ the second. Is it that the mind simply cannot go beyond these rules because they know and see only one world, or that we have become so accustomed to think things are one way and only one from some external force that can be overcome?

I’m bringing up the filmmaker Painleve here, but in his short film on time, he discusses the idea of a flat plane with mice in it. This plane is totally 2D and if we were to place an object in our 3D world through the plane, to the mice it would appear that something suddenly appeared there, though to us it all looks continuous. The film does a better job, but this is the general idea. What if in some other plane or dimension, these rules we hold true are not the same. And do these rules colour our interpretation of ideas of say evolution, that describe beings fighting each other in time with pain and evils.

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When I say 'time' I am only appealing to your idea of time, whatever that may be. For the purposes here, time is just the usual axiom meant as a series of motions or events happening in a sequence. The point is, that whomever you are, you probably believe that there are some things not satisfactorily explained by science, unless you are a die hard positivist (but who would take them seriously?). Is there reason to believe that we could or should appeal to some different order of being?

Like, I am reading right now a book by Aristotle you may or may not be familiar with called 'the Nicomachean Ethics,' and ─ in my interpretation ─ within it there is a section that asks, 'What are the core activities of a human?' or in some translation 'Where is the good in being human?' Connecting this to the discussion, someone may think that our ability to use those faculties that nature gave us to try and look beyond and appeal to a higher order would be the most human quality, as Aristotle seems to be doing in his notion of virtue.

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Let me clarify, by 'different order' it sounds silly but it does not only refer to a separateness of mysteries of religion or incomprehensible things. Take infinity for example, infinity is useful for many things, it is used every day by statisticians and programmers, but it is by definition incomprehensible, referring to a magnitude so large that it could not be comprehended.

It seems that time in a certain way transcends language, and is prior to it. Language is created through time, it is a dimension. And it is the most important and fundamental dimension, because all the other dimensions rely on it not just for their use but for their definitions in language. So how can we say that time seems to require us to take on a sort of mindset that allows for super-rational things like religion, or spirit. It is something we can surrender to as we cannot know practically speaking but comes to bear on all our concepts.

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OK it will be multiple sentences but here it goes,

We have inescapable bias in thinking towards what exists and is available to our senses. In a person's life they must make decisions about how to live their life. Sometimes we can act upon things without for-thought or being able to justify those actions in the context of our own interests, Sometimes we think or believe in things that aren't necessarily 'there.' Can we appeal to transcendent views of what is 'there,' such as those afforded by abnormal physical laws - time being an example, that is used at times to refer to immutable or immortal beings?

Apologies at my poor writing if its not clear enough. Don't know if now it's so reductive at the other extreme that it ceases to express anything, but we'll see.

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Well in Aristotle's time, they had 'the Gods,' or what is virtuous is something beyond our individual scope, or a way of seeing things different from our common way, or alike to the Gods. What do we have to turn a miser into a philanthropist?

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OK well just for arguments sake let us both be irreligious people, if someone were to ask 'why should I stay at home during Coronavirus while I'm sick, when it's so much fun to go out?' How would you respond without reference to some physical law beyond the scope of their intuition and also yours. Like 'because it's the right thing to do?,' but the right thing to whom?

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When we apply a force to something, it moves, and it moves in a reproducible way. Like harmonic motion, or something that repeats over and over. It fulfills it's cycle in predictable ways, and there is only one 'typical way' it does so. Perhaps reality doesn't measure up to it exactly, but as a geometric object it fulfills a prediction the same way triangles fulfill our predictions that all the angles will add to two right angles. But morality doesn't work like this. And a large part of life doesn't either. To some it would seem wise to rely on what is known, but in certain cases like the one in the last post there is no knowable reason or explanation why someone should do something. But clearly there is a reason why we shouldn't it is just that it's beyond our finite capabilities. We encounter decisions like this constantly, why should I not download all my music and movies, why should I save an animal's life, why should I care about global warming, etc. etc.

It seems unsatisfactory to approach these questions from another other point of view than a transcendental or supernatural one. Wouldn't you agree with this?

'Supernatural physical laws' was a way of saying we are appealing to intuitions that are beyond our minds current ways of knowing and its logical processes, the sense that the thing we experienced and understood could be something different from what we experienced and understood and not necessarily in a spiritual way. Though it's a cliche, that two and two could equal five.

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OK so what is your sense of humanity, something beyond pure reason? So it is transcendental is it not? Forget the physical law part, it transcends physical laws. It seems our views on this are aligned.

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One word. ENTROPY!

What is obvious, yet sublime, is that it is physical ‘possible’ for the winds to blow the sand around on a beach to produce a sandcastle. In reality it is a mathematical ‘impossibility’ because the chance is so insignificantly small - along the lines of it would take something like a billion to the power of a billion universes and then add up all the atoms in these universes to make that many more universes - repeat this a billion times - and then you might find a percentage chance of this happening that has less than trillions of decimal places prior to a figure above 0.

In more tangible terms objects are generally ‘made’ of mostly ‘empty’ space. Given this why is it we cannot walk through walls or see items fall through tables.

Chaos is also another extraordinarily fascinating topic to look into alongside this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon

The concept of time is necessarily referential to change (hence ENTROPY). Time is the means of measuring ENTROPY, and because of the reasonable degree of ‘consistency’ herein sentient ‘experience’ - which is a ‘time-bound’ concept - is linear in form or we simply wouldn’t have ‘experience’.

Note: Please take into account that talking about ‘temporality’, with a language that exists because of temporality, unfortunately produces obtuse verbiage as above :l We don’t know what ENTROPY ‘is’ but I’m damn sure if there was a God of science scientists would be worshipping Entropy (the Greek equivalent would be the Fates; they were onto something there!)

Nice example. So what about processes that are more or less random on a microscopic level but contribute to macroscopic effects. From this idea one might be tempted to believe that all things proceed in this way and that it is the origin of free will, destiny, etc. The drawback is it is biased by a world in which it exists. Because it exists it is the only existence possible. But reverting to the prior discussion of time, what exactly does a random process do outside of time? How can something be the origin of time, presuming time perception is a strictly natural human faculty, when it is seen through time?

So what about processes that are more or less random on a microscopic level but contribute to macroscopic effects. From this idea one might be tempted to believe that all things proceed in this way and that it is the origin of free will, destiny, etc. — kudos

What about it? You tell me.

Why would someone believe that? Tell me.

But reverting to the prior discussion of time, what exactly does a random process do outside of time? — kudos

I can only imagine you mean ‘abstracted from’ rather than ‘outside of’. If not that’s basically nonsense so I’ll assume you meant ‘abstracted’. Even if you did mean that I’m not entirely sure what you’re getting at? Chaotic systems are basically systems that we cannot infer the original step from. In an abstract (to be clear I mean a rigid mathematical model) setting we can set up a system that would produce chaotic motion. If we new the initial parameters we’d know EXACTLY what would happen within our enclosed system yet to the onlooker if they never knew the initial state they could only model as best they could the probable states of origin - and their modeling would generally improve over time as they accumulated more data, but they’d only ever get so close to estimating the original starting state (all entirely dependent upon the number of variables involved of course!).

How can something be the origin of time, presuming time perception is a strictly natural human faculty, when it is seen through time? — kudos

I believe I ever said such a thing? I said ‘time’ is our means of measuring change - we call this ENTROPY but we don’t pretend to know what/how/why ENTROPY ‘is’ anymore than we know gravity.

I’m talking about change. Change is utterly part of existence. No change - literally - isn’t anything to us at all other than a negative noumenal conception (in the Kantian parse). We cannot know beyond our limitations and we can only know anything because of our limitations. On the precipice of understanding we stretch ourselves, but we cannot stretch further than we can stretch. We can say things like ‘existence without time’ or ‘orange Monday under the carpet of made of paper tear dreams’ ... so what? Language itself has limitations AND that is precisely why it’s useful. A limitless ’language’ would leave everything known ‘absolutely’ and therefore redundant as nought would be open to investigation because we’d be wholly unable to doubt anything.

Note: All that said simply forming strange sentences and seemingly pointless questions can occasionally be useful as it frees up our assumptions and allows us to move beyond our perceived limits (but never our actual limits!).

What about it? You tell me.

Why would someone believe that?
...
I can only imagine you mean ‘abstracted from’ rather than ‘outside of’. If not that’s basically nonsense so I’ll assume you meant ‘abstracted’.

Suppose it’s not a proposition, but a social ideology to have these types of thoughts. That random formation of cells led to the creation of life and your being is fully surmised through a series of semi-random statistical problems.

If you take time out of the picture, which is not altogether nonsensical, or spacetime, this all starts to make a lot less sense. Consider these cells, did they have a notion of time? Was time simply ‘there’ and they didn’t know of it until animal brains were highly constituted enough to appreciate it? If so, what would be the need, when animals fighting for survival really only makes sense as an afterthought?

Keep in mind this random process thing is simply one example but others could be made.

If you take time out of the picture, which is not altogether nonsensical, or spacetime, this all starts to make a lot less sense. — kudos

How? I cannot imagine what I cannot imagine. Without experience of space or time I am non-existent - I cannot ‘think’!

Consider these cells, did they have a notion of time? — kudos

Cells are not conscious of time because they’re not conscious. There is literally zero evidence to suggest they are conscious. The concepts of ‘time’ and ‘space’ are only known to us because we’re conscious of change.

We do not talk about rock rolling down hills being conscious of ‘gravity’ because that is plainly a misuse of the term ‘conscious’. If you wish to argue that individual cells possess consciousness I’d say that’s ridiculous, but I do understand that ‘emergence’ is a tricky problem - mainly a linguistic one. We know water exists and what constitutes water on a atomic level, yet ‘wet’ is an emergent ‘experiential’ property of water and other liquid substances. When does a gathering become a crowd, etc.,?

We can talk to each other because we are conscious beings. I cannot discuss this with a rat though because rats are not ‘conscious’ in anything like the way I am. If you go down all the way to a singular cell, nope, there is nothing even remotely like a rat or human experience going on - ergo there is nothing that resembles ‘consciousness’ other than a rather desperate and analogous sense of the term.

Was time simply ‘there’ and they didn’t know of it until animal brains were highly constituted enough to appreciate it? — kudos

I’ve already pointed out that ‘time’ is our experience of entropy. What you are asking is like asking if gravity existed prior to human life - I find it hard to believe that gravity came into being parallel to human consciousness (the conception of the term ‘gravity’ did though). That is basically the question of a tree falling in the woods making a ‘sound’ (it depends entirely on what you define as ‘sound’ as some would argue that there is no ‘sound’ because sound is an experience, whereas others would refer to the sound wave existing and therefore ‘sound’ existing regardless of experience.

There seems to be a running theme here that I hope you can clarify. How are you delineating ’experience’ from ‘stuff’ if at all? If you’re not at all that could be a problem.

If so, what would be the need, when animals fighting for survival really only makes sense as an afterthought? — kudos

The ‘need’ of what? Consciousness? There is no ‘need’ in evolutionary terms only circumstantial use. What is of no use is useless and therefore redundant, but it may become of use in the future. ‘Consciousness’ - or just broader cognitive capacities - allows for better planning and navigation through space and time (aka the environment). Some people believe consciousness is merely ‘steam from an engine’ and does nothing at all (in the sense of agency). A lot of the varying views, yet again, depend on the application and use of terminology. Dennett makes perfect sense if you understand what exactly he means by ‘free will’ yet I, and many others, have tended to latch onto the surface detail of his statements rather than employ his use fo words.

Note: The free will issue likely ties into the issue of ‘random’ too. Life is a homeostatic phenomenon and is therefore bound by limits. This means that ‘random’ doesn’t mean anything can happen, only that over time certain things are almost certain and others almost impossible (such as the ‘sand castle’). This also plays out in a political sense too as many people say they want freedom, but they really mean they want just enough freedom as ‘complete’ (as absolutism) freedom means full responsibility for their actions and everyone else’s - that is a hard burden to carry akin to something like the religious conception of God! We may think we like the idea of godhood but the reality is likely far from pleasant. I honestly imagine a God would release themselves from the burden of knowledge and responsibility in order to ‘exist’ - Sisyphus was praised by the Greeks for continuing an apparently futile task. That is our lot. I like it well enough :)

This will interest you I’m sure : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk

It’s very late here and I can’t sleep so this is bound to make less sense as we go.

But it absolutely makes sense it’s not evolving from cells that’s the thing in doubt, but the ideology behind it. The contributions from scientists has been of huge importance and thats not coming under scrutiny...

I’m not quite sure how to explain myself, but that in some words it seems as though the way we see our past, present and future is just a mutation of the time that was necessary to produce it. That in fact this whole point of view is in many ways tautological.

That time is just a form of entropy is interesting, you should explore this further. How are you coming to this conclusion?

That time is just a form of entropy is interesting, you should explore this further. How are you coming to this conclusion? — kudos

I’m not saying it is a form of entropy. I am saying our experience of entropy is what we experientially refer to as ‘time’. No entropy means no change. Zero entropy is our closest ‘appreciation’ concept of ‘nothing’ (in more day-to-day talk).

Here’s something else considered to be one of, if not the, most important papers written in the 20th century (I hope to one day be able to fully appreciate it) :

http://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf

In the video above the guy mentions the book Chaos by James Gleick - something I first heard about from watching Sapolsky’s lectures on youtube (highly recommend both!)

Does it then follow that time is fully encapsulated in the word ‘Entropy’? Surely not, since time is thought by some to be a partially external, part apparatus-related idea. Or maybe you have evidence that entropy is part experience part physical phenomena?

You’ve lost me. If you put an ice cube on the table you’ll entropy in action. Time can be subjective (if you’re bathed in red light your subjective appreciation of time will be different than if you’re bathed in blue light or simply the activity you’re doing will change your experience of time’s passage) but an atomic clock doesn’t care about your subjective experience of time. Radioactive decay is entropy increasing - our means of measuring this is with time.

Back to the pool of water that was once ice. As time passes it will evaporate - this is entropy increasing. Homeostatic entities (in this instance ‘life forms’) exist because they create a boundary between the environment and their inner functioning - yet they are never ever separate and although it seems like things ‘grow’ essentially everything - on the universal scale - is falling apart (entropic death).

Basically everything is trying to reach equilibrium (that is precisely what entropy is all about). Without balls rolling down hills or ice melting there would be no ‘time’. Our human appreciation of time is clearly due to our homeostatic state as a living organism - a rock doesn’t care about anything. We’re eating up the little eddies produced as entropy continually increases on a universal scale.

In short, of course time is encapsulated in the term Entropy? The fact that we’re alive is a blip. We cannot hold death at bay and defy Entropy. We merely sustain and balance our homeostatic states and slow the inevitable. This is all about entropy and efficient use of energy/information. Time does ‘happen’ entropy ‘is’ and change occurs due to entropy. The ‘randomness’ of an event is quantified by entropy. Higher entropy means more randomness and more randomness means so appreciable ‘different’ because there is no measurable means to predict what is pulled from the cosmic bag if every item pulled is unknowable - time doesn’t ‘exist’ in any sense we could appreciate. The same goes for a cosmic bag full of the same items. Every time we pull something from the bag it would be identical, there would be no discernible difference between absolute entropic states (zero or ‘random’ - true random!).

Perfect order means explosive potential for change. Perfect disorder means no potential for anything. In a bizarre way absolute ‘equilibrium‘ and absolute ’randomness’ are so different the are, to my mind, as good as the same for my poor little brain.

Maybe my words are too confusing.

Here, wiki away! :D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(arrow_of_time)

Yes no what you’re saying makes total sense, our experience of time is certainly in part derived from such an external phenomena that relates to changes of states, that is a position that has been held from the very beginning of the use of the word. And that physics is so well advanced it can be reframed in such definition is really cool. Imagine if only you could fully understand and predict this you’d truly be all-powerful!

So you’re certainly not suggesting that through nature there is a comparison of entropy and time that is full and complete. It sounds as if your point is that through time this structure of entropy takes shape and vise versa that through entropy time takes shape. Right? So they must be very closely related, which is definitely true. It doesn’t seem to follow from there that our experience of time is entropy in the strict sense, but if it’s a case of reading between the lines, then yes. It’s an example of how these faculties present themselves with an inherent bias to certain structures of descriptions extending from the fact that they are the only faculties that happened to exist.