The Illusion of Time (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, June 19, 2010, 14:15 (5053 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Saturday, June 19, 2010, 14:22

dhw, 
You ask a huge question in here!
> MATT: You gave me something to think about.
> 
> Ah, tit for tat!
> 
> MATT: In discussing stars--you (unwittingly) allow for the exact fallacy I was worried about in the original post. You can look at a star through a telescope and see it as it was only an hour previously. But the light you see even then is not reality. The reality for however long ago the light was emitted, but even with that; a star is much more than just light. So even in your example you're not getting the star in itself, are you?
> 
> True, but this observation applies just as much to the present as to the past. It depends what level we're thinking on. I can never "get" anything "in itself". I can only get my perception of it. The example I gave was witnessing the crucifixion, but if you and I witnessed a crucifixion together in our present, we would still offer different accounts, so we couldn't claim that our version was reality or the crucifixion in itself. On this level, in line with your observation that the past does not exist and only our measurements of it exist, one would have to say the present does not exist ... only our perceptions of it exist.
> -Well, this is true as well; the post I just sent to David discusses briefly the phenomenon of 5 people watching the same car accident and reporting 5 different sequences of events. Perception always creeps in, and the fact may be we only remember what we want to remember. But let me focus you again on the river.-Your hand is in the river, and in no two moments is the "same" river flowing through your fingertips. So it is with time. When you look upstream towards your future, you have what might be, but you can't predict which molecules will actually hit your hand. When you look downstream, you'll have a general idea, based on the speed, where your touch "influenced" the stream.-But you're reasoning about an event that hasn't happened and one that already did in both cases. The only event that's actually happening is the river flowing through your fingers right now! The past, only exists in what observations we humans choose to write down--or in rare cases, are able to infer based on things we DO know. Happened. -(more for david) I'm not arguing that events in the past never happened, just shedding light on the paucity of information actually available to us. -
> You conclude: "Reality ... for each of us ... is ONLY where we are at this very moment in time." If at this very moment in time I watch a 3-D newsreel of some past event (the equivalent of my watching the crucifixion through my telescope on Planet X), I will be in the presence of the past. -Presence again of "measurements" put to newsreel, yes. -Once again, what I perceive is not the thing in itself ... it never can be ... but the image is as "real" to me as the view I have out of my study window at this moment. And so on one level I'd say you are right, because we can never claim that what we see is reality in itself, but on another level, theoretically, the past ... in the same sense of perceptions of the past ... can go on for ever, depending on the position of our observation post out there in space.
> 
> Perception is one thing, but how about participation? Supposing life is one gigantic computer game, with infinite potential for repetition and variation? Could the Illusion of Time actually = The Illusion of Life?-[EDIT] And I almost forgot the biggest question of all!!!-I hope my previous paragraphs coincide with what you say here in these two paragraphs. The late comedian George Carlin once said, "Life began a very long time ago, and is a continuous process." The continuity of life would also suggest that "now" is the only thing that matters for life as well. I think the same work I did on the river for time can apply to life too; as a single, continuous process, life at large has millions of "states" (organisms) at any given second, but they are all part of the same continuity. Most animals don't get the luxury of looking back on what came before it. And I think a great deal of thinking about the world is lead astray by the illusion of "life" just as much as the illusion of "time."

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"