Template:M intro design System redundancy: Difference between revisions

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 ==2. Time==
 ====Reductionism about time====
-In reducing everything to measured inputs and outputs, [[data modernism]] collapses into a kind of ''[[reductionism]]'', only about ''time'': just as reductionists see all knowledge as being reducible to infinitesimally small, sub-atomic essences — all laws of nature are functions of theoretical physics — so [[data modernist]]s see socio-economics as reducible to infinitesimally small windows — “frames” — of ''time'': so thin as to be static, resembling the still frames of a movie reel.
+The Turing machines on which [[data modernism]] depends do not do ''[[tense]]''. There is no past of future, perfect or otherwise: only a permanent simple ''present''.
-By compiling a sequence of consecutive frames you can create a “cinematic” ''appearance'' of movement. The beauty of a static frame is that it can’t move or do anything unexpected. In this way we replace ''actually'' passing time — ''three'' dimensional objects projecting backwards and forwards in a ''fourth'' dimension — with ''apparently'' passing time rendered in only ''one'' dimension.<ref>Binary code is linear: it has only one dimension.</ref>
+In reducing everything to measured ''events'', “passages of play” are reduced to and rendered in a series of infinitesimally small windows of ''time'': so thin as to be static, like the still frames of a movie reel.
+The apparent temporal continuity that code vouchsafes is, like cinematography, a conjuring trick: the continuity does not exist at all ''in the code''; rather we, the viewer, imputes it, ascribing our own conceptualisation of time, from our own natural language, to what we see. The “magic” is not in the machine. It is in our heads.
+By compiling a sequence of consecutive frames you can create a “cinematic” ''appearance'' of movement and continuity whilst not having to have any actual concept of continuity. The beauty of a static frame is that it ''can’t move''. It can’t surprise us. In this way, we replace ''actually'' passing time —in which ''three'' dimensional objects project backwards and forwards in a ''fourth'' dimension — with ''apparently'' passing time, rendered the single symbol-processing dimension that is the lot of all Turing machines.<ref>Binary code is linear: it has only one dimension.</ref>
-For the Turing machines on which [[data modernism]] depends do not do ''[[tense]]''. They are permanently in the ''present''. The apparent continuity through time they vouchsafe is, like cinematography, a conjuring trick: there is no sense of continuity ''in the code'': we ascribe our own sense, from our own natural language, to what we see. The “magic” is not in the machine. It is in our heads.
 For existential continuity backwards and forwards in “time”, is precisely the problem the human brain evolved to solve: it demands a projection of continuously existing “things” with definitive boundaries, just one of which is “me”, moving through spacetime, interacting with each other. None of this “continuity” is “in the data”.<ref>{{author|David Hume}} wrestled with this idea of continuity: if I see you, then look away, then look back at you, what ''grounds'' do I have for believing it is still “you”?  Computer code makes no such assumption. It captures property A, timestamp 1; property A timestamp 2, property A timestamp 3: these are discrete objects with common property, in a permanent present — code imputes no necessary link between them, not does it extrapolate intermediate states. It is the human genius to make that logical leap. How we do it, ''when'' we do it — generally, how human consciousness works, defies explanation. {{author|Daniel Dennett}} made a virtuoso attempt to apply this algorithmic [[reductionist]] approach to the problem of mind in {{br|Consciousness Explained}}, but ended up defining away the very thing he claimed to explain, effectively concluding “consciousness is an illusion”. But on whom?</ref>