Scott, I have referred you to books such as 'time's arrow and archimedes'
point' by huw price. The recent book by Vic Stenger - I can't remember what
name he settled on in the end - also examines evidence for time. All the
traditional arguments for time turn out to be predicated on hidden initial
assumptions that time exisits, and this includes the 3rd law of
thermodynamics. 'Time' is a subjective phenomenon.
It would be unreasonable of you to expect me to take the time to reproduce
these perfectly sound arguments. I tell you what- I'll look them up on
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195117980/o/qid=981889963/sr=8-1/ref
=aps_sr_b_1_1/103-1683623-4661404
Furthermore, anyone who assumes that the relative state formulation of QM is
the correct (in its own terms) - and I though pretty well everyone on this
list did - can only view time as a sequencing of multiverse snapshots.This
sequencing is not inherent to the multiverse, but must be subjective.
Regarding 'time does not exist so how can you talk about 2 years ago' - even
a solipsist will enter into a debate, and talk in Newtonian language of 'me,
you, now, then'. In the back of his mind he will remember that it is an
'internal' debate, using a misleading language, but the only language he
knows.
BTW, George, of course I understand the 3rd person vs 1st person fallacy,
which it took Jacques Mallah about a year to disabuse me of in the old QTI
debates. Once I saw that there was no such thing as the first vs third
person, all the contradictions under discussion vanished, and hence I have
not been active in the debate since then.
PS have you noticed that the time is always now? Funny, that.
----- Original Message -----
From: Scott D. Yelich <scott.domain.name.hidden>
To: John Mikes <jamikes.domain.name.hidden>
Cc: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2001 8:19 PM
Subject: Re: Consciousness schmonscioisness
> On Sat, 10 Feb 2001, John Mikes wrote:
> > > Scott
> > First: the past tense is objectionable unless the answer is negative
(=Yes,
> > it didn't).
>
> I don't approach my choice of and use of language by choosing words that
> are continuously defendable from a certain perspective. That is,
> I am not scientific in my approach.
>
> Actually, my statement seems to indicate that I believe that time does
> exist. It wasn't meant to be objectionable, but rather a reference back
> to trying to get a solid answer from J.H. -- to which he always responds
> that he doesn't have the time (to explain to me why time doesn't exist).
>
> I try to gather what I can from this list -- although there appear to
> be so many divergent beliefs, that I have a difficult time truly
> extracting anything, let alone everything.
>
> Back to the poiint: I'm a little crazier -- I simply think everything
> can't happen all at once, hence there has to be (degrees of) difference.
>
> > I beg to differ: it is about the level of "same". If you consider a
same
>
> I talk about this to various people who probably don't care to hear
> about it. But, to me, one can't discuss levels of sameness to the same
> extent that one can with difference... therefore I approach it from the
> perspective of "difference" -- but we are probably talking about very
> similar concepts from slightly different perspectives.
>
> > not duplicate THIS and so that difference is information.
> > We usually deal in incomplete information, by incomplete modeling in our
> > thinking.
> > So Scott may be right: we CANNOT compare (absolutely) same differences.
> > Scott, is this what you pointed at?
> > John Mikes
>
> Yes.
>
> Now to offend everyone... in my own simplistic method, I am programming
> a system that extracts information through difference. It is a pet
> project of mine. Whether it turns out to be everything, or not, is not
> important. I simply want it to turn out to be something.
>
> I am simply here, and elsewhere, looking to either find additional
> insight or anything that might shoot down my theories/ideas or cause me
> to alter them. I'd love to talk with anyone, via private emails,
> about this programming project.
>
> Scott
> ps:
> AI is alive, if is believes that it is.
> AI exists because it believes that it does.
>
>
>
Received on Sun Feb 11 2001 - 03:20:24 PST