Clock Times

[trainspotter48]

This one is probably for Carl, or anyone else out there that understands how the times are set up.

Living in the UK, our 'standard time' is linked to Greenwich Mean Time, unless it is our summer (April to October), when we adopt British Summer Time (ie GMT + 1 hr).

The forum clock appears to synchronise with BST, rather than GMT. I believe that I've read somewhere that it is linked to UTC.

Can anyone explain how UTC links with GMT?

[crfriend]

This one is probably for Carl, or anyone else out there that understands how the times are set up.

[...]

Can anyone explain how UTC links with GMT?

UTC, or , "Coordinated Universal Time", is today pretty much what GMT used to be, and the two are more or less interchangeable -- for now. Technically, GMT is linked to solar transits at the Royal observatory at Greenwich, whereas UTC is linked to the resonant frequency of Caesium atoms and forcefully "stepped" every so often to replace lost seconds as the Earth slows down (these are "Leap Seconds" where the last day of either June or December has an "extra" second allocated to it); GMT adjusts slowly and gracefully, which may be why it's fallen out of favour.

Making matters worse, or at least more obtuse, there are factions that are trying to get Leap Seconds abolished, and if this happens, UTC will drift away from GMT and the Sun. This won't be noticeable for several hundred years or more, but eventually the clocks will be saying noon and the sun will just be rising. I hope that idea gets shouted down.

But I digress. In any event...

The forum's clock is synced to UTC by way of satellite-receivers, other radio devices, and network links to primary time-providers. That said, converting from UTC to a local time-zone is trivial, but users have to set it up in their board preferences -- and then need to tell the forum whether Summer Time is in effect or not. If the "Summer Time" setting is wrong, the display will be an hour off. Since the forum's software has no idea where people are when they're logged in (other than a vague and expensive tactic known as "IP Geolocation") the forum has no notion of time-zone nor of whether Summer Time is in effect or not, and needs those inputs from the user.

Check the "User Control Panel" screen and then the "Board Preferences" screen for these settings. They're in there someplace.

So, there you have it.

[Fred in Skirts]

Thank You very much for the information to change the time zone. I was wondering just how to do that now it is easier to see when a post was made in my time.

Fred

[crfriend]

If anybody took the time to read my entire post and didn't come away from the thing thinking, "ruddy time geeks", they need to have their head examined. I make no pretence whatsoever to being a Time Lord (I don't even play one on the telly), but I am most assuredly a "time geek" and love most things horological.

What a change it was from the time (heh!) where we tried to construct mechanical objects that would "keep time" as well as the Earth, to now, when our atomic-resonance clocks are so precise that they can trivially measure the wobble of the Earth and it's subtle changes in speed. Of note is that we (as a species, mind) began to suspect that good old Mother Earth wasn't as good a timepiece as we'd thought back in the late Victorian era when precision pendulum clocks started pointing up subtle "errors" in Mother Earth's rotational speed; this was irrefutably verified my the Shortt Free-Pendulum clock in the early 20th Century and can be analysed now to sub-nanosecond accuracy by things like Hydrogen MASERs.

It's always been said that, "A man with a watch always knows what time it is; a man with two is never sure." But what of a man with a thousand, and who is willing to meticulously take the average of those on a continual basis to remove most errors that aren't entirely systematic? He's got a pretty darned good idea of the time, and that's now how UTC is derived based on atomic clocks around the world, all meticulously monitored, outliers ejected from the suite, and the rest averaged to derive UTC to within tens of trillionths of a second.

And precise time is dirt cheap now. My ex bought me a $10 junker from Walmart which is more accurate than all but the very best other timepiece I have (and I've spent more on replacing the batteries in that junker than the thing cost originally). But yet I retain a fondness for mechanical escapements and balance-wheels, and have several pocket-watches of 100 years old or better that work "well enough" for day-to-day use. I have an NTP Stratum-1 time source in my apartment which derives its time from the orbiting GPS constellation and is good on a long-term average to a couple-dozen nanoseconds; this is what sets all the computers in my apartment, and which I have made available to all my house-mates (although I don't know if they use it). In 2002, the receiver cost me about $600; that sounds like a lot, but it's been amortised over more than a decade, and newer ones are likely available at a fraction of the price (I also have on record details of its performance, at 1-second granularity, since I first plugged it in minus, of course, the period when I was homeless thanks to the actions of said ex).

Yes, I like time. She's a great teacher, but, sadly, she kills all her students in the end.

[moonshadow]

Carl, you seem like you're angling for someone to talk time with.

Well, I am quite the amateur thinker, and sometimes my line of thought runs into the rumble strip, but I do enjoy thinking about matters as time, space, physics, and other curiosities. Granted, your post seemed more to do with the measure of time, and not the nature of time itself, but still, I thought I would weigh in some thoughts that I contemplate on many-a-starry night.

Now when I was much younger, as in a mid-teen I figured time didn't really exist at all. It was just a method to measure duration. I held this view for a little while, when I got into a debate with a middle schooler about it (I was in high school), and he stumped me. As much as I hated to admit that my argument didn't hold water, the kid was right. Fortunately, I may not be the brightest crayon in the box, but I will adjust my thought process when presented with more accurate information, unlike so many people seem today. They get an ideal in their head and they won't let go no matter how asinine it is. To make matters worse, the 8th grader confused me. It wasn't until later on down the road, when programs like "The Universe" would come on the TV, in addition to some books by Steven Hawking, such as "A brief history of time" did I begin to realize that time does exist after all. Not only does it exist, but also could be considered "fluid", in as much as a second really isn't a fixed duration. It really depends on the speed one is going. It has been said that as one approaches the speed of light, time slows greatly. When I first read this, I must admit, I thought "ahh bull sh_t!" Until I learned that GPS satellites much take time lag into consideration as they orbit the Earth, otherwise they would not be accurate.

I consider time the fourth dimension. For if something exist in our universe, it must exist in four possible ways, width, height, length, and duration (time). If an object exist in width, height, and length, but not in duration, did it ever exist at all?

Another fascinating thought of mine, is the big bang. Or for the religious among us, "the beginning". What ever your belief, all seem to agree that at some point in the past, time began. The question I pose, is what came before time? How would the laws of physics work in a space (universe?) before time. It has been said that the universe is expanding, if so, what is it expanding in to? What would happen if one could theoretically <---holy cow I spelled that right! travel to the universes edge and stick your head through the barrier?

Fascinating stuff out there.... What's even more interesting is how much of the universe can we not detect. How many dimensions could be all around us, and yet we not know it. Could there be some sort of "spirit world" after all? Impossible you say? Not so fast.... We are bound to what our five senses can detect, sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. However there are sights we can't see such as infrared light, ultraviolet light, etc, there are sounds we can't hear. We can hear it with the aide of machines that can sense it, but by our selves we are blind to these sights. Who knows what the world of science will uncover in the years to come. How much of our universe still eludes even our most advanced instrumentation.

Fun stuff....

[Jim]

Another fascinating thought of mine, is the big bang. Or for the religious among us, "the beginning". What ever your belief, all seem to agree that at some point in the past, time began. The question I pose, is what came before time? How would the laws of physics work in a space (universe?) before time. It has been said that the universe is expanding, if so, what is it expanding in to? What would happen if one could theoretically <---holy cow I spelled that right! travel to the universes edge and stick your head through the barrier?

Not all agree that at some point in the past time began. Some models have there being something before a big bang singularity; there's just no possible way to observe what it was.

What is the universe expanding into? Is there an edge?

One model is two dimensional analogy, a balloon. A two dimensional creature on the surface of the balloon might be able to discover that there is no end to the balloon's surface, but if it traveled far enough it could return to where it started. If the balloon was expanding and had 2 dimensional stars pasted on it, each would become farther away from each other star. The balloon would be expanding into a 3rd dimension. Cosmologists hypothesize additional spacial dimensions.

[crfriend]

[...] Not only does it exist, but also could be considered "fluid", in as much as a second really isn't a fixed duration. It really depends on the speed one is going. It has been said that as one approaches the speed of light, time slows greatly. When I first read this, I must admit, I thought "ahh bull sh_t!" Until I learned that GPS satellites much take time lag into consideration as they orbit the Earth, otherwise they would not be accurate.

The interesting thing here is that time is "relative" in the same way that mass is. Einstein also posited that as velocity approaches the speed of light (which is supposed to be an absolute maximum, but what, then, of the neutrino?)) mass increases becoming infinite at the speed of light (effectively preventing anything from reaching such a speed. However, the speed of light remains a constant for everybody and for all observers -- and the speed of light can be used as a definition of time as in, "How long does it take a beam of light to go "x" distance?". An interesting riff on this was played by Grace Hopper (whom my ex once had the privilege of hearing speak) who introduced people to the concept of a nanosecond with an 11 inch long piece of wire: "Here's your nanosecond. Put electricity into one end of this, and one nanosecond later it appears at the other end." (The speed of electricity in copper is a bit slower than light, but it's "close enough" to make the point.) So there's one way of defining time. But back to the satellites, they think the clocks are actually running fast because we've sped them up artificially to remove the relativistic effects from an Earth-centric viewpoint not a spacecraft-centric viewpoint.

However, humans had been using the Earth's rotation for eons by way of noting the passage of days and nights, as well as the change of the seasons and changes in position of assorted celestial bodies (this forms the basis for celestial navigation of both ships and aircraft), and this became what would be for centuries the "Gold Standard" for timekeeping. It wouldn't be until the late 19th Century that we'd suspect any differently, and up until that point the objective was to make a timepiece that was as good as the Earth. And some of the designs were awe-inspiring.

Time, however, as another dimension has always fascinated me -- not for the fact that it might exist so, but for the fact that it's extremely rigid. We know what's happening now, we know what happened a few moments ago (history, and we have a pretty good idea what's going to happen in a few moments (at least if we're awake and paying attention). We can alter our own futures, and do all the time; however, once it's history it is locked that way for all time going forward. However, everything we do, and everything we perceive around us, both ahead of us in time and behind, exists in precisely the same time-frame that we do (and this includes everybody and everything in "our" universe). Given the rather tenuous nature of matter (there's a lot more empty space in it than there is actual solid matter) would it not be possible to have other universes co-existing with our own, but "out of time" with us by some fixed "distance"? Would we ever be able to know or sense that they were even there?

Mathematicians and cosmologists are currently wrangling with some of those notions, unfortunately using mathematics that is well beyond what the layman can get his head around.

I consider time the fourth dimension. For if something exist in our universe, it must exist in four possible ways, width, height, length, and duration (time). If an object exist in width, height, and length, but not in duration, did it ever exist at all?

A lot of folks do, and it's interesting precisely because events in the future are mutable -- we can alter them -- which isn't really possible in the physical world without materially altering physical objects (which we do all the time anyway). We have the ability to turn what would be a sad ending into a happy one, or we can choose to not pick the soldering-iron up by the hot end.

Another fascinating thought of mine, is the big bang. Or for the religious among us, "the beginning". What ever your belief, all seem to agree that at some point in the past, time began. The question I pose, is what came before time?

This is a hot topic at the moment for the theoreticians; some hold that the universe is "open" and will continue to expand (and cool) until all that's left is cinders of iron and whatever leftover hydrogen and helium there is; others hold that it must be "closed" such that it will cycle "outward" and "inward" perpetually -- and they're busy looking for enough mass to be able to pull all that mass back into a singularity to start the whole shooting-match going again. Rinse, lather, repeat. The notion of parallel universes make me not really care much whether "ours" is "open" or "closed", because when ours ceases to exist (not that there'll be anybody around to witness it) others will still be in play with perhaps new ones starting up. What's to say that the "death" of one universe might not kick off the "creation" of another? (That's wild-arsed speculation there if you haven't guessed.)

We are bound to what our five senses can detect, sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. However there are sights we can't see such as infrared light, ultraviolet light, etc, there are sounds we can't hear. We can hear it with the aide of machines that can sense it, but by our selves we are blind to these sights. Who knows what the world of science will uncover in the years to come. How much of our universe still eludes even our most advanced instrumentation.

Humans are actually very well adapted to the world that they evolved in, with no less -- and no more -- capabilities than required for the time. What made us what we are is our brains (which, in turn, dictated some other biological dimensions) which allow us to be vastly more adaptable than any other creature save, perhaps, the cockroach which will inhabit Earth long after the last human has died off. It turns out that our sensory apparatus didn't need anything more, and so those capabilities never evolved. We don't need to hear frequencies on dozens of kHz; we have no need to see into the infra-red nor into the ultraviolet, to live our daily lives. Sure, interesting things can be seen in such images, and from which much can be learnt, but it's not required for survival. Recall that we're an evolved species and not a "designed" one. If we are a "designed" species, that doesn't say much for the engineer in charge. But, would the "designer" have built in the sensory apparatus to allow us to detect "neighbour universes"? Given the mess we've made this little corner of our own I'm rather glad we can't screw up somebody else's (or them, ours).

Fun stuff....

Indeed.

I may rant a bit about "Intelligent Design" today at my customary watering-hole today. It'll keep the regulars on their toes.

On another note, the sky was clear enough last night that I actually got a sight on Polaris for the first time since I've lived here. It's good to know it's still there. (And it was a positively amazing night -- crisp and cool with a brilliant waxing half moon, bright enough to cast shadows, and which pointed up just how many jet-contrails there are in the sky; seeing them backlit was quite something.)

[pelmut]

Grace Hopper (whom my ex once had the privilege of hearing speak) who introduced people to the concept of a nanosecond with an 11 inch long piece of wire: "Here's your nanosecond. Put electricity into one end of this, and one nanosecond later it appears at the other end." (The speed of electricity in copper is a bit slower than light, but it's "close enough" to make the point.)

[Nit pick]
Actually the speed of electrons in a wire is relatively slow, it is the electrical impulse which travels at nearly the speed of light.

A good anlogy is a tube full of marbles; tap the marble at one at the end with a hammer and the marble at the other end will fly out in a very short time. The impulse has travelled quickly but the progress of the marbles along the tube is slow.

[Jim]

Grace Hopper (whom my ex once had the privilege of hearing speak) who introduced people to the concept of a nanosecond with an 11 inch long piece of wire: "Here's your nanosecond. Put electricity into one end of this, and one nanosecond later it appears at the other end." (The speed of electricity in copper is a bit slower than light, but it's "close enough" to make the point.)

[Nit pick]
Actually the speed of electrons in a wire is relatively slow, it is the electrical impulse which travels at nearly the speed of light.

[Nit picking the Nit pick]
Isn't electricity another name for the electrical impulse, not the electrons?

[crfriend]

Actually the speed of electrons in a wire is relatively slow, it is the electrical impulse which travels at nearly the speed of light.

Indeed, but when you put it into one end of the wire you get something out very quickly, and while the human mind is not great at understanding an interval as short as a billionth of a second, the 11-inch-wire analogy helps folks get over the hump. And, yes the speed of the impulse is measurably slower than the speed of light in vacuuo. In fact, if we couldn't vary the speed of light (the optical stuff) we wouldn't have lenses, and without lenses I'd not be able to read the screen I'm looking at now.

Then there's the sort of fun one gets when his length of wire is longer than the wavelength of an AC signal he's putting into the wire. Enter The Terminator.

[Sinned]

Whilst we are at it and discussing the mysteries of life, the unverse and everything here are some points to think about:

Point 1. It is theorised that as well as space/matter being quantised then so can time be. Of course it's not so simple as that and scientists are finding out that there can be particle interference that changes what has actually happened and other strange effects The following is typical of what's out there now - http://www.collective-evolution.com/201 ... -altering/. Personally I like to think of the simple definition of time as nature's way of stopping everything happening at once.

Point 2. I like Douglas Adams statements "Time is an illusion, lunchtimes doubly so." and "There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

Point 3. There has been posited that there is a minimum value for the value of time and this is the Planck's time which is the time required for light to travel one Planck length and turns out to be about 5.4 x 10 to the minus 44 seconds. Some years ago I speculated in a computing magazine about decimalising time so there would be 100 seconds in a minute, 100 minutes in an hour and 10 hours to the day. Of course this would mean redefining the length of the second. I didn't pursue it any further to see if this redefinition would produce better values for some of the constants that litter physics. Shame on me, maybe a nobel prize there somewhere.

Point 4. There is a theory that the universe is holographic in nature. I won't elaborate here - google it.

Point 5. The Kabbalistic Jews thought that there were at least 5 dimensions and probably as many as 10. There were the three spatial, time and dimension of good and evil. Thus matter can absorb events that are extremely good or evil and hence why we can sense that shadow many years after the event.

Now the disclaimer - I do not necessarily believe any of the above or even intimate that any of them are true. If life is as it is then I prefer to live in my own little dream world and whereas I may have matured I have not necessarily grown up.

[moonshadow]

Point 2. I like Douglas Adams statements "Time is an illusion, lunchtimes doubly so." and "There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

This point resonates with me is the illusion of the universe, and how it ties into thought.

Disclaimer:

I, Moon Shadow, do NOT claim this to be fact, gospel, science, or religion, the comments below are simply random things I think about on many-a-long rides home.... Debate them if you will, I never claimed them to be accurate.

What if...

Thought is another dimension of the universe. And I'm not just talking about human thought. I mean any type of thought. Thoughts of other living beings, such as animals, or even extra terrestrial beings. Who's to say objects like stars and planets don't have some sort of "universal thought?". There are those who believe that there is some type of a soul, or "spirit" if you will in everything.

Now, with that hypothetical theory, remove ALL thought from the universe. Does the universe even exist? It's loosely tied to the old question, of the tree that fell in the forest when no one heard it... did it make a sound? In the universe, if there is no one there to observe, and to evolve in it's motions, did it ever exist at all? Would it matter if it did? It's not hard to imagine that "something" must have surely "wound up" the cosmic clock. Even if you follow the theory that the big bang was the result of a former universe collapsing, or some other theory that could, possibly be measured, still everything moves into an infinite realm. Moving out into the furthers, biggest picture imaginable, into the picture of the infinite.... SOMETHING must have surely got it started, but then again, what came before that something?

What if that something is the infinite thought? The final say on everything that is? The one dimension that binds the others together. "Ahh B.S. Moon Shadow!" Maybe, but our physics equations merely explain that which is.... the laws of the universe. What wrote them? What set them in motion? The best we, (humanity) can do is come up with a handful of theories that for all intents and purposes WORK for us, they make modern life possible, I.E. general relativity, quantum mechanics, etc. But these theories are at odds with one another. Surely there must be an equation that binds it all together.

And surely it must be a pretty simple, straight forward one if it's design was totally arbitrary and by chance. Or was it? How can we prove one way or the other?

What if with thought... anything is indeed possible? What if it is possible two be to places as once, as shown with the quantum theory? What if simple faster than light travel is possible? What if it is indeed possible to go backward in the time line? What if nothing is real, we only THINK it's real?

The four major dimensions, length, width, height, and time all appear to be finite. Our universe seem to be finite, as indicated that it's "expanding"... into what? Perhaps it's just my dumb hillbilly logic... but it seems that whenever I think I may know it all about something, I normally learn something new pretty quick. This indicates to me, that thought might just be as infinite as the nature of everything that is... and isn't (for the dark matter fans out there)

Science has probed pretty far out, and we think we can see the edge of the universe, the edge of time. Therefore, some people take the position that that which we can see, and detect with our instrumentation is the grand sum of all that is. Frankly I find such a notion as dogmatic and illogical as the "religious science" of the middle ages. I hold the view that just because we can't detect it, doesn't mean it isn't there. For all we know, there could be other worlds past our "time barrier" that are simply not detectable to us, and maybe never will be. Perhaps there are other universes with completely different laws of Nature (physics), and yet still, moving a rung higher on the ladder, SOMETHING must bind it all together in some way... surely to God! (no pun intended)

And so, the paragraph above brings us back full circle to the start of my post... moving backward now, if there is nothing to observe the universe, who's to say it even exist?

You can't bend the spoon with your mind, that's impossible.
The answer is... there is no spoon!
-Loosely quoted from The Matrix

* * *

The hidden language:
I don't mind saying this has been a difficult post to put into words. And doesn't truly convey my thoughts on the matter. In a matter of speaking, I just don't have the vocabulary to accurately express what really goes on in my head. Which further indicated to me the importance of thought in the universe. Perhaps someday we will evolve past the need to communicate with words, and can do so with thought.... then Carl won't fuss at me for using the wrong word in conversation!

Edit... had to add a few question marks.... this post is meant to be a post of questions, not answers. God knows I don't have any answers.

[Sinned]

Moon, I watched a series of programmes about the human mind, consciousness and reality. It seems that the world is only because of what we receive through the senses and these can be fooled easily and in many ways so who is to say what is real. Also it appears that we don't even have as much control over our bodies that we think we do. When we say walk we don't consciously say left foot then right foot and so on we just decide to move and some autonomous mechanism takes over and we think no more about it. And this goes for pretty much everything we do - reaching for and picking up a glass, writing, eating etc. We don't consciously thing about it so how much control do we really have. I have seen some really awesome programmes recently that have made me peruse the nature of reality and our role in it. Add that to the theory of the holographic universe which has a lot of similarities to The Matrix and you start to wonder what is really real.

[dillon]

Point 2. I like Douglas Adams statements "Time is an illusion, lunchtimes doubly so." and "There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

This point resonates with me is the illusion of the universe, and how it ties into thought.

Disclaimer:

I, Moon Shadow, do NOT claim this to be fact, gospel, science, or religion, the comments below are simply random things I think about on many-a-long rides home.... Debate them if you will, I never claimed them to be accurate.

What if...

Thought is another dimension of the universe. And I'm not just talking about human thought. I mean any type of thought. Thoughts of other living beings, such as animals, or even extra terrestrial beings. Who's to say objects like stars and planets don't have some sort of "universal thought?". There are those who believe that there is some type of a soul, or "spirit" if you will in everything.

Now, with that hypothetical theory, remove ALL thought from the universe. Does the universe even exist? It's loosely tied to the old question, of the tree that fell in the forest when no one heard it... did it make a sound? In the universe, if there is no one there to observe, and to evolve in it's motions, did it ever exist at all? Would it matter if it did? It's not hard to imagine that "something" must have surely "wound up" the cosmic clock. Even if you follow the theory that the big bang was the result of a former universe collapsing, or some other theory that could, possibly be measured, still everything moves into an infinite realm. Moving out into the furthers, biggest picture imaginable, into the picture of the infinite.... SOMETHING must have surely got it started, but then again, what came before that something?

What if that something is the infinite thought? The final say on everything that is? The one dimension that binds the others together. "Ahh B.S. Moon Shadow!" Maybe, but our physics equations merely explain that which is.... the laws of the universe. What wrote them? What set them in motion? The best we, (humanity) can do is come up with a handful of theories that for all intents and purposes WORK for us, they make modern life possible, I.E. general relativity, quantum mechanics, etc. But these theories are at odds with one another. Surely there must be an equation that binds it all together.

And surely it must be a pretty simple, straight forward one if it's design was totally arbitrary and by chance. Or was it? How can we prove one way or the other?

What if with thought... anything is indeed possible? What if it is possible two be to places as once, as shown with the quantum theory? What if simple faster than light travel is possible? What if it is indeed possible to go backward in the time line? What if nothing is real, we only THINK it's real?

The four major dimensions, length, width, height, and time all appear to be finite. Our universe seem to be finite, as indicated that it's "expanding"... into what? Perhaps it's just my dumb hillbilly logic... but it seems that whenever I think I may know it all about something, I normally learn something new pretty quick. This indicates to me, that thought might just be as infinite as the nature of everything that is... and isn't (for the dark matter fans out there)

Science has probed pretty far out, and we think we can see the edge of the universe, the edge of time. Therefore, some people take the position that that which we can see, and detect with our instrumentation is the grand sum of all that is. Frankly I find such a notion as dogmatic and illogical as the "religious science" of the middle ages. I hold the view that just because we can't detect it, doesn't mean it isn't there. For all we know, there could be other worlds past our "time barrier" that are simply not detectable to us, and maybe never will be. Perhaps there are other universes with completely different laws of Nature (physics), and yet still, moving a rung higher on the ladder, SOMETHING must bind it all together in some way... surely to God! (no pun intended)

And so, the paragraph above brings us back full circle to the start of my post... moving backward now, if there is nothing to observe the universe, who's to say it even exist?

You can't bend the spoon with your mind, that's impossible.
The answer is... there is no spoon!
-Loosely quoted from The Matrix

* * *

The hidden language:
I don't mind saying this has been a difficult post to put into words. And doesn't truly convey my thoughts on the matter. In a matter of speaking, I just don't have the vocabulary to accurately express what really goes on in my head. Which further indicated to me the importance of thought in the universe. Perhaps someday we will evolve past the need to communicate with words, and can do so with thought.... then Carl won't fuss at me for using the wrong word in conversation!

Edit... had to add a few question marks.... this post is meant to be a post of questions, not answers. God knows I don't have any answers.

I didnt quite follow all this, but I get where you're coming from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUOGxePBs50

[crfriend]

Also it appears that we don't even have as much control over our bodies that we think we do. When we say walk we don't consciously say left foot then right foot and so on we just decide to move and some autonomous mechanism takes over and we think no more about it. And this goes for pretty much everything we do - reaching for and picking up a glass, writing, eating etc. We don't consciously thing about it so how much control do we really have.

Actually, if we pay attention, we have a stunning level of control over our bodies -- but it requires that serious dedicated attention be paid.

What's being referred to in the quote is more of what's known as a "sensorimotor behaviour" than any sort of "lack of control". These are behaviours that are learned and become fairly autonomous. To use the case of walking, the brain will make a decision to walk in a certain direction, and at a certain speed, and the semi-autonomous sensorimotor system takes over, up to, and including, sometimes avoiding obstacles. Recall that we must learn to walk; the programming begins there, and it's us that are doing said programming. This works in many situations, up to, and including, driving a car; watch how somebody who is just learning to handle a couple of tons of steel and plastic handles the vehicle and then watch an expert driver who's been doing it for years. It's all learned, and we have to learn it -- and know how to make our bodies perform the correct actions.

True, some things are almost completely autonomous, mainly the bits run out of the R-brain ("R" for "reptilian") and which control things like heartbeat and respiration (which, note, can be overridden by the conscious mind, but once focus is taken off go back to doing what they do automatically). But much, if not most, of what we do -- especially if it's unfamiliar -- happens almost entirely under direct control or some level of symbiosis with.