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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 1 year

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Errors, “Errors,” and Sci Fi

@strawberry-crocodile

tvtropes calls stuff like the wolf example "science matches on" which I think is a pretty fair shake

This. This is what’s got me thinking so much about errors. There’s a certain danger, here. A certain way that this particular effect — delicious dramatic irony — tempts the mind when reading old stories, even true ones.

What do you know about R.M.S. Titanic? I ask my class every year, and the first hand rises. “It was unsinkable,” the student inevitably says, and everyone is nodding, “or so they thought.” I write the word UNSINKABLE on the board, underneath my crude drawing of a ship with four smokestacks. It will be crossed out before the end of the hour, but not for the reason they expect.

“I find no evidence,” Walter Lord, preeminent biographer of the ship’s survivors, wrote, “that Titanic was ever advertised as unsinkable. This detail seems to have entered the collective mind so as to create a more perfect irony.” Indeed, historians’ examinations of White Star Line documents show the shipbuilders themselves worried it would be so large as to risk collision; they stocked several more lifeboats than 1910s regulations required.

The War to End All Wars (deep breath, satisfied exhale), also known as World War ONE. Chuckle. Shake of the head. What if I told you that this phrase, used primarily in American newspapers after the fact, wasn’t meant to be literal? Nowadays we’d say The Mother of All Wars, or One Hell of a Fucking War, but we wouldn’t mean literal motherhood, literal intercourse. What if I said the armistice and the Lost Generation and the Roaring 20s were all braced for another outbreak of European conflict, and yet we still failed to prevent it?

Did you know they were so confident in the safety of the S.S. Challenger that they put a civilian schoolteacher onboard? I do, because I’ve heard that one repeated many times. Only, see, it’s got the cause and effect reversed. Challenger launched on a day the shuttle’s engineers knew to be dangerously cold, because the first civilian in space was on board. And NASA knew its shuttle project would be cancelled entirely, if they couldn’t get that civilian’s much-delayed entry into space in the next two weeks. So they launched on a cold day, and killed her instead.

These are all what cognitive science calls Hindsight Bias on the personal level, what sociology calls Presentism on the cultural level. Social psychology’s a little of both, is primarily interested in why you’re sitting on your couch in a Colonize Mars shirt watching PBS and chuckling at the fools who believed in El Dorado. It wants to know why the mind flees straight from “marijuana will kill you” to “marijuana will cure cancer” without so much as a pause on the middle ground of its real benefits and drawbacks, its real (mild) risks and rewards.

And they can paralyze the sci-fi writer, if you think too much about them. Jetsons is futurist one decade, retro the next. “There are no bathrooms on the Enterprise,” the creators of Serenity say smugly, as if Gene Roddenberry should’ve simply known that decades later it’d be acceptable to show a man peeing in full view of the camera, nothing but the curve of the actor’s hand to protect his modesty. “No sound in space,” the Fandom Menace says, “No explosions in space,” and “A space station can’t collapse in zero-G.” Only then NASA burns a paper napkin outside of atmosphere, transmits music using only the ghost of nearby planets’ gravities, and logs onto Reddit long enough to point out the Death Star would implode in its own gravity field. And now we’re the ones pointing, the ones laughing, at those earlier point-and-laughers. Self-satisfied, smug in superiority. As if we did the work to find out ourselves, instead of just happening to be born a little later than George Lucas.

#errors #continuity #sci fi #presentism #star wars #titanic #world war i #science marches on #history #started a new post because i got waaaaaay off topic here #if you think the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993) should've had feathers #you're a lot more ignorant about paleontology than the people you're trying to criticize #science was not handed down to us in its perfect complete form circa 1943 #stop for a second before you call out someone else's reptilian denonychus #someone else's oxygenated moon #and ask: am i better read #or am i just more recently born?

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omegaphilosophia · 1 year

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Theories of The Philosophy of Time

The philosophy of time is the study of the nature of time, including the ontological status of time, the relationship between time and causation, and the various ways in which time is experienced and represented. It involves questions such as whether time is an objective or subjective feature of the world, whether time has a direction or is symmetrical, and whether time is a continuous or discrete phenomenon. The philosophy of time is closely related to other areas of philosophy, such as metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science.

There are various theories and debates within the philosophy of time, some of which include:

The block universe theory: This theory suggests that all of time exists as a block, with each moment in time equally real and determined. This means that past, present, and future are all equally real and exist simultaneously. The theory suggests that everything that ever happened, is happening, or will happen already exists and is fixed.

B-theory of time: This theory is related to the block universe theory, which holds that time is tenseless and that all moments in time are equally real. This means that there is no objective difference between past, present, and future - they all exist equally. According to this theory, time is similar to space, and just as we can move around in space, we can also move around in time.

Relativity theory of time: A scientific theory developed by Albert Einstein that suggests that time is relative to the observer and dependent on the observer's relative motion and position. According to this theory, time passes more slowly for objects that are moving relative to an observer than for objects that are stationary. This effect is known as time dilation. The theory also suggests that time and space are not separate entities but are intertwined, forming a four-dimensional spacetime continuum.

Perdurantism: This theory posits that objects are four-dimensional entities that exist across time and persist by having different temporal parts at different times. This view is sometimes called "four-dimensionalism" or "eternalism". According to this theory, an object is not a single entity that stays the same over time, but rather a collection of temporal parts that come together at different times to form a complete object. For example, a person is not just a single entity that exists at a particular moment in time, but rather a collection of temporal parts (e.g. cells, organs, memories) that exist at different times and come together to form a complete person.

Endurantism: This theory posits that objects are three-dimensional entities that persist over time by having the same parts at different times. According to this view, an object is a single entity that stays the same over time, and it has the same parts at every moment of its existence. For example, a person is a single entity that exists at a particular moment in time, and it has the same physical and psychological parts at every moment of its existence.

The Growing Block Theory: This theory posits that only the past and present exist, with the future being continually created as time moves forward. In other words, the present is constantly expanding, and the future is not yet determined.

The Presentism Theory: According to this theory, only the present moment exists. The past is no longer real, and the future is yet to come into existence. This view holds that the present is privileged and that the past and future are merely conceptual constructs.

The Eternalism Theory: This theory views time as a fourth dimension, similar to space, and asserts that all moments in time exist simultaneously. This means that the past, present, and future all exist at the same time, and our experience of time is just an illusion. This theory has some similarities to the block universe theory but rejects the idea of a fixed future.

Four-dimensionalism: This theory claims that objects persist in time by having different temporal parts at different times. According to this view, time is considered to be a dimension, similar to space. Just as an object can have different spatial parts, it can also have different temporal parts. In this way, an object is not considered to exist at any particular moment in time, but rather it exists across a whole span of time. This view is sometimes associated with the theory of special relativity in physics.

The causal theory of time: This theory posits that time is defined by causation. On this view, events are ordered in time by their causal relationships. An event is considered to be earlier than another event if it is causally prior to that event, and later if it is causally subsequent to that event. The causal theory of time is often associated with the work of the philosopher David Lewis.

The tensed theory of time: The theory that time is fundamentally characterized by a distinction between past, present, and future. According to this view, the present moment is privileged, and the past and future are real but in different ways. The past is considered to be fixed and unalterable, while the future is open and uncertain. This view is often associated with the philosopher J.M.E. McTaggart, who famously argued that time is an illusion because the A-series of past, present, and future is contradictory.

Overall, the philosophy of time involves complex and often contradictory theories, which continue to be the subject of ongoing debate and investigation.

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crylockchaos · 2 years

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The mcr tour has so much presentism in it, which is interesting considering that that theory doesn’t usually mix with anything contemporary to this extent.

#Crylocks rambling #crylock your student is showing #mcr #my chemical romance #presentism #English major things

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cultml · 2 years

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#presentism

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mergist · 1 year

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I've run into the distinction between eternalists and presentists in the philosophy of time over and over, but I've never actually seen what presentists consider the present to look like.

I mean, for people who say that the past and future are just as real as the present there is this accompanying image of a 4-dimensional whole, a structure we happen to be taking 'slices' out of. Or the modified 'growing block universe' where the future isn't in the picture but the past trails out below the square hyperplane of becoming that is the Now. (See also the most convoluted time travel RPG, Continuum, where time travel is always implicitly 'down' toward the Big Bang or 'up' away from it.)

We might be tempted to leave the hyperplane hanging in the void on its own and call it 'the present' - and anyway, a system with one component scarcely needs modeling - but doesn't relativity eat the idea of a pan-universal Now for breakfast? If there is only one instant of time we should call 'real', it must be a warped sort of manifold blanketing everything - and in trying to form a picture of it all we can really verify about is that the things in it are not direct causes or effects of one-another (e.g. that they're simultaneous).

#presentism #philosophy of time #growing block universe

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liskantope · 2 years

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One thing that our natural tendency towards presentism makes it easy to forget is that many events and situations from decades ago which are widely lamented today were, at the time, not generally considered horrible, or at least that their horribleness wasn't obvious to society as a whole even if it seems blindingly obvious today in the wisdom of hindsight. These things may have been polarizing enough at the time that some large percentage of the population did recognize them as very bad, but there was often still a vast difference in the width of the Overton window between then and now that may be hard to get our minds around.

In light of this consideration, I predict that in a century's time, historians and even ordinary reasonably-educated citizens will look back upon the grimly adversarial turbulence of the Trump era and near-universally conclude that Alec Baldwin's impression of that president was in fact absolutely awful and lament that other, far superior, Trump impressionists are already mostly lost to history.

#presentism #our last president #overton window #alec baldwin #shitpost

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philosohoney · 2 years

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Metaphysics series: "Eternalism and Presentism: The Here and Now of Material Objects"

Space, time, time travel, and us.

Although I should know better by now, I cannot help thinking that it is the notion of change, rather than permanence, that is an illusion. However, it is the idea of permanence that is quickly shattered by a cursory glance at an old film strip. Who is that infant? Is that me? When did I change and how did I get here… to this point in time? Although the simple realization that things now are not how they once were may seem trivial, it is in fact a helpful guide into the nature of objects and time. Though, admittedly, the relationship between contemporary physics in regards to space and time and the philosophical inquiry of material objects might be a better place to start.

Einstein’s theory of special relativity pushed forth the idea that there is no such thing as objective simultaneity— various events are not in fact objective to reality, and, therefore, it can be said that time itself is relative. With this in mind, a recontextualized “now” is to be considered as a kind of “here”, in which physical objects acquire temporal parts. However, despite this theory’s notable absorption into the post-2010-wine-mom aesthetic (“it’s wine o’clock somewhere”), there remains debate on what can be said about the nature of reality and its existing objects. The debate is led by two views: Eternalism and Presentism.

Eternalism is the view which holds that past, present, and future objects exist all at once, and that these objects are real objects. For example, the Eiffel Tower in 2010, Mary Shelley in 1818, a glass cup at 10 am this morning and myself at this moment in time, exist together. Under Eternalism the totality of reality is four-dimensional. Fourth-Dimensionalism states that any physical object that is located at different times has a different temporal part for each moment at which it is located. A common description of fourth-dimensionalism and its temporal parts is to think of a film strip that depicts an individual running up a hill. The film strip is made of many frames, each of which depict the individual at a moment in time. If one where to cut the frames, stack them on top of another and turn the stack sideways so that the images were right side up, each image would represent a temporal part of the individual, in a specific position in space and moment in time. And so the individual, under this view, is a collection of each of these temporal parts. A common way of understanding the concept of being in this way is as a “spacetime worm” that exists fourth-dimensionally through spacetime, or as David Lewis describes it, “a streak through the manifold of spacetime”. This solves the problem of Stachy and Lumpy, claiming that, fourth-dimensionally, both are different parts of the same worm; there is only one fourth-dimensional object. This can be applied to Theseus’s ship and Tib/Tibbles as well, as an Eternalist observes the spacetime worm in their cases as well. As you have probably already noticed, one of the most important arguments in favor of Eternalism is the very fact that it fits with Einstein’s theory of relativity, but Einstein alone does not render Eternalism immune to Presentist criticism.

In contrast to the Eternalist view, Presentism is the view that all existing objects are, in fact, presently existing objects: “necessarily, it is always the case that, present things exist.” As a result, it is said that there are neither past nor future objects, as they are not presently existing. For example, consider the following sentence D, “There used to be dinosaurs.” A presentist believes this to be true due the fact that it is in the past tense; any mention of a dinosaur’s current existence would not pass the presentists’ requirements. Furthermore, a key difference can be seen through the following sentences:

M— Mary Shelly is the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft.

N— Nat King Cole admired Ella Fitzgerald.

Under Eternalism these sentences are true because of the fact that Mary Wollstonecraft and Ella Fitzgerald exist! In contrast, presentists, like Ned Markosian, argue for a form of fictionalism in which sentences M and N are not strictly true, but rather for all practical purpose true (FAPP-TRUE). In this case, these sentences are not true, but are close to ideas of truth which are called “nearby truths.” The nearby truths for sentences M and N would be as follows:

M— Mary Wollstonecraft had a baby, and that baby was Mary Shelly.

N— Nat King Cole admires certain properties that Ella Fitzgerald has.

Therefore, relevant sentences about the past are FAPP-TRUE because the following counterfactual is literally true: if Eternalism had been true, then it would have been the case that x. In regards to the special bond of relativity theory and Eternalism, presentists often respond by stating that there is no good scientific evidence to prefer the standard theory of special relativity (STR) to, say, a version of standard theory of relativity with a caveat that states that there is an empirically undiscoverable privilege frame of refence (STR+; i.e., an undiscoverable fact about which objects are really, for example, motionless.)

At this time, we might direct our attention to Eli Hirsch’s suggestion of mere-verbalism, which requires that a) the debating parties agree about the relevant worldly facts, and b) the debating parties subsequently assign different truth values to sentences only because they mean different things by their words. Initially, it seems that mere-verbalism simply claims that the two parties just need to set up their terms so they can progress, but one wonders just how many decades it will take before the real debates can begin in earnest. Hirsch seems to be in a nearby truth of his own, however, as, unless the presentist denies a fourth dimension, an eternalist and a presentist might be arguing past each other, from different scopes: in the case of a spacetime worm-farm in a fourth dimension, it might be observed that only those worms which are present could be included in a list of things that exist. One might suggest that the presentist state their stance on dimensions before proceeding any further— upon learning the presentist is also a three-dimensionalist, it will become necessary to establish the terms and parameters of the debate.

Suppose that the debate establishes its parties as follows: the Fourth-Dimensional Presentist (eternalist) in one corner, the Three-Dimensional Presentist (Sider’s Temporal Actualist) in the other. It becomes immediately apparent that this is not merely a verbal dispute; this is an ontological debate. Suppose, then, that we consider Lewis’ claim of the existence of the plurality of worlds, if only to extract his distinction of a relational, indexical “actuality” (as opposed to “actuality” as an intrinsic quality of something); conceding, for the sake of discussion which resists bloviation, at least a modicum of simple determinism (an effect has a cause or causes); and, perhaps most important of all, suppose we require a rendering of a FAPP-TRUE ruling, a nearby truth (as opposed to an absolutist strawman). What might result?

Under such constraints, the Three-Dimensional Presentist/Temporal Actualist (TDP) might initially find herself vulnerable to criticism on the grounds of simple determinism. If only the present exists, there would appear to be a lack of causality, so TDP might fortify her position and insist that while only present things exist, the present can change. And while this is apparently a common mode of fortification, one might wonder that if the present is capable of change, could it not then be argued that the present exists as a temporal location, a not insignificant quality of which recognizes a past and a future? And if this is the case, would that not serve to weaken TDP’s denial of the existence of past and future objects, simply recontextualizing the scope in which such objects are recognized? It would be tempting, then, to seek to quantify this recontextualized scope to more fully grasp what the TDP holds to be ontologically acceptable to her position— returning to the film strip, the TDP might claim the present as the lowest possible frame-rate wherein action can be recognized. Within this scope of the present, it might then be argued that instances of the past and future are FAPP-TRUE. A non-static present might then be represented as the currently extant mini-worm, elected to Lewisian Actuality as a consequence of a perception which can observe causality even as it is bound in a seemingly linearly progressing consciousness.

Finally: Einstein; time travel; relativity. The TDP might perk up and wield Lewisian Actuality in a kind of temporal equivalent of Fermi’s Paradox: “If it were true that a person could travel through time, why haven’t we seen the evidence already? If it isn’t occurring in the present, it doesn’t exist.” This question as a means of support for TDP’s case presupposes quite a lot, and we are limited by our established parameters and by TDP’s rejection of a fourth dimension. However, in a causal, three-dimensional universe, in which only the present is actual, one might imagine that any disruption caused by a time-traveler would not exist. If there are ripples through time, they are ripples in non-actual time, and if TDP’s model is correct, the currently extant mini-worms would be more-or-less unaffected by the nature of their size and frequency of propagation. As Lewisian Actuality functions similarly to Berkeleyan Idealism which holds that “to be is to be perceived”, the past would be made real to the time-traveler; it would become her present. With these considerations in mind, one might imagine the act of traveling into the past as one of those old morbid experiments where they would pass electricity through a dead frog to make its legs move— a lively motion, true, but not alive. It seems, then, that TDP must reject time travel, because, due to the most generous ruling on the matter being the claim that it is merely conceptual and as the success of a journey derived from such a concept is likely unknowable, time travel is FAPP-NOT TRUE. Instances in actuality which support, or seem to support, STR+, seem to potentially concede a fourth-dimension or the simulacrum of a fourth-dimension by way of the so-called “empirically undiscoverable privileged frame of reference”, yet, even if this is the case, it should be considered FAPP-NOT TRUE, as such a reference point is inaccessible in actuality.

While the FDP’s argument might not exist free from critique, it seems the TDP’s argument makes enough concessions in favor of Eternalism to at least fail in debunking it, wholesale.

So where does that leave us?

It seems that the best that one should really hope for in the pursuit of most metaphysical inquiries is the chance to observe patterns that appear to maintain a kind of consistency, while avoiding making absolutist claims about them whenever possible. Perhaps we have not left the TDP’s actual present; perhaps there can be no confirmation of time-travel; perhaps Here and Now is the only place we will ever go.

But then again, perhaps the FDP might suggest that we remain worms, growing, wriggling, who are currently haggling over size.

-Aleksi

#eternalism #presentism #philosophy #forthdimentionalism #science

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