Time Travelers Never Die

I been hit with the future but I don't walk with a limp. (I'm alright.)

"For it is true that we often discover meanings and reasons for things many years after they mattered quite so much to us."

(This one's for the Doctor Who ringtone.)

Some time ago I mentioned that I wanted to talk about information from the future. I've held off on that because the ideas in my head haven't solidified into a coherent picture yet. But what the hell... This post has marinated long enough. Let's cook it up and serve it to the unsuspecting masses. :)

I've tried (in this blog) to create a picture of time that has our conscious experience arising from a struggle between information/influence from the (subjective) past and information/influence from the (subjective) future. I don't know quite how to conceptualize this information/influence... Some have call it a 'wave' (in the quantum sense), and that seems as good a picture as any, for the moment.

In working to create this picture of time and its relationship to experience, I occasionally indulge in bizarre thought experiments like the one that prompted my earlier mention of information from the future...

Thought Experiment: Assume that there is an influence traveling 'back in time' from the subjective future. (This is not an unreasonable assumption; the idea has been out there for a while.) Further assume that consciousness as we experience it is somehow critically tied to that biochemical mass we call the brain. (Not an unreasonable assumption, but certainly not a given either.) Assume that the brain would retain its capacity to produce exactly the same experience of consciousness after a period of cryonic suspension. (I doubt that this is possible, as I believe that a critical portion of our conscious experience arises from a non-local 'entanglement' (if you will) with other minds.)

With all these assumptions in place, it stands to reason that a person who has successfully extended his lifespan via cryonic suspension would also have extended the potential for information from his subjective future to influence him now. What would this person have access to, and how would it affect his behavior in the present? If one can reasonably assume that he would use (though perhaps not consciously) information from the future to enhance his own survival, what would you expect to see him doing now? (Hmmm...)

Thinking about the influence of the future brings up other interesting questions as well...

Is time an illusion? How do we experience this influence/information from the future? Is our perception of 'free will' nothing more than an incomplete awareness of the continually shifting balance between the information/influence of the past and that of the future?

What property of the substrate of consciousness creates/enables our awareness of the passage of time? (You want to say 'Memory, duh!', but why should there not also be a corresponding neural/neurochemical structure to harness and/or 'display' information from the future?) Without this property/structure, how would we know about time? What would we know about time? Is our particular kind of temporal perception really nothing more than a reverberation property within the mechanism/substrate of consciousness?

And that's not even the best part...

Now come questions like: How can we deliberately capitalize on our ability to access information from the future? Is our lifespan of moments of conscious experience simply one giant bi-directional temporal computation, such that events in our past can be perceived as having been 'caused' by events (or needs) in our future? Is it possible to willfully use the 'future' in the present to achieve a specific outcome now? In my head, I refer to this as 'borrowing against future entropy', though physicists might have a beef with the way I'm using the word 'entropy'.

I've mentioned things like this before, and I'm slowing solidifying an ontology for... (pick one)

• trans-temporal
• extra-temporal
• bi-directional temporal

... ways of describing and discussing conscious experience and the computations that give rise to it. Who knows what kind of questions such a perspective might answer...

(Crazy thought experiments welcome!)

(P.S. Sorry, 50 - I had to do that.)

The Science of the Craft

"The study of magic is not a science, it is not an art, and it is not a religion. Magic is a craft... This is not to say that we understand magic, in the sense that physicists understand why subatomic particles do whatever it is that they do. Or perhaps they don't understand that yet. I can never remember."

"Anyone with a spark of the research spirit does not need to be exhorted to chase for all he is worth a really promising clue when one is found, dropping for the time being other activities and interests as far as practicable."

"To see what no one has seen before, look where no one has looked before."

(Because your response disappoints, on several levels.)

When I was a bit younger, in a used bookstore I came across a book on spells. Since I was investigating the effects of mind upon matter, I could not resist having a look. I came across a spell for attracting money (or some such), and I can remember thinking "I understand why that works." All the extra 'fluff' - the specific-colored candle (or whatever), etc. - fell away and it was clear how saying/doing whatever the spell 'required' simply created (and released) a specific set of visualizations/expectations/emotions about future outcomes. The 'fluff' is just a reinforcing support structure that works/helps because it taps an associated knowledge structure. (Yes, it works because you believe it works.)

Sounds like a load of 'useless crap' to many scientists. But why?

1) Perspective - It is difficult/unacceptable for the scientific method to make use 'data' that is only accessible from a subjective perspective. What goes on in my head is only really accessible to me. I can tell you about it, but you have no means of verifying anything I've said, other than to attempt to replicate it in your own mind. "To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning." (q)

2) Evidence - What constitutes 'acceptable evidence' of certain phenomena is, by current scientific definitions, evidence that can be procured under circumstances that specifically discount any collective effect of mind. For example: what can be produced in an environment where one is alone is required to be exactly the same as what can be produced in a room full of skeptical observers. Only then is the phenomenon deemed to be a 'true' phenomenon.

3) Correlations - Scientists are taught to look for correlations. They are also taught that correlation does not equal causation. What they are not taught is to look inside for correlations - to dissect and examine their own mental processes. The assumption is that there is no need to do this - that 'science' stands beyond/above the (non-local) influence of mind.

With the above limitations on what is acceptable 'science', it is no wonder that religious/magical belief systems persist. If data persists, then the search for explanations (and the attempts to harness this knowledge) will also persist, even if it is not/cannot be called 'science'.

4) Replication - Replication of something that requires a specific type of subjective awareness can be achieved, but it involves teaching a naive subject. Then, of course, you have only your word and the word of your pupil. (See #1.) This might be worth something if you had a pupil with the appropriate background, reputation, and integrity... But most people still will not believe a thing like that until they have experienced it themselves. However, narratives like that produced by William H. Keith can be powerful stimuli for people to start/continue their own explorations. "I was well aware that my senses could deceive, that my will to believe could play tricks on my mind, that what I seemed to be experiencing - my subjective reality - might well be different from things as they really were."

5) Falsification - "No amount of experimentation can prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." (That's Einstein, not Keith.) Yes, we're still looking for that magical experiment that could prove this picture of reality to be wrong. (With a less-pedantic approach to things, you could be useful there. Skippy's best (though perhaps unintentional) contribution was simply asking the question 'Where does the entropy go?')

No doubt submitting this idea to peer-review in a journal would point out all these things, and more. But these are big enough problems to overcome, and we are already well-aware of them. If you can contribute nothing more than yet another 'burden of proof' argument, then you really don't bring anything to the table that wasn't already there and you should probably move on/back to some 'real' science. Best,

N

The Art of Scientific Investigation

(This blog post is a spontaneous act of creation - because creating is fun, and wordplay while creating is double (entendre) the fun. ;)

"Those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination,
the real relation, the underlying theme."

"What is more important - knowing, or being known for knowing?"

"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."

And from The Art of Scientific Investigation, by W.I.B. Beveridge (revised edition - 1957)...

"It is the duty of every scientist to give generously whatever advice and ideas he can and usually formal acknowledgement should not be demanded for such help."

"The chief incentives of research are to satisfy curiosity, to satisfy the creative instinct, the desire to know whether one's conjecture has led to new knowledge and the desire for the feeling of importance by gaining recognition."

You'd get the impression from some scientists that that last bit is their top incentive. And perhaps it is a powerful motivator to do research and to put great effort into explaining that research... But I would argue that the first three 'incentives' are in a different (and, IMHO, a far more rewarding and productive) class than the last one.

"If it becomes a standard procedure to use somebody else's work without mentioning it's not our own, in the end nobody will see the point of creating anything themselves." (q) So not true. People create because there is joy in the creative process. People create because there is satisfaction in knowing that you were the first to do a thing, and that others liked it well enough to use it. Or that what you did was better than whatever else was available, or whatever the other person could have created themselves. And in the end, only those who are willing to create matter anyway - they are the only ones who really challenge you/us to be better.

I'm not saying that recognition doesn't matter... I'm only saying that obsessing over recognition detracts from fully engaging in the process/joy of discovery/creation. Best,

N

(h/t WB, for our conversation about this most-excellent book)