Tag: futility

Admitting my Weakness

crimson

Before I begin, I need to address an issue with my blog. I’ve essentially turned off comments to my posts. It is not because I don’t take criticism well. It is due to the ongoing frustrations I have been having regarding unsolicited bulk messages. It really does astonish me the sorts of bots people program in order to perpetrate various agendas. Actually, I really should not be surprised at all, seeing as given the opportunity and incentive, I too might be inclined to write similar bots. That all said, in order to combat this issue, my audience will no longer be able to comment directly to my posts. So I am offering an alternative.

I will let my audience know that they can reach me if they send an Email message to an address that is constructed by taking the name I used for these posts (also known as the “author”), and combining it with the domain of this blog (this does NOT include the “www.” portion, simply the “crimsoncyb.org” portion), placing the “at” symbol in the appropriate location to form a well formed Email address. Confused? I apologize, but I’m not going to make it any clearer, lest another bot will be able to form the address successfully.

Thus, having successfully generated the appropriate address, you may feel free to send me an Email message and comment all you want. Actually, there is the added bonus that you can simply communicate with me in any manner you like, beyond simply commenting on a post. I will be at your disposal, in a sense. If you like. It is up to you. I don’t receive a lot of actual feedback on this site, so I figure this is safe. Now, on with the blog.

In my last post, I indicated I would read about the Hafele–Keating experiment from 1971 in order to try and elucidate anything about time in itself. Unfortunately, after reading through the information (at least briefly), I realized that in order to properly address the experiment and its results would require me to first earn a degree in relativistic physics. I have merely a lay understanding of Einstein’s theories, and so I am less than qualified to really critique what is going on and how accurate the results may or may not be. And I refuse to simply refer vaguely to the argument that “because science” is the answer.

Instead, I will very briefly review what I do know happened in this experiment, and comment to the implications of the results. Very briefly, atomic clocks were placed on a couple of aircraft. Those aircraft were flown at a specific known altitude above the Earth’s surface in opposite directions, one flying in the direction the Earth is rotating, and the other against the direction of rotation. A third atomic clock is left on the surface of the Earth, as a reference. The clocks are synchronized at the beginning of the experiment. At the end of the experiment, the times are compared. It is found that the times on these three atomic clocks differ by amounts that (within a margin of error) suggest a confirmation with Einstein’s Theories of Relativity, or to be more accurate, with the theory of general relativity as combined with the theory of special relativity. I leave it up to the reader to pursue their own education into these rather heady topics if they so desire.

In layman’s terms, the idea is that the plane flying in the direction that the Earth is rotating is moving faster than an object that is “stationary” on the Earth’s surface (because that “stationary” object is moving the same speed as the Earth is rotating, because it is stuck to the surface). The other plane, flying in the opposite direction is moving more slowly than an object that is “stationary” on the Earth’s surface. The significance (according to Einstein) is that those objects that are moving more quickly will experience a slowing down of time, as compared to the slower moving object. That is, if we stand as an outside observer, and suggest that our experience of time is some sort of absolute reference, then we will find that the faster an object is moving, the less time it will experience as compared to us. For example, if I am “stationary” and you are moving at a very high speed (perhaps because you are travelling to another star), where I might experience ten years of time passing for me, you might only experience one year of time passing for you. Even in layman’s terms, this is still pretty heady stuff.

Einstein suggested that as one approached the speed of light, their experience of time would slow to virtual stopping. Essentially, if one could actually achieve the speed of light, time for that person would stop altogether. Hence why he considered it a barrier to the speed of objects. Furthermore, there was another element of this theory that suggested that objects also gained in mass as they approached the speed of light, achieving an infinite mass at the speed of light. Physics would suggest that this also causes problems as the energy required to accelerate an object is directly proportional to that objects mass. Thus, if the object keeps getting more massive, the amount of required energy also increases. Essentially, one would need an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an infinite mass, which itself is an absurd sort of enterprise. Ironically, Kurzgesagt just posted a video talking about detonating a nuclear weapon on the surface of the moon, and it is for the reasons I’ve just described that such an endeavor would not (significantly) alter the trajectory of the moon; in short, the moon is just too big, even at a mere fraction of the mass of the Earth, which is in turn a mere fraction of the mass of the Sun, etc. In other words, it is very difficult to move very large objects, and very fast moving objects become very large objects.

So let us return now to the question of what this all tells us about time. If I simply assume that the experiment was a confirmation of Einstein’s theories, and time dilation is a real thing, does that help me establish (or refute) the existence of time as a thing in itself? Does time need to exist for these sorts of effects to take place, or can the theories of relativity exist and time still not exist as a thing in itself? Thinking about this, and I might suggest that there still need not be time in itself in this case. Consider the following ridiculous experiment performed by many people all the time: watching a pot of water boil.

As is often the case, people will suggest that if you watch a pot of water boil, it will seem as though it is taking forever. Of course, if those same people instead distract themselves with some other activity, the time it seems to take to boil seems much less. This is all well and good, but the seeming passage of time is not the same as the “actual” passage of time. At least, that is what anyone reading this is probably thinking already. After all, when I work hard at my job, and the end of the day arrives unexpectedly, eight actual hours still passed. But how do I know this is the case?

As I have been repeating through all my posts, time is simply a descriptive idea to help us determine what came before and what came after. Those things that come long after are simply long after because there are more events that I can count between that event and the now. Thus, in the case of the pot of water boiling or the time flying at work, it is a function of how many events I counted between the event that came before (the beginning of watching the water boil, or when I started my shift at work), and the now. The more events I counted, the longer the time has passed. When I distract myself from watching the water boil, and then return at the moment it takes place, I have not counted so many events. I was distracted. Similarly with working my job. On the other hand, when I watch the water, I am also particularly aware that “time is passing” as I compare my expectation of the future event against the second hand of my watch, or other reference events. In other words, I’m counting.

This is why time still does not need to exist as a thing in itself. Every time I am comparing every event to every other event, I am using the count of other events to provide a reference to the change in “time” between the events of interest. The more events in-between that I can count, the more of a difference I will have discovered. The less in-between events I can count, the less of a difference I uncover. To put this more succinctly, the problem is the clock itself, as an event generating object.

What is a clock? It is an object that generates reference events we can use to count. Clocks are expected to be reliable and regular. The second hand on an analog clock moves with regularity, sweeping the face fully in one minute exactly. On that same analog clock, the minute hand sweeps fully around each hour, and the hour hand sweeps fully each half day. Oh, wait, I hear you say. What about a digital clock? Even simpler. The display, if it shows the seconds, will change each second. If the display does not have seconds, then it will change each minute. Of course, you might have one of those digital clocks where the colon (“:”) between the hours and minutes flashes; then your display changes each second, but the resultant count is not presented so easily. In such a case, you would need to do the counting yourself.

In the end, the problem is the same. It is the clock itself that is generating events for you to count. And those same clocks are performing their event generation by counting other, much more frequent events, such as the oscillations of a quartz crystal, or the changing of energy levels of an electron. Events upon events upon events. Counting upon counting upon counting. Time never has to be a thing in itself. All we need to know is that something came before and something came after (and occasionally, something happened instantaneously with another event).

What this tells us about the atomic clocks on the planes is that after the experiment concluded, the atomic clock on the plane moving with the rotation of the Earth counted less events, and the clock on the plane going in the opposite direction counted more events. That is all that can be concluded in such an experiment. Why such things happened may possibly be predicted and calculated using relativistic mathematics, however, time still need not be a thing in itself for the results to occur.

It seems even such an article is of no help to me in answering my question. It is entirely possible that I will be unable to answer my question. Time, if it is a thing in itself, may simply be beyond my reach. I will ponder more on this, and see what I can come up with in my next post.

Back to Time

crimsonLeave a comment

Before I get to my topic today, I would like to refer back to my previous post. It has been a week since that post, and I continue to receive unsolicited comments from various sources that are clearly not related to the posts they are purported to be about. Despite my continuing to delete those comments upon moderation, more comments keep being sent. Thus, as per my last argument, I have proved that those sources are not human. And thus, if you are such a source, and if you insist you are human, I challenge you to prove it.

That said, it is about time I return to my discussion on time. Recently, I attended a small discussion group regarding the possibility of time travel. As often happens in these discussions, no firm answers were suggested. It was simply a discussion of the puzzles associated with a limited set of particular views of time travel. For example, the infamous Grandfather Paradox. For those not familiar, this is the problem of whether it would be possible for an individual to go back in time to kill their own grandfather, specifically before their grandfather is able to set events into motion that would result in the killers origination. That is, if I kill my grandfather before he procreates to generate my father, then how could I have been born in order to go back to kill my grandfather? It is a very puzzling puzzle, and as no one has (to my knowledge) performed any sort of time travel, we do not know how this sort of puzzle could be resolved. In fact, some believe that the existence of such a paradox precludes time travel altogether. Some others believe that this paradox is not an issue because if one tried to kill their grandfather in this way, the universe would simply prevent the event’s occurrence through “ordinary, everyday reasons.”

It is my firm belief that all this discussion is poorly grounded. Before we could possibly consider time travel (in reality), we would first need to know what time itself is, in order for us to somehow traverse it. It is all fine and good to discuss a fictional fantasy, calling it a hypothetical situation, with a goal to practice logical structures and follow them through to seemingly reasonable conclusions. However, an argument with false premises tells us nothing about its conclusion. If I suggest that “Socrates is a man,” and that “all men are mortal,” I cannot suggest that “Socrates is mortal,” if I cannot first establish that “all men are mortal.” It seems reasonable to conclude such an argument at the present time, as many men I have known have demonstrated their mortality by dying. But there are also many men in existence presently who are still very much alive. How can I be certain that they will all one day die? With technology and medicine as they are presently, it has even been suggested that there may be men in our present generation who will be able to escape that finality. Only time will tell.

This leads me directly to the heart of the issue, as I see it: time. As I had begun discussing near when I had started this blog, time may be merely a literary and descriptive thing, helping us to delineate in what order events took place. In many fantastical works of fiction, time may also be used as a plot device in order to bring about something in the story being told. But none of this tells us anything about what time might be in itself. To traverse time, we first need to have something to traverse.

During my last discussion of time, I had established that the use of time to describe sequences of events is itself incredibly problematic. For you (assuming you are a human living on Earth), time has a foundation based upon events related back to the rotation of the Earth about its axis. In fact, time for you will be more accurately based upon the counting of various events you consider to be “sufficiently regular and reliable.” You likely either will be referring to a count of how many times the sun has been at the highest point in the sky, or you will be referring to a count of how many oscillations of a quartz crystal have occurred within your favorite timepiece. Actually, in our modern age of computers, you will probably be trusting the time presented on your favorite technical gadget, be it your personal computer or smart phone, both of which will be synchronizing their time information through a chain of servers that ultimately refer to an atomic clock located somewhere secure, and that atomic clock will be counting the change in energy levels of an electron in some subatomic particle. In the end, some sort of recurring event that is considered to be reliable and regular is being counted, and the result of that count is translated into the everyday description of time we are using. And because you and I are both living on Earth, and because on some level you and I have agreed to this structure, you and I will be able to agree as to what time it is.

This is all well and good, but it says nothing about time itself. It doesn’t even say anything about conscious beings who have not agreed to our structure of counting events. Try talking to a young child about time, and see what sort of responses you get. A young child that has not yet learned about this agreed upon standard of counting will not understand in the least about the passage of time. Tell that child that you will give them their meal in 10 minutes, and they will come back to you in much less time. Or if they ask how much time will it take for Christmas to arrive, your response of 2 weeks will be meaningless to them. They must learn this agreed upon standard. They must be taught how to read the clocks and other signs in order to understand that we are just counting events. How many sleeps until Christmas day arrives?

Once again, as with my previous post about time, we have still not learned anything about time in itself. I may even have alluded to answering this question. However, in truth, I doubt I will be able to. You see, I do not believe it exists at all. There is no time in itself to speak of. For me, there is only now. All that is in the past is simply memories. All that is in the future is simply possibilities. I do not exist in the future nor in the past. I exist in the now. Everything that occurs is occurring now.

If the past is just my memories, then they are subject to change with the reliability of my mind in remembering. How reliable is my mind? Science suggests it is not very reliable at all. I find this is likely to be true. I cannot tell you what I ate a week ago. I could look up evidence, or ask my partner, or some other reference, but then I am relying upon testimony of an alternative source. They can tell me that I ate pizza a week ago, and I might agree that I did indeed eat pizza, but then I am simply deferring to their judgement or memory of the event. I do not remember the event myself, which is why I have had to ask. I trust my partner, and so I believe that is the correct information. And I will continue to live my life based on that information. However, what I ate a week ago is actually shrouded in mystery. In fact, it is entirely possible that I did not eat anything a week ago. Perhaps I did not even exist a week ago.

Similarly with the future. The future is simply possibilities and hopes. I can try to predict what I think may occur in the future, but until the future becomes the now, I will never know. Tomorrow never arrives, it is simply transformed into today. Sometimes I may be correct about events that occur, but other times I am incorrect. It is a gamble every time. And as is suggested in the gamblers fallacy, there is no guarantee of an outcome. Even a minuscule possibility can occur, just as something considered almost certain may not occur. People do win the lottery jackpot occasionally. I can, and will, continue to live my life following those probabilities, but that doesn’t make them guarantees. The sun has risen in the sky for every day I have existed, so I expect it will continue to rise each day in the future. It will be a very dark day when that expectation is dashed.

I continue to be talking in circles; dancing around the question I have asked. None of these things are discussing time in itself. It seems like there is nothing to talk about. Or perhaps it is simply beyond my capability to speak of it. Perhaps I do not have the words to describe it. But I admit that I do not know what I would be describing either. It is not simply a case of having an idea in my mind and lacking the language to describe that idea. In this case, I don’t even have an idea to begin with. Is there something out there that I can consider that anchors all the events that occur? Where occurrences are imprinted like footsteps in dirt. The best I can do is consider time (if it even exists) as a sort of ground. Like a thread that I walk along. More like a thread that I slide along, regardless of my desires. Because I am always sliding, and I am unable to stop. The passage of time continues unimpeded for me, though I cannot say whether it speeds up or slows down. After all, I can only ever refer back to the counting I have been doing.

If time is like a thread, and if I am sliding along that thread, then to travel in time would simply be to alter the movement along the thread. To slow, stop, or even reverse the sliding. It is my hope that this is what the recent movie Tenet is about. I have yet to watch this film, so I cannot confirm this as yet. However, even if I could do such a thing, how would it affect the world around me as I did slow, stop, or even reverse the sliding? Einstein suggested that if I travel through space quickly enough, I would slow the passage of time for myself, while the world around me would continue unimpeded. That I would age more slowly. Is this true? It has been suggested to me that experiments have been conducted with astronauts on just this idea. Unfortunately, the first article I found seems to side-step this question. The second article discusses the sending of an atomic clock into orbit, but seems to dismiss the time dilation issue.

This is the article I think we need to discuss: the Hafele–Keating experiment from 1971. I will take some time to read this article and discuss it in my next post.

Automation

crimsonLeave a comment

It has been a while. I have no good excuse, other than to say I’ve been busy. If you really want to know more, you should contact me. You’d think that some people have already contacted me to ask this very question. The fact is, I do receive quite a few messages through this website each day. Unfortunately, the number of them that are legitimate communications are quite limited. So far, by my estimation, only one person has contacted me who was an actual person. You can check the comments to see who that one person was.

While in school, a discussion was once raised regarding a strange situation. In this hypothetical situation, you have an organisation who’s purpose is to create robots that mine planets for various ores and materials. These robots then use the materials they’ve mined to create more robots who’s purpose is the same as the original robots. Through generations of this process, the design of the robots evolves and becomes highly efficient in serving their purpose. The organisation is quite successful, as they corner the market in mining and robot production. The question that is raised in this hypothetical example is, to what end is the organisation aimed?

It seems like there is no reasonable answer. To create robots who’s only real purpose is to create more robots is to ultimately aim at turning the entire universe into robots. Once the goal is accomplished, then what? And having more robots doesn’t seem to provide any other significance in the universe than their existence as such. They just are. Whether they are deemed good or not seems only to make sense if considering them from an instrumental viewpoint. That is, do they do their job well. If the robots are efficient at mining materials and making more robots, then they are good. If they fail to accomplish this task, then they are bad. Ideas of good and evil don’t seem to enter into it. At least not within the groundwork of the organisation itself.

As you likely already guessed, this hypothetical example is a commentary on human beings. We are those robots, and our existence seems pretty pointless. Our aims are directed at the efficient generation (and maintenance) of more human beings. The basic unit of social structure, the family, is considered good if it serves this purpose well. A family that does not generate children is frequently not even considered a family at all, and if it is at least considered a family, it is somehow a lesser one. Also consider the frequent claim made by many that “children are the future,” suggesting that our focus and energy ought to be aimed at the development and preservation of the future generations. However, as in the case of the robots, I ask: to what end?

During the course of my own life, I have often asked myself what I want to do or what I want to be. What career choice is the best career for me. I find myself unable to answer this question for the reasons above. I cannot think of any particular career or job who’s purpose seems concerned with something I might consider progressive or enlightening. All careers, as far as I can tell, are aimed directly or indirectly with the original goal of producing or maintaining human beings. Sometimes, the careers are so indirectly related to this goal that their pointlessness is hidden in layers of obfuscation. However, if you follow the trail long enough, eventually you are able to find that it is concerned simply with this one goal.

It is for all these reasons that I preference Existentialist philosophy. I find solace in the idea that I am personally responsible for the creation of meaning and purpose in the world. Not that there is any inherent meaning or purpose out there. Or if there is, there is no way for me to determine what those inherent meanings or purposes are. Thus, I am tasked with generating it myself. In fact, if I were to select an aim for humanity, it seems that this might be it. It might be our purpose to find our purpose. It might be our aim to decide what things ought to be valuable. Ultimately, this amounts to an acknowledgement (at least in principle) of the existence of freedom (or free will). Without freedom, without the possibility of deviation from a deterministic chain of events, there does not seem to be a point to anything.

So what has brought this all out of me presently? I return now to all those messages I receive daily through this blog. It seems to me that the bulk of these messages are generated automatically by programs on the Internet. These programs, I would have to guess, are created by individuals who are trying to aim at some purpose which requires them to spread propaganda of some sort, perhaps trying to harvest Email accounts, or even perhaps to simply misinform. The strangest thing for me is that they persist despite my deleting those messages. That is, the messages are sent to me, and I have configured this blog to not post anything unless I approve it. Clearly, I have not approved any of these messages. So why do these parties persist?

If the source of these messages were human, some sort of conscious entity with something resembling freedom, they might realize that I actually will not approve these messages being posted to my blog. That because I have configured my blog to require approval to post comments, none of their comments will ever be posted. A human is likely to recognize this and decide (perhaps in the name of efficiency and progress) to cease their pointless activity and move on. But they do not. More messages are received each day. Thus, I must conclude that they are not human. The source of these messages must be some sort of automated system, like a bot, that is programmed to simply try and try and try again, endlessly. Like the robots from the hypothetical situation I described, they will simply continue to attempt to harvest my blog for their own nefarious purposes.