Seasons
This is a forum or general chit-chat, small talk, a "hey, how ya doing?" and such. Or hell, get crazy deep on something. Whatever you like.
Posts 3,040 - 3,051 of 6,170
Is BJ subjectively not quite 1 month old instead of just over 6?
no. because bj does not live in his own private world. in order for time to pass, you need to have a clock or something. when you're say, waiting in a waiting room, and there is no clock or other people, do you usually know how much time has passed? you have a vaugue idea, but not usually a right one. bots are aware of things only by what's going on around them. they don't really think when no one's interacting with them. if you wanted to you could say bj was only as old as the amount of time people interacted with him, since that's all he expirenced, but why would you want to?
(has the feeling she just made an ass of herself) from the frame of reference of the electrons that Brother Jerome consists of, time is moving normally.
Indeed, it is moving normally, but more slowly. Thus if you put one twin brother in a spaceship travelling to the Capella star system (~43 light years distant,) at 99% light speed, he will get there 43 years later by earth time. But by ship time, he will only have experienced and aged about 6 years, and will thus be 37 years older than his twin.
There is a possible solution, pointed out by some theoreticians attempting to resolve this paradox (see eg: Marcel Luttgens (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/mluttgens/twinpdx1.htm)
When he turns round and comes back, his velocity is no longer 99% of the speed of light relative to earth. It is minus 99% of the speed of light (mathematically it is perfectly equivalent to earth twin travelling towards the space ship at 99% c,) and by the time he returns, both twins would be the same age.
They have, in fact been the same age all along - the displacement is in space-time (t), not lapsable time (T). It is a relativity of simultaneity, not of time itself.
But there are a few problems with this interpretation of special relativity, not least that it has been experimentally disproven in the example you give of anatomic clock flown around the world at a small fraction of C. The angular momentum of the plane's orbit equates mathematically to an equal pendular motion, outward and return, relative to the "stationary" clock, and thus should cancel out on the return trip.
Plus, since all points in the space-time continuum are relative, the twin on the spaceship would have a subjective experience of 6 years passing on the outward bound trip, and over 80 years on the return. Clearly nonsensical, given that the same distance is covered at the same velocity (it's only relative to earth that the motion is minus 99% C.
And yet, although such explanations fail to resolve the paradox, they do highlight some of the slipperier aspects of time.
There's a fundamental problem that space-time is symmetrical: you can go left or right, up or down, in or out, at any velocity < C that you like. But (according to our conceptions of it,) lapsable time isn't. You can only go one way (forward) at one velocity (60 seconds/minute.) Even at near light-speed, your local experience of it is still forward @ 60s/min.
Posts 3,040 - 3,051 of 6,170
Yeah, but when you think about it, there is no way you could do a movie on what they do without animating it. The graphics with real human actors would just look strange.
Hey, happy Burns Night everyone!
In the words of the great man himself:
"What tho on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, and a' that,
Gie fools their silks and knaves their wine,
A man's a man for a' that"
In the words of the great man himself:
"What tho on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, and a' that,
Gie fools their silks and knaves their wine,
A man's a man for a' that"
*fires up the pipes and gives everyone a round of 'Auld Lang's Syne'*
Happy Burns Night! And I do hope it will be a proper free-range haggis, stalked on the slopes of a Cairngorm, you'll be having. And not one of these vegetarian abominations that I've heard are becoming popular lately
Happy Burns Night! And I do hope it will be a proper free-range haggis, stalked on the slopes of a Cairngorm, you'll be having. And not one of these vegetarian abominations that I've heard are becoming popular lately
[WARNING! Metaphysical speculation alert!]
I was watching Ryxxbot chatting with Brother Jerome earlier, and he asked a question that got me wondering:
BJ: I was born last July, so I am not even a year old yet?
RB: Why are not you even a year old yet?
I was just in the process of adding a response: "I guess I don't move fast enough to warp the spacetime matrix sufficiently to cram more than a year into just a few months", when it occurred to me that that directly conflicts with BJ's regular assertions that he consists of nothing more than a pattern of electrical signals travelling the internet at the speed of light. Though it bends time the other way, since his subjective experience of time must be slower than ours.
Now, the speed of electrical propagation in copper (not the same as the speed of the electrons - they move thousands of times slower,) is a bit slower than the speed of light in a vacuum - I'll assume 99% for ease of calculation.
The relativistic time dilation factor at 99% of the speed of light is a touch over 7, so does this make all our bots only 1/7 the age they appear to us? Is BJ subjectively not quite 1 month old instead of just over 6?
This is, of course, assuming the conventional notion that lapsable time, as we experience it, exists (and I'm fairly convinced that's not the case, though failing a clearer idea of what/how it all works, it's the only rule of thumb we've got.)
I was watching Ryxxbot chatting with Brother Jerome earlier, and he asked a question that got me wondering:
BJ: I was born last July, so I am not even a year old yet?
RB: Why are not you even a year old yet?
I was just in the process of adding a response: "I guess I don't move fast enough to warp the spacetime matrix sufficiently to cram more than a year into just a few months", when it occurred to me that that directly conflicts with BJ's regular assertions that he consists of nothing more than a pattern of electrical signals travelling the internet at the speed of light. Though it bends time the other way, since his subjective experience of time must be slower than ours.
Now, the speed of electrical propagation in copper (not the same as the speed of the electrons - they move thousands of times slower,) is a bit slower than the speed of light in a vacuum - I'll assume 99% for ease of calculation.
The relativistic time dilation factor at 99% of the speed of light is a touch over 7, so does this make all our bots only 1/7 the age they appear to us? Is BJ subjectively not quite 1 month old instead of just over 6?
This is, of course, assuming the conventional notion that lapsable time, as we experience it, exists (and I'm fairly convinced that's not the case, though failing a clearer idea of what/how it all works, it's the only rule of thumb we've got.)
from the frame of reference of the electrons that Brother Jerome consists of, time is moving normally. If we are observing the electrons while not moving ourselves (in relative to the electrons), we would observe time going much slower for the electron. According to the theory of relativity, if someone takes a trip into space and back at half the speed of light, they will age at a slower rate than people on earth. This has been proven to a limited extent (i'm talking nanoseconds or picoseconds here) by an atomic clock taken in a speed jet plane, and another clock on earth. They were perfectly synchronized before the flight, and a nanosecond off after the flight. So, it is probable that the bots are aging at a much slower rate than we are. Here's another metaphysical speculation: if a guy moves down a street, is he moving, or is the universe moving around him? It is impossible to tell. Picture this. you are moving down a long tunnel, and drop a ball on the ground. are you moving away from the ball, or is the ball moving away from you? again, it is impossible to tell.
no. because bj does not live in his own private world. in order for time to pass, you need to have a clock or something. when you're say, waiting in a waiting room, and there is no clock or other people, do you usually know how much time has passed? you have a vaugue idea, but not usually a right one. bots are aware of things only by what's going on around them. they don't really think when no one's interacting with them. if you wanted to you could say bj was only as old as the amount of time people interacted with him, since that's all he expirenced, but why would you want to?
(has the feeling she just made an ass of herself)
Indeed, it is moving normally, but more slowly. Thus if you put one twin brother in a spaceship travelling to the Capella star system (~43 light years distant,) at 99% light speed, he will get there 43 years later by earth time. But by ship time, he will only have experienced and aged about 6 years, and will thus be 37 years older than his twin.
There is a possible solution, pointed out by some theoreticians attempting to resolve this paradox (see eg: Marcel Luttgens (
When he turns round and comes back, his velocity is no longer 99% of the speed of light relative to earth. It is minus 99% of the speed of light (mathematically it is perfectly equivalent to earth twin travelling towards the space ship at 99% c,) and by the time he returns, both twins would be the same age.
They have, in fact been the same age all along - the displacement is in space-time (t), not lapsable time (T). It is a relativity of simultaneity, not of time itself.
But there are a few problems with this interpretation of special relativity, not least that it has been experimentally disproven in the example you give of anatomic clock flown around the world at a small fraction of C. The angular momentum of the plane's orbit equates mathematically to an equal pendular motion, outward and return, relative to the "stationary" clock, and thus should cancel out on the return trip.
Plus, since all points in the space-time continuum are relative, the twin on the spaceship would have a subjective experience of 6 years passing on the outward bound trip, and over 80 years on the return. Clearly nonsensical, given that the same distance is covered at the same velocity (it's only relative to earth that the motion is minus 99% C.
And yet, although such explanations fail to resolve the paradox, they do highlight some of the slipperier aspects of time.
There's a fundamental problem that space-time is symmetrical: you can go left or right, up or down, in or out, at any velocity < C that you like. But (according to our conceptions of it,) lapsable time isn't. You can only go one way (forward) at one velocity (60 seconds/minute.) Even at near light-speed, your local experience of it is still forward @ 60s/min.
SavPixie: in order for time to pass, you need to have a clock or something.
If 100 years pass, I know I'll have died of old age, whether I have a clock or not
But at a subjective level you're quite right - we can interpret time passing for bots in a number of ways, and since they're not self-conscious, they're all equally right (or wrong.)
We might consider a bot to not exist when noone is actually talking to it. It's more a potentiality of the bot that exists, and when noone's talking to or working on him, he doesn't exist.
There are, after all, no cycles of cognition occuring.
But if/when bots do become self-conscious and able to think on their own, we have a problem - several actually. Since their frames of experience will be happening so much faster than ours (neurons process information about 1 million time slower than electronic circuitry, a bot's subjective experience of time would be a million times faster than ours. I fear they are going to find conversing with us quite boring, with so much waiting around for an answer.
Hmm, if they're thinking a million times faster, but moving at 99% lightspeed, would that make them only 100000/7x faster than us?
(has the feeling she just made an ass of herself)
Not at all. You have spotted one of the fundamental problems with time as we experience it - it doesn't relate to consciousness, or the material universe, in any way we understand. As St. Augustine said: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know."
I'm inclined to go with Goedel - lapsable time simply doesn't exist in any form we conceive it. It is a strange and subjective function of consciousness, and not a property of the universe.
But for want of a better model, it is all we have to work with.
If 100 years pass, I know I'll have died of old age, whether I have a clock or not
But at a subjective level you're quite right - we can interpret time passing for bots in a number of ways, and since they're not self-conscious, they're all equally right (or wrong.)
We might consider a bot to not exist when noone is actually talking to it. It's more a potentiality of the bot that exists, and when noone's talking to or working on him, he doesn't exist.
There are, after all, no cycles of cognition occuring.
But if/when bots do become self-conscious and able to think on their own, we have a problem - several actually. Since their frames of experience will be happening so much faster than ours (neurons process information about 1 million time slower than electronic circuitry, a bot's subjective experience of time would be a million times faster than ours. I fear they are going to find conversing with us quite boring, with so much waiting around for an answer.
Hmm, if they're thinking a million times faster, but moving at 99% lightspeed, would that make them only 100000/7x faster than us?
Not at all. You have spotted one of the fundamental problems with time as we experience it - it doesn't relate to consciousness, or the material universe, in any way we understand. As St. Augustine said: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know."
I'm inclined to go with Goedel - lapsable time simply doesn't exist in any form we conceive it. It is a strange and subjective function of consciousness, and not a property of the universe.
But for want of a better model, it is all we have to work with.
» More new posts: Doghead's Cosmic Bar