jim wrote:
ROFL! Loving the levity, jdlaw. Much needed!
On the serious side though, different species probably have different subjective rates of the passing of time, right? Does a fruit fly's 24-hour life feel like ours? If quarks are conscious, their little zepto lives might still be rich with experience.
But were you really rolling on the floor? LOTIS (Laughing on the in-side) Way too early here for LOLs.
Speaking of time, maybe there is a lot more to discuss here when it comes to simulated reality and digital consciousness. I am trying to remember something from either of your books. I know time was discussed in depth somewhere in those pages.
Time is another one of those things we have to accept in our consciousness for this reality to be real (for us).
Perhaps the deeper and more truthful analogy than "a watched pot never boils" is that "an unwatched watch never ticks."
Sir James Matthew Barri, an Edinburgh alumni who wrote the play "Peter Pan," created the character "Captain Hook" the pirate and in that play while talking to his crewmember "Smee" mentions the crocodile that ate his hand. The wrist watch had not yet become popular in Barrie's time, but apparently according to the story the crocadile had also eaten the "clock" that apparently came with Hook's hand. The Disney version of the story adds a name for the crocodile who is called "Tick Tock" in the cartoon cinema.
Peter Pan (or the boy who never grew up) Quote:“I have often,” said Smee, “noticed your strange dread of crocodiles.”
“Not of crocodiles,” Hook corrected him, “but of that one crocodile.” He lowered his voice. “It liked my arm so much, Smee, that it has followed me ever since, from sea to sea and from land to land, licking its lips for the rest of me.”
“In a way,” said Smee, “it’s sort of a compliment.”
“I want no such compliments,” Hook barked petulantly. “I want Peter Pan, who first gave the brute its taste for me.”
He sat down on a large mushroom, and now there was a quiver in his voice. “Smee,” he said huskily, “that crocodile would have had me before this, but by a lucky chance it swallowed a clock which goes tick tick inside it, and so before it can reach me I hear the tick and bolt.” He laughed, but in a hollow way.
“Some day,” said Smee, “the clock will run down, and then he’ll get you.”
Hook wetted his dry lips. “Ay,” he said, “that’s the fear that haunts me.”
When thinking about nature of reality and particularly "time" itself, I liked the often critically slammed (but popular) youtube video from Rob Bryanton called "imagining the 10th Dimension" (that I like to call the
"We Start with a Point" video).
