Can you answer the most fundamental question about time?

[ruby sparks]

The results of this experiment, as well as another conducted in 2007, proved what Wheeler had always suspected – observers’ consciousness is required to bring the universe into existence. This means that a pre-life Earth would have existed in an undetermined state, and a pre-life universe could only exist retroactively.''

Ok I can't get my head around that.

This guy, Brian Lanza, goes even further:

"But if there were no observers, the universe wouldn't merely look like nothing. No, more than that it wouldn't exist in any way."

And then he cites someone who appears to (approximately) agree with him:

"Physicist Andrei Linde, of Stanford University says, 'the universe and the observer exist as a pair.......I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers'"

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...universe that ignores consciousness.”&f=false

I would have been ready to say that a tree falling in a forest makes no sound if there is nothing there to experience it, but I would have said that the tree itself existed.

 

[fromderinside]

If you want to be technical we never perceive in real time. The finite speed of light and relativity defines that. Add to thyat the neural processing time.

We are always behind events.

And the various routes the inputs take to reach the brain mean that they arrive at different times, but I read that our brain 'tampers' with the conscious perception of the inputs, so that they all feel as if they happen at the same time. So if you hit the tip of your shoe with a stick, you see it, feel it and hear it at the same 'time' even though the news arrived in 3 ways at different times.

Then there's the flash-lag effect, for which one explanation (it's not fully explained) is that we see the moving dot ahead of the static one because our conscious perception of the moving dot is actually a prediction of where it will be rather than where it is. If true, that would make us early rather than late, for some things.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Flash_lag.gif

I've found that with sound, time is traded for signal duration. Since the receptor system is overall singular, the cochlea, information derived from it, neural processing, need be resolved through trades to achieve location, content, and character of source. The acoustic filter can be seen as composed of channels resolving time and frequency. Studies indicate clicks are perceived after tones even orienting responses are preceding recognition. That is one will report a tone as being heard before a click but moving of eyes and head toward target precedes recognition of approaching threat.

I suspect similar contrasts can be found for vision, position, and feel sensations and perceptions.

In the case of hearing things are relatively simple to explain. We process sound, an omnidirectional sense more rapidly than any other by nature of signal-sensor mechanism. We begin processing sound in as little as six milliseconds while visual, olfactory, and skin senses require much more transduction and transport time before interacting with central processing systems. Arrival time differences of a signal from and around the observer between two ears can processed within that six milliseconds which makes possible turning of head and threat orienting behavior possible within just a few tens of milliseconds.

The visual stimulus has not completed leaving the retina for up to 20-30 milliseconds. Touch signals don't reach cortex for more time than visual signals while olfactory signals are just being coupled after 60-120 milliseconds.

This distinction of time advantage for sound detection imposes constraints on other auditory processing features not to mention the information aspect being temporal for sound while being more spatial for the other senses. The brain doesn't tamper. Rather The brain is has many intersensory problems to solve to coordinate and resolve sensory processing time differences for coherent processing of complex sensory events. You see how insisting on a central thing doing something muddles the discussion ruby sparks?

 

[DBT]

The results of this experiment, as well as another conducted in 2007, proved what Wheeler had always suspected – observers’ consciousness is required to bring the universe into existence. This means that a pre-life Earth would have existed in an undetermined state, and a pre-life universe could only exist retroactively.''

Ok I can't get my head around that.

This guy, Brian Lanza, goes even further:

"But if there were no observers, the universe wouldn't merely look like nothing. No, more than that it wouldn't exist in any way."i

And then he cites someone who appears to (approximately) agree with him:

"Physicist Andrei Linde, of Stanford University says, 'the universe and the observer exist as a pair.......I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers'"

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...universe that ignores consciousness.”&f=false

I would have been ready to say that a tree falling in a forest makes no sound if there is nothing there to experience it, but I would have said that the tree itself existed.

I think the idea is that probability wave function collapses into a definite form once observed, so the tree falling in the forest is there falling in the forest, doing whatever it does, the history of the universe, star formation, gallaxies colliding, etc, once 'observed' remains objective for all observers, history happened as we understand it because observers exist.

What constitutes an 'observer' is not clear. Apparently superposition is hard to maintain in a lab....even vibration from a passing truck can collapse the superposition/wave state, which could act as an 'observer'

 

[ruby sparks]

The brain doesn't tamper. Rather The brain is has many intersensory problems to solve to coordinate and resolve sensory processing time differences for coherent processing of complex sensory events. You see how insisting on a central thing doing something muddles the discussion ruby sparks?

The brain has many problems to solve?

Don't you see how insisting on a central thing doing something muddles the discussion?

 

[DBT]

To be fair, it could be said that the brain is modular, frontal lobes, mid brain, hind brain, two hemisphere, glands, etc, working to produce conscious and unconscious behaviours...sometimes in conflict.

 

[fromderinside]

We, including me, put too many issues to brain problems. I wonder why we don't get similarly upset when we complain about the heart missing beats. Huh, huh?

When ruby sparks talks about brain tamper she gives it authority as an agent. OK. Wherein lies the agency?

When I talk about the brain having intersensory problems to solve I'm speaking as an outside observer who has to determine whether I need control for this or that intervening variable as one who studies sensory brain function.

I accept that I commit the same imputation of agency except I did include her complete causal statement as I criticize her for imputing the brain tampers when she means the brain acts contrary to expectations.

Mia and culpa.

DBT I'm never fair. I always bias toward me.

 

[OLDMAN]

The results of this experiment, as well as another conducted in 2007, proved what Wheeler had always suspected – observers’ consciousness is required to bring the universe into existence. This means that a pre-life Earth would have existed in an undetermined state, and a pre-life universe could only exist retroactively.''

Ok I can't get my head around that.

This guy, Brian Lanza, goes even further:

"But if there were no observers, the universe wouldn't merely look like nothing. No, more than that it wouldn't exist in any way."i

And then he cites someone who appears to (approximately) agree with him:

"Physicist Andrei Linde, of Stanford University says, 'the universe and the observer exist as a pair.......I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers'"

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...universe that ignores consciousness.”&f=false

I would have been ready to say that a tree falling in a forest makes no sound if there is nothing there to experience it, but I would have said that the tree itself existed.

I think the idea is that probability wave function collapses into a definite form once observed, so the tree falling in the forest is there falling in the forest, doing whatever it does, the history of the universe, star formation, gallaxies colliding, etc, once 'observed' remains objective for all observers, history happened as we understand it because observers exist.

What constitutes an 'observer' is not clear. Apparently superposition is hard to maintain in a lab....even vibration from a passing truck can collapse the superposition/wave state, which could act as an 'observer'

We are not people with brains, using them to figure things out, we are brains with personas, the brain using the persona to protect itself. Like the creatures that came before us, we are part of that which we envision.

 

[DBT]

I think the idea is that probability wave function collapses into a definite form once observed, so the tree falling in the forest is there falling in the forest, doing whatever it does, the history of the universe, star formation, gallaxies colliding, etc, once 'observed' remains objective for all observers, history happened as we understand it because observers exist.

What constitutes an 'observer' is not clear. Apparently superposition is hard to maintain in a lab....even vibration from a passing truck can collapse the superposition/wave state, which could act as an 'observer'

We are not people with brains, using them to figure things out, we are brains with personas, the brain using the persona to protect itself. Like the creatures that came before us, we are part of that which we envision.

Exactly, rather than a persona with a brain, we are a brain with a persona.

 

[4321lynx]

I think the idea is that probability wave function collapses into a definite form once observed, so the tree falling in the forest is there falling in the forest, doing whatever it does, the history of the universe, star formation, gallaxies colliding, etc, once 'observed' remains objective for all observers, history happened as we understand it because observers exist.

What constitutes an 'observer' is not clear. Apparently superposition is hard to maintain in a lab....even vibration from a passing truck can collapse the superposition/wave state, which could act as an 'observer'

We are not people with brains, using them to figure things out, we are brains with personas, the brain using the persona to protect itself. Like the creatures that came before us, we are part of that which we envision.

Exactly, rather than a persona with a brain, we are a brain with a persona.

No. We are an organized mass of genes using our personas and brains to propagate themselves/us through space/tme. Go forth and multiply is the name of the game.

 

[DBT]

Exactly, rather than a persona with a brain, we are a brain with a persona.

No. We are an organized mass of genes using our personas and brains to propagate themselves/us through space/tme. Go forth and multiply is the name of the game.

Well, you can keep rolling back further than that. The point here was the role and function of a brain. Genes can act in many different ways that does not involve a brain or persona.

 

[4321lynx]

Exactly, rather than a persona with a brain, we are a brain with a persona.

No. We are an organized mass of genes using our personas and brains to propagate themselves/us through space/tme. Go forth and multiply is the name of the game.

Well, you can keep rolling back further than that. The point here was the role and function of a brain. Genes can act in many different ways that does not involve a brain or persona.

The OP was about time. Yes, genes "misfire" but over billions of years some get lucky and more useful than others and last through time in spite of "falling trees" in the forest and floundering pnilosophers here, there, and everywhere.

 

[DBT]

Well, you can keep rolling back further than that. The point here was the role and function of a brain. Genes can act in many different ways that does not involve a brain or persona.

The OP was about time. Yes, genes "misfire" but over billions of years some get lucky and more useful than others and last through time in spite of "falling trees" in the forest and floundering pnilosophers here, there, and everywhere.

The discussion took a turn onto the role of the brain as the 'observer in quantum physics as it relates to Wheelers retrocausal universe and the nature of time. He based his idea on physics not philosophy, the double eraser experiment, observer effect, etc.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Do you have the time?

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Time is the distance between events.