[W. M.]

Time, Free Will, and Unshared Presents

Computational irreducibility states that the only way to work out how as system will behave is to perform this computation with the result that there can be fundamentally no laws that allow one to work out the behavior more directly. This is the origin of apparent free will.

Time and free will are two primary perceptions that govern our lives. Perception is a barrier, or wall, that brings things down from the abstract level to the definitive level, the level at which we live our lives. In essence, on one side of the perception wall there is God's realm (reality), which houses simultaneity and predestination (pre-determinism), while on the other side of the wall (our side) we are shepherded by perceptions: time and free will. The reality side of the wall is abstract to us, while the perception side is definitive from our viewpoint.

The present is an individual perception because one person's present is another person's future. For example, two people, John and Sarah are standing four feet apart. John is going to tell Sarah that he's getting married. So we have:

1) John is four feet from Sarah.
A)Light travels at one ns/ft (one nanosecond, or billionth of a second per foot).
B) Sound travels at 700ft/sec.
C) John and Sarah are four Lns (four light nanoseconds) from each other.
D)John and Sarah are 0.006 Ssec (sound seconds) from each other.

2) From John's perspective it's the present when he tells Sarah his good news. However, he sees Sarah four Lns in the past. Time's arrow for John's vision cone is toward his past, but he sees his own time moving forward.

3)When Sarah hears John she hears him 0.006 Ssec in the past and sees him four Lns in the past, even though John thinks it's the present.

4) The reaction John observes from Sarah is from Sarah's past (four Lns and 0.006 Ssec) so Sarah thinks that she's in the present now.

The conclusion: The present is an individual perception; everyone except you exists in the past or the future. But since light and sound do not travel instantaneously, it seems to John and Sarah that they share a common present. In a free will system time would be a dimension instead of a perception.

Bibliography

"A New Kind of Science" by Stephen Wolfram
Excerpts from my notes

[willvz]

In your conclusion you state that everyone but you exists in the past or the future.
The past, yes.
The future, no.
From my perspective, relative to you I am in the future, but that is my present. I therefore exist in the presnt. My present.

There is no future. Only now.
There is no past. Only a now that happened before now.

[W. M.]

I think in my conclusion, I probably should have explained my position a little more clearly; namely, seperated the observable past from the expected future. By that I mean that we can only observe the past, because we can see only what has happened, but we can have certain expectations about future events. For example, if I see someone approaching me to talk to me, I am seeing them in the past but expecting them to interact with me in the very near future.

What I failed to do was to seperate the actual, or observable past from the expected/possible (but unobservable) future.

My goof

Willvz stated, correctly:
There is no future. Only now.
There is no past. Only a now that happened before now.

Sound like Julian Barbour thinking to me (Julian Barbour, End of Time). . He's one of my favorite theoretical physicists who believes that all moments of time exist simultaneously but we only perceive them as seperate "nows".

[Nebulous Neura]

You have stated "By that I mean that we can only observe the past, because we can see only what has happened, but we can have certain expectations about future events. "

In recent experiements using MRI and other tools to study an active brain, it has become a little more clear how this works. Your eyes see light reflected from objects almost instantaneously. However, there is a slight delay before the areas of the brain that process information become stimulated. Your brain and nervous system respond to the visual stimulus based on the current state your system is in. This acquired state is effected by past experiences and chemical reactions that are occurring at that instant in time within your body. The body and nervous system are never completely still. From the time you are conceived, your system is in motion. In the very next instatnt of time your system will be in a new state never to return to exactly the same state it was in at some instant in the past. You may have responded slightly differently to the stimulous if it had happened one fraction of a second before or after. There are so many factors that impact stimulous / response in humans that it is almost impossible to represent mathematically. I said almost because I believe that one day we will be able to derive the formulae that predict a particular human's response to given stimuli based on the state their system is in at that instant.

In John McCrone's book, "Going Inside - A tour round a single moment of consciousness", the process used by our brains to process an instant of time is explained far better than I can do it justice. If we understand an instant, we can better understand how we "think" throughout our lifetime.

Life is a one-way journey into the future, experienced one instant at a time. What you were before, you will never be again.

[ccristi99]

WM, I read about your computational irreducibility and I must say I don't fully agree, or maybe I don't fully understand it. To "compute" means to build a model of a system and then evolve it based on its rules. Irreducibility is therefore relative to the model used. Change the model and you can always reduce it further. Example:
If addition is the only operation allowed in your model then the following expression cannot be reduced: 2+2+2+2. As you were saying, you just have to perform all three operations to get to the result. However you can invent multiplication and just do 2*4 (one operation) for the same result.

Some people will argue that multiplication is more expensive, but that's just how it's implemented now in computers. In school we learned both addition and multiplication for small numbers as lookup tables, which makes them equally fast.

[hdeasy]

The above discussion maybe a bit too functionalist to give a balanced view of
the current state of play in the philosophy of consciousness. Don't forget the hard
problem ( See Dave Chalmers' stuff at http://consc.net/chalmers/ ). Objective
science a la Wolfram or other functionalists, is silent on
the subjective dimension of conscious experience. But as mysterians like Colin McGinn
( see e.g. http://www.consciousentities.com/mcginn.htm ) point out, no objective process can
explain the ineffability of the subjective sensation of a red rose or a bat's echo or a fine Chianti.
Another wonderful insight of McGinn: our minds are not in any physical location - your awareness
of this page is not anywhere. Thus this leads him to asort of subjective cosmology:
before matter there was pure mind, which can exist outside of space - only later, when
matter created the correct conditions could mind enter the material world and inform it with meaning.
Thus spirit imbues the boring world of Wolfram with a numinous essence: and breathes
fire into the equations, as Hawking once said.

Also, free will can enter via a sort of 'quantum pineal gland', allowing spirit to supervene on the brain's chaotic processes - the 2-way feedback between mind and matter is via this interface. Thus neither qualia nor subjective time flow nor free will are illusions.

Ciao bello,
Hugh.

[mkirkpatrick]

To an absolute being outside of this known universe,outside of the illusion of
time and space,there would only be now,and in that now the universe would
have come and gone,in the blink of an eye.To you and me with somewhat
blurred vision,and living in a seemingly real illusion,will have to wait for many
aeons to pass,before we catch up to what has already happened.Our minds
seem to find this simple truth,almost impossible to swallow,and by every means
at their disposal,will try and look for other explanations,and just when this new
formula gains some merit,it will be found to be shot through with holes.It has
been known for centuries that time is an illusion,and that there is only now,
6000,years in the old eastern teachings it expressed this truth,why dont we
all wake up and smell the roses,the present is now,the time is now,understanding it seems can take a long time to filter through.

kind regards,michael.