The Concept of Time Travel

Before discussing multi-linear time, one must establish what the concept of time is. Time, for this argument, is a tool that measures the cycles of day and night. It can be divided into decreasing discrete measurements (hours, minutes, seconds). A collection of discrete measurements can represent a block (day) or several blocks (week, month, year). This is an universal truth, but not a law. Our concept of time is not necessarily the same for another species, but time occurs. To borrow from the incompleteness theorem of Gödel, truth is not a function of logic.


Our concept of time is that seconds lead to minutes to hours to days to weeks to years. This is linear time or simply A to B. Hawking when writing on the concept of worm holes noted that the truth that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, especially when two points are folded over. Take a piece of paper and make two points on it. Fold the paper so the points are over each other, and that is what Hawking meant. 


In our concept of time, the War of 1812 started on Friday, June 18th, 1812. It is a definite dot on the timeline. Common theories on time travel would say we could build a device and go back in time to June 18th, 1812. The issue is going forward in time.

To be able to go forwards in time, say to March 1st, 3500, all time must have happened. Clarifying to travel forwards in time, all time, from the beginning of the universe to the end of it, must have already occurred. Traveling forward in time would have a dead-end. And again this is linear time as we know it.

The concept of multi-linear time is that all time that has/will ever occur happens along the straight line of our seven day week. Every single Friday in all of history happens on Friday; first Friday and final Friday occurs all at once. One p.m Friday now is one p.m. Friday throughout all of history. Basically time is L-shaped with the days of the week moving left to right and years and its more discrete parts from bottom to top. Why would this be superior to our standard concept of time? The points on the line are still the same.

Then we come back around to Hawking's concept of a worm hole. Nimtz and Stahlhofen claim to have succeeded with quantum tunneling which is theoretically similar to Hawking. In linear time, folding time from say Monday, February 28th, 2011 to Friday, June 18th, 1812 would not be possible because it is not a folding of time, but a fold and twist. In multi-linear time, you could fold Friday, whatever year, over to Friday, June 18th, 1812.

Following Baye's Theorem [P(H/E)=P(E/H)xP(H)/P(E), where H=hypothesis and E=evidence supporting H] the probability of time travel in the current concept of linear time is decidedly less probable than in a multi-linear concept. Not a perfect hypothesis, but closer to an universal truth than what is commonly accepted.

Intelligence and rain

Consider this implication that the human brain is composed mainly of water and that thoughts are electrical transmissions. These are scientific facts. Also fact that the brain requires oxygen to remain functional. Heck let's toss in that it is a complex structure. And we will take the final step and say that we are explicitly discussing a fruit fly brain.

Now, remove religion. I am not saying that a deity of sorts does not exist or anything like that. This is just a simple extension of Sartre's statement in Being and Nothingness that he did not deny god existed but he questioned should god not exist man would create himself. Arguing Sartre's theory is an entirely different post. And while I am removing religion, remove qualia, that mythical "essence" that Searle and others desperately cling to in their argument against computers and artificial intelligence.

Referencing the opening paragraph, I have to wonder if rain could have sentience? Let me define sentience as having the quality of being able to compose and transmit thoughts independently of outside manipulations. Rain is composed mostly of water, conducts electrical transmissions, has access to unlimited amounts of oxygen and is a complex structure. To say that rain is not a complex structure, snow is a type of frozen rain.

Is it possible to prove that rain is not capable of sentience? Not that rain is sentient, but that it is impossible for rain to be sentient. Having disqualified religion and qualia, how can the argument against be made? Is this a perversion of Pascal's wager?

Happy 2011

Sorry for the infrequent posts. Hopefully I can get back to posting at least once per month this year...

What is bad?

A local television ministry has the following statement in their commercial:

if its good its god, if its bad its the devil.

Putting aside the question of whether such deities exist, instead we need to focus on the ambiguity of the words good and bad. Neither word has an absolute meaning. Each person, pending we have free will, makes constant determinations as to what they believe is good and bad. Sartre was fond of making the argument that without god man creates himself. I make a much looser assertion.

A perfect example is food. Say you think prime rib is good. To a vegan, prime rib is bad. It is both good and bad, ambiguous.

To a catholic, god is good and the devil is bad. To a satanist the devil is good and god is bad.

What about murder? Murder is the willful taking of life. Can murder be a good thing or is it always bad? A poor analogy would be the war argument, that soldiers willingly murder people, but they don't. They follow orders. Taking ones own life is murder and therefore bad. But its not. In certain cultures committing suicide is respected and therefore good.

And if god exists, then god takes our lives willfully, being the supreme arbitrator of life and death. So to rewrite the statement of the television ministry:

If its good it might be god or the devil, and if its bad it might be god or the devil

The truth question

Nietzsche once wrote that "Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies."  And of course the begged question is what is truth then? How does one define it and validate it. Can that even happen? Do we kill truth be the simple process of definition?

From convictions truth becomes irrelevant. Convictions force truth to be what it wants it to be. In religion, conviction would make a deity truth. The quest then would be to cast off convictions to know truth. But how does one do that? How does one even have any idea what convictions are?

If we believe in something, then it is a conviction. Worse still, "all things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth." In the Dark Ages, the Church determined what was truth through its immense power. It silenced Copernicus and Galileo. It burned those who questioned their autonomy. So the question of truth gets murkier as we try to de-wed ourselves of the influence of religion.

Left stark and bare, we can only assume that Nietzsche is saying truth is. Or I suppose more correctly, truth was. It is a thing that can't be defined but has one true definition. Its like the Mohist saying that no matter where you look at a stream, you are seeing the beginning, middle, and end all at once. It is the beginning the flows from where you look, the middle of the entire stream, and the end of where it came from. It is truth.

Truth can never flow from definition or conviction. Truth is what exists and it must be something that can never have a definition. Truth just is.