Exploring Time

Heard of space-time? Yes, it is the dimensification of time (and yea dimensification is not a word, at least not yet). Now, this idea initially seems a bit synthetic. At least it did to me. It appears to be a mathematical model to just solve certain problems. That is it. I mean yea, theoretically it opens up the possibility of time travel (only one way though). But, still we have this notion of time as a river. It being continuous. Past affecting present (Let’s refrain ourselves and not talk about future).

We do not generally question this notion. I mean it’s one of the fundamentals on which physics is based on. Causality, that is, cause precedes effect. Seems legit does it not? But, that should not be the mere reason to accept. I am not asking to entirely drop the idea but here in this post I will try and explore another possible scenario. I will consider time as a complete dimension just like the space. Let’s see where we get with this idea.

Consider two pens lying on a table a meter apart. Note that they are independent of each other. That is to say, existence of one does not depend on another. One position in our physical world does not decide what is happening at another position. Yes, there is gravity and all other sorts of interactions between various objects. But then they are mutual. This about the two pens, both of them will experience the same pull.

And this where causality breaks down. If you consider time as a dimension analogous to space then it must offer similar circumstances. If it does then our model rather I must say notion of unidirectional time is incorrect. If that is the case then how do we visualize time?

History was not written when the wars were waged, wars were waged when we read history.

I sound funny eh? Guess we will find out. So, yesterday, there was an ATM theft committed in one of those SBI ATM’s. Now, Delhi police has caught an innocent man for the same. They say that the CCTV cameras recorded the man stealing, so he must be the one. Now, Delhi police appears to be outstandingly correct. But, hey, how can this be? There is got to be something. Indeed, apparently unaware of my enormously popular blog, inspector does not know that causality might not hold. He assumed that the guy is on the camera because he robbed the ATM. He assumed, that he is seeing that the guy stealing in camera because that is what they show. He assumes, that the event, “man in the tape” suggests that the hypothetical event, “man robber the ATM” are related by the time is a river notion. He assumes that the event, “TV showing footage emit light showing man robbing ATM” is implied by the event, “Light showing man robbing, enters his eyes”. But, these of course assumptions. Now, I consider myself a man of justice and I cannot stand conviction of a man based on assumptions. Can you?

Essence is,

Past as we know it is in fact in the present.

Food for thought: Now, that you know time is yet another dimension, can you change past? Can you live the future?

“Aleph – Paulo Coelho”

Here I am going to quote some of the beautiful lines, my personal favorites, from Aleph, the book written by Paulo Coelho.

The light falls only on the stranger.

No one is a prophet in his own land.

That is to say, we value that one bird in the bush more than that in hand.

I have lit a fire on the mountain opposite of yours.

This one comes with a story where a man supposed to spend one night on a mountain which get’s extremely cold. And the above quote is his friend just saying I got your back buddy. 😀
(By the way isn’t this story similar to that Akhbar Birbal story? eh?)

Time is not a casette tape which can be wound and rewound. Don’t think about what you’ll tell people afterwards. The time is here and now. Make the most of it.

precisely my feeling for all those who think they are models when on a journey/trip.

My body is the throne of the Divine, it serves as a manifestation of what we are experiencing in another dimension.

This is perhaps the best one. It is in fact abstraction of the whole idea of life of humans. The way we see and perceive things are just our own manifestations, an attempt to explain ourselves what we are feeling and doing. The actual however might be entirely different, just way to complex and abstract for us to deal with. So, we create this universe and peace out with the trouble of understanding it. Now, as it turns out, this is a theory I have long pondered upon. Perhaps you might find a detailed post on it in the recent future. 🙂

Best way to prepare for a challenge is to cultivate the ability to call upon an infinite variety of responses.

You might have heard, “Hope for the best, plan for the worst”. However it’s virtually impossible to evaluate and plan all the possible scenarios. When the things are not the way you plan, whatever skills you are able to summon in that pressure situation is your elixir. So, prioritize development of your skills in general rather than preparing for a particular challenge or milestone.

Well, that is pretty much it. There is a philosophy Paulo has introduced in this novel. It is that time is stationary past, present and future are all happening simultaneously. In fact you can at any time move from one “time instance” to another by following certain exercises described in the book. But, I have still not got a hold of this idea. It is a bit deceiving. Paulo says to support his ide, “Music isn’t a succession of notes. It’s the constant movement of a note between sound and silence”. This is the most confusing sentence I found in the book. No matter how much try, I cannot visualize movement without the notion of time being passing by. And definitely not the movement of musical notes.

However “Aleph” is an outstanding novel which delves into Paulo’s insights and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Chaos!!

Okay before I get to the main theory let me just talk about the motivation of this theory. Today in chemistry lab we were supposed to identify certain compounds which were numbered. As it turns out most of the students had already figured out a pattern as to which compound is assigned which number and thus the identification was just a piece of cake. But, out teacher was constantly pointing out that the numbers are rather randomly distributed and hence we shall not jump to any conclusions. This provoked a friend to say, “No finite set is random.”

At first thought this statement seem pretty correct. But when you think about it, how often do we deal with events/things which happen infinite number of times? And yet, countless number of times we talk about event being random or chaotic. So what is this chaos anyways!?

Okay, so talk to a kid who has just learnt counting. And show him this sequence:
1,4,7,10,13 ….
Trivially, this is an arithmetic progression with a difference of 3. But to that kid this is just a sequence of random numbers separated by ‘periods’.

Now just forget about the kid and have a nice look at this:
1,1,2,3,3,4,5,5,6,6,6,8,8,8,10,9,10,11,11,12,12,12,12,16,14,14,16,16,16,16,20,17,17,20,21,19,20,…
Glare at this stream of numbers till you find a pattern or your mind terms it as chaotic or random.
Just to let you know this is known as Hofstadter’s Q Sequence, and it follows a well defined pattern details of which you can find at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter_sequence

The whole point of this exercise was to show that the randomness of a phenomenon is not just the function of that phenomenon but also the observer. The first sequence I mentioned must not have been random for you but the second sequence, I must admit seemed pretty chaotic for me as well for quite some time.  So,  the idea is that each and every moment that we live through is a result of a pre-defined mechanism. It’s only a matter of observation and perception. We tend to call anything for which we are not able to find an explanation or mechanism as chaotic. For instance, consider butterfly effect, also known as chaotic effect. Now, butterfly effect put into simple words is amplification of small changes by a series of events. But, to most of us it is highly unlikely that how not greeting someone morning in India can result in getting an FedEx employee in USA fired, and thus we term this effect as chaos.

Chaos is relative. Every moment of our lives we are observing, perceiving and learning. When I see a chaos all I feel is the zeal to learn. Pattern is beautiful but chaos is inspirational.

Let it out…

I don’t remember the exact text but, there is a sanskrit doha which can be interpreted as, “one should not control one’s urges.”
Of course you know that you should not control your urinal urges for long. But I am not talking about that, you already know that.

Often we hear about violent incidents involving drunk people. Well, ofcourse one tends to lose control when excessively drunk, but why out of all the things a drunk person gets involved in violence or any other activity which is not expected from that person?

People tend to bury the urges which are not in accordance with the society which we live in. But these urges and temptations, they don’t die. Whenever, a person experiences weak moments, we vehemently give vent to these urges.

So, one must let it all out whenever one get’s a chance in one way or other. One can get rid of these anxieties and urges by boxing a punch bag, shouting aloud, sprinting on the roads, playing mad music or having goosebumps… (goosebumps are my favorite. ) Or, you can just talk about them to a friend, someone who wont be embarrassed.

Find a way and just let it all out of your system. Life would be much better.. 🙂

I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet….

I’ve heard this statement a thousand times. But in my opinion, it does not take a more than a fraction of time to decide. You have made the decision as soon as you get to know that you gotta make the decision. Any time that you spend on “deciding” is not really deciding. All that you are doing is trying to figure out why was that decision made. At times u don’t even realize  that what decision you have made. So, some part of the time u spent “deciding” is understanding what exactly have you decided.

Next phase of decision making is justification. We try to justify our own decisions to us. We considers all aspects of various options and try to prove that the decision that was made is the best. People say that they are trying to decide by considering all the options but the truth is that the decision was made long ago.
At times this exercise of justification becomes so intense that we end up undertaking path b just to prove that the road not taken is better..
So, next time you encounter a two way, just walk… much easier.. 🙂