consciousness is non-orientable. reality is a knot. (Quantum Theoretic Machines)

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/19409041fbbf.jpg[/atsimg]

you can see only what is in front of you.

this patronizingly obvious statement lies at the center of a new theory of consciouness developed by theoretical physicist August Stern in his book, Quantum Theoretic Machines / (google books).

in this new theory, time is linked to consciousness. this is why, similar to the statement above, time appears to only move in the forward direction. like a mobius strip which has two sides which are the same side, paradoxes such as shrodinger's dead/alive cat make perfect sense to us because our consciousness has the same basic paradoxical structure.

in his book, much of which i did not understand, Stern claims to be able to reconcile the mind/brain dualism, and all of the mathematical, physical, and logical formalisms using Matrix Algebra and topological structures.

i dont know about all that, but i did find it quite useful in my research for an article on the intelligent nature of DNA. Stern suggests that DNA contains not only linear information in the nucleotide sequence, but also a type of Quantum information in the twist of the helix itself. very interesting!

There is a fundamental science of space, geometry, and there
is a fundamental science of maner, group theory. In this study we suggest that
there is also a fundamental science of consciousness, topology. Consciousness is
nonorientable and in this respect it 'violates' the laws of 'orientable' physics.

The left and the right vector products are symmetrically defined, and a mirror
functions properly, swapping the left and the right. But when we consider
consciousness, we have to imagine a world from which the mirror symmetry
had been banned. Somehow it must perform rotations that appear impossible to
our geometrical brain.

The backreaction for a system
with a single side. which has no other' side' to go to, is routed back to the
system. in this manner inducing the effect of self-awareness.

Topology is concerned with the properties of objects that remain
invariant under continuous deformation of the object without any puncturing
or cuts. If one object can be continuously deformed into another, the two are
topologically equivalent. This is the first underlying principle of topology. By
bending the surface and gluing the edges one obtains a variety of topologies. If
the two ends of a rectangular surface are glued together, the result is a
cylinder. If prior to being glued they are twisted, we get a Mobius strip, a
surface which has one side and no amount of continuous deformation can
change its unilateral topology.

...and just in case you need all the answers to the universe in a simple, single-page format, here is the "mathematical abstract" from page 7:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/753792344357.jpg[/atsimg]


it is certainly impressive looking, but does it actually mean anything?! haha.

I can't pretend to understand half of what is said either, but I have had a theory on Time for .. well, some time

My thought is... Time is only relative to having a Perception of it. Other than that I do not think it exists as we Believe it does... as the fourth dimension.

We know two cesium clocks at differing heights above the ground will provide different observations of time passing... the higher one marks time slower. Which suggests Time slows the further we move away from earth.. so I then wonder if we were able to observe Time passing at the boundary of our Universe, would it appear to be exceedingly slow or even stopped ?

Umm, I'll crawl back in my hole now.....

Originally posted by tgidkp

...and just in case you need all the answers to the universe in a simple, single-page format, here is the "mathematical abstract" from page 7:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/753792344357.jpg[/atsimg]

Sure looks abstract alright.

reply to post by RenegadeScholar


I think it doesn't mean anything, just random things ^^'

Quantum Theory is super interesting but super complex

Interesting theory though

as a demonstration of this one sided topology, you might consider NOT thinking of a banana.


in this common example, it is easy to see that it is impossible to perform an inverse function, consciously.

you can't not do. you can only do. feedforward.

seems like a ontological straightjacket to me.

reply to post by Tayesin


if time and perception are co-dependent, how would a change in perception be reflected as a change in time?

as i was pondering this in bed last night, i tried to conceptually place myself in a perceptual space of 360 degree awareness (rather than the forward-only non-orientable awareness suggested in the book).

indeed, i was able to induce at least a small hint of a alternate time-frame. i think it may be possible to take such concepts further.

i think his theorems are true for his perspective and if true that mind/consciousness is aware of the implications of its deeds his theorems are supported by his mind for the sake of self aggrandizement.

Originally posted by tgidkp
in this new theory, time is linked to consciousness. this is why, similar to the statement above, time appears to only move in the forward direction.

New theory? You're talking about the book published in the year 2000 over a decade ago as "new"?? It's not exactly breaking news.

I haven't read the book and for $225 I'm unlikely to read it, even my library can't afford to pay that much for just one book.

But from everything written about it, it sounds pretty far fetched. I think the obsession some people have with consciousness is largely delusional (for example: www.abovetopsecret.com... ), in the sense that there could easily be a place in our galaxy where things happen just as they do here in our part of the galaxy, but the life forms there haven't yet developed consciousness. So I don't see what consciousness has to do with it. We can develop plenty of measuring instruments that function independently of our consciousness.

reply to post by tgidkp


by my calculations this = potato...

no but seriously time is one of those things that actually doesn't exist, it's only the present there is never a future because if you were to go by that we would always be in the future no matter what. so therefor time is just a form of measurement that when broken down truly has no meaning other than to well help us determine what "time" it is...yea I probably made no sense, but nothing in this thread does to half of us...lol

reply to post by tgidkp

April Fool's day is tomorrow, mate. You're a day early.

Originally posted by Tayesin
I can't pretend to understand half of what is said either, but I have had a theory on Time for .. well, some time

My thought is... Time is only relative to having a Perception of it. Other than that I do not think it exists as we Believe it does... as the fourth dimension.

We know two cesium clocks at differing heights above the ground will provide different observations of time passing... the higher one marks time slower. Which suggests Time slows the further we move away from earth.. so I then wonder if we were able to observe Time passing at the boundary of our Universe, would it appear to be exceedingly slow or even stopped ?

Umm, I'll crawl back in my hole now.....

edit on 30-3-2011 by Tayesin because: one day my dyslexic typing fingers will not fail me

Honestly to me, that suggests that Earth's gravity exerts less force upon the cesium clock... but what do I know right?

Originally posted by sirnex
Honestly to me, that suggests that Earth's gravity exerts less force upon the cesium clock... but what do I know right?

Yes, makes good sense. Thanks.

Somewhere in the recesses of my dim memory is something about long term space crew may age slower than if they were on earth. I tried to google search "Do ISS crew age slower?" But found nothing to back it up.

Originally posted by Tayesin

Originally posted by sirnex
Honestly to me, that suggests that Earth's gravity exerts less force upon the cesium clock... but what do I know right?

Yes, makes good sense. Thanks.

Somewhere in the recesses of my dim memory is something about long term space crew may age slower than if they were on earth. I tried to google search "Do ISS crew age slower?" But found nothing to back it up.

If I had to guess, the perceived slower aging effect of orbiting the Earth has more to do with being outside the confines of normal gravitational influence compared to living on the planet under it's full force being exerted upon the bodies atoms.

I personally don't subscribe to time as a fourth dimension as we've never perceived nor directly measured nor can quantify any exact property of time. All we've done to measure time is through measuring sequential cyclic events, such as the oscillations of a cesium atom, drips of water, falling sand, the orbit of our planet around it's star.

When are we going to measure and point to time as a fourth dimension? When are we going to physically prove this aspect of our equations to be true? If it's not true, then perhaps our understanding of our universe is mostly wrong as we base a lot of equations off the illusion of time...

Originally posted by sirnex

Originally posted by Tayesin
Somewhere in the recesses of my dim memory is something about long term space crew may age slower than if they were on earth. I tried to google search "Do ISS crew age slower?" But found nothing to back it up.

If I had to guess, the perceived slower aging effect of orbiting the Earth has more to do with being outside the confines of normal gravitational influence compared to living on the planet under it's full force being exerted upon the bodies atoms.

It's just as well you didn't find the information online, much of it is wrong. There are two major relativistic effects at work. The faster you go, the slower time goes, but the closer you are to a gravitational source, the slower time goes. Some people don't consider both of these effects. I happen to have a graph of the effects for a geostationary orbit which includes both:

www.thescienceforum.com...
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f9410d2ed67e.jpg[/atsimg]
The x axis is radius from centre of earth.
The y axis is proper time added to satellite (second) per earth (equator) second from earth-equator's reference frame.
Green is gravitational time dilation
Blue is velocity time dilation
Red is total time dilation
And Brown is r=earth's radius

The ISS orbits faster, but the gravitational effect still outweighs the velocity effect. Even the guy on the space shuttle only used the velocity calculation (the blue line) and forgot to account for the gravitational effect (the green line) and thought he aged more slowly in space, when the opposite is true, he aged more quickly, so this is right for the blue line calculation but wrong because he never did the green line calculation:
spaceflight.nasa.gov...
So even the astronaut got the calculation wrong. Just goes to show you can't believe what you read online.

I actually did find one source online who got the math close to right, it's the 3rd answer (from mountain) here:
ca.answers.yahoo.com...

Relativity produces several measurable effects on orbiting astronauts. Three relativistic effects are the time dilation, gravitational frequency shift, and eccentricity effects.

The time dilation effect is predicted by the theory of Special Relativity...

The effect of time speed up is due to General Relativity, which states that a clock closer to a massive object will be slower than a clock farther away. Applied to the spacecraft, the clocks on the ground are much closer to Earth than the spacecraft ones, causing the spacecraft clocks to appear faster by a factor of 5×10^(-10), or about 45 μs/day.

Combining the time dilation and time speed up effect, clocks on the spacecraft tick approximately 38μs /day faster than clocks on the ground. In addition, because spacecraft orbits are not perfectly circular, their elliptical orbits cause the time dilation and gravitational frequency shift effects to vary with time.

Thus the astronaut actually ages faster on the spacecraft. Don't get too excited though, the difference is tiny. After a million days (2,700 years) in orbit, the astronaut is exactly one second older than he would have been if he had stayed on the ground.

But even he screwed up the math, though he got so close. 38μs per day faster is right, but that's 38 millionths of a second per day, so after a million days, he'd be 38 seconds older, not one second older. So actually I didn't find any sources online who got it exactly right, but mountain got close until the last step.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I don't know... I'm still of the camp that we're seeing forces being acted upon atoms differently than they are on our little rock. Are these people actually aging faster or slower? How do we measure the aging process at such small increments? How do we know they are actually moving faster or slower through time itself? It makes no sense to me at all.

I probably won't subscribe to the theory of time until we begin to measure time itself. Maybe we should put more emphasis on entropy instead of and illusory fourth dimension of time.

Wouldn't time from a Quantum perspective be subject to experience?

I would also think that it would mean, that from a quantum perspective, that time would be cosmiclly measured in realtion to the position of the observer, subjectively and abstract from the "true" reality factored into the mathematic equation.

Time would be imeasurable due to the fact that it is measured cosmiclly from the perspective of the observer dependent on the position of observation(or experience).

Ok, i mean, at least from another perspective, so basiclly every calculation we make of time is wrong because every calculation is subjective.

Quantum theory is really saying that.

But, wait, we must cover all of our bases.

Are we examing possibility, then choosing the possible outcomes of measureable time and creating that into our mind(reality)? If so, then this theory could be true if it garners enough support and becomes accepted by the collective mind and chosen as is.

Wow, what does that even mean?

Originally posted by sirnex
How do we know they are actually moving faster or slower through time itself? It makes no sense to me at all.

There's a reason nobody figured it out before Einstein, it's not obvious so of course it doesn't make sense to a lot of people, you're not alone.

But if you want to educate yourself, here's a place to start, though more accurate experiments have been done since:
Hafele–Keating experiment

This is how science is done. We had Einstein's theories. We made calculations of how those theories would affect the clocks in planes flying around the Earth. The observations matched the theory within calculated margins of error. So we can say the experimental observations are consistent with the theory to a high degree of confidence, and further, that similar results have since been repeated with even more accurate experiments.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


The measurements are used to explain the experience, not define the physics of the experience because they are subject to change as they evolve through the experience.

Has quantum theory not taught us anything?