But is the future ahead of us or behind us? An interesting twist on the flow of time is that Eastern Philosophy has the future behind us, like a rower in a boat. We can only see what's happened... the past. We can't see the future. It's why the Arabs say inshallah" (إِنْ شَاءَ ٱللَّٰهُ) which means, "God Willing" They tend to see our constant striving to look into the future to be funny since the past has the patterns that answer the future.
It's true: our only way to learn about the future is to study its exact opposite, the past! This is yet another example of the power of symmetry, another subject I need to get out of my brain and into the digital cosmos ASAP.
Hahahaha I totally opened immediately because of the title. Sang the song as soon as I saw it.
I wish I could bend time. I never have enough time in each day. I had a pretty deep conversation with my oldest about time a few months ago. I told him I thought that time seemed to go faster the older I got. He said his experience of time was different and didn’t feel like time was going faster as he got older. Of course, I can’t remember now exactly what he told me, but I’m going to have to ask him about it because it was pretty interesting, and a good example of how the experience of time passing is highly subjective.
Yes! I think time goes way, way faster these days. I think that, when you're a kid, everything is new and worthy of intense focus. You've never experienced THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT ever before, and it's so exciting! A few decades later and you've experienced very similar things many times, and you know what's truly important far better (I'm sure you can tell how much I'm generalizing here).
I also realized I really stepped in it today. I could have written about this subject for like 9 hours longer. Yikes!
Hahahaha yes, you very easily could have written all day about this!
I think your point is very similar to the one he was making. I wonder how much of it has to do with the pace of society having taken leaps over the past 20 years…
I can say this for sure: my mind has a LOT more stuff in there than it had 30 years ago, and I forget trivial stuff I never used to forget. Is it cognitive decline? Perhaps, but I honestly think it's more along the lines of TMI constantly bombarding us. The alternative, to be a "low information individual", is a bit of a non-starter for folks like us, though. :-/
Exactly! I believe it’s the TMI overwhelm of information vs cognitive decline, and I could never go low info. It’s too exciting to have so much information about everything all over. I’m constantly wondering how we learned anything back in pre-internet days. The hard and slow way! Hahahaha! I did frequent the library and was constantly reading when I was a kid. But, that kind of learning and knowledge had intention behind it and prior thought. With the flow of information now, you also have to weed through misinformation…
I still remember my first explanation of time dilation as a kid; it was actually in a science fiction novel (I'm not 100% positive, but I think it was Robert Heinlein's "Time for the Stars") and that got me to get Einstein's book "Relativity" (which is surprisingly easy to comprehend). The idea of time being inconstant just blew me away!
I've read Einstein's Relativity as well, and enjoyed it too! I was also surprised how much I liked it. It was really accessible.
I was also primed by the ideas of science fiction. I think I will always be at least loosely tethered to science fiction, and that's why Sci-Friday appeals so much to me. So many minds are being stretched!
I'm also delighted that this didn't get too technical. It's quite a tightrope to walk some days!
The way computers do video - codecs - is similar to a flipbook. Like a flipbook, the only important frames (think pages) are the ones where something changed, you can ignore the rest. Like your point about time only mattering when something happens. So a computers perception (think AI) is sharper because its only sees the change and is not distracted by the passage of time
Yeah, I think we can learn a TON about the nature of reality by simply observing how computers do things. Very good example and a great add-on to this!
I just figured out the actual ANSWER? to this riddle. About 30 minutes ago. There is in fact an answer that doesn’t feel needlessly relative. If only I was as efficient in my writing as you are.
Time in western philosophy and civilization, our orientation to it and why it feels like a construct. A real answer and origin story, it’s actually sort of absurd, feels like a play. There absolutely is a flow of time that makes sense and interestingly a few days ago I bumped into the quantum realm and Einstein and sunflowers on my way to this understanding.
This seems to be the last piece of the puzzle to a much larger one about the implications of this disorientation in our modern moment in history and what to do about it. It’s taken a few months-ish but I have “parsimoniously” toppled a cascade of paradigms potentially…
AND YET, I’ve left notifications on on Substack and throughout this time, the steady drip of your articles in particular, the consistency of the 2am publishing, the perfectly portioned out content stream, and the serendipitous relevance of this one about time in particular, fills me with a mixture of dread and envy because you are an actual writer. Which is a different skill than generalist strategist. I have a habit of giving my ideas away and have been trying not to do so here, but it would be so nice to just shout all the things into your notes right now… or hand it all off to a writer.
Well hey, there is an awful lot to think about and digest, and also to share with others. I can think about things endlessly, but it only really gets fun and truly interesting if it's shared with someone else. It means a lot to hear that my ideas are actually able to get to you by way of some kind of encoded electronic signal traveling at c.
Emergence, entropy, and the flow of time are all very much on my mind these days, along with the very idea that information and energy are the same thing. It's just a framework, but everything else sort of clicks into place for me when I think about things this way.
This was everything! Emergence, entropy, combined with the fusion, fission, and luminosity. And figuring out the origins of human misalignment. Writing this so maybe I’ll just figure out how to write it up. Thanks!
Oh, I’ve written! Maybe the MOST words. I’ve developed models. Visuals. It’s just the first three paragraphs. I usually write from the perspective of my audience, but in this case that’s the piece I don’t have. So I have to frame it cold. Does one start with Pythagoras, Anaximander, the Egyptians, or maybe cores, orbits and spirals? Perhaps I should start with the shadow sun or reframe time or disagree with circles. It’s just 🤯
I was going to leave a comment and click the "Post" button, but then I realized that the "Post" button has always been clicked and is in fact clicked as we speak, at all times, and forever, which means this comment has already existed and continues to exist.
From my perspective, time is a mental device we use to measure change. It gets very refined (smaller and smaller increments) yet in essence that is what it seems to be.
But is the future ahead of us or behind us? An interesting twist on the flow of time is that Eastern Philosophy has the future behind us, like a rower in a boat. We can only see what's happened... the past. We can't see the future. It's why the Arabs say inshallah" (إِنْ شَاءَ ٱللَّٰهُ) which means, "God Willing" They tend to see our constant striving to look into the future to be funny since the past has the patterns that answer the future.
It's true: our only way to learn about the future is to study its exact opposite, the past! This is yet another example of the power of symmetry, another subject I need to get out of my brain and into the digital cosmos ASAP.
Hahahaha I totally opened immediately because of the title. Sang the song as soon as I saw it.
I wish I could bend time. I never have enough time in each day. I had a pretty deep conversation with my oldest about time a few months ago. I told him I thought that time seemed to go faster the older I got. He said his experience of time was different and didn’t feel like time was going faster as he got older. Of course, I can’t remember now exactly what he told me, but I’m going to have to ask him about it because it was pretty interesting, and a good example of how the experience of time passing is highly subjective.
Yes! I think time goes way, way faster these days. I think that, when you're a kid, everything is new and worthy of intense focus. You've never experienced THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT ever before, and it's so exciting! A few decades later and you've experienced very similar things many times, and you know what's truly important far better (I'm sure you can tell how much I'm generalizing here).
I also realized I really stepped in it today. I could have written about this subject for like 9 hours longer. Yikes!
Hahahaha yes, you very easily could have written all day about this!
I think your point is very similar to the one he was making. I wonder how much of it has to do with the pace of society having taken leaps over the past 20 years…
I can say this for sure: my mind has a LOT more stuff in there than it had 30 years ago, and I forget trivial stuff I never used to forget. Is it cognitive decline? Perhaps, but I honestly think it's more along the lines of TMI constantly bombarding us. The alternative, to be a "low information individual", is a bit of a non-starter for folks like us, though. :-/
Exactly! I believe it’s the TMI overwhelm of information vs cognitive decline, and I could never go low info. It’s too exciting to have so much information about everything all over. I’m constantly wondering how we learned anything back in pre-internet days. The hard and slow way! Hahahaha! I did frequent the library and was constantly reading when I was a kid. But, that kind of learning and knowledge had intention behind it and prior thought. With the flow of information now, you also have to weed through misinformation…
If you want to travel back in time to those pre-internet research days with me, I did that not too long ago: https://goatfury.substack.com/p/why-is-this-octopus-drunk
I think about the Drunken Octopus phenomenon a lot these days.
Nice little summary without getting technical!
I still remember my first explanation of time dilation as a kid; it was actually in a science fiction novel (I'm not 100% positive, but I think it was Robert Heinlein's "Time for the Stars") and that got me to get Einstein's book "Relativity" (which is surprisingly easy to comprehend). The idea of time being inconstant just blew me away!
I've read Einstein's Relativity as well, and enjoyed it too! I was also surprised how much I liked it. It was really accessible.
I was also primed by the ideas of science fiction. I think I will always be at least loosely tethered to science fiction, and that's why Sci-Friday appeals so much to me. So many minds are being stretched!
I'm also delighted that this didn't get too technical. It's quite a tightrope to walk some days!
The way computers do video - codecs - is similar to a flipbook. Like a flipbook, the only important frames (think pages) are the ones where something changed, you can ignore the rest. Like your point about time only mattering when something happens. So a computers perception (think AI) is sharper because its only sees the change and is not distracted by the passage of time
Yeah, I think we can learn a TON about the nature of reality by simply observing how computers do things. Very good example and a great add-on to this!
I just figured out the actual ANSWER? to this riddle. About 30 minutes ago. There is in fact an answer that doesn’t feel needlessly relative. If only I was as efficient in my writing as you are.
Like the riddle of time?
Time in western philosophy and civilization, our orientation to it and why it feels like a construct. A real answer and origin story, it’s actually sort of absurd, feels like a play. There absolutely is a flow of time that makes sense and interestingly a few days ago I bumped into the quantum realm and Einstein and sunflowers on my way to this understanding.
This seems to be the last piece of the puzzle to a much larger one about the implications of this disorientation in our modern moment in history and what to do about it. It’s taken a few months-ish but I have “parsimoniously” toppled a cascade of paradigms potentially…
AND YET, I’ve left notifications on on Substack and throughout this time, the steady drip of your articles in particular, the consistency of the 2am publishing, the perfectly portioned out content stream, and the serendipitous relevance of this one about time in particular, fills me with a mixture of dread and envy because you are an actual writer. Which is a different skill than generalist strategist. I have a habit of giving my ideas away and have been trying not to do so here, but it would be so nice to just shout all the things into your notes right now… or hand it all off to a writer.
Well hey, there is an awful lot to think about and digest, and also to share with others. I can think about things endlessly, but it only really gets fun and truly interesting if it's shared with someone else. It means a lot to hear that my ideas are actually able to get to you by way of some kind of encoded electronic signal traveling at c.
Emergence, entropy, and the flow of time are all very much on my mind these days, along with the very idea that information and energy are the same thing. It's just a framework, but everything else sort of clicks into place for me when I think about things this way.
This was everything! Emergence, entropy, combined with the fusion, fission, and luminosity. And figuring out the origins of human misalignment. Writing this so maybe I’ll just figure out how to write it up. Thanks!
Writing my ideas down has helped me to clarify my own views tremendously! I highly recommend it, even if it's just for you for now.
And hey, this stuff is VERY fun to consider.
Oh, I’ve written! Maybe the MOST words. I’ve developed models. Visuals. It’s just the first three paragraphs. I usually write from the perspective of my audience, but in this case that’s the piece I don’t have. So I have to frame it cold. Does one start with Pythagoras, Anaximander, the Egyptians, or maybe cores, orbits and spirals? Perhaps I should start with the shadow sun or reframe time or disagree with circles. It’s just 🤯
I was going to leave a comment and click the "Post" button, but then I realized that the "Post" button has always been clicked and is in fact clicked as we speak, at all times, and forever, which means this comment has already existed and continues to exist.
Existence is a construct!
Yo mama is a construct.
I don't know if there is a perfect song, but this may be it (not joking):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMhOlx-fz44
Flipbooks are the most rudimentary form of animated films- aside from zoetropes, which use paper images in a circular fashion.
Nice, I knew you would appreciate the animation mention!
From my perspective, time is a mental device we use to measure change. It gets very refined (smaller and smaller increments) yet in essence that is what it seems to be.
The flip book thing seems Similar to the reality we experience in a movie…in my opinion, and I have no real knowledge of physics or philosophy…
What do you think of the flipbook framework? Is there any "flow" of time?
You’ll never get back lost time.