Cosmology and Time's Arrow (nerd content.)

[Matt]

Well, actually I think the N was 1,000, but I tend to agree with your point. My first inclination is to compare their symmetrical approach to the multiverse approach, where singularities arise constantly and each one puffs out into its own set of laws. That possibility is actually testable in a device like the LHC, where they are starting to search for energy leakage in certain particle breakdowns. I don't see how the symmetrical model could jibe with a multiverse model... but then most of this is beyond my comprehension. My interests are more as a spectator, because I think the questions are fascinating, and sometimes I enjoy watching the efforts at model building, even for the sheer pleasure of seeing a glimpse of beauty in it.

Bugger, that's the worst sort of typo to miss! I confess I think that quite a lot of this sort of speculative model based physics is losing itself in computer models (which, I conpletely agree can be a joy to grasp in their crystalline elegance) and, lets face it, we have seen just how creatively utterly wrong one can get in the last sixty odd years of AI!

[skywatch]

(post moved to end of thread, for context.)

[skywatch]

In truth I was inspired to start this nerdy thread not just by that one cosmology article, but by the entire July 25 special issue of Science News where that review appears.

1) There's a cute little overview of the history of timekeeping, here: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...ry-timekeeping

2) A review of experiments looking at how brains perceive time, and the presence of intrinsic timekeeping in groups of neurons. Even in a petri dish, growing rat neurons can detect the difference between two pieces of music (causing lights to pulse.) https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...perceives-time

3) A review of biological clocks and circadian timekeepers. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...logical-clocks

These biological topics take me back to my university studies way back in the 1980s, where I was building electronic gizmos and sensors to do sleep research. I can't help but wonder at our mutual attraction to timekeeping devices here on this forum. I am attracted to the larger question of what time *is*. Clearly as I'm getting a bit older, time is feeling shorter and shorter!

[Matt]

In truth I was inspired to start this nerdy thread not just by that one cosmology article, but by the entire July 25 special issue of Science News where that review appears.

1) There's a cute little overview of the history of timekeeping, here: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...ry-timekeeping

2) A review of experiments looking at how brains perceive time, and the presence of intrinsic timekeeping in groups of neurons. Even in a petri dish, growing rat neurons can detect the difference between two pieces of music (causing lights to pulse.) https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...perceives-time

3) A review of biological clocks and circadian timekeepers. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...logical-clocks

These biological topics take me back to my university studies way back in the 1980s, where I was building electronic gizmos and sensors to do sleep research. I can't help but wonder at our mutual attraction to timekeeping devices here on this forum. I am attracted to the larger question of what time *is*. Clearly as I'm getting a bit older, time is feeling shorter and shorter!

So are you a time monist (all there is to time is some form of changing organisation) or a time dualist (even if the organisation of the universe were unchanging time would pass)?

I'm not going to comment on the neural timing article as I've been quite tedious enough already.

However, what sort of sleep research?

[skywatch]

So are you a time monist (all there is to time is some form of changing organisation) or a time dualist (even if the organisation of the universe were unchanging time would pass)?

I'm not going to comment on the neural timing article as I've been quite tedious enough already.

However, what sort of sleep research?

You've not been even slightly tedious - you're making me think, and I enjoy that.

As for the research, I was at Stanford studying psychology back in the early '80s and started working closely with Stephen LaBerge studying lucid dreaming. Lucid dreams are when people become aware that they are dreaming while still dreaming, and can often engage intentionally with the dream characters and content. Stephen was the person who proved in the late 1970's that a lucid dream was actually a real dream, occurring during REM sleep. People thought they might be some sort of partial awakening. To pay the rent I was building widgets for the med center while we were trying to start a company helping people get better at lucid dreaming, using an eye movement sensing device that could signal them when they're dreaming.

As for my own theories of time? I really have no idea. However, there is an underlying part of my thinking that inclines towards a radical materialism - which might sound odd because my art deals with ecstatic experience. Intuitively I feel inclined towards monism, that everything is completely interconnected and part of the same thing. In this framework, time, energy, matter and consciousness would be completely intertwined, and time might simply be the perception of change by the mind (which is an emergent process of the others.) I wonder sometimes if everything is actually a verb, and that nouns are a mental convenience.