A simple way to visualise non-linear time — the “ball of wool” model

[Lumen]

His ideas are the result of wooly thinking. (Jesus these jokes are infectious, like scrapie...)

'HER' ideas

You seem to have come unravelled

 

[DaveC426913]

The wool represents the entire spacetime structure existing simultaneously.

Simultaneously literally means 'at the same moment in time.' So now you've got a squiggly line that tracks time 1:1 along its squiggly length, embedded in a block that all occurs at the same time.

Here is a question for your model. What is represented by the various extents of it? Say it has an X direction, a Y direction and a Z direction. What do they represent? What does it mean for two disparate parts of the thread, say, 6 inches along the length, but looping back so they are only, say, one inch apart? What does it mean for those two points to be one inch apart in the XYZ space?




In what way does the model illuminate the nature of the universe.

 

[James R]

Lumen:

What motivates your need for a new model of time?

It looks to me like you think there are unexplained things about human consciousness. You think that we can't find explanations without rethinking the basics of space and time?

I wonder whether you have considered much simpler explanations that are more directly concerned with the brain and consciousness.

The wool analogy also suggests why occasional experiences such as déjà vu, precognitive dreams, or unusual perception of events are reported by some people.

Couldn't deja vu be a kind of mental glitch, rather than consciousness connecting across the strands in a wooly spacetime? Wouldn't that be a much simpler explanation?

As for precognitive dreams, if your claim is that dreams can actually show some people the future, then I am skeptical. What makes you think there are any actual "precognitive dreams"? Can you give me an example or two of confirmed precognitive dreams?

I don't know what else you have in mind when you write "unusual perception of events". That would appear to cover a wide range of possible sensory experiences, with many possible explanations.

If different parts of the thread physically touch within the ball, it raises the possibility that consciousness might sometimes momentarily access another point along the thread.

What, physically, would allow consciousness to do that? Consciousness is a brain state, isn't it?

My answer to why consciousness normally follows a single thread is simple: the brain.

The more standard answer is that consciousness is just something a brain does. A brain is a physical object that obeys physical laws, like all the other physical things in the universe.

Can you show that consciousness is non-physical (i.e. supernatural or not bound in the same way to time and space that ordinary matter is)?

If reality is more like a structured whole (the ball of wool) rather than a line, then the brain could be acting as a filter or interface that constrains how consciousness experiences it.

How is the "interface" able to connect across the strands of wool? In the absence of a proposed mechanism, this seems little better than wishful thinking.

So what looks like distant points in time from our linear perspective might actually sit next to each other in the underlying structure. If that were true, it could explain why people occasionally report experiences that seem to involve information from another time.

Are there any confirmed examples of people actually getting information from "another time", apart from in the usual ways (e.g. reading a book to get information from the past)?

The brain acts like a constraint that forces awareness to move along a single strand sequentially.

It sounds like you think that consciousness or awareness can exist independent of a brain. Is there any evidence that it can do that?

In the ball-of-wool analogy the structure is not just a static block. The threads inside the ball physically touch each other at many points. That means events that appear far apart along the timeline could actually be adjacent in the deeper structure.

Is there any evidence of events that don't involve consciousness interacting mysteriously while being chronologically separated in time? If not, what makes consciousness specially able to take advantage of the close connections between wool strands?

The key shift is this: there is no separate, mind-independent material universe “out there” ticking along on its own. What we experience as solid objects with long histories mountains eroding, stars fusing hydrogen, galaxies spinning are stable, consistent patterns that the larger experiential field presents whenever any perspective (ours or others) engages them.

Are you claiming, then, that matter is not actually real? There is only consciousness and experience?

These patterns look like they have independent, linear histories because that’s how the shared weave consistently structures appearances for dissociated viewpoints like human consciousness. The coherence is built-in so that multiple observers agree on the same “facts”: the same rock feels hard, the same star burns at the same temperature, the same fossil record appears in the ground.

Why should separate consciousness generate a coherent, shared experience of events and objects and such?

The wool ball visualizes how a fully simultaneous, holistic structure can give rise to the strong, reliable illusion of linear time and solid objects without contradiction.

To summarise, then, you're saying that the universe as a whole is a shared illusion created by a kind of consciousness that we all share, in part?

That all sounds very mystical. I think you have a lot of work to do to make this plausible to critical thinkers.

 

[C C]

The ball of wool analogy isn't meant to imply that events interfere with each other across time.

The wool represents the entire spacetime structure existing simultaneously.

Conscious experience traces a path through that structure, much like following a thread within the ball.

The apparent flow of time arises from the order in which conscious states access that structure, not from the structure itself changing.

The "ball of wool" seems superfluous then, if the jumbled mess actually offers no more anachronistic effects or crossover than the ordinary 4D "worm" of a non-curled block universe. Again, the latter already classically assumed it was consciousness flowing through the co-existing differences of the structure (the wordlines of brains, anyway) -- and that unwarranted approach of treating "consciousness" as a moving substance (as well as, alternatively, time itself) was addressed at the outset in post#5.
_

 

[Lumen]

Lumen:

What motivates your need for a new model of time?

It looks to me like you think there are unexplained things about human consciousness. You think that we can't find explanations without rethinking the basics of space and time?

I wonder whether you have considered much simpler explanations that are more directly concerned with the brain and consciousness.


Couldn't deja vu be a kind of mental glitch, rather than consciousness connecting across the strands in a wooly spacetime? Wouldn't that be a much simpler explanation?

As for precognitive dreams, if your claim is that dreams can actually show some people the future, then I am skeptical. What makes you think there are any actual "precognitive dreams"? Can you give me an example or two of confirmed precognitive dreams?

I don't know what else you have in mind when you write "unusual perception of events". That would appear to cover a wide range of possible sensory experiences, with many possible explanations.


What, physically, would allow consciousness to do that? Consciousness is a brain state, isn't it?

The more standard answer is that consciousness is just something a brain does. A brain is a physical object that obeys physical laws, like all the other physical things in the universe.

Can you show that consciousness is non-physical (i.e. supernatural or not bound in the same way to time and space that ordinary matter is)?

How is the "interface" able to connect across the strands of wool? In the absence of a proposed mechanism, this seems little better than wishful thinking.

Are there any confirmed examples of people actually getting information from "another time", apart from in the usual ways (e.g. reading a book to get information from the past)?

It sounds like you think that consciousness or awareness can exist independent of a brain. Is there any evidence that it can do that?

Is there any evidence of events that don't involve consciousness interacting mysteriously while being chronologically separated in time? If not, what makes consciousness specially able to take advantage of the close connections between wool strands?

Are you claiming, then, that matter is not actually real? There is only consciousness and experience?

Why should separate consciousness generate a coherent, shared experience of events and objects and such?

To summarise, then, you're saying that the universe as a whole is a shared illusion created by a kind of consciousness that we all share, in part?

That all sounds very mystical. I think you have a lot of work to do to make this plausible to critical thinkers.

I’m not claiming to have demonstrated that consciousness is non-physical.

My point is simply that the nature of consciousness itself is still philosophically unsettled.

Even if we map every neural correlate of experience, the question of why subjective experience exists at all remains open, what philosophers call the “hard problem of consciousness”.

The wool analogy was just a way of exploring what reality might look like if consciousness turned out to be more fundamental than we currently assume.

 

[Lumen]

The "ball of wool" seems superfluous then, if the jumbled mess actually offers no more anachronistic effects or crossover than the ordinary 4D "worm" of a non-curled block universe. Again, the latter already classically assumed it was consciousness flowing through the co-existing differences of the structure (the wordlines of brains, anyway) -- and that unwarranted approach of treating "consciousness" as a moving substance (as well as, alternatively, time itself) was addressed at the outset in post#5.
_

My point wasn’t to replace the block-universe picture but to highlight something it leaves unexplained, the structure of experience.

The block universe describes how events exist in spacetime, but it doesn’t explain why conscious experience appears to move sequentially through those events.

The wool analogy was simply meant to visualize how a fixed structure could still produce a strongly linear experience.

 

[DaveC426913]

My point wasn’t to replace the block-universe picture but to highlight something it leaves unexplained, the structure of experience.

The block universe describes how events exist in spacetime, but it doesn’t explain why conscious experience appears to move sequentially through those events.

The wool analogy was simply meant to visualize how a fixed structure could still produce a strongly linear experience.

Great. Except our consciousness does not travel back in time - it is always moving forward. So the ball of wool becomes - at best - a single piece of relatively straight string. It is constrained to move in the forward direction through the time dimension, - and constained in its side-to-side movement by the speed of light. In other words, exactly as the block model depicts it.

 

[TheVat]

You chaps should stop teasing and spinning Lumen along.

Ewe!

 

[TheVat]

Conscious experience traces a path through that structure, much like following a thread within the ball.

The apparent flow of time arises from the order in which conscious states access that structure, not from the structure itself changing.

Julian Barbour fan?

 

[Lumen]

Ewe!

I'm not remotely sheepish

 

[TheVat]

I'm not remotely sheepish

No I meant "ewwwww!" as in: bad puns.

 

[C C]

My point wasn’t to replace the block-universe picture but to highlight something it leaves unexplained, the structure of experience.

The block universe describes how events exist in spacetime, but it doesn’t explain why conscious experience appears to move sequentially through those events.

The wool analogy was simply meant to visualize how a fixed structure could still produce a strongly linear experience.

It's brain structure that does that (albeit likewise fixed). A process can't even validate that change occurred (or applies in non-tense context) unless it can contrast and analyze two different states. That's why a cognitive system is mandatory. As an example, the mindless frames of a filmstrip co-exist without any internal experience of developmental movement through them.

Suppose each increment of brain-based cognition had stored foreknowledge of the next (future) one that it was comparing to the "current" information it held, instead of having memory of the previous (past) one and using that for a determination of the two being different (confirming change). Then you would arguably be speciously experiencing "time travel" in reverse. Since the illusory "flow" is oriented in the direction of the unknown (where there is a lack of knowledge about the next co-existing difference or change).

But even if the brain dependence of temporal cognition is ignored -- like again in a filmstrip where the movie characters are not conscious -- then nothing is altered if the strip is contingently played in reverse on a screen. When played in the forward direction again, the characters do not remark that time was reversed for them, because nothing was modified in their superficial "block universe".

Similarly, we would never know that we had experienced time in reverse after it "switched back" to normal again (due to the immutability of the block -- the configurations of our brains would not be modified). Again, the arrow toward the future direction is built into brain structure via each chunk sequence of applicable neural states only having information about the previous segment (not the next one).

But if a discipline has a presupposition or belief that the passage of time is objective rather than being brain or cognition dependent (that discipline reifies the flow, IOW, as if time were ironically a substance or ripple traveling through a structure), then via that motivated reasoning, the practice will seek and invent other explanations that accommodate that belief. Ergo, ideas like the arrow falling of entropy, etc. It would also be reifying the phenomenal meanings of color, sound, odor, etc if not for the primary slash secondary properties distinction that Galileo and Locke historically promoted (the passage of time was just negligently excluded).
_
_

 

[Lumen]

Note: I have elaborated on this 'ball of wool' analogy in this thread:

Are Structure, Evolution, and Conscious Experience Different Aspects of One System?

As you may know I’ve been exploring a few related ideas across different threads, and they’re starting to feel like different angles on the same underlying question. I’ll link those threads below for context. This post is an attempt to pull them together into a single, clearer framing. Ball of...

www.sciforums.com

With a mockup diagram for clarity in that thread.

(Diagram is not ideal as generated using Ai but you should get the gist and it makes things less abstract. Ignore repetition ... I didn't bother to edit it).

 

[Lumen]

It's brain structure that does that (albeit likewise fixed). A process can't even validate that change occurred (or applies in non-tense context) unless it can contrast and analyze two different states. That's why a cognitive system is mandatory. As an example, the mindless frames of a filmstrip co-exist without any internal experience of developmental movement through them.

Suppose each increment of brain-based cognition had stored foreknowledge of the next (future) one that it was comparing to the "current" information it held, instead of having memory of the previous (past) one and using that for a determination of the two being different (confirming change). Then you would arguably be speciously experiencing "time travel" in reverse. Since the illusory "flow" is oriented in the direction of the unknown (where there is a lack of knowledge about the next co-existing difference or change).

But even if the brain dependence of temporal cognition is ignored -- like again in a filmstrip where the movie characters are not conscious -- then nothing is altered if the strip is contingently played in reverse on a screen. When played in the forward direction again, the characters do not remark that time was reversed for them, because nothing was modified in their superficial "block universe".

Similarly, we would never know that we had experienced time in reverse after it "switched back" to normal again (due to the immutability of the block -- the configurations of our brains would not be modified). Again, the arrow toward the future direction is built into brain structure via each chunk sequence of applicable neural states only having information about the previous segment (not the next one).

But if a discipline has a presupposition or belief that the passage of time is objective rather than being brain or cognition dependent (that discipline reifies the flow, IOW, as if time were ironically a substance or ripple traveling through a structure), then via that motivated reasoning, the practice will seek and invent other explanations that accommodate that belief. Ergo, ideas like the arrow falling of entropy, etc. It would also be reifying the phenomenal meanings of color, sound, odor, etc if not for the primary slash secondary properties distinction that Galileo and Locke historically promoted (the passage of time was just negligently excluded).
_
_

I think where I differ from you is that I’m not treating time as something produced by the brain comparing stored states.

I agree that a complete structure could exist without any objective “flow”, but I’m not reducing the experience of time to memory of the past versus lack of knowledge of the future.

In the “ball of wool” picture, the structure exists as a whole, but what we call time is the path through it. So it’s not just that the brain is comparing two states, it’s that the system is locally traversing a connected structure.

The filmstrip analogy is close, but it still treats the frames as isolated. What I’m trying to get at is that the structure has internal connectivity, and the experience comes from moving along that, not just from comparing snapshots.

So the brain may shape how that experience appears, but I don’t think it’s the source of the temporal aspect itself.

 

[Lumen]

I

No I meant "ewwwww!" as in: bad puns.

I know ... I engaged with a 'bad pun'

 

[C C]

I think where I differ from you is that I’m not treating time as something produced by the brain comparing stored states.

I agree that a complete structure could exist without any objective “flow”, but I’m not reducing the experience of time to memory of the past versus lack of knowledge of the future.

In the “ball of wool” picture, the structure exists as a whole, but what we call time is the path through it. So it’s not just that the brain is comparing two states, it’s that the system is locally traversing a connected structure.

The filmstrip analogy is close, but it still treats the frames as isolated. What I’m trying to get at is that the structure has internal connectivity, and the experience comes from moving along that, not just from comparing snapshots.

So the brain may shape how that experience appears, but I don’t think it’s the source of the temporal aspect itself.

Well, the fundamental source of the appearance of change (in those 4D schemes) would be that there are slightly different states of the universe co-existing in _X_ structure (block universe or whatever variant). Treating time as a substance flowing through those differences (as the non-critical popular conception goes) is superfluous, since outside of brains or their technological and ET-life equivalents there would be no cognitive capacity or memory and information processing for even discerning the changes, anyway.

It's accommodating direct realism, whose adherents have a very low opinion of the brain doing much of anything, especially with respect to being a mediator of the environment. Some would probably even reify the secondary qualities if they could (and probably do).

Nevertheless, a "temporal flow" is the position that the average person on the street holds, and it's a thought orientation that commonly persists even after being groomed by the intellectual establishment. So there's no risk of incurring rebuke by objectifying it.
_

 

[gmilam]

Even if we map every neural correlate of experience, the question of why subjective experience exists at all remains open, what philosophers call the “hard problem of consciousness”.

How else should an autonomous biological machine interface with the environment?

 

[Roosters for ever]

John Wheeler's participatory universe couldn't figure out how to garner a consensus reality from itself. Perhaps what he was missing was his own equivalent of Zurek's pointer states:

John Wheeler Saw the Tear in Reality | Quanta Magazine

Until his dying days, the giant of 20th-century physics obsessed over the underpinnings of space and time, and how we can all share the same version of them.

www.quantamagazine.org

Great article! While the gist of the article has me in a state of mildly confused wonderment, the simplicity of the description of "gravitationally completely collapsed objects", as black holes, (which have now been verified) didn't earn this giant of physics a Nobel prize is surprising. Although upon further thinking, Special and General relativity, didn't earn Albert Einstein one either.

 

[Roosters for ever]

So the analogy wasn’t meant to replace the idea of a coherent universe, only to suggest that the full structure of reality might be richer than the very simple way we tend to picture it when talking about time.

Hi Lumen.
While I aint a scientist of any sort, (just a poor old retired maintenance fitter/machinist/welder) who always had an interest and fascination in astronomy/cosmology, and has read some reputable stuff over the years, (including Kip Thorne's "Black Holes and Baby Universes) you seem to be more into quantum mechanics. (Didn't someone say something to the effect that no one understands quantum mechanics)
I also remember a bloke called Irwin Schrodinger, famous of course for the "Schrödinger's cat experiment.
I also googled the following...."The idea that the Moon isn't there until you look at it stems from a quantum mechanics interpretation that reality is created by observation, famously questioned by Einstein. While microscopic particles may exist in indefinite states until measured, this does not mean the Moon literally disappears. It implies that at a fundamental level, reality is determined by interactions rather than a predetermined existence independent of observers".

Also in one of your posts, you mentioned something about "moments in time" and how close they may or could be? While worm holes have never been observed, or white holes for that matter, they are though a prediction of GR.
Not sure of its relevancy but a recent book I read, "A Universe From Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss, speculates that spacetime at the quantum/Planck level, called the "quantum foam", is essentially as close to our definition of "NOTHING" that can ever be obtainable, and that which has existed for eternity. Remembering that there was a time, we called empty space or the vacuum of space nothing, that is until the Casimir effect was observed.
Anyway, treat me gently in any of your replies, but what I will say is it is a shame that in this day and age, we don't have thinkers of the ilk of Einstein, Bohr, Wheeler, Schrodinger, Schwarzchild, Feyman and company. Or have we reached the limitations of our thinking? Na, not yet! All we need to do is stand on the shoulders of those giants of yesterday.

 

[Lumen]

Hi Lumen.
While I aint a scientist of any sort, (just a poor old retired maintenance fitter/machinist/welder) who always had an interest and fascination in astronomy/cosmology, and has read some reputable stuff over the years, (including Kip Thorne's "Black Holes and Baby Universes) you seem to be more into quantum mechanics. (Didn't someone say something to the effect that no one understands quantum mechanics)
I also remember a bloke called Irwin Schrodinger, famous of course for the "Schrödinger's cat experiment.
I also googled the following...."The idea that the Moon isn't there until you look at it stems from a quantum mechanics interpretation that reality is created by observation, famously questioned by Einstein. While microscopic particles may exist in indefinite states until measured, this does not mean the Moon literally disappears. It implies that at a fundamental level, reality is determined by interactions rather than a predetermined existence independent of observers".

Also in one of your posts, you mentioned something about "moments in time" and how close they may or could be? While worm holes have never been observed, or white holes for that matter, they are though a prediction of GR.
Not sure of its relevancy but a recent book I read, "A Universe From Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss, speculates that spacetime at the quantum/Planck level, called the "quantum foam", is essentially as close to our definition of "NOTHING" that can ever be obtainable, and that which has existed for eternity. Remembering that there was a time, we called empty space or the vacuum of space nothing, that is until the Casimir effect was observed.
Anyway, treat me gently in any of your replies, but what I will say is it is a shame that in this day and age, we don't have thinkers of the ilk of Einstein, Bohr, Wheeler, Schrodinger, Schwarzchild, Feyman and company. Or have we reached the limitations of our thinking? Na, not yet! All we need to do is stand on the shoulders of those giants of yesterday.

I’m not actually leaning on the idea that reality only exists when observed, or that things like the moon pop in and out of existence. That’s one interpretation, but it's not mine. I've never liked that theory.

What I’m trying to do with the ball of wool is a bit different and more structural.

I’m not saying things only exist when looked at. I’m saying the underlying structure of reality might not be laid out in time at all.

So instead of:
things exist in time and we observe them

I’m suggesting:
there is a complete structure, and what we experience as time is what it’s like to trace a stable sequence through it.

So the “observer” here isn’t creating reality, it’s just what a self-sustaining system looks like from the inside as it holds a sequence together.