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Template:M intro design System redundancy (view source)

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==2. Time==
==2. Time==
====Reductionism about time====
====Reductionism about time====
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''.  
The JC’s developing view is that this grimness is caused by the poverty of this model when compared to the territory it sets out to map. For the magic of an algorithm is its ability to reduce a rich, multi-dimensional experience to a succession of very simple, one-dimensional steps. But in that [[reductionism]], we lose something ''essential''.


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 Turing machines on which [[data modernism]] depends have no ''[[tense]]''. There is no past or future, perfect or otherwise in code: there is only a permanent simple ''present''. A software object’s ''past'' is rendered as a series of date-stamped events and presented as metadata in the present. On object’s ''future'' is not represented at all. How could it be?


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.
In reducing everything to data, spatio-temporal continuity is represented as an array of contiguous, static ''events''. Each has zero duration and zero dimension: they are just ''values''.  


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>
The beauty of a static frame is its economy. It ''can’t move'', it can’t surprise us, it takes up minimal space. We can replace bandwidth-heavy actual spacetime, in which ''three'' dimensional objects project backwards and forwards in a ''fourth'' dimension — with ''apparent'' time, rendered the single symbol-processing dimension that is the lot of all Turing machines.


The apparent temporal continuity that results, like cinematography, is a conjuring trick: it does not exist “in the code” at all; rather the output of the code is presented in a way that ''induces the viewer to impute continuity to it''. When regarding the code’s output, the user ascribes her own conceptualisation of time, from her own natural language, to what she sees. The “magic” is not in the machine. It is in her head.


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>
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>
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