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!
Time is Illusory
- dantana
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Re: Time is Illusory
Nobody gets to be a cowboy forever. - Lee Marvin/Monte Walsh
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Re: Time is Illusory
- Some Schmo
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Re: Time is Illusory
Funny you should mention him. I was just wondering what he was up to recently.
Religion is for people whose existential fear is greater than their common sense.
The god idea is popular with desperate people.
The god idea is popular with desperate people.
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Re: Time is Illusory
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.Some Schmo wrote: ↑Wed Oct 20, 2021 2:13 amWith age comes some measure of patience, at least with respect to how long things generally take.
What say you?
Cry Heaven and let loose the Penguins of Peace
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Re: Time is Illusory
You know you're getting older when going to the bathroom makes you depressed about getting older.
Religion is for people whose existential fear is greater than their common sense.
The god idea is popular with desperate people.
The god idea is popular with desperate people.
- Res Ipsa
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Re: Time is Illusory
I’ve been noodling on this one, as I had been using the third definition, which I’m happy to discard as you suggested.Some Schmo wrote: ↑Fri Oct 22, 2021 7:09 pmBecause 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.
I did a quick google search on the definition. These were the three that came up:Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:17 pmI 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."
- 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?"
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.
he/him
When a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its Professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the Civil Power, ’tis a Sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
Benjamin Franklin
When a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its Professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the Civil Power, ’tis a Sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
Benjamin Franklin
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Re: Time is Illusory
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.Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:55 pmI’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.
edit to add. Except that I can more or less understand what you just said.
.
- Res Ipsa
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Re: Time is Illusory
Probably should be filed under “even a broken clock…”Morley wrote: ↑Sun Oct 24, 2021 3:21 pmToo 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.Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:55 pmI’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.
edit to add. Except that I can more or less understand what you just said.
.
he/him
When a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its Professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the Civil Power, ’tis a Sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
Benjamin Franklin
When a Religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its Professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the Civil Power, ’tis a Sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
Benjamin Franklin
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Re: Time is Illusory
Yeah, I'll accept that codicil.Chap wrote: ↑Fri Oct 22, 2021 6:46 pmPerhaps 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."Physics Guy wrote: ↑Fri Oct 22, 2021 5:08 pmThe fact that Augustine was writing in a different culture may be why he needed an editor.
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.)
I was a teenager before it was cool.
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Re: Time 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.Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Sat Oct 23, 2021 8:55 pmWhere 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?
One of my main points in this discussion is that context can help mess with your perception.
No, it's the same phenomenon. This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.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?
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.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.
Religion is for people whose existential fear is greater than their common sense.
The god idea is popular with desperate people.
The god idea is popular with desperate people.