On 4D Objects

Day 30

Yesterday I sat by a lake and watched ripples in the water. This got me to thinking about something that I've said before – that everything effects everything else. Of course this appears to be true by definition of a thing in the world, but I wander if there is another way to interpret the saying. One way to think of something effecting something else is to think of it in a present and physical sense. In a present sense, we can say that when something happens, then everything else is effected immediately by definition. If a tree falls in a forest and I don't hear it, then I am still effected by that tree because a complete description of me would also include information about everything that effects, and everything that effects those things that effect me, and so on and on. In the physical sense, the fall of that tree in the forest sends out a wave of energy, or a wave of change that results in me moving in some way. We might envision this as a incredibly small shift in gravity. Now, these are the ways that I was thinking of the statement that 'everything effects everything else', but I realized yesterday that the was another way to understand the statement, and this understanding results in a different understanding of things which exist. That is to think of things that effect me in the future.

See, when I saw the ripples in the water, what I realized is that I eventually lost sight of each ripple as it spread. The ripples in the water caused concentric waves to spread out from a point of origin and play over the surface of the surrounding water. These rings waves would run into other waves and there would sometimes be interference patterns, and sometimes the waves would run into the shore and disappear, or reflect. So I got to thinking about how these waves effected me. I had a hard time understanding that they effected me in the present because I could see the waves spreading out and they took time to reach me. This seems to be the same issue for physical changes as well. (discounting the fact that I could see the waves, which is a bit besides the point right now. This issue could be just as much about waves I don't see as waves I do see) there is still the change by definition, but exactly how this changes me is unclear. If I was already able to give a perfect definition of myself and the world, then perhaps it would be more clear how a change by definition matters, but since I am already unclear and vague to myself, understanding an effect by definition between me and the ripple doesn't appear to illuminate much.

The other thought I had was that perhaps this wave effected me in the future. Perhaps the force of the ripple dissapears and becomes invisible, being stored up in atoms and forces which are too small and weak for me to be aware of. Perhaps these changes and stored energy, or modified probabilities, didn't do anything presently which effected me and didn't do anything physically which effected me. Perhaps the effect of the ripple was to change things which didn't effect me, to change them so that they acted differently then they would have if the ripple had never happened. These things changed other things, and so on and on until a dozen years in the future – It rained on me one day. This is an allusion to the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world can cause it to rain here. I've heard the idea before, but I realized as I stared at the water that what I hadn't thought of was the ratio of time between the butterfly flapping its wings and the rain on the other side of the world. The butterfly flapping its wings does effect everything – but perhaps doesn't effect everything presently and physically. Rather, it effect everything eventually.

This would appear to suggest that the idea of 'everything effects everything else' is false; The thing which is effecting doesn't effect the past, or doesn't effect anything outside its light-cone. A light cone is the area spreading out from an event which involves the theoretical spread of light from that event. Because the speed of light is an absolute limit on speed, the idea of a light-cone is that the results of an event can only effect things within its light cone, or things which are close enough to it in space-time that there could possible by some physical effect. That's an idea from physics, but while it gives an idea for how we could state the laws of interactions between events on a 4-d plane, its not strictly necessary for my interests today.

We could rescue the idea that everything effects everything else if we include the future changes that a thing experiences as part of the events of the ripple as also being a part of the thing itself. We have interactions between a series of 4-d snakes as it were. This envisioning of an object as a 4-d object has several possibilities for interesting discussion. There are problems that can arise from this viewpoint, but there are also illuminations and solutions to other problems which could be interesting to review. I think that some of these issues are not insurmountable, ad that most of them do not differ substantially from problems which already exist in my conception of the world – I say problems, but perhaps they aren't that bad.

One of the issues that a 4-d existence has is with the identification and definition of a thing. Take the human body for example – the human body grows new cells and sheds old ones. This means that eventually there will be complete replacement of all the cells in your body. Are you still the same you? This is the problem of the ship of Sisyphus, the ship which was slowly replaced plank by plank until there was no original part at all in the ship. The issues of the ship of Sisyphus are not issues of definition exactly, for we can give a definition of the ship which manages to state that the ship is the same ship now as it was ten years ago, just as we can give a definition of the human body which holds that same thing. Rather, these problems of the ship of Sisyphus are psychological and spiritual issues. If we accept a definition of the the human body and of the ship of Sisyphus as being malleable and changeable over time, then we learn that we ourselves are malleable and changeable over time. If the problems can be solves by using a certain definition, then what is it about that definition that does not seem arbitrary? We could give a definition of the the ship of Sisyphus which demands that if anything changes on the ship, then the ship is no longer the same ship. Yet, we often want to reside somewhere in between these two definitions and systems, in our usual life; the ship can only be modified so far until it changes completely into a different thing, but it does accept some changes. Which change is enough? Its hard to tell if a new keel, or a new ram is enough. Certainly it doesn't seem as if a single plank being changed is enough to think of the ship as a different ship, but perhaps a new deck is – perhaps it depends on what you know about the construction of ships. Perhaps it has to do with your understanding about the soul of a ship. I once read in the manga One Piece that if a ship's keel has to be replaced, then the soul of the ship has died – I don't know if this is true, or who believes it. The same issues might arise for the human body – how much cybernetic replacement can you handle before you become a different being?

These issues of identity and definition also show up when we start talking about the world. The world of today is different from the world of yesterday, and every time anything changes in the world the entire world changes by definition. Yet, these changes might happen in the same way in which a ripple happens. The forces and energies which sway throughout the world, changing logical fields and releasing or relaxing areas of stress would be understood to happen in a time-relational manner. Since we are part of the world, this means that we change – that I change. Yet, what makes the me of tomorrow the same as the me of today? What I am in the world is a gem that has an unknown origin which I call the free will. The area of the world which I think of as myself is an area with very strong foundation. I wish to focus on one of those foundations – the ethical. Put another way, the general foundations of me in the world determine which actions I can do and still remain me. If I act in a way which I am not ethically allowed to do by my foundations, then I can be said to have died and become a different person. This is the idea I suggested once that perhaps an ethics are necessary for identity. That is, within the space of possibilities under the limit, I only exist in certain of those spaces. If we envision the world as being a 4-d object, then the world inhabits a sort of logical space within all possible logical spaces. That is to say, that the world is a W under a limit. The limits define the space of the possible world – but not of all possible worlds. Limits after all can be overcome and worlds can fall apart. So, we can envision ourselves, as we are part of the world, as being a 4-d snake within another 4-d snake, which is within yet another 4-d snake. The outermost snake is all possible world, is everything which is within reality which could possibly be a part of the world. We don't know what the limits of this space are. The second ring snake is the area of the world which exists. It marks the limits of the world which we know about. The innermost snake is us, is the activities or world-structures and gems which are recognizably us. Thus, the disposition of these three snakes and how the logical field demarcated by the snakes which represent limits relates to a point of view or is understood by somebody determines what a thing is. This doesn't clear up many practical issues of identification of course, but it enables us to have a reasonable picture for how these issues may be understood.

So what is the definition of the ship of Sisyphus? What you recognize the ship as. Thus, the definition is defined by the use, and the use is defined by the world. We guess at the world by our use, but we don't know the world for certain. To make things more clear, we need to learn more about the world.