What is Freedom and Time?

An aspect of our present world is that we seem to be able to extend the present instance both forward and backward in time. The obvious derivative question is whether or not this trend can continue so that in the future we will have a significantly larger present.

For example, we now have the capability to record events and characteristics of events more accurately than ever before. We have access to huge amounts of storage capacity so that it is increasingly possible for more and more of aspects of the present moment to be retained for the future. Likewise, we now have a greatly increased capacity to compute and calculate what might happen, as say in elections. We can take a sample survey and within minutes project what an election result may be.

The reach of the present moment into the past and into the future seems to be growing with the development of science and technology. Our present moments are enlarging, or are they? If we move faster do we perceive more? If we are running, human beings are relatively slow compared to other animals. As we age, many of us lose mental speed and age ever more rapidly as a result. A year becomes a relative month. Would that we could alter our brains processing speed to lengthen the now, the present. This would take exercise?

What if we could get our brains to operate more quickly within each segment of our present moment?

The Dilution of Time and One's Vision

In my earlier blogs, I assume that the universe was like my construction of the Wuh Lax world of 50 AD in which the perception of time and the flow of events was very different. We some times forget that the mind has many capabilities and one capacity is that of being able to deal with stress. People under stress perceive time differently from people who are not under stress. I think!

We see an aspect of this when we use our peripheral vision and look sideways at a rotating fan. I, at least, perceive that the fan rotates slightly slower when I view it using my peripheral vision. What if all my vision were operating at the speed of my peripheral vision?

The big question is whether time would be significantly increased were I able to speed up the processing of all my vision to the speed of my peripheral vision. What is going on in my brain?

Now if I can speed up my vision, could it not be possible to speed up all sorts of other brain activity and would not my perception of time be significantly altered?

Gaining Time

A characteristic of the human mind is that some processing seems to be going on relatively slowly, such as seeing, while other processing is proceeding at such a fast rate that we have no awareness that it is happening at all. If we can perceive more rapidly, perhaps we can gain subjective time.

How Fast are We Capable of?

One has an idea of how quickly the human eye processes information because of development in digital camera technologies. There is probably a measurable normal speed of visual processing and probably a variance between individuals as to their normal speeds, as for example created by the relative distribution of rod and cones in the eye, rods being much faster, but processing motion more than colour. Suppose we only saw things in black and white. This raises all sorts of questions.

New Questions to Consider ... I am Getting a Head Ache Just Thinking about Them

Would or could we see things at a faster rate? If so, would the present now for that individual expand indefinitely? Is it possible to create a human being that sees things so fast that he perceives the world at a very different speed from everyone else? Could such a human creature have so much time within what we perceive as several seconds to be capable of understanding much more than normal human beings and then having the capacity to do the infinite? Or would such an individual be content with just perceiving, and forget about our world of motion and time?

What is Evolution in the Modern Context of Bio-engineering?

Are human beings evolving or going to evolve in a way very different from the theory of evolution as presently put forward by Dawkins and Darwin? The Intelligent Design theorists seem to think so, and claim that the DNA stories alone are inadequate to explain the myriad aspects of evolution. By raising the evolution issue in a heavy handed way Dawkins has manged to encamp two opposing groups of thought so that emotional bias is presented by both as reasonable bias.

The problem is that whatever you think was evolution in the past will be inapplicable for the future should future man take an active role in engineering evolution, as now seems very probable.

Obviously, as a human being, you are aware of the intelligent designs created by human beings. What if one of these designs were to speed up the rate at which the eye processes information? This new design for the human being would add a hitherto undeveloped capacity to the list of human capacities and obviously would be a major step in evolution. One may ask whether the list of alternative technologies to bring about this evolution would be confined to biology.

Is Stupid a Word that Should Not be Used?

Logically, for me at least, the words smart and stupid are closely connected. What I have come to realize is how inexact the use of such words can be. I have a friend who advises me never to use the word stupid with reference to a person. The same friend constantly reminds me that whatever I say in any event is only my opinion.

What is Stupid?

Perhaps, nothing is stupid except in reference to something else. I can regard a statement by someone as stupid because I have heard a different statement from someone else that I would regard as smart. The distance between the two statements is in my mind great enough that one is so significantly different from the other that the statements belong to two recognizable groups, a smart group and a stupid group. My grouping of the statements is probably subjective, but may not be.

For example, if a person who has had three glasses of vodka decides to get into a car and drive, I might say that the person is stupid. I don't necessarily mean to say that the person is permanently stupid, but that the alcohol has affected his brain and the person does not reason correctly according to some social wisdom about drinking and driving. The same statement may, however, be construed differently in that I am merely commenting that the act of driving when having drunk three glasses of vodka is stupid.

What should bother me is that the stupid person, who is drunk and getting into a car to drive it, may actually be smart. Its just that an issue has arisen, a drunken state, in which his thinking and his actions are stupid, or so I assume.

Why Referring to Some one's Behaviour as Stupid Confuses People

When one looks for the word stupid in the English and American dictionaries one gets a very different impression of the social aspects of the term. The dictionaries give examples using other words that are, perhaps, as offensive as referring to someone as stupid.

For example, someone who is boring may be thought of as stupid. Someone who is foolish may be thought of as stupid. Someone who is senseless may be thought of a stupid. Someone who is unwise may be thought of as stupid.

In any event, use of the term stupid with reference to behaviour or characteristic is fraught with problems because it is something that repels people away from the individual in question. Politicians often think their rivals are stupid, but they rarely say so. The reason is perhaps that reference to one's fit within a context is a measure by which others will act.

Saying some one is stupid is a negative advertising for that individual, and is something that person may or may not know how to deal with. If the person is really inadequate, we don't often use the term stupid, and that is because the term is pejorative and demeaning.

The Unwelcome Rebound

Use of the word is likely to rebound back on the individual who uses it. Thus the very act of using the term stupid is stupid, at least for the present!

We use other words instead. We find the phrase 'shameful' an improvement on 'stupid'. One can say openly that a person's behaviour in driving while drunk is shameful, but we don't say the behaviour is stupid. Are we making a mistake? Is there such a thing as stupidity? What do you think?