[ExI] mayan forecast

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2012-12-21 19:48, Mike Dougherty wrote:
> Natural systems rotate and orbit in cycles, why doesn't our observance
> of the passage of time?

This might actually have some things to do with our linear sense of 
time, originating with a Judeo-Christian model of a world with a finite 
span regressing from a perfect initial state to a maximum entropy end 
state. Then reversed with concepts of progress, and extended to 
indefinitely big futures and pasts.

The simple answer is that we do not need to keep track of cycles. We are 
no longer bound by daylight (how many of us on this list do not live 
lives in some sort of international timezone where friends pop into and 
disappear from our communicative space largely unbound by the rotation 
of Earth?) Few people in our society need to keep track of planting 
seasons. I predict that as technology advances we are going to get less 
and less cyclic and more linear in our time sense.

Linear doesn't mean unchanging, but it has a connotation of 
irreversibility: things in the future will not be like they were in the 
past. Cyclic time transhumanism is not really possible.


-- 
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford University