Time and the Dragonfly

The other day, while sitting wrapped in my own thoughts, their comforting, numbing shroud buffering me from the world, I began to think about time.  Einstein tells us that time is relative, “When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it feels like two hours. But, when you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it feels like two minutes. That's relativity!” He also showed us that the faster an object moves through space, the more slowly it moves through time. An excellent example of this is the phenomenon which happens to the clocks aboard satellites. Because they are moving much faster than the objects they are measuring on earth the clocks lose approximately 7 microseconds per day, but space-time curves less the further one is from a gravity source (especially one as large as our planet), and clocks in areas with less-curved space-time appear to tick faster, so the clocks on satellites are approximately 38 microseconds faster per day than their counterparts on earth. Okay, maybe that was a bad example after all, but the point is, if the curvature of space-time is equal for two objects, the object which moves faster through space moves more slowly through time. Einstein was hella smart.

If Einstein's body was the equivalent of his brain.

As I thought of time, ensconced in my mind, I thought first of the dragonfly.  Fleet, shimmering warrior of the skies, we seem to lumber as he flits by.  The dragonfly is an excellent example of something which must experience time differently than we do. That is, in order to move and act in the way it does, the dragonfly's reaction time and information processing speed must be far greater than ours.  Now, this is a slightly different point than I was making up there on the less sexy side of Einstein.  There I was discussing the interaction of time with physical objects, and now I'm discussing the perception of time by physical objects.  It seems to me that they cannot be the same.  Sure, the dragonfly is very fast (moving at speeds of up to 38 mph), but relative to the speed of light (670,616,629 mph), there is almost no difference between the speed of a dragonfly and the speed of a human.  This means that the movement through time of a dragonfly and a human are nearly equal, even if the dragonfly is moving at top speed, and the human is doing what humans tend to do, sit around and stare into a glowing screen while absentmindedly scratching its butt.  So the physical effect of time on the physical object does not account for the difference in time perception.  

Perhaps you are thinking "Whoa, you haven't established that dragonflies experience time differently than us, if they experience anything at all!" Fine, Jesus Christ, be all picky about it.

http://www.godlikeproductions.com

Oh I'm sorry, what was that? Were you taking my name in vain?

First of all, I'm going to establish a philosophical "floor" so that I don't have to argue my way up from epistemology just to write a damn post about dragonflies' time perception.  I'm going to assume that you, like me, think that dragonflies really exist, that we can observe them and know things about them, that they are entirely physical entities in a physical universe, that they experience stimuli, and that seriously shut up so I can write this post.

"I find your lack of faith disturbing"

As you might know, we have something called "reaction time". This is the speed at which we are able to sense, process, and respond to a given stimulus. Usually this term is used to describe the speed of one's reflexes, which are unconscious reactions, such as blinking and/or raising one's hands to shield one's eyes when something quickly approaches one's face. I don't think I need to make an argument for the fact that these types of reactions are generally much quicker than an action which we have to consciously process, so I won't. There is a physical limit to the speed at which neurons can pass along a signal, and the more neurons a signal must pass through the longer the signal will take to reach its destination. One of the reasons that reflex actions take a much shorter time between detection of the stimulus and action is that many times the signals bypass the brain entirely. For example, a study was done in the early, barbarous days of Psychology, back when men were men, women were men, and children were men, in which the scientists severed a dog's spinal column at the neck in order to see if reflex actions depended on the brain. Amazingly, despite the fact that no neural signal could reach the brain from the body, when the dog's foot was pricked with a pin it lifted the foot to avoid the negative stimulus. So, analogously, when you accidentally place your hand on a hot stove and immediately pull it back, you are able to do that with no input from your brain. Only your spinal column is involved, and unless I misremember my psych. education, the signal which causes you to be consciously aware of the fact that the stove is hot arrives after your hand receives the signal to move. This will be a post for another time, but it's interesting to think about what that implies for consciousness and free will.

So I hope to have loosely established so far that reflex actions are faster than conscious decisions because they depend on fewer neural connections, and also that reflex actions are independent from conscious decisions. Now, we already know that simplicity can give rise to complexity, especially in light of chaos theory (read Chaos by James Gleick. Seriously. Do it.) and that there aren't enough neurons in the human brain for each to represent a unique stimulus, concept, function, etc. So the functions which our brains perform seem to rely on there being enough neurons to form complex enough neural networks to handle those functions. This seems to be how our particular brand of consciousness arises. Importantly, these networks seem necessary and sufficient for those functions, so without them the dragonfly does not perform the "higher" functions we do. Now, we clearly are able to perform certain functions that dragonflies cannot (problem solving, tool use, self-recognition, long-term memory, although interestingly they seem to be one of the few other animals which demonstrate selective attention), which implies that we have a much larger set of neurons. We also have much larger bodies, so signals sent to our limbs will take longer.

epapermint.blogspot.com

Day 3 of "Operation Lift Sandwich to Mouth"

So, given that dragonflies are teeny-tiny compared to us, and since they have far fewer neurons to deal with, it seems reasonable to say that they must be getting input from their senses more quickly and since they literally have less processing capability, the processing they do is faster. If they process stimuli faster, then they can process more stimuli per second. To me, an animal which has evolved those features probably experiences our motions through space as "slow". Our time experience is relative, and seems to depend on how much we are processing at any given time. The more we are dealing with, the faster time seems to go, hence the eternal struggle between wanting to not have work to do, but knowing that if there is work to do the day will go by more quickly. For dragonflies, a day must seem much longer than it does for us. Fortunately for them, we haven't noticed self-reflective capabilities indicative of being capable of boredom.


I'm not exactly sure how this became a post about establishing how a dragonfly experiences time but there you go...Eventually I'll write about what I think time itself is, because honestly that's what this was supposed to be. As it stands, I'll just release this onto the world and I hope you all got some good thinkin' time out of it! Please write in to tell me why I'm wrong/what needs better established/etc.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

This post is not humorous in any way, but feel free to find it humorous if you like.
My cousin asked me why the universe is here if I didn't believe in the "Big-Bang Big-Crunch" theory of cosmology, so I wrote the following back to him:

I've only been working on my cosmology for a year or so, so bear with me.  It takes a little bit to get going.


I'm partial to a self-invented version of the Chaotic Inflationary hypothesis.  It allows for (or perhaps requires) a multiverse, and works like this:  The universe as we know it consists essentially of information, or, if you prefer, a series of "x is the case" or "x is not the case" bits of information.  Basically binary, relying on what may simply be a brute fact "There is something."  There seems to be no purpose to the universe, and I don't think we have any evidence to assert that there must be a reason for its existence, so we'll have to settle for "It is the case that the universe exists." for now.

In order to have causality, happenings, and time, we need "if-then" states of affairs.  From a relatively homogenous chaos of nonsensical pieces of information, which generate spontaneously (and on this point I may simply need to bite the bullet and say it is a brute fact that nowhere is there true nothingness, but because it is the case that something exists, wherever there might be true nothingness, there is instead some bit of information, which may or may not relate to anything else.)  At some point a piece of information generated which would have contained the statement "if x is the case, then y is the case".  There happened to be at that time a piece of information "if there would otherwise be nothing here, there is x."

Since the state of affairs known as "the universe", which is essentially the set of all states of affairs (think Wittgenstein's "The world is all that is the case."), contained both the information "x is the case" and the information "if x is the case then y is also the case", the universe then also included the information "y".  There could be many bits of information also that said "if x is the case, and y is not the case, then z is the case." In that case, z would never exist in the universe, because x would never occur without y also occurring. To get away from the letters, there may be a piece of information saying "If it is true that there are triangular things, and it is not true that triangular things can only have angles which add up to 180 degrees, then there can be square triangles."  However, we do have a state of affairs in which triangles can only have angles which add up to 180 degrees, so we never have square triangles.

From this generated a set of comprehensive and co-dependent logical laws, though this does not mean that they are the only possible logical laws, and I grant that some other 'verse which has arisen from the chaos may rely on completely different laws.

Those bits of information which best copy themselves, or are frequent byproducts of commonly occurring "if-then" interactions are the bits of information there are the most of.  The Big Bang may be the result of a state of affairs in which the right bit of information was generated (and it may be a very complicated bit..."if a state of affairs in which a, b, c, and d are the case exists, then it will be the case that bits of information with properties p, q, and s will exist." and if a bit existed that said "If there is any bit of information with properties p,q, and s, then for every bit of information with properties p, q, and s, there will be 100 bits of information with property r").  Or, on a different note, "if the universe is such that a bit with property t generated in place x, and property t made that bit change its location properties in order to be nearer or farther from another bit of information with property t, then that bit also acquires the property of "moving at speed m" "moving in direction h" and "being in spatial location___(wherever it is as it moves)".  And hence, Physics!

A quark is one of the smallest, most basic subatomic particles we know of, and it comes in at least 6 "flavors".  Up quarks and down quarks are all that make up protons and neutrons, with 2 up and a down making protons, and 1 up quark and 2 down quarks making neutrons.  Though it may be an oversimplification, let's say that an up quark is a bit of information with the properties "If this bit is within .0002 picometers of a bit of information with properties [whatever makes a down quark a down quark] and another bit with the same properties as itself, that set of properties creates a state of affairs with the properties [whatever makes a proton a proton]. There is fact about the universe, which we call the "strong nuclear force" that says that when objects (I'm going to call the information bits "objects" now because it's more intuitive, but they are still, essentially, collections of properties, or "if-then" information bits) with the properties [protons] and the properties [neutrons] are within a certain distance from each other, they gain a new property, which is "only able to be separated by x amount of energy".  So they stick together and, because one of the properties of protons is having an electrical charge of +1 (or, "if object p has the properties [proton], it will attract all objects with property [attracted by {proton}] and repel all objects with property [repelled by {proton}]") the object created by the sticking together of the protons and neutron will have a positive electrical charge equal to the number of protons the object contains.

This is the root of chemistry. Chemistry is the root of biology. Biology is the root of Neurology. Neurology is the root of Psychology. Psychology allows for Philosophy, and here I am today trying to bore you to death with my Cosmology.

Based on what I've read, the properties of the universe are such that eventually they will either become inert, that is, run out of objects with properties that allow for "work" to be done (energy) as they continue to drift away from each other, or there is some as-yet-unknown property of the universe which, when some state of affairs is reached, will cause something else entirely to happen.  Since we have, and can have, no evidence of this extra property, Occam's Razor tells us to not complicate our theories with extraneous hypotheses which are not required to explain what we observe.

umbraco.com

Um. Ta-da?

Happy Darwin Day!

Darwin's much-loved "Shut the fuck up while I'm explaining this tree-thing" face.  

In honor of Darwin Day, I've posted my favorite picture of Darwin and one of my favorite quotes.

  " Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."  

-Charles Darwin

Random Thought Droppings

Right. So here's the thing, and the thing is this:

My job is a bit of a stop-n'-start venture, so every so often I get a long stretch of waiting.  Such has been the case today, and in lieu of forcing work on myself, I've decided to save my strength for the next big work push (which will be tomorrow, as it turns out) and read online articles instead.

I'd like to share with you some of the more interesting stories (numbered, but in no particular order) I found today:

1.  The White South's Last Defeat
      by Michael Lind

 http://www.salon.com/2013/02/05/the_white_souths_last_defeat/

This article takes a look at our current political situation and comes to an interesting, though not mind-boggling conclusion.  As the article states, rather than attribute the differences in political views to Right and Left, the author thinks the crux of the difference is North vs. South.  He supports this view with references to historical military/social accomplishments and demographic shifts, as well as analogous examples in other regions of the country.  I think he has a plausible, but (obviously) not comprehensive theory that deserves further examination.



2.  The Quantum Physics Sequence
     by Eliezer Yudkowski

http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/

Actually a series of articles, this is a fascinating, nearly-understandable-to-the-layperson explanation of Quantum Mechanics.  I struggled with the formulas he uses as examples, but because he also provides illustrations and is a fairly clear writer I think I understand most of what he is saying.  I highly recommend trying to wrap your head around these articles.  Don't you want to know how reality works? Well, DON'T YOU?


3. Elves, Aliens, Angels, and Ayahuasca
    by Graham Hancock

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qgMFO0KU-I

This is a talk given by Mr. Hancock in which he explains his theory about why elves, aliens, etc. are actually all part of the same phenomenon.  Essentially he relies on the testimony (both personal and otherwise) of people who have taken hallucinogenic drugs, and he compares this to historical art (cave paintings, medieval paintings) and modern works by people who have taken hallucinogens.  The strange part is that his conclusion is not "Drugs make you see crazy shit!" Instead, he thinks that the particular class of drugs which includes ayahuasca, ibogaine, and psylocibin actually allow the users to look into other dimensions, where these strange beings depicted in ancient art and described by "abductees" actually live.  It's very interesting, though rather implausible.  I recommend watching it just because it's unique, it's interesting, and his passion for this view is compelling.  I wish it were true, but I'm pretty sure it's not.



I'll add more articles here from time to time, so check back now and again!

An introduction, an article, an exhortation.

Hello and welcome! My friend Will and I have a bad habit of finding interesting articles online and sending them to each other while at work.  This is generally accomplished over Facebook, but we figured that if anyone found us as witty and insightful as we find ourselves, it would be irresponsible to keep our thoughts to ourselves.  But fear not, gentle reader, for this blog is not mere stroking of egos, for we rely on you, yes you, to contribute and criticize, as we will be doing to each other.  So please join us on this journey as we delve into topics as mind-bending as quantum mechanics and philosophy, as esoteric as Trollmetal and Nightcore, and as deeply engrossing to the point of kind of ruining your life as The Elder Scrolls games...

I don't know what Will is going to do, but I'm hoping to have most of my posts take this form: I'll post an article, and give my thoughts on it.  Bam. In the words of a man pointing out Stephen King's killer clown, "That's it." I assume anyway, I've never read that book or seen the movie.

Anyway, here's my first article.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21150047

Since you probably skipped reading it, here's my very brief summary:
This article is called

Quantum biology: Do weird physics effects abound in nature?

For years now, we who follow science with an avid but almost entirely non-professional interest have been hearing about all the cool, new, and often theoretical claims coming out of the field of quantum mechanics.  As a  philosophy Teaching Assistant for UF for two years, it was a miracle if one or two students per semester didn't try to bring quantum mechanics into every argument we discussed.  In a way, I think they are validated in this pursuit, because quantum mechanics is supposed to describe some of the most basic workings of reality.  Even in intro philosophy classes we addressed the fundamentals of reality, so it's natural that they would attempt to use QM to derail or support certain philosophical arguments. Given their generally poor understanding of the arguments in the first place (and quantum mechanics) I often had to settle for furiously punching them in my head while gently explaining that they had no idea what they were talking about.

That being said, many of QM's predictions are being confirmed, which speaks volumes for any theory.  My students' suspicions about QM's applicability were not necessarily wrong (let's not get into reasons they may be wrong), just too misinformed or speculative about what they were attempting to apply.

In this article we have some pretty solid examples of those predictions being borne out.  Quantum superposition, the idea that a particle exists in all of the possible potential spatial positions and states, for example.  If that sounds awesome/weird/unlikely, go look it up! Fly fly!  I recommend looking up double-slit experiments as a decent starting point. This is discussed as a reason why photosynthesis is so efficient. Next, quantum entanglement, the idea that some particles, no matter how far apart, communicate their states instantaneously (so, you know, faster than the speed of light...by a lot) to other particles. That's hella crazy! And not only is it hella crazy, but this article claims that it helps explain how birds navigate using magnetic fields.  Finally, it talks about quantum tunneling. Quantum tunneling has to do with the ability of electrons to disappear from one location and reappear in another without seeming to traverse the space in between.  My understanding is that this is usually between energy states, which I've always seen presented as physically distinct areas relative to an atom's nucleus, or between multiple atoms' "electron shell".  The point is that it seems to science that these electrons are giving the finger to space-time and just sort of being at point A, then  being at point B without ever being at one of the (possibly) infinite points in between.  It doesn't move, just pops between the points.  Anyway, according to the article this possibly plays a role in how the sense of smell works. Whoa.

If you're interested, read the article.  Here are my thoughts:

Frankly, if we grant that quantum mechanics is true (or at least that the experiments supporting the theory are accurate, even if the theory is wrong), then I say "Of course quantum mechanics influences biology!" Consider this, dear reader: Quantum mechanics attempts to describe and predict the actions of sub-atomic particles.  Sub-atomic particles (electrons, protons, neutrinos, blah blah blah) make up or interact with each individual atom of each element (hydrogen, helium, molybdenum, blah blah blah), the elements make up all composite physical structures (bodies, planets, viruses, blah blah blah), and the action of physical laws (quantum mechanical laws, thermodynamic laws, physical laws, blah blah blah) on physical structures results in systems that convert energy from one form to another (suns, metabolisms, power plants, blah blah blah).  Does nature consist of anything else (and I say nature specifically to exclude supernatural considerations)? Maybe, but if these laws are specifying the way that building blocks of matter interact with each other, then all of matter is affected by them.  So yeah, quantum mechanics affects biology.  That's not to say it isn't super cool and awesome to find out how it does this, or the mechanisms involved, I'm just saying it doesn't seem like a controversial claim.  It's as obvious as a Secret Service agent at a county fair.  I mean...right?


So I guess I didn't have much to say about it after vaguely describing it.  Next article, I'm going to attempt to analyze something less science-y. Ambiguity always makes it easier to bull-shit!