What's your answer to the most fundamental question concerning time?

So what's really going on?

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Greylorn Ell
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Re: What's your answer to the most fundamental question concerning time?

Post by Greylorn Ell »

Skepdick wrote: Thu Oct 15, 2020 7:53 pm
Greylorn Ell wrote: Thu Oct 15, 2020 7:42 pm I've no clue as to what you mean by joining threads. You are coming across as a bullshit artist, and I'm sorry to find that. I'd love to find a competent interlocutor. GL
You said you have programming background, yes? You understand what concurrency/parallelism is, yes?

A "join" is a point in future where multiple concurrent time-lines (threads) collapse back into one. It's a synchronization technique.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork%E2%80%93join_model

And the relevant quote from the wikipedia page on synchronization
Process synchronization refers to the idea that multiple processes are to join up or handshake at a certain point, in order to reach an agreement.
So you can think about it as two observers taking different paths through spacetime, who rendevouz at some other point in spacetime and compare notes on "how much time has passed since we parted ways?"

The thread that did more work "experienced more time".
The WikiP page you referenced began with the "needs more citations" (i.e. more work) admonishment, and presents so much diverse crap as to be functionally meaningless, except as a gaggle of talking-points.

I'm realizing that instead of being a competent interloquitor, you are merely another "be-right" machine, so I'll discontinue conversations with you until your replies become constructive. With adverse ideas like mine, it is easy to find conventional views. I don't need more of them, and I'm looking for simplifications rather than more complex ideas that one can argue about forever.

Anyone who's perused Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and Mortimer Adler's "How to Read a Book," (excellent philosophers both) will have a sense of where I'm coming from-- which is problem solving.

Nonetheless, I appreciate your contributions.
GL
Skepdick
Posts: 14364
Joined: Fri Jun 14, 2019 11:16 am

Re: What's your answer to the most fundamental question concerning time?

Post by Skepdick »

Greylorn Ell wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2020 3:32 am The WikiP page you referenced began with the "needs more citations" (i.e. more work) admonishment, and presents so much diverse crap as to be functionally meaningless, except as a gaggle of talking-points.
Functionally meaningless ? It's the foundation of ALL distributed systems. You know - this functionally useless "internet" thing.

It's the engineering practice behind the process calculus theories
Process calculi provide a tool for the high-level description of interactions, communications, and synchronizations between a collection of independent agents or processes.
I mean, literally one of the process-calculi is called the JOIN calculus all while you are insisting that it's "functionally meaningless".

Greylorn Ell wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2020 3:32 am I'm realizing that instead of being a competent interloquitor, you are merely another "be-right" machine, so I'll discontinue conversations with you until your replies become constructive.
I've given you a bunch of new ways to think about "clocks" and "synchronisation" that you haven't seen before and you think I am trying to "be right"?

If you don't see people adding thinking-instruments to your thinking toolbox as "constructive" - just say so...
Greylorn Ell wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2020 3:32 am With adverse ideas like mine, it is easy to find conventional views. I don't need more of them, and I'm looking for simplifications rather than more complex ideas that one can argue about forever.
The journey to simplicity takes a detour through complexity.
Greylorn Ell wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2020 3:32 am Anyone who's perused Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and Mortimer Adler's "How to Read a Book," (excellent philosophers both) will have a sense of where I'm coming from-- which is problem solving.
Apparently, defining the problem is half the solution. What is "the problem" you are trying to solve? When Thomas Kuhn was writing his book, the computer scientific revolution hadn't happened yet. Much of the physics of time-relativity can be studied as computational phenomena in distributed systems.

For example liveness, safety and fairness are all considered to be the linear time properties of distributed system.

Truly, though. Philosophers know fuckall about problem-solving. They are way more capable of problem-inventing.
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