• Coeus
    11
    We know we are actually experiencing the past i.e. the now is a past experience. This has been shown by Benjamin Libet in his experiments.

    So if we live or experience the past and this is known as the NOW then all nows are actually pasts.

    If we look to our pasts and see that all paths to each other are in a direct line i.e. a cause and effect then we know that to be a truth, that is to say we can verify one and only one direct resulting effect came about due to one particular cause. We can imagine that there were an infinite number of possible effects from that one cause but in the end there was one and only one cause per effect.

    So we say there has only been one path and not a multitude of possible paths that got us to here and now.

    So if we accept this as true then it also has to be true in all futures.

    Now if we actually live or experience a now that is actually past, we know that light travels at the speed of light so all information we receive comes to us at the speed of light and enters our eyes but then goes through the rods and cones and then gets converted into electromechanical signals which are transmitted by sodium atoms and this is slower than light speed.

    So light comes in and is slowed down for processing in the brain.

    Now we know there are billions if not trillions of neurons in the brain. So this information that is slowed down and transmitted throughout the brain is in effect slowed still more.

    So the question remains, how can something slow down the speed of light?

    Einstein stated that as you approach the speed of light rulers contract, time slows but oddly mass increases?

    So is the information coming into our eyes since it is under the control of light, contracted?

    In effect if we are truly experiencing the past as a now, then we are never in control of our future.

    How can we being and existing in a past or rather experiencing it have any control on what is taking place out there up ahead?

    This up ahead is similar to star treks transporter. Every moment it starts to materialize and then becomes fact or actuality.

    The question arises how the hell are you there in the future while you can only experience the past or what has happened?

    It must be you, because each successive moments you experience what you have done.

    This is where the past and how it is defined comes into play, when you look back you see a set one way path with only one decision being made to get you to the here and now, all infinite possibilities have been wiped clean.

    This will be true ten years into your future, because it is true for your past, this is a truth.

    This tells me that there are not an infinite number of possibilities at each point or second in my future.

    If you analyze it, like if I am going to the supermarket, I will not end up in New York or end up at some sammich shop or find myself in Florida etc. So many things are ruled out even to the extent of putting sugar or pepper or bleach in my tea.

    The bottom line is that there will be only one choice made, and like I stated earlier, you are not in the future to make that choice, by you I mean the you here and now.

    So what I gather from all this is that when you came to be everything you have done was there, beginning to end.

    Whether you believe in God or not, whatever is in control has given us the ability to see it all in a sort of slow motion movie,

    Back to Einstein if something is traveling at the speed of light, like information that is entering our eye, how the hell can you or something slow down light especially since traveling at that speed we are told that rulers shrink?

    So in essence the stuff that we receive by light or the speed of light which by definition should already be slowed I.E. clocks or shrunk rulers, how the hell can our brains slow it down further, Einstein did state that at the speed of light time slows or stops?????

    When this speed of light information comes in it should be at a standstill and how the hell can a brain slow down information that is supposed to be topped or at a standstill?

    Let me know where my logic is screwed.

    Peace

  • Echarmion
    2.5k
    Let me know where my logic is screwed.Coeus

    Basically, everywhere. But let's take it from the top:

    We know we are actually experiencing the past i.e. the now is a past experience. This has been shown by Benjamin Libet in his experiments.

    So if we live or experience the past and this is known as the NOW then all nows are actually pasts.
    Coeus

    This is a contradiction in terms. Of course my now is now. My internal perspective clearly has a present. Whether or not the information that reaches me in my present comes from the past for some hypothetical outside observer doesn't turn my present into my past.

    If we look to our pasts and see that all paths to each other are in a direct line i.e. a cause and effect then we know that to be a truth, that is to say we can verify one and only one direct resulting effect came about due to one particular cause. We can imagine that there were an infinite number of possible effects from that one cause but in the end there was one and only one cause per effect.Coeus

    I disagree. I can see multiple causes contributing to single effects. We cannot verify that an effect has only a single cause.

    So we say there has only been one path and not a multitude of possible paths that got us to here and now.

    So if we accept this as true then it also has to be true in all futures.
    Coeus

    This does not follow. That we perceive our past as a single path doesn't mean the future is determined.

    Now if we actually live or experience a now that is actually past, we know that light travels at the speed of light so all information we receive comes to us at the speed of light and enters our eyes but then goes through the rods and cones and then gets converted into electromechanical signals which are transmitted by sodium atoms and this is slower than light speed.Coeus

    Not all information we receive is transmitted by light. You do have ears, don't you?

    So light comes in and is slowed down for processing in the brain.

    Now we know there are billions if not trillions of neurons in the brain. So this information that is slowed down and transmitted throughout the brain is in effect slowed still more.

    So the question remains, how can something slow down the speed of light?
    Coeus

    Neither is the light hitting our eyes slowed down, nor is the speed of light slowed down. The photons that hit your eyes merely create an electrical impulse.

    Einstein stated that as you approach the speed of light rulers contract, time slows but oddly mass increases?

    So is the information coming into our eyes since it is under the control of light, contracted?
    Coeus

    No. And I have no idea what you mean by "information being under the control of light"

    In effect if we are truly experiencing the past as a now, then we are never in control of our future.

    How can we being and existing in a past or rather experiencing it have any control on what is taking place out there up ahead?
    Coeus

    By triggering events?

    The question arises how the hell are you there in the future while you can only experience the past or what has happened?Coeus

    Why would I have to be in the future?

    If you analyze it, like if I am going to the supermarket, I will not end up in New York or end up at some sammich shop or find myself in Florida etc. So many things are ruled out even to the extent of putting sugar or pepper or bleach in my tea.Coeus

    Quantum physics disagrees. All these are technically possible.
  • Mww
    4.5k


    On another philosophy discussion medium, I used to sign off with “Peace”. Seems weird to see it when I didn’t write it.

    On Libet. Sufficiently counter-argued by Dennet, 1996 and P. Churchland, 1981. I don’t have a problem with allowing the mechanics of the brain to have a little time to do it’s thing before presenting it to my attention.

    On Einstein. We and our perceived information are in the same reference frame, so SOL effects are not an issue. Quantum effects with respect to human mental processes, on the other hand, have pros and cons, re: Penrose and Tegmark, resp., and probably others.
    ———————

    So we say there has only been one path and not a multitude of possible paths that got us to here and now. So if we accept this as true then it also has to be true in all futures.Coeus

    We can say there was only one path leading from past to present, only after a path has been taken. That doesn’t mean there was only one path possible to take. We can also say we will take only one path in the future, but this time, only because taking more than one path is impossible.

    We know which path leads from past to present, aka experience, but cannot know the path from present to future, hence there cannot be a preferred path of all possible paths, but there can be a path of greater probability.
    —————————

    This tells me that there are not an infinite number of possibilities at each point or second in my future.Coeus

    The only reason we consider an infinite number of future possibilities is because it is impossible to know the one it is going to be. Technically, there can’t be an infinite number anyway. It’s better to say, future paths are not entirely under our own control, and given a certain set of antecedent conditions, there should be a particular consequence.
    —————————

    When this speed of light information comes in it should be at a standstill and how the hell can a brain slow down information that is supposed to be topped or at a standstill?Coeus

    If light informations stops at the eyes, how would we experience what we’re looking at?
  • Coeus
    11
    Quantum physics? Show me a quantum. What do you mean by quantum? Do you mean the smallest physical thing? How about a grain of sand? Do you mean something we cannot see or experience? So if that is so how can you analyze something not seen or experienced is it like God? Is God a Quanta?
    Tell me about these things you experience that you call quanta, are they red, blue, square, oval, spherical. Please show them to me, I must see them for myself.

    Oh and when they delved into these things coming from the double slit experiment and ventured off into wave particle duality and Schrodinger, De Broglie, Heisenberg and Dirac had to work out the maths for this problem it is interesting that Dirac stated this tidbit in his The Principles of Quantum Mechanics fourth edition page 6 para 3.
    "Questions about what decides whether the photon is to go through or not and how it changes its direction of polarization when it does go through cannot be investigated by experiment and should be regarded as outside the domain of science."

    "Quantum physics disagrees. All these are technically possible. " - Echarmion

    So you say quantum physics disagrees yet Dirac states we cannot know what these quanta do or how they do it, how then can you know how quanta decide things?
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    We know we are actually experiencing the past i.e. the now is a past experience. This has been shown by Benjamin Libet in his experiments.Coeus

    I don't actually agree with that. The present is the changes/motions that are happening in a particular reference frame, as opposed to the changes/motions that already happened in that reference frame (as well as opposed to the changes/motion that have yet to happen in that reference frame). Changes/motion in one reference frame's past can be in another reference frame's present, and will be in yet another's future.

    (I'm not using "reference frame" in a strict, conventional physics sense there--I'm using it more in the vein of "perspective," but where we're also not necessarily talking about a person's point of view, just any ontological/spatiotemporal "situatedness.")
  • CoeusAccepted Answer
    11
    If light informations stops at the eyes, how would we experience what we’re looking at?
    - Mww
    Light is electromagnetic so after the rods and cones all signals are transmitted by electro-chemical signals, so this is why I stated that we go from the speed of light entering our eyes to a slower speed of information transmission. How an apple is imprinted in our brain is an amazing thing. So these signals diverge into all areas of the brain. Now imagine if we had only one neuron as a brain and imagine it was located right in the eye. How would our experience be in this instance? Would we experience things at the speed of light due to no additional processing time through all those neurons?

    What I meant by that statement is imagine if there was a pellet or something in that light beam, Einstein told us that for it time stops or should we say there would be no way of knowing what time it is by looking at a clock not on the beam and no way of determining it was in motion. So when it hits the eye and the rods and cones it is in effect not in motion. So it being a pellet is equal to whatever information is contained in the light of some object being looked at.

    Now that pellet has to be transferred into the brain but it is not moving or has no time because time is the measure of motion and going at the speed of light you cannot determine speed in reference to anything.

    This is the question if that pellet hit you eye and then right to your neuron how fast would you experience things? At the speed of light continuously? If so does light get slowed down with many neurons or do you think that if that 0 speed the pellet has due to traveling at the speed of light how does it go to the negative since it is not moving an anything experiencing travel at the speed of light is instantaneous. Do you see the problem? In essence from the pellets frame of reference there is no time and no speed all is 0 what does it experience when it comes upon the eye it has to slow down but it is at 0 speed.

    Peace
  • Mww
    4.5k

    Would we experience things at the speed of light due to no additional processing time through all those neurons?
    Coeus

    This is easily reconciled if we acknowledge that experience itself isn’t the receptivity and processing of sensory data. They are the conditions for it, but at not it, per se. If we treat experience as the end of the process, the speed of the information being processed is irrelevant to the experience.

    No additional processing time is an interesting notion, but because the human cognitive system doesn’t work that way, such speculation can’t really tell us anything.

    The pellet argument might be reconciled by asserting that the pellet, hence its information, isn’t moving at the SOL as soon as it enters a conducting medium of some arbitrary, but much greater physical density, than regular atmosphere.

    Besides, Einstein also said an object, in this case a pellet riding a light beam, would have zero mass hence infinite energy, due to the Principle of Complementarity, so when that sukka hits your eye, you’re not going to see anything anyway. But that is an impossible physical scenario, which implies the whole pellet thing is too speculative.

    Another thing. The pellet’s zero speed is relative to the light beam, not the eye or subsequent medium it’s transferred to.
  • Coeus
    11
    so when that sukka hits your eye, you’re not going to see anything anyway.
    LMAO!!!
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