Making no assumptions as to the existence or nature of time and space, we can reduce their defining properties to more fundamental propositions:
• there are information processors (us) • thus there is, implicitly, 'information', the actual substance and format of which is determined by our form of processing For example 1 and 0 are the 'stuff' of information relative to a digital IC, and the dimensions of their potential relations are also 'binary', in that that they're sequential, and / or parallel. So for instance, going a little deeper into that analogy, the basic building blocks of digital processing - logic gates, and their associated truth tables - are mapped to the finite (and thus, again, 'implicit') range of first-order permutations of basic spatiotemporal relations; ie. "if A=1 when B=1 then C=1" gives us an 'And' logical operation.. ..Likewise, if one's on when the other's off, we get 'Or' or perhaps 'Nor', and so on and so forth. You get the point; The spatiotemporal dichotomy is inherent to the nature of 'information' itself. An inevitable prerequisite for 'processing'. Whether we consider serial or 'parallel' processing. Yet it is not 'time and space' that are intrinsically invoked here, but something even more fundamental: simultaneity and sequentiality. A logic gate's truth table refers to an instant of time - it's essentially timeless - describing conditions between coextant states, such that, say, C=1 only when A&B=1 within a threshold period determined by an onboard clock. Similarly, processing information necessitates some form of basic 'memory' in which values can be stored, retrieved and incremented. IOW, processing depends upon two informational dimensions - one field in which all the information is coextant, and another in which it is not. That is to say, processing - and information itself - is intrinsically serial and parallel. Written or spoken, a given word is the same information with different spatiotemporal distributions, but each has a foot in both domains. So a spatiotemporal dichotomy is inherent, and built into the nature and very existence of both 'information', and 'processors' (with no particular regard to the animate). Yet we also know from relativity that there's actually no such thing as true 'simultaneity' - rather, what we may reduce to 'temporal integration windows' (TIW's) are improvised or coalesced on the fly; in the case of a typical IC, by a quartz timing crystal, but likewise in our own physiology, TIW's are built into every level of processing, from primary receptors all the way up to cortex; every 'now' composed of a myriad flux of smaller 'nows' with progressively shorter TIW's. 'Attention span' is the executive-level TIW, and at the base levels are, for instance, the shortest intervals we can detect between stimuli - such as the threshold between a click-train and a 'buzzing sound', or visual flicker detection; where a series of distinct events merge into one continuous event. Our own data-timing clocks use relative, rather than constant time. The key timing relation that binds all the information we process together is factor-of-two symmetry, in both time and space. This is why we experience 'octave equivalence' between frequencies in that particular relationship in the spatial domain, and likewise, 'rhythm entrainment' in the temporal domain. By definition, 'C2' and 'C4', say, are not 'the same note', they're not 'double or half' one another's frequency, and their ineffably-paradoxical sensation of equivalence actually pertains to the bandwidth of their frequency interval being the simplest-possible relationship, resolving to the shortest-possible (ie. most energy efficient) TIW, resolving every cycle of the fundamental (the lower freq). Whereas, the next most consonant interval, the 'fifth' resolves every other cycle (a factor of three relationship), thus a slightly larger TIW and slightly more work. The harmonic series follows the integer number line of relative factors of a given fundamental. Thus what we regard as 'harmonic consonance' is actually just this same weird 'equivalence' we perceive in octaves; there's only degrees of 'inequivalence' / difference, where progressively longer frequency resolutions requires longer TIW's and more energy, sounding more and more 'dissonant' (but really, just 'less equivalent'). You see that this anomalous perceptual parity forms a kind of 'zero' for whatever form of processing we're using for metadata - that is, equivalence / difference is a kind of analogue 'bit', in that it can have a zero or variable value, such that we regard C1 and C4 as somehow 'the same' note; but where 'pitch class' is a higher-order manifestation of this phenomenon (and likewise rhythm entrainment in the temporal domain), these information-binding principles are more fundamental that the modality of audition itself, since it is non-auditory, abstract information that we, as processors, ascribe to the stimuli, a valuation we make - a tactile 'sensation' - that C1 and C4 in some certain regard represent minimal entropy and thus zero metadata. Of course, the actual data we're thus locking onto and processing is all the 'non-zero' stuff; 'information' = difference / change, infinite complexity in relation to finite and elementary simplicity. It is metadata that provides a basis for abstraction. For development, reasoning, progress. Useful processing means finding efficient solutions to existential problems. These principles are even more fundamental than multicellularity and the development of neural systems, which, rather than having invented the spatiotemporal dichotomy, have simply had to co-opt and make do with it; hence for example if bilateral symmetry and distinct l/r hemispheres results from the way dividing cells in the zygote fold outwards symmetrically from the cortical axis, we nonetheless exploit that distributed architecture to optimise processing with parallel and serial specialisations on either hemisphere of a given cortical nuclei; what's different between the two sides being the relative sizes of the respective TIW's and thus the corresponding spatiotemporal distributions / workloads for a given process / stimuli, this increasing our dexterity for generalisation and abstraction. Most of the information that matters to any complex animal is this higher-order meta-information about primary stimuli; context and meaning. We long to understand time as a construct independent of ourselves, in the same way a QM researcher wants to be able to isolate an experiment from his influence. Yet time is an inherent construct of information itself, and all fundamental interactions are processors, relative to which it is the spatial domain that is the stubbornly-persistent illusion. We may as well ask "why is there information?".. On Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 2:32 AM H LV <hveeder...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Sat, Apr 11, 2020 at 5:14 PM <mix...@bigpond.com> wrote: > >> >> >> Note that our perception of the flow of time and even our measurement of >> it is based on processes which may vary in >> speed. IOW if the fabric of space time changes, e.g. in a gravitational >> field, then the processes upon which our clocks >> are based may speed up or slow down, but this doesn't *necessarily* imply >> that time itself is flowing faster or slower. >> It may be, but we have no object means of telling the difference. IOW our >> temporal "yardstick" may change in length in >> some situations. A clock can run fast or slow without the actual passage >> of time changing. >> >> > I agree. For example an increase in ambient temperature can change the > period of pendulum clock by increasing the length the swing arm. However, > we don't say time slows down just because it got warmer. In the 18th > century pendulums were designed so as not to be affected > by temperature. Although we can't block the affects of gravity on a clock, > we can make sure a clock at the surface of the Earth keeps the same time as > a clock in deep space by systematically adding time to the measured time on > Earth. > > Harry >
