BS: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?

Subject: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Jul 01 - 11:41 AM

I was talking with Rog last night, remarking on how long it seems I've known so many of you. I went on to tell him of how we sometimes talk about "all those years" we've been at Mudcat and known each other; then I laughed, and said, "you know it's really only been about 3.5 years, but it feels like twenty, sometimes all of my life."

So then we got into a discussion about Time, as it exists on the Mudcat and whether or not it was compressed or expanded. We finally decided it was expanded, yet compressed into a short amount of "real" time.

What's your take on this *phenomenon*?

Subject: RE: BS: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?
From: MMario
Date: 23 Jul 01 - 11:48 AM

I think it's a bit of both - I have a couple of 3D situations that have a lot in common with interaction on the MudCat - and the same seems to apply to them. I think what happens is that there is an intensity of experience for many of us here on the cat - and that tends to make it seem as if we've "been here" longer.

I know there have been several situations where I SWEAR that weeks went by between updates on my screen - but in reality everything occured over a few days.

Subject: RE: BS: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?
From: Burke
Date: 23 Jul 01 - 12:15 PM

I feel like I've spent an hour on Mudcat & it turns out to be 3! In that case I guess it's compressed!

Subject: RE: BS: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?
From: mousethief
Date: 23 Jul 01 - 12:27 PM

I was looking for a thread I remembered from a week or two ago, and when I finally found it, it was 2 months old! Does that mean it's contracted or expanded? Whichever it is, definitely that's what it is.

Alex

Subject: RE: BS: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?
From: Amos
Date: 23 Jul 01 - 12:44 PM

TIme is (phsyicists notwithstanding) (duck and cover) actually a relationship that changes relative to the reaching, acting, or withdrawing being done by the individual. This is a very scary thought, in some ways, but I think it is true. When your emphasis is on reaching for, and acting on, the world, time speeds up and a lot of time fits into a "wall-clock" hour, so it feels like three hours have gone by when one has. When you are focussing on resisting, defending, or pulling back from the world in various ways, such as procrastinating, time slows down, and a "wall-clock" hour seems to have forever built into it, one gigantic second at a time! Consider the last hour of work on Friday afternoon, for example!

The real problem with this observation is that it raises the question of whether there really is such a thing as a wall-clock!

Regards,

A

Subject: RE: BS: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?
From: mousethief
Date: 23 Jul 01 - 12:45 PM

Time is an illusion. Lunch time, doubly so. ---Douglas Adams

Subject: RE: BS: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?
From: MMario
Date: 23 Jul 01 - 01:15 PM

Amos - your observation "whether there really is such a thing as a wall-clock" brings new insight into interpretation of the Lyrics for "My Grandfather's clock"

Subject: RE: BS: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Jul 01 - 01:26 PM

That's the kind of discussion I was looking for, Amos. I love to think on the possibilities of time, space, dimensions, parallel universes etc.

Did the "Grandfather's Clock" really exist?**BG**

This is the first year, in my adult life, that I have gone without a wristwatch. It has been interesting. I find that "what time it is" is not as important to me, unless of course I am on my way to a "specific time" event. Maybe I am learning to live more like my cats...in one of those other dimensions with no time but the present; no, I haven't learned that, yet, still too concerned about the future, which never arrives.**BG**

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?
From: Kim C
Date: 23 Jul 01 - 01:30 PM

Time is a funny thing. Not long ago I drove a friend home from the airport, knowing this would likely be the last time I ever see this person. The 40-mile trip seemed like it only took 5 minutes. And I don't even remember what we talked about on the way. I wanted MORE time, but I had yet somewhere else to be.

The drive back to my house took forever.

Subject: RE: BS: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?
From: Amos
Date: 23 Jul 01 - 01:48 PM

Well, kat-deer, I think you are poking your estimable intellect into the key piece of the puzzle of how the creativity of our spiritual side and the apparent inexorable entropic solidity of our intertia- and time-space-bound universe intersect. It's right in there somewhere. Lock onto a "physical" object and you have unidirectional, common-rate garden-variety time. SHift off into your own creative perspective and you have all the dimensionality and rates you can come up with, multi-directional and totally defined by the conditions of Will. (Don't ask who he is). That is the boundary layer that will probably define the biggest philosophical, if not scientific, wrangle of the current millenium.

How's that for a pompous pedantic decree?? Purdy good, huh???

Love ya,

A

Subject: RE: BS: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?
From: mousethief
Date: 23 Jul 01 - 01:50 PM

Einstein said something to the effect that when you're sitting with your sweetheart for five hours it seems like five minutes, but if you sit on a hot stove for five seconds, it seems like infinity.

Alex

Subject: RE: BS: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?
From: Burke
Date: 23 Jul 01 - 02:50 PM

Read this to understand all: Einstein's dreams / Alan Lightman. New York : Pantheon Books, c1993.

Subject: RE: BS: Time on Mudcat - Expanded/Compressed?
From: Amos
Date: 23 Jul 01 - 02:52 PM

And when you're sitting with your own imagination for five seconds it can seem like five lifetimes!

A