Predestination and free will, at the same time...
When we imagined our torso rib-slice-worm (RSW) for the last post we ended up with an incredible picture of humankind all the way back to Adam! All of the hydra stalks were cross connected and twisted around each other in an amazing tangle. But we failed to think about one aspect that our 3D flatland visitor saw immediately when he looked at the amoeba... the amoeba was really a worm that stretched below (past) and above (future) the slowly rising water in the drum. For some reason, the worm was only self aware right at the water/air interface! However, the 3D visitor saw all of the worm at once... as a creature in time.
In Frank Herbert's sci fy clasic "Dune", he visualized time as a billion pre and post possibilities intersecting at now. I am not proposing the same concept, but it is a somewhat related thought. Instead, I am visualizing a creature, which exists in time-space as a billion, stacked up time slice worms. Again, we pick one slice to help visualize this creature, say, the rib-slice-worm (RSW). We spent a lot of time visualizing this guy last post and even saw him as a bud off an Adam Hydra, attached finally to the dust of the new creation. But, try to make this next leap in the visualization... Think of yourself as the 3D visitor to Flatland who could see the 3D amoeba-worm stretching both above and below the water's surface. To the time-free 4D viewer, our human worm creature already exists in the future, just as it exists in the past! Whoa... stop a while and let that soak...
My RSW is only self aware at the past/future interface just as the Flatland amoeba worm was self aware only at the water/air interface! This view of my RSW has some interesting consequences. For this post, we will only think through one of them. How do you feel about predestination? In Christianity there has been a "war" of sorts for a long time about predestination and free will. Some of the major lines of reasoning became focused in the teachings of John Calvin (Calvinistic) and Professor Armineas (Arminian). While there are various points of difference, one major one is the difference in how they see predestination and free will. After all if we are predestined to sin, then how can we be held accountable for that sin? Can we not see God as having freedom in time so that he can look "up" through the future to see me accept Christ as savior and Lord? So, I am predestinated because that is what God sees. Or, from the other side, God is soverign and he knows his children from the foundation of the universe. They are soverignly elected, and therefor arrive at the moment of rebirth. Those who are not the elect do not go through the "narrow gate". Both of them are free to choose to sin, and are fully responsible but the elect have their debt "paid in full". (if you want more details there are at least 300 years wourh of books and other writings on the subject! Eternal secutity can take a whole nother life time to ponder...)
Hummm... all of that would have seemed very hard to visualize just a few weeks ago, but now that you can view your RSW, you can see that in fact, both are true at the same time! Problem solved! God sees the entire creature from the foundation of the universe to the Adam-bud to the me-bud. God may soverignly pass my RSW through the narrow gate while I maintain full free will and responsibility for what my worm does on the way there... see? This image was an incredible reliefe 25 years ago when I was struggling with these two different theologies! Both schools seemed to have right ideas and both seemed to have weak ideas. I have never been able to give enough context to explain it to more than a few people, so hopefully you, gentle reader, are now among the group who sees this! Ordinary thought just does not allow one to think about predestnation and free will at the same time, but with our new time creatures, it is a synch! It is all just a matter of perspective!
In Watchman Nee's classic "Sit, Walk, Stand" Nee also touches this truth. He describes the believer as simultaneously seated with Christ in the heavenlies, walking through a messy life, and standing on the power of a choice for Christ all at the same time! You can visualize that easily if you think of your RSW existing at all those points already. Years later when I was talking to my daughter about how a road knows the way back to the tent, I answered "It knows because it is already there." This is also that kind of vision - see it?
I can not end this without relaying my favorite Calvinistic/Arminian story... Oh no... there he goes again... This is from a neighborhood Reformed Prespretarian (Calvinistic) pastor who was talking to us as we were thinking about changing churches. John Calvin and John Wesely (Arminian) both died, and were walking up paths to heaven. As luck would have it the paths they were on joined and as soon as they saw each other, there was great rejoycing! "John! how good to see you!" "No, John, it is my pleasure! How delightful!" (sure, they talked like that...) They continued their rejoycing and reminiscing as they walked up the path. Soon, they came to the walls of Heaven, and they saw the Pearly Gates. They stopped. Wesely looked longingly at Calvin... Calvin nodded as in final agreement... there, above the gate, was an inscription: "Whosoever will may come!" They embraced, and continued on arm in arm. They entered heaven and started to walk from the gate a bit down the street of gold. Suddenly, Wesely felt Calvin tug on his sleve... They both turned around and stared back at the Pearly Gates. There above the inside of the gates was another inscription: "Known from the foundation of the universe!" It was just a matter of perspective.
Nois
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Adam... the hydra...
Adam... the hydra...
OK kids... now we are going somewhere... all the way back to Adam. If you have enjoyed the mental gymnastics so far, I hope you will get a good work out this time. We are going to abandon the photo-flattening and go back to the micro slice technique.
Remember when we took the micro slices through two fingers and visualized the time snakes created as we stacked up copies from the same finger locations over time? As your fingers moved through time and space, their worms moved around in the slice-time space we created in our imagination. OK, so now instead of a finger, think about slicing right through your torso... right about at the bottom rib... Can you imagine that slice? Take another now... another... another... stack them up... What do you get? Yep, a really wormy worm this time, complete with innards! Try to visualize your rib-slice-worm (RSW) for a minute or two. Hopefully by now you can see yourself stretching through time. Imagine the slices from the previous moments sort of trailing off below you as you rise through time while unfurling your RSW like a rope.
Now, here's the real fun. I want you to travel with your torso RSW back through your day. Imagine similar torso RSWs of the people you saw -- the guy who cut you off in traffic, the person walking down the hall in front of you, the person you passed going the opposite way. Imagine all of those worms, but don't even try to imagine all of the other objects around you! You could hurt yourself! Can you do that for a day's worth of time? Sure, it is OK to leave out some detail... just see the basic idea. My worm went from the bed to the shower, then down to put some flaky stuff down a tube, then into the car, and in to work after dropping off my girls at school... oops there go their worms! I walked back and forth to the coffee station, sat at my desk, came home, drove out to get some sandwiches, sat at home here typing, then soon back to bed... quite a worm-day! If I allow myself to imagine the bed's worm, it is pretty stable, so it is just a stationary surface in time. My worm was on it, then did all the daily stuff, then plopped down right back on the bed surface again... can you see it? Sort of like ivy attaching to a trellis, then going out and then attaching again further up... What does yours look like? Try to see just the rib slices stacked up... can you see the worm? Work at it! How does it look when you breathe? Now you are getting it!
OK now, Please allow me to assume that Adam was a real, actual, person who was the real actual first man, personally crafted by God in the garden. For some, that is probably an even harder stretch than visualizing their RSW! Do it anyway, it will do you good to think through this. So, travel back in your imagination all the way to Adam. God got some dust, a little spit, breathed in the air (spirit) and poof... Adam! For our purposes now, we do not need all of Adam... we just need his rib-slice. Ah, you are getting ahead of me - eh? OK, go ahead and imagine his RSW for a little while. Got it? Well, as many of you know, it was not long and God decided to complete the creation by making Eve. He did not make her in the same way, but instead he took a rib from Adam! As luck would have it, it is exactly the rib that we sliced through to make Adams RSW! Cleaver of us.
But wait... if he took the rib out of Adam to make Eve, then Eve's RSW is actually sort of a bud off the side of Adam's RSW! Imagine That! Whoa, that is an odd creature indeed! Eventually there were other, child worms. how would they occur? Well, I suppose one would have to make slices at different places than the rib, but I just picked that rib-slice out as an example... remember all of the billion slices are there stacked up all through the time we see. We just picked one as an example to make it easier to visualize. So, make an Adam slice and an Eve slice in appropriate places and let yourself imagine that sequence... oops getting pretty racy on the old blog...
So... if you are back... with me... Did you see a tiny Adam-cell-worm move across, join with an Eve-cell-worm, making it's own worm, then bursting forth to continue on as a separate, but time-connected little, growing bud? Good. Now, continue to imagine that for a few generations... How about a thousand years? It gets pretty tangled and interconnected - eh?
When I first thought of Adam this way I tried to figure out how to describe it to the few people who would listen to me... thanks son!... about the only thing I could think of was a hydra! That is not an especially good metaphor, particularly if you visualize the mythological hydra that Hercules fought!!! Or the constellation!!!
No, No, NO, I am talking about the little pond creature! See some here http://www.fishpondinfo.com/animals/micro.htm
and here http://www.scientificillustrator.com/illustration/microscopic/hydra.html
.
Even that is not very good, and only good for a few child-buds, but it might give you a little help with this!
The scripture says that we were in Adam from the beginning. I think that this visualization gives an interesting insight to that truth. When I think of my RSW (and necessary others...) stretching back through my life, budding from my mother and father, from their parents, on... and on... What an amazing creature! ...All the way back to Adam... standing there in the garden... Eve is reaching for that fruit... I am silent... (Larry Crabb, "The Silence of Adam")
Nois
OK kids... now we are going somewhere... all the way back to Adam. If you have enjoyed the mental gymnastics so far, I hope you will get a good work out this time. We are going to abandon the photo-flattening and go back to the micro slice technique.
Remember when we took the micro slices through two fingers and visualized the time snakes created as we stacked up copies from the same finger locations over time? As your fingers moved through time and space, their worms moved around in the slice-time space we created in our imagination. OK, so now instead of a finger, think about slicing right through your torso... right about at the bottom rib... Can you imagine that slice? Take another now... another... another... stack them up... What do you get? Yep, a really wormy worm this time, complete with innards! Try to visualize your rib-slice-worm (RSW) for a minute or two. Hopefully by now you can see yourself stretching through time. Imagine the slices from the previous moments sort of trailing off below you as you rise through time while unfurling your RSW like a rope.
Now, here's the real fun. I want you to travel with your torso RSW back through your day. Imagine similar torso RSWs of the people you saw -- the guy who cut you off in traffic, the person walking down the hall in front of you, the person you passed going the opposite way. Imagine all of those worms, but don't even try to imagine all of the other objects around you! You could hurt yourself! Can you do that for a day's worth of time? Sure, it is OK to leave out some detail... just see the basic idea. My worm went from the bed to the shower, then down to put some flaky stuff down a tube, then into the car, and in to work after dropping off my girls at school... oops there go their worms! I walked back and forth to the coffee station, sat at my desk, came home, drove out to get some sandwiches, sat at home here typing, then soon back to bed... quite a worm-day! If I allow myself to imagine the bed's worm, it is pretty stable, so it is just a stationary surface in time. My worm was on it, then did all the daily stuff, then plopped down right back on the bed surface again... can you see it? Sort of like ivy attaching to a trellis, then going out and then attaching again further up... What does yours look like? Try to see just the rib slices stacked up... can you see the worm? Work at it! How does it look when you breathe? Now you are getting it!
OK now, Please allow me to assume that Adam was a real, actual, person who was the real actual first man, personally crafted by God in the garden. For some, that is probably an even harder stretch than visualizing their RSW! Do it anyway, it will do you good to think through this. So, travel back in your imagination all the way to Adam. God got some dust, a little spit, breathed in the air (spirit) and poof... Adam! For our purposes now, we do not need all of Adam... we just need his rib-slice. Ah, you are getting ahead of me - eh? OK, go ahead and imagine his RSW for a little while. Got it? Well, as many of you know, it was not long and God decided to complete the creation by making Eve. He did not make her in the same way, but instead he took a rib from Adam! As luck would have it, it is exactly the rib that we sliced through to make Adams RSW! Cleaver of us.
But wait... if he took the rib out of Adam to make Eve, then Eve's RSW is actually sort of a bud off the side of Adam's RSW! Imagine That! Whoa, that is an odd creature indeed! Eventually there were other, child worms. how would they occur? Well, I suppose one would have to make slices at different places than the rib, but I just picked that rib-slice out as an example... remember all of the billion slices are there stacked up all through the time we see. We just picked one as an example to make it easier to visualize. So, make an Adam slice and an Eve slice in appropriate places and let yourself imagine that sequence... oops getting pretty racy on the old blog...
So... if you are back... with me... Did you see a tiny Adam-cell-worm move across, join with an Eve-cell-worm, making it's own worm, then bursting forth to continue on as a separate, but time-connected little, growing bud? Good. Now, continue to imagine that for a few generations... How about a thousand years? It gets pretty tangled and interconnected - eh?
When I first thought of Adam this way I tried to figure out how to describe it to the few people who would listen to me... thanks son!... about the only thing I could think of was a hydra! That is not an especially good metaphor, particularly if you visualize the mythological hydra that Hercules fought!!! Or the constellation!!!
No, No, NO, I am talking about the little pond creature! See some here http://www.fishpondinfo.com/animals/micro.htm and here http://www.scientificillustrator.com/illustration/microscopic/hydra.html
.
Even that is not very good, and only good for a few child-buds, but it might give you a little help with this!
The scripture says that we were in Adam from the beginning. I think that this visualization gives an interesting insight to that truth. When I think of my RSW (and necessary others...) stretching back through my life, budding from my mother and father, from their parents, on... and on... What an amazing creature! ...All the way back to Adam... standing there in the garden... Eve is reaching for that fruit... I am silent... (Larry Crabb, "The Silence of Adam")
Nois
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Flat Like Me...
Flat like me...
Did you like being a worm? Maybe not so much? A billion worms?... ah no thanks... Before we move on, lets try a different analogy and see how that goes. Basically, to visualize the time dimension via a 3D worm, we need to loose one of our 3 dimensions. Previously, we did that by making thin slices, but there is more than one way to flatten an amoeba!
Lets do a little mental exercise to warm up! To start, either commit to a 2 hour experiment, or warm up that imagination... (Did you actually slice that carrot for my earlier post?) Now, get a brekfast bowl and a small cup. put the cup upside down in the bowl and set it somewhere warm. Now go to the freezer, get an icecube and put it on top the cup so that you can see it. Now, go away! Not too far... Every 10-15 min come back and look at your time traveler. Is it the same each time? Is it changing? It is melting you say? Well what would you expect ice to do over time!
Alright... rewind that sequence in your mind. Imagine each visit to the cube as a photo. (If you need to, consider repeating the experiment and actually taking a series of digital picutres with your cell phone.) All a photo does is capture a projection of a 3d objct onto a 2D surface, so it is an alternate way of creating a "slice". (A movie creates a series of 2D projections of 3D objetcts.) Finally, if only in your mind, print out and glue those pics to some cardboard, cut them out and stack them up like we stacked the carrot slices. Voi la, we saw a 3D icecube became a 4D time traveler, then a 3D worm! See? In order for us to visualize the 3D worm, we had to morph the icecube to a 2D surface, then grow the worm from slices. Our worm is hard and has sharp edges near the base. As we go "up" in time his edges get more round. We see him get narrower and rounder, and then eventually he disapears. Got it?
If we want to consider the liquid water too, then the worm is even more interesting. It has a fairly solid tapering core with probably some little "streams" that would be like branches ending in pools that would be sort of like leaves. Of course, over time these leaves join together into a pool... so we end up with one big leaf and no trunk, like high up in a tree. The water leaf eventually evaporates and we may get some individual pools which eventually disappear. Think about the last few pictures. We go back to some individual lobe-leaves with each one disappearing... finally only one, the tallest one, left... then gone. The whole thing might end up looking sort of like a broccoli stalk!
Now, put your hand back in front of you, but this time, just take a picture of it. Play the same print/glue/cut/stack game as with the ice cube and you end up with a different kind of you-worm. You can let this one move too, like we did with the earlier finger worms. Also, if we are cleaver, we can always take the picture from the front of the hand and glue it to the pile with a little tilt as well as a side-to-side movement. Now we have a really interesting worm!
What do you get if you wigggle your fingers? Ooey gooey...
Nois
Did you like being a worm? Maybe not so much? A billion worms?... ah no thanks... Before we move on, lets try a different analogy and see how that goes. Basically, to visualize the time dimension via a 3D worm, we need to loose one of our 3 dimensions. Previously, we did that by making thin slices, but there is more than one way to flatten an amoeba!
Lets do a little mental exercise to warm up! To start, either commit to a 2 hour experiment, or warm up that imagination... (Did you actually slice that carrot for my earlier post?) Now, get a brekfast bowl and a small cup. put the cup upside down in the bowl and set it somewhere warm. Now go to the freezer, get an icecube and put it on top the cup so that you can see it. Now, go away! Not too far... Every 10-15 min come back and look at your time traveler. Is it the same each time? Is it changing? It is melting you say? Well what would you expect ice to do over time!
Alright... rewind that sequence in your mind. Imagine each visit to the cube as a photo. (If you need to, consider repeating the experiment and actually taking a series of digital picutres with your cell phone.) All a photo does is capture a projection of a 3d objct onto a 2D surface, so it is an alternate way of creating a "slice". (A movie creates a series of 2D projections of 3D objetcts.) Finally, if only in your mind, print out and glue those pics to some cardboard, cut them out and stack them up like we stacked the carrot slices. Voi la, we saw a 3D icecube became a 4D time traveler, then a 3D worm! See? In order for us to visualize the 3D worm, we had to morph the icecube to a 2D surface, then grow the worm from slices. Our worm is hard and has sharp edges near the base. As we go "up" in time his edges get more round. We see him get narrower and rounder, and then eventually he disapears. Got it?
If we want to consider the liquid water too, then the worm is even more interesting. It has a fairly solid tapering core with probably some little "streams" that would be like branches ending in pools that would be sort of like leaves. Of course, over time these leaves join together into a pool... so we end up with one big leaf and no trunk, like high up in a tree. The water leaf eventually evaporates and we may get some individual pools which eventually disappear. Think about the last few pictures. We go back to some individual lobe-leaves with each one disappearing... finally only one, the tallest one, left... then gone. The whole thing might end up looking sort of like a broccoli stalk!
Now, put your hand back in front of you, but this time, just take a picture of it. Play the same print/glue/cut/stack game as with the ice cube and you end up with a different kind of you-worm. You can let this one move too, like we did with the earlier finger worms. Also, if we are cleaver, we can always take the picture from the front of the hand and glue it to the pile with a little tilt as well as a side-to-side movement. Now we have a really interesting worm!
What do you get if you wigggle your fingers? Ooey gooey...
Nois
Saturday, April 24, 2010
I am a worm too...
I am a worm too... G'Day time travelors!
You h-a-v-e been traveling in time since the last post - eh? Remember our amoeba/wafer/worm friend who was slowly changing awareness-slices at the surface of the water as the rain slowly filled his 50 gal drum universe? How about you... are you a worm? Before you can start to wriggle around in time you need to figure out what carrot slices of youself would be like.
Alright. Here we go... take your hand and place it in front of you while making a victory V with your pointer and middle fingers. Use a microscopic double-bladed Samurai sword to remove a thin slice across those 2 fingers and pop them into a vat of nutrient solution so that they stay alive... aw come on! Ain't ya got no imagination??? OK, this seems a bit too barbaric, so, use some kind of Star trek transporter slicer to make a copy of each slice instead.
After a split second, take another pair of slices and stack them on top of the others. Supposing our copier allows us to keep doing this, what do we end up with in the vat? Right! 2 worms! Each new slice attaches to the previous slice and we would get worms just like our amoeba friends worm. If we take slices in more places, how many worms could we get? If we did a Plank length minimum slice we could get billions! If we slice closer to the base of the V, we would get an odd worm with 2 round lobes and a thin fleshy membrane connecting them. If we slice through our torso we would get a great big oval worm (some people have bigger torso worms than others!) Having any luck visualizing this? Give it some time. (They have actually done this sort of thing with cadavers "frozen in time" see 1 and 2 below to help visualize this. Remember that all of those slices are frozen at one time while ours are the same slice over and over at different times.)
What good is a 3D worm that can't move??? Remember how we allowed the flatland amoeba to move by stacking his carrot slices not quite straight? Lets do that with our finger worms. Before we make our next slice, we are going to move our hand slowly and then attach the new slices onto the worms offset to the side just the same tiny amount. Again, assume the worm can just seem to bend. As your hand moves in time, the finger worms just bend to the new positions. Careful, don't cross your fingers! You will get the worms all tangled up! Fun eh?
Alright... a final visualization for this post. If we wanted to, we could copy/slice our entire body and stack all billion worms up in a giant vat (again, see 1 and 2 below). Then, if we wanted to, we could grab all of the slices at one time-slice-level and stick them all back together to make a "me". If each time-slice-level was only self-aware when hooked together, and if we could grab/stack/attach them to make my "me" very quickly, that could actually be me!
Now, suppose they were not actually stacked separately, but rather all stacked together while also being sorted into worms... Huh? How could you do that??? Well, you can't without another dimension, but you can't grab/stack/attach them either, and we did not let that stop us! Lets just say that I am either the series of 3D "me"s that I see, or a billion worms depending on the perspective I want to use at the moment. Let that image soak for a bit. Happy stacking!
Nois.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Human_Project
2. http://www.dhpc.adelaide.edu.au/projects/vishuman2/VisibleHuman.html
You h-a-v-e been traveling in time since the last post - eh? Remember our amoeba/wafer/worm friend who was slowly changing awareness-slices at the surface of the water as the rain slowly filled his 50 gal drum universe? How about you... are you a worm? Before you can start to wriggle around in time you need to figure out what carrot slices of youself would be like.
Alright. Here we go... take your hand and place it in front of you while making a victory V with your pointer and middle fingers. Use a microscopic double-bladed Samurai sword to remove a thin slice across those 2 fingers and pop them into a vat of nutrient solution so that they stay alive... aw come on! Ain't ya got no imagination??? OK, this seems a bit too barbaric, so, use some kind of Star trek transporter slicer to make a copy of each slice instead.
After a split second, take another pair of slices and stack them on top of the others. Supposing our copier allows us to keep doing this, what do we end up with in the vat? Right! 2 worms! Each new slice attaches to the previous slice and we would get worms just like our amoeba friends worm. If we take slices in more places, how many worms could we get? If we did a Plank length minimum slice we could get billions! If we slice closer to the base of the V, we would get an odd worm with 2 round lobes and a thin fleshy membrane connecting them. If we slice through our torso we would get a great big oval worm (some people have bigger torso worms than others!) Having any luck visualizing this? Give it some time. (They have actually done this sort of thing with cadavers "frozen in time" see 1 and 2 below to help visualize this. Remember that all of those slices are frozen at one time while ours are the same slice over and over at different times.)
What good is a 3D worm that can't move??? Remember how we allowed the flatland amoeba to move by stacking his carrot slices not quite straight? Lets do that with our finger worms. Before we make our next slice, we are going to move our hand slowly and then attach the new slices onto the worms offset to the side just the same tiny amount. Again, assume the worm can just seem to bend. As your hand moves in time, the finger worms just bend to the new positions. Careful, don't cross your fingers! You will get the worms all tangled up! Fun eh?
Alright... a final visualization for this post. If we wanted to, we could copy/slice our entire body and stack all billion worms up in a giant vat (again, see 1 and 2 below). Then, if we wanted to, we could grab all of the slices at one time-slice-level and stick them all back together to make a "me". If each time-slice-level was only self-aware when hooked together, and if we could grab/stack/attach them to make my "me" very quickly, that could actually be me!
Now, suppose they were not actually stacked separately, but rather all stacked together while also being sorted into worms... Huh? How could you do that??? Well, you can't without another dimension, but you can't grab/stack/attach them either, and we did not let that stop us! Lets just say that I am either the series of 3D "me"s that I see, or a billion worms depending on the perspective I want to use at the moment. Let that image soak for a bit. Happy stacking!
Nois.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Human_Project
2. http://www.dhpc.adelaide.edu.au/projects/vishuman2/VisibleHuman.html
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Before you can fly...
Before you can fly...
So, you want to fly in time? Before you can fly, you have to wriggle... ugh... like a worm? What's that got to do with time travel???
To get started, lets do a little culinary chore... slice a carrot, thin... not to the Plank length, but make them thin... got it? (Are you just doing this in your head?? OK! If you can handle it...) Now, take all those slices and stack them back up to make the carrot again. Does that seem like a waste of time? Then, just consider it an investment in your education!
I need to tell you something about my flatland friend... he is not actually flat, nor is he a wafer like I discussed last post. You were not ready to see him at that point! What he thinks he is is not at all what he is... sounds familiar to Nois readers - eh? He thinks he is a disk, and we said (and lied) that he is really a wafer, but he thinks that only because that is all he can perceive. He has 2D perception after all! Even if he agrees that he has a little thickness in time, he has no idea what he actually looks like to me in 3D... he is a worm!
Say what??? OK, visualize this... you remember how I put the pencil into his 2D brane, then pulled it back out? He just saw a series of disks, but I saw the entire pencil. In exactly the same way, he sees himself as a disk, but I see a worm! To make this a little easier, lets loose the pond analogy, and put my flatland amoeba friend on the surface of some water in a 50 gal drum. It is gently raining and the drum is slowly filling with water. Now, think of my friend as a worm like creature who actually is attached to the bottom of the drum and extends up through the water and into the air. Thing is, he is only aware of himself at the surface of the water... I do not know why... this is just an analogy, not a theory of existence! (Hummm... maybe it is the interface change from water to air... from past to future...) I am free to move around and see him all the way from top to bottom, but he only sees himself as a disk at the water surface.
You can think of his surface existence as the thin disk we talked about before and think of the rest of him as all the other carrot slices of him. For him, the passage of time is the rising of the water and the perception of himself at a new level. I see him at all the points in "time", but he only sees himself at one time +/- a bit. Get the idea? You will probably need to stop a few minutes and let that soak in...
Back? What happens if you do not stack the slices quite straight? Now stretch that brain a little more... lets let him move around a bit... say 1 inch West. What does that look like to him? Not too exciting. He just takes his little disk-self and uses his little flagilla to scoot himself across the surface of the water. I, on the other hand see something completely different! I see this worm creature flex and bend himself so that the place where he comes out of the water is 1 inch west.
That may seem the same to you, but it is drastically different in terms of it's logical consequences. We need to pursue this bunny trail some more, but enough brain stretching for one post.
Nois
So, you want to fly in time? Before you can fly, you have to wriggle... ugh... like a worm? What's that got to do with time travel???
To get started, lets do a little culinary chore... slice a carrot, thin... not to the Plank length, but make them thin... got it? (Are you just doing this in your head?? OK! If you can handle it...) Now, take all those slices and stack them back up to make the carrot again. Does that seem like a waste of time? Then, just consider it an investment in your education!
I need to tell you something about my flatland friend... he is not actually flat, nor is he a wafer like I discussed last post. You were not ready to see him at that point! What he thinks he is is not at all what he is... sounds familiar to Nois readers - eh? He thinks he is a disk, and we said (and lied) that he is really a wafer, but he thinks that only because that is all he can perceive. He has 2D perception after all! Even if he agrees that he has a little thickness in time, he has no idea what he actually looks like to me in 3D... he is a worm!
Say what??? OK, visualize this... you remember how I put the pencil into his 2D brane, then pulled it back out? He just saw a series of disks, but I saw the entire pencil. In exactly the same way, he sees himself as a disk, but I see a worm! To make this a little easier, lets loose the pond analogy, and put my flatland amoeba friend on the surface of some water in a 50 gal drum. It is gently raining and the drum is slowly filling with water. Now, think of my friend as a worm like creature who actually is attached to the bottom of the drum and extends up through the water and into the air. Thing is, he is only aware of himself at the surface of the water... I do not know why... this is just an analogy, not a theory of existence! (Hummm... maybe it is the interface change from water to air... from past to future...) I am free to move around and see him all the way from top to bottom, but he only sees himself as a disk at the water surface.
You can think of his surface existence as the thin disk we talked about before and think of the rest of him as all the other carrot slices of him. For him, the passage of time is the rising of the water and the perception of himself at a new level. I see him at all the points in "time", but he only sees himself at one time +/- a bit. Get the idea? You will probably need to stop a few minutes and let that soak in...
Back? What happens if you do not stack the slices quite straight? Now stretch that brain a little more... lets let him move around a bit... say 1 inch West. What does that look like to him? Not too exciting. He just takes his little disk-self and uses his little flagilla to scoot himself across the surface of the water. I, on the other hand see something completely different! I see this worm creature flex and bend himself so that the place where he comes out of the water is 1 inch west.
That may seem the same to you, but it is drastically different in terms of it's logical consequences. We need to pursue this bunny trail some more, but enough brain stretching for one post.
Nois
Saturday, April 17, 2010
More Time for Nothing...
More Time for Nothing...
OK, Time travelers... ready for the ultimate skinny? Suppose someone asks you how far it is around a lake while you are running. You may be tempted to say something like "Oh, it is about 1-and-a-half miles." That would not be any fun! So, instead answer with a question, like "Gee, mister, how big a ruler should I use?" Assuming you do not get punched out, you will probably be ignored and left alone, permanently... by that person anyway. However, on the rare occasion that some brave soul rises to the bait... "How about paces." I gladly answer "Just about 1800."
Now suppose we ask a more serious question. How far is it around the lake if I use a meter stick? How about a 1 Foot ruler? How about a 1" measure? A 1/2" measure? A 1/4" measure?... A .0000001" measure? Would all of those come out the same? You are measuring the same lake - right? But, do you get the same answer? No. Now wait a minute... what do we mean by "around the lake"? Clearly if I drew a line around the lake and just measured the same line with different measures it might be pretty simple... so lets keep it interesting and say that you measure as close to the water line as possible... now answer the question... Visualize it... Not so easy. Not even if you froze te water so that it stood still! If you read my earlier posts about existance you know that I think there is no right answer because neither the pond, nor the ruler, nor I exist. However, aside from that, lets talk about what we perceive to be real. Is there a right answer to how far is it around the lake? I suppose you can chew on that a while... ya'know that little pebble you ignored with the 1' ruler? Don't forget to measure around it with the .1' ruler! Tricky!
Mathematicians spend a lot of time thinking about really big and really small numbers... sort of the ultimate extreme athletes! Maybe we could get a "right" answer to the above question if we had the ultimate shortest measure. Some gague and string theories adopt the Plank length (1.616252(81)×10^35 meters) as the ultimately shortest short... Which is related via the speed of light to the shortest time interval, the chron. To illustrate, think about thin tall things. Take a square that is 1" by 1". By definition, it has an area of 1 square inch. Now, lets squish it so that it is only 1/2" wide, but with the same area... sure, it has to be 2" tall (2 * .5 = 1). Now squeeze it until it is 1/4" wide... yep, it will be 4" tall. See the game? So, let's get really crazy and squeeze it until it is 1/10000000000" wide. Sure, simple, it is 10000000000" tall. Seems easy, but can you answer this question... How tall is it if I squeeze it to 0" wide? Is that even possible? Is there a "Tallness" that would still give 1 square inch? Well... generally we just avoid that question... Some like to talk about infinity, but usually the answer is "You give me the width and I will give you the height." The hight gets as tall as it needs to get - See? So, if we use the Plank length as the utimate skinny, that little square would be 1.616252x10^35 meters tall! (About 10^32 miles!)
Lets take our ultimate skinny measure and travel back to the 1880's to see what our Flatland friend is up to...
E. Abbot Abbot's stories of the Flatland folk had to deal with an issue of thinness in regard to the 3D visitor who reveals himself to them. Lets just talk about me and my pencil the day after I put it through my 2D friends living room and then pulled it out! He thought he was going crazy! From my perspective, it seemed very easy! But I had a different problem... I could not seem to see him very well in his space. When I got down close to the pond surface, everything just seemed to disappear! Try this experiment... get a piece of paper and a pencil. Draw a light, straight, inch-or-so pencil line on the paper and look at it... any trouble seeing that? Nope. Ok, now lay the paper on the table and get down close to the surface... can you still see it easily? yes? OK, get closer... Closer... you see? After a bit you can not see the line at all!
I had that trouble with my friend! If I entered his space I saw nothing! So, answer me this... How thin is that pencil line? The thickness of the image on the Shroud of Turin is 200-600 nanometers (http://www.shroudstory.com/) - Is a pencil line that thin? However thin it is it is too thin to be viewed easliy from the surface it is on. So, as EAA said in Flatland, the creatures had a little thickness. OK, that is cool! Let's say that!
Lets think about me in my 3D world and about some 4D creature coming to visit me. Lets also suppose that the 4th dimension we both have but that I do not perceive the same, is time! If he comes into my world will he be able to see me? I think not, or at least not easily. I think that if he is "above" or "below" my time he can see me just fine, but as he gets close to my 3D "brane" he would have more and more trouble seeing me! Just like I have trouble seeing the pencil line on the paper or seeing my Flatland friend. (We will talk more about time as a space dimension next post.)
Now, that leads to an interesting question... do I have a little thickness in 4D just like the Flatlander has a little thickness in 3D? I often visualize our universe as the surface of a slice through time where the stuff "below" is the past and the stuff "above" is the future. After our above discussion, maybe it can not be a surface, but rather a thin wafer. Hummmm... does that mean that I exist now but also a bit in the past and a bit in the future? Maybe that is how we are able to remember things and predict events.
If we only preceived "Now" what would the past mean? See? Wouldn't it be hard to live in a world where we could not infer where a ball would go when we threw it? Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principal says about the same thing... you can not know both the location and the momentum of a particle with ultimate precision. If I slice the location of the particle too thinly, I can not measure it's velocity! I can not predict it's path. I need a little thickness to take the measurement. Similarly, in time-talk, we can infer instantaneous velocity, but we can not measure it - we need a little time to do the measurement.
OK, Time travelers... ready for the ultimate skinny? Suppose someone asks you how far it is around a lake while you are running. You may be tempted to say something like "Oh, it is about 1-and-a-half miles." That would not be any fun! So, instead answer with a question, like "Gee, mister, how big a ruler should I use?" Assuming you do not get punched out, you will probably be ignored and left alone, permanently... by that person anyway. However, on the rare occasion that some brave soul rises to the bait... "How about paces." I gladly answer "Just about 1800."
Now suppose we ask a more serious question. How far is it around the lake if I use a meter stick? How about a 1 Foot ruler? How about a 1" measure? A 1/2" measure? A 1/4" measure?... A .0000001" measure? Would all of those come out the same? You are measuring the same lake - right? But, do you get the same answer? No. Now wait a minute... what do we mean by "around the lake"? Clearly if I drew a line around the lake and just measured the same line with different measures it might be pretty simple... so lets keep it interesting and say that you measure as close to the water line as possible... now answer the question... Visualize it... Not so easy. Not even if you froze te water so that it stood still! If you read my earlier posts about existance you know that I think there is no right answer because neither the pond, nor the ruler, nor I exist. However, aside from that, lets talk about what we perceive to be real. Is there a right answer to how far is it around the lake? I suppose you can chew on that a while... ya'know that little pebble you ignored with the 1' ruler? Don't forget to measure around it with the .1' ruler! Tricky!
Mathematicians spend a lot of time thinking about really big and really small numbers... sort of the ultimate extreme athletes! Maybe we could get a "right" answer to the above question if we had the ultimate shortest measure. Some gague and string theories adopt the Plank length (1.616252(81)×10^35 meters) as the ultimately shortest short... Which is related via the speed of light to the shortest time interval, the chron. To illustrate, think about thin tall things. Take a square that is 1" by 1". By definition, it has an area of 1 square inch. Now, lets squish it so that it is only 1/2" wide, but with the same area... sure, it has to be 2" tall (2 * .5 = 1). Now squeeze it until it is 1/4" wide... yep, it will be 4" tall. See the game? So, let's get really crazy and squeeze it until it is 1/10000000000" wide. Sure, simple, it is 10000000000" tall. Seems easy, but can you answer this question... How tall is it if I squeeze it to 0" wide? Is that even possible? Is there a "Tallness" that would still give 1 square inch? Well... generally we just avoid that question... Some like to talk about infinity, but usually the answer is "You give me the width and I will give you the height." The hight gets as tall as it needs to get - See? So, if we use the Plank length as the utimate skinny, that little square would be 1.616252x10^35 meters tall! (About 10^32 miles!)
Lets take our ultimate skinny measure and travel back to the 1880's to see what our Flatland friend is up to...
E. Abbot Abbot's stories of the Flatland folk had to deal with an issue of thinness in regard to the 3D visitor who reveals himself to them. Lets just talk about me and my pencil the day after I put it through my 2D friends living room and then pulled it out! He thought he was going crazy! From my perspective, it seemed very easy! But I had a different problem... I could not seem to see him very well in his space. When I got down close to the pond surface, everything just seemed to disappear! Try this experiment... get a piece of paper and a pencil. Draw a light, straight, inch-or-so pencil line on the paper and look at it... any trouble seeing that? Nope. Ok, now lay the paper on the table and get down close to the surface... can you still see it easily? yes? OK, get closer... Closer... you see? After a bit you can not see the line at all!
I had that trouble with my friend! If I entered his space I saw nothing! So, answer me this... How thin is that pencil line? The thickness of the image on the Shroud of Turin is 200-600 nanometers (http://www.shroudstory.com/) - Is a pencil line that thin? However thin it is it is too thin to be viewed easliy from the surface it is on. So, as EAA said in Flatland, the creatures had a little thickness. OK, that is cool! Let's say that!
Lets think about me in my 3D world and about some 4D creature coming to visit me. Lets also suppose that the 4th dimension we both have but that I do not perceive the same, is time! If he comes into my world will he be able to see me? I think not, or at least not easily. I think that if he is "above" or "below" my time he can see me just fine, but as he gets close to my 3D "brane" he would have more and more trouble seeing me! Just like I have trouble seeing the pencil line on the paper or seeing my Flatland friend. (We will talk more about time as a space dimension next post.)
Now, that leads to an interesting question... do I have a little thickness in 4D just like the Flatlander has a little thickness in 3D? I often visualize our universe as the surface of a slice through time where the stuff "below" is the past and the stuff "above" is the future. After our above discussion, maybe it can not be a surface, but rather a thin wafer. Hummmm... does that mean that I exist now but also a bit in the past and a bit in the future? Maybe that is how we are able to remember things and predict events.
If we only preceived "Now" what would the past mean? See? Wouldn't it be hard to live in a world where we could not infer where a ball would go when we threw it? Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principal says about the same thing... you can not know both the location and the momentum of a particle with ultimate precision. If I slice the location of the particle too thinly, I can not measure it's velocity! I can not predict it's path. I need a little thickness to take the measurement. Similarly, in time-talk, we can infer instantaneous velocity, but we can not measure it - we need a little time to do the measurement.
If the Plank-length-chron is an actual smallest thickness in time, then I have a thickness in time! Then what happens if I leave my 3D prison brane and learn to fly in the 4th dimension? Am I traveling in time? EAA's Flatlander learned to fly in 3D... maybe there is hope for me in 4! Nois
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Time to write about time...
Time to write about time...
If you are waiting with bated breath for my next post about gravity... sorry... you will need to wait. I have started to write a few times, and I just can not do it without taking you off on another bunny trail that I walked before I had the gravity epiphany while talking to my 3-year old. The trail I am talking about is TIME! I suppose I must say that time does not exist either, just to be consistent. However, like my existance, I believe that time exists, but not as I normally perceive it. This insight will take a few posts to unpack, as will the following discussion about gravity. It should be interesting though... would you like a way to visualize time travel? Would you like to see how you can have predestination and free will at the same time? Be brave and read on.
I need to keep these posts shorter than my ones on existance, so I will make them into shorter chunks. Hopefully you will not run out of interest before you run out of text. This first one will introduce Flatland, then from there we will talk about a rain barrel, then about Adam, the hydra; then about time travel and changing the past. Eventually we will end up back at the Galactic Hologram, finally to Einstine's rubber sheet, and to gravity. Here we go.
As a graduate studant in Math at Colorado State University several professors mentioned a little book called "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" 1884, by Edwin Abbot Abbot an English schoolmaster. Even without reading it, the ideas excited me because they gave me a tool to visualize 9 dinensions! Say, what... how could that be? Well, you see, if I can be in 3 dinensions, and can under stand how a 2-D creature can visualize my 3-D world, that helps me to visualize a 4-D world... see? Then on to 9 or farther!
Here's the basic idea... Imagine a little 2-D sort of creature... I sometimes think about an amobea living on the surface of a pond... not perfect, but it is something I can see in my mind. Suppose he wants to build a house... what would it be? If we assume that he and his fellow creatures can not swin dowm from the surface or up into the air, then, all he needs is a little ring of algae stems with a little hinged one for a door! As far as he is concerned, when he closes that door he is completely safe and can not be seen or see out.
So, let's suppose he "gets up" in the morning and goes outside. Suddenly he is terrified to see a little black dot appear out of nowhere! then it grows into a hard, black disk. Of course he only sees a black line, but he is used to moving around an object to figure out it's shape. Then, it changes into a brown, fuzzy disk that grows and then into a red disk. Just as quickly, it goes back to the black dot and is gone. Scary! What he does not know is that I just put a red pencil down into the water near his house and then pulled it out. Stop a while and visualize that sequence in your mind... what does it look like to me. What does it look like to him?
That night I rocked his world... I put the pencil into his "house"... he did not sleep any more that night!
So, how would a Flatland Jesus walk through the walls? He would have freedom in other dimensions, so he simply goes up or down a bit, moves over the closed stem walls, and moves back to flat-D. Voi la! He is inside a locked door...
How would that look if I was a 3-D creature with a 3-D house and someone with freedom in time simply went "up" in time moved over inside my locked house and them came back to my time... are you getting it? Don't have nightmares. Nois
If you are waiting with bated breath for my next post about gravity... sorry... you will need to wait. I have started to write a few times, and I just can not do it without taking you off on another bunny trail that I walked before I had the gravity epiphany while talking to my 3-year old. The trail I am talking about is TIME! I suppose I must say that time does not exist either, just to be consistent. However, like my existance, I believe that time exists, but not as I normally perceive it. This insight will take a few posts to unpack, as will the following discussion about gravity. It should be interesting though... would you like a way to visualize time travel? Would you like to see how you can have predestination and free will at the same time? Be brave and read on.
I need to keep these posts shorter than my ones on existance, so I will make them into shorter chunks. Hopefully you will not run out of interest before you run out of text. This first one will introduce Flatland, then from there we will talk about a rain barrel, then about Adam, the hydra; then about time travel and changing the past. Eventually we will end up back at the Galactic Hologram, finally to Einstine's rubber sheet, and to gravity. Here we go.
As a graduate studant in Math at Colorado State University several professors mentioned a little book called "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" 1884, by Edwin Abbot Abbot an English schoolmaster. Even without reading it, the ideas excited me because they gave me a tool to visualize 9 dinensions! Say, what... how could that be? Well, you see, if I can be in 3 dinensions, and can under stand how a 2-D creature can visualize my 3-D world, that helps me to visualize a 4-D world... see? Then on to 9 or farther!
Here's the basic idea... Imagine a little 2-D sort of creature... I sometimes think about an amobea living on the surface of a pond... not perfect, but it is something I can see in my mind. Suppose he wants to build a house... what would it be? If we assume that he and his fellow creatures can not swin dowm from the surface or up into the air, then, all he needs is a little ring of algae stems with a little hinged one for a door! As far as he is concerned, when he closes that door he is completely safe and can not be seen or see out.
So, let's suppose he "gets up" in the morning and goes outside. Suddenly he is terrified to see a little black dot appear out of nowhere! then it grows into a hard, black disk. Of course he only sees a black line, but he is used to moving around an object to figure out it's shape. Then, it changes into a brown, fuzzy disk that grows and then into a red disk. Just as quickly, it goes back to the black dot and is gone. Scary! What he does not know is that I just put a red pencil down into the water near his house and then pulled it out. Stop a while and visualize that sequence in your mind... what does it look like to me. What does it look like to him?
That night I rocked his world... I put the pencil into his "house"... he did not sleep any more that night!
So, how would a Flatland Jesus walk through the walls? He would have freedom in other dimensions, so he simply goes up or down a bit, moves over the closed stem walls, and moves back to flat-D. Voi la! He is inside a locked door...
How would that look if I was a 3-D creature with a 3-D house and someone with freedom in time simply went "up" in time moved over inside my locked house and them came back to my time... are you getting it? Don't have nightmares. Nois
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