I Don't Get It

If I am here, and you are there, and you tell me that time doesn't exist, but space does, then how long does it take me to get there? No time? Then how do I get there?

If I have to go from here to there and so I have to go through space, then I refuse to believe that no time will have passed. If there is no time, there is no space.

If light travels so fast that time, for it, does not exist, then it must be everywhere already. I don't have to go where you are; I can't. I'm already there.

So where is light?

It's not in space.

If it is not in us, then it is nowhere.

Time Dilation as a Function of Knowledge

Time is relative to age. When you are young, time takes longer. Five years is a long time from 15-20 years of age. However, it is but one year for the 30-35 year old.

When you change surroundings, such as to live in another country for a few months, it will feel much longer than it actually is. Time - our perception of it - is a function of age, surely, but more centrally, of newness.

New things require processing. For survival, the objective is to learn, and thus to put as much potentially ‘new’ information as possible into unconscious processing, freeing up brainpower for other things.

And so it [the perception of time] is also dependent on knowledge and experience. The more knowledge you have, the less things are new to you. And this is what speeds up time. It takes you less time to sift through the incoming info [enabling an automatic response instead].

Furthermore, it is then apparent that the more you know, the faster ‘time’ seems to fly by. As we enter the future, and we know more every day, and we are sharing information in greater amounts everyday, it seems logical that eventually, we will know ‘everything’ and time will speed up to the point of non-movement.

Phylogenetic vs. Ontogenetic Time Dilation

Species (over 100,000 yr period)

Vs

Individual (over 100 yr period)

Telescopic Evolution

Eamonn Healy Monologue

Waking Life, Richard Linklater, 2001

TRANSCRIPTION

“If we’re looking at the highlights of human development, you have to look at the evolution of the organism and then at the development of its interaction with the environment. Evolution of the organism will begin with the evolution of life perceived through the hominid coming to the evolution of mankind. Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man. Now, interestingly, what you’re looking at here are three strings: biological, anthropological — development of the cities — and cultural, which is human expression.

Now, what you’ve seen here is the evolution of populations, not so much the evolution of individuals. And in addition, if you look at the time scales that are involved here — two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, 100,000 years for mankind as we know it — you’re beginning to see the telescoping nature of the evolutionary paradigm. And then when you get to agricultural, when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution, you’re looking at 10,000 years, 400 years, 150 years. Uou’re seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time. What that means is that as we go through the new evolution, it’s gonna telescope to the point we should be able to see it manifest itself within our lifetime, within this generation.

The new evolution stems from information, and it stems from two types of information: digital and analog. The digital is artificial intelligence. The analog results from molecular biology, the cloning of the organism. And you knit the two together with neurobiology. Before on the old evolutionary paradigm, one would die and the other would grow and dominate. But under the new paradigm, they would exist as a mutually supportive, noncompetitive grouping. Okay, independent from the external.

And what is interesting here is that evolution now becomes an individually centered process, emanating from the needs and desires of the individual, and not an external process, a passive process where the individual is just at the whim of the collective. So, you produce a neo-human, okay, with a new individuality and a new consciousness. But that’s only the beginning of the evolutionary cycle because as the next cycle proceeds, the input is now this new intelligence. As intelligence piles on intelligence, as ability piles on ability, the speed changes. Until what? Until we reach a crescendo in a way could be imagined as an enormous instantaneous fulfillment of human, human and neo-human potential. It could be something totally different. It could be the amplification of the individual, the multiplication of individual existences. Parallel existences now with the individual no longer restricted by time and space.

And the manifestations of this neo-human-type evolution, manifestations could be dramatically counter-intuitive. That’s the interesting part. The old evolution is cold. It’s sterile. It’s efficient, okay? And its manifestations of those social adaptations. We’re talking about parasitism, dominance, morality, okay? Uh, war, predation, these would be subject to de-emphasis. These will be subject to de-evolution. The new evolutionary paradigm will give us the human traits of truth, of loyalty, of justice, of freedom. These will be the manifestations of the new evolution. And that is what we would hope to see from this. That would be nice.”

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VIDEO EXCERPT

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COMMENTARY

An important aspect of this idea of telescopic evolution is to consider the rate of change relative to a single human life cycle. If we take some basic values, such as information transfer as measured in bits, successive iterations of a novel idea/machine/device, or even just the lifespan of the structure of a typical single family-unit residence, and plot these as they change over time, we would probably see the following behavior:

However we measure the 'rate of change' either of technology or culture, we should see that we are approaching a point in human progress where that change is coming close to a threshold relative to humans. The ratio of the rate of change versus the length of a single human life cycle is approaching a significant point in the trajectory of progress.

Perhaps some threshold has already been crossed, making biological evolution secondary to the evolution of the mind. Regardless, it is not a difficult task to imagine the speed at which ideas were generated, combined and mutated in the 1700's as compared to the 2000's. Human civilization, the anthroposphere, digested over a century the transformation of culture and technology due to the advent of the printing press. However, we have had only a decade to assimilate from internet-infancy to global connectivity.

The telescopic nature of evolution supports the idea that biological evolution is no longer an effective means of sustainability - it can no longer wait for successive generations; the transformation/mutation needs to happen within a single human lifetime.

We are approaching the point at which it is not our offspring that propogate the human race, but our thoughts.

Tiny Neutrinos May Have Broken Cosmic Speed Limit

DENNIS OVERBYE, New York Times, September 22, 2011

The physics world is abuzz with news that a group of European physicists plans to announce Friday that it has clocked a burst of subatomic particles known as neutrinos breaking the cosmic speed limit — the speed of light — that was set by Albert Einstein in 1905.

“The correct attitude is to ask oneself what went wrong.” -Alvaro de Rujula, theorist at CERN

John Learned, a neutrino astronomer at the University of Hawaii, said that if the results of the Opera researchers turned out to be true, it could be the first hint that neutrinos can take a shortcut through space, through extra dimensions.

The Opera results will generate a rush of experiments aimed at confirming or repudiating it, according to Dr. Learned. “This is revolutionary and will require convincing replication,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/science/23speed.html?_r=1&hp

The replications of this experiment alone, convincing or not, will create a disturbance in the world of science that will be severe and unpredictable.

Teilhard’s Evolution

Man’s thinking enables him to intervene in the course of his own evolution [and in fact is the sole determinant].

On Teilhard’s Phenomenology:

In classic ontology the consequence can never be more than the cause (as man comes from animal, he can never be more than animal).

Geology was not a historical science until ~1850, when it was evidenced that the earth was not static, but in a state of becoming (this leads to paleontology, fossil-studying). By 1900, astronomy also becomes a dynamic subject. Where does biology intersect?

[astronomy à geology à biology à anthropology à sociology/psychology]

How can life spring from no-life?

There is no such thing as no-life; it is all pre-life. All matter has the germ of life in it (thus the germ of consciousness as well).

On Entropy and Meaning:

Energy is neither created nor destroyed only transfered, and in the transfer, some of it is rendered purposeless (random/disorganized) thus tending to entropy.

Change arises from purposelessness.

Change, however, also arises from purpose.

Purposeless - entropic dispersal

Purpose - anti-entropic concentration

But meaning also is neither created nor destroyed, only transfered.

What is this relationship?

Absolute manifestation vs cold, conscious universe.