RE: virus: Language

Gifford, Nate F (giffon@SDCPOS3B.DAYTONOH.ncr.com)
Wed, 1 Apr 1998 17:37:58 -0500


I'm puzzled by these two posts:

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On Sat, 28 Mar 1998, Kristee wrote:

> Well I'm glad you broke the ice on that one; I'll share how
I got
> my "confirmation" that time does not exist. ....
> Anyhow...so awhile ago when I was shrooming, I was confronted by
the stark
* reality that INDEED, time does not exist.

Eva-Lise Carlstrom wrote:

When my partner of the time and I were tripping, we found it
an
extremely exhausting experience, and wanted to be reassured, though
it was
very interesting, that it would in fact end eventually. My
reasoning in
that state was that as long as every time I looked at a clock, it
was a
later time, then time was passing, and thus the effects would
eventually
wear off, so things were fine.

Please forgive me If I'm missing the point as I haven't been closely
following the language thread ...but I am puzzled why you two would think
that subjective definitions of time have any meaning for objective time ....
Your descriptions remind me of the time I was lieing in the back seat of my
car at a highway rest stop. Suddenly I saw that the car was moving past a
truck so I jumped over the bucket seats to get to the emergency brake ...
which I found was already set. Then I realized that the truck that was
parked next to me was backing up ... my car wasn't moving forward!!!! Most
popular relativity books point out that we can't perceive if time is moving
forward or backward ... if its moving "backward" then we essentially
remember the future until an event occurs when we forget it .... But even if
the universe is moving toward a state of less entropy and we are moving
forward into the past IT DOESN'T MATTER DOES IT? Nothing changes. So,
because you have turned down subjective time to close to zero doesn't mean
that your autonomic functions were any different then what is objectively
necessary to sustain life does it? If you take drugs that allow you to
perceive the world as a non-euclidean geometry that doesn't change the
utility of Euclidean geometry for the rest of us does it? We could probably
build a house while you were still trying to design it ... on the other
hand you could pilot a starship while we'd be hopelessly lost. I'm not
trying to deny the validity of your hallucination ... just the utility.