Time is Illusory

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dantana
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Re: Time is Illusory

Post by dantana »

Physics Guy wrote:
Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:44 pm
I'm from Thursday."
P.G., if you happen to run into 'Tarski' next time you're in the day after Wednesday, tell him Dantana says... you've taken over for him nicely!
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Re: Time is Illusory

Post by canpakes »

dantana wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 3:36 am
Physics Guy wrote:
Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:44 pm
I'm from Thursday."
P.G., if you happen to run into 'Tarski' next time you're in the day after Wednesday, tell him Dantana says... you've taken over for him nicely!
: ) Seconded.
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Some Schmo
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Re: Time is Illusory

Post by Some Schmo »

dantana wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 3:36 am
Physics Guy wrote:
Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:44 pm
I'm from Thursday."
P.G., if you happen to run into 'Tarski' next time you're in the day after Wednesday, tell him Dantana says... you've taken over for him nicely!
Funny you should mention him. I was just wondering what he was up to recently.
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Re: Time is Illusory

Post by Moksha »

Some Schmo wrote:
Wed Oct 20, 2021 2:13 am
With age comes some measure of patience, at least with respect to how long things generally take.

What say you?
Not sure that an aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, but we definitely spend more time standing in front of the toilet.
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Re: Time is Illusory

Post by Some Schmo »

Moksha wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 4:45 pm
Not sure that an aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, but we definitely spend more time standing in front of the toilet.
You know you're getting older when going to the bathroom makes you depressed about getting older.
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Res Ipsa
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Re: Time is Illusory

Post by Res Ipsa »

Some Schmo wrote:
Fri Oct 22, 2021 7:09 pm
Res Ipsa wrote:
Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:17 pm
I'm not sure that illusory is the right term. Two cars race. One hits the finish line first. If the passage of time is illusory, how do we explain that one car went faster than the other.
Because one was actually going faster.

I'm not saying that time on Earth passes at different speeds, just that our perception of that passage feels different to anyone who perceives it from moment to moment, depending on a number of factors, including the person's age and what they are doing.
Res Ipsa wrote:
Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:17 pm
I think there's a difference between something being illusory and subjective impressions of the thing. We can define a certain range of light wavelengths as "red." But that doesn't mean we wouldn't have different subjective impressions of where the boundaries of "red" just by looking at colors. Would that make "color" an illusion? If so, I think we should probably discuss what distinguishes "illusion" from "not illusion."
I did a quick google search on the definition. These were the three that came up:

- a thing that is or is likely to be wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses
- a deceptive appearance or impression
- a false idea or belief

We can scrap the last one for the sake of this discussion.

Let's start here: would you consider the feeling of an hour when you're sleeping to be either "a thing that is or is likely to be wrongly perceived or interpreted by the senses" or "a deceptive appearance or impression?"
I’ve been noodling on this one, as I had been using the third definition, which I’m happy to discard as you suggested.

Where I get hung up is in the distinction between the thing and our subjective impression of the thing. Let’s say you and I witness a purse snatching. You describe the perp’s height as 5’8” and I describe it as 6’2”. It turns out, he’s 5’11”. Would we say that height is illusory?

Now, we go see a movie. I’m so into it that the time seems to fly by. You hate it, so the time seems to drag. Is that different than the first example? If so, how?

We can objectively measure both height and the passage of time. I don’t think that the fact that our brains can perceive both differently make height or the passage of time illusory.

I think of illusion as involving something that appears to be one thing but is actually something else. One example would be the standard optical illusions. They’re illusions, not because you and I don’t perceive them differently, but because we both perceive them wrong. Lines that look parallel aren’t parallel. Pictures that appear to move are stationary. Or a magician’s card trick: we think one thing is happening but really something else is going on.

Not sure if any of that makes sense, but it’s what I’m thinking.
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Re: Time is Illusory

Post by Morley »

Res Ipsa wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:55 pm
I’ve been noodling on this one, as I had been using the third definition, which I’m happy to discard as you suggested.

Where I get hung up is in the distinction between the thing and our subjective impression of the thing. Let’s say you and I witness a purse snatching. You describe the perp’s height as 5’8” and I describe it as 6’2”. It turns out, he’s 5’11”. Would we say that height is illusory?

Now, we go see a movie. I’m so into it that the time seems to fly by. You hate it, so the time seems to drag. Is that different than the first example? If so, how?

We can objectively measure both height and the passage of time. I don’t think that the fact that our brains can perceive both differently make height or the passage of time illusory.

I think of illusion as involving something that appears to be one thing but is actually something else. One example would be the standard optical illusions. They’re illusions, not because you and I don’t perceive them differently, but because we both perceive them wrong. Lines that look parallel aren’t parallel. Pictures that appear to move are stationary. Or a magician’s card trick: we think one thing is happening but really something else is going on.

Not sure if any of that makes sense, but it’s what I’m thinking.
Too funny. I've been trying to push my way through Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, for something I have to write. This could have almost come from him.



edit to add. Except that I can more or less understand what you just said.
.
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Re: Time is Illusory

Post by Res Ipsa »

Morley wrote:
Sun Oct 24, 2021 3:21 pm
Res Ipsa wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:55 pm
I’ve been noodling on this one, as I had been using the third definition, which I’m happy to discard as you suggested.

Where I get hung up is in the distinction between the thing and our subjective impression of the thing. Let’s say you and I witness a purse snatching. You describe the perp’s height as 5’8” and I describe it as 6’2”. It turns out, he’s 5’11”. Would we say that height is illusory?

Now, we go see a movie. I’m so into it that the time seems to fly by. You hate it, so the time seems to drag. Is that different than the first example? If so, how?

We can objectively measure both height and the passage of time. I don’t think that the fact that our brains can perceive both differently make height or the passage of time illusory.

I think of illusion as involving something that appears to be one thing but is actually something else. One example would be the standard optical illusions. They’re illusions, not because you and I don’t perceive them differently, but because we both perceive them wrong. Lines that look parallel aren’t parallel. Pictures that appear to move are stationary. Or a magician’s card trick: we think one thing is happening but really something else is going on.

Not sure if any of that makes sense, but it’s what I’m thinking.
Too funny. I've been trying to push my way through Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, for something I have to write. This could have almost come from him.



edit to add. Except that I can more or less understand what you just said.
.
Probably should be filed under “even a broken clock…” :lol:
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Re: Time is Illusory

Post by Physics Guy »

Chap wrote:
Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:46 pm
Physics Guy wrote:
Fri Oct 22, 2021 5:08 pm
The fact that Augustine was writing in a different culture may be why he needed an editor.
Perhaps you will allow me to agree with that, but with the addition of the phrase "in order to be acceptable reading in translation to people whose roots lie in a completely different intellectual and literary culture from his."
Yeah, I'll accept that codicil.

I'm not sure I buy complete cultural relativism. I think we may actually have learned some things since Augustine's day about better ways to convey information, especially to a broader audience. So I think it might be objectively true that Augustine wrote too redundantly.

Then again, though, even if the informational efficiency of Augustine's prose is an objective property, whether efficiency is the highest goal in communication is surely a matter of taste that can differ with culture. So even if my view that his writing could be condensed a lot is objective, whether or not that's a flaw in his writing is probably quite subjective. In the future people may well value different things in communication from what we most value now.

For an even more jaundiced view of ancient literature than mine I suggest Stephen Leacock's notorious essay Homer and Humbug. After little more than one century Leacock's own style might not be approved nowadays, but at least for me it has not yet aged too badly, as long as one overlooks a few iffy sentences like this essay's first one, that mentions "coloured scholars".

(It doesn't actually say anything bad about coloured scholars, but it goes out of its way to mention them in a way that has a racist whiff to it, because it sure looks as though Leacock thought he was drawing a chuckle from the reader just with the mention. Something written in 1913 could be a lot worse than that, but still it's something you have to overlook now—if you're going to read Leacock.)
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Some Schmo
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Re: Time is Illusory

Post by Some Schmo »

Res Ipsa wrote:
Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:55 pm
Where I get hung up is in the distinction between the thing and our subjective impression of the thing. Let’s say you and I witness a purse snatching. You describe the perp’s height as 5’8” and I describe it as 6’2”. It turns out, he’s 5’11”. Would we say that height is illusory?
I would say so. That's why we need measuring tapes. Having some kind of measuring devise might be the only way we can actually tell the reality of a thing, because without it, we're hung up on an illusion. Perhaps the reason the purse snatcher looked shorter to one person than another was the different angles they saw the event, and background scenery altered each person's perception. Perhaps the shock of seeing such an event screwed more with one person's ability to perceive height accurately than the other.

One of my main points in this discussion is that context can help mess with your perception.
Now, we go see a movie. I’m so into it that the time seems to fly by. You hate it, so the time seems to drag. Is that different than the first example? If so, how?
No, it's the same phenomenon. This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
We can objectively measure both height and the passage of time. I don’t think that the fact that our brains can perceive both differently make height or the passage of time illusory.

I think of illusion as involving something that appears to be one thing but is actually something else. One example would be the standard optical illusions. They’re illusions, not because you and I don’t perceive them differently, but because we both perceive them wrong. Lines that look parallel aren’t parallel. Pictures that appear to move are stationary. Or a magician’s card trick: we think one thing is happening but really something else is going on.

Not sure if any of that makes sense, but it’s what I’m thinking.
I guess this is where I get stuck: all illusions are a distortion that happens in the process of perceiving something. There is the reality of a thing, and then there's the way we perceive it. Just because we can measure something doesn't mean we aren't initially fooled by it. There are some illusions that your brain has a hard time seeing through, and then when you see the "real" thing, you can't un-see it anymore. These are all features of perception.
Religion is for people whose existential fear is greater than their common sense.

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