Does the brain's perception of time and pH play a role?

[alethea]

Study reveals substantial evidence of holographic universe: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2017/01/holographic-universe.page

 

[alethea]

It is as if we are watching a movie. You are talking about what is happening in the movie. I am talking about the movie's speed. https://www.simulation-argument.com

 

[katabasis]

Yes, I can clarify what I mean by frame of reference. I mean that, since there is substantial evidence that this is a holographic universe, we should treat the frame of reference as the speed of light.

Why does the holographic principle imply that speed of light ought to be our 'frame of reference'? If it turns out that spacetime as we perceive it is actually an emergent property of a lesser-dimensional reality, why is it that light is somehow privileged above other phenomena to serve as a reference point? Can you explain to me what you think the holographic principle is?

You are speaking about images on a tapestry. All of your examples are grounded in Newtonian language. That is not the state of the art. The world is comprised of images we are creating with our brains. Again, if you were to take a quick dip into books by Donald Hoffman, Beau Lotto, Anil Seth, or the like, it'd go a long way.

I'm actually familiar with Anil Seth and I have to say you're misunderstanding a lot of what he has to say. One of the main concepts he advocates is that our perception of reality is a sort of controlled hallucination. However he does not see this as proof against the notion that a reality does in fact exist. To quote him:

"I don’t go all the way to what in philosophy you might call some version of idealism — that everything is a property of the mental. Some people do. This is where I diverge a little bit from people like [the cognitive scientist] Donald Hoffman. We line up in agreeing that perception is an active construction in the brain and that the goal of perception is not to create a veridical, accurate representation of the real world, but is instead geared toward helping the survival prospects of an organism. We see the world not as it is, but as it’s useful for us to do so.

But he goes further, ending up in a kind of panpsychist idealism that some degree of consciousness inheres in everything. I just don’t buy it, frankly, and I don’t think you need to go there. He might be right, but it’s not testable. I think you can tell a rich story about the nature of consciousness and perception while retaining a broadly realist view of the world."

This mirrors what I said in my first reply - that 'the perceptions of the human mind are best adapted to survival, not truth'. It is perfectly reasonable, however, to conclude that there is an underlying reality that serves as the substrate in which our brains exist and produce consciousness. I think a good analogy would be that we can see only those colors in the visible spectrum. Yet even though we can't see microwaves or x-rays, we can infer their existence from evidence that relates to the light spectrum that we can see. Our survival adapted brain can only perceive certain things, and quite inaccurately, yet we are still able to come to rational conclusions about reality as it truly is.

I also want to mention that if Donald Hoffman is in fact a panpsychist, that view is technically not at odds with there being an underlying reality, only that it ascribes consciousness to it in a epiphenomenal sort of way. Which would be hard to test one way or the other, but in either case it doesn't seem to bear greatly on the subject we are discussing.

You are speaking of the images on a tapestry. I am speaking of the tapestry itself. I believe, in a holographic universe, the tapestry is c. C is the required speed. It can be achieved innately, or via movement. From the frame of reference of matter, c requires speed. From the frame of reference of light, c requires nothing. From the frame of reference of energy, c requires "reverse speed" (contraction). Again, see the Lorentz contraction.

Why is it that your ideas are not also 'images on the tapestry'? You talk a lot about the speed of light and reference frames, but aren't these concepts things that exist within the tapestry of existence?

Yes. I believe we are mistaken at a fundamental level. I share the view of physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, who said this of the Cosmic Microwave Background:

“But when you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun—the plane of the earth around the sun—the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe. The new results are either telling us that all of science is wrong and we’re the center of the universe, or maybe the data is (s)imply incorrect, or maybe it’s telling us there’s something weird about the microwave background results and that maybe, maybe there’s something wrong with our theories on the larger scales.”

The quote you are using refers to the so-called cosmological 'axis of evil'. There are a few possible explanations for it, though there hasn't really been even enough evidence to really prove beyond a doubt that it exists and is not an artifact of observation. One strong possibility is that it's a coincidence - there are so many cosmological phenomena that could possibly line up with some feature of our local existence on earth, that statistically, a few of them are bound to do so coincidentally regardless of whether our spot in the universe is significant. The resolution of the 'axis of evil' in the CMB is around a degree, so mathematically there's around 1/180 odds. Certainly possible. Another possibility is that there is some local distorting effect that is adding this pattern. You have to remember that the anisotropy in the CMB is absolutely miniscule, which means that a very small effect from some local distortion would be sufficient to produce the result we're seeing. Maybe this will turn out to relate to dark matter or something, which would be cool, but in no way does it privilege our location as being 'the center of the universe'.

In fact, more broadly, it is useful to consider that by definition we are the 'center of the observable universe'. We can only see as far as light has had time to reach us, which forms a sphere of observation that we are in the center of - again, by definition. It doesn't have any implications of us being in the center of the whole universe. We can't even see the rest of the universe, so there's no way to know where we are in it.

It is as if we are watching a movie. You are talking about what is happening in the movie. I am talking about the movie's speed. https://www.simulation-argument.com

The simulation argument is an interesting subject but it's really beyond the scope of our discussion about physics. From first principles, if we are in a simulation, then both of our observations and reasonings about the state of 'underlying reality' are essentially worthless. You can think about simulations on our computers as an example - they exist as 0s and 1s coded onto a physical object that is then manipulated by electricity. That is the underlying reality of our computer simulation. However the content of those simulations can be literally anything we can conceptualize that is small enough to fit onto our computer. You can code a 'universe' that has all kinds of objects and fields and rules and whatever, and it may have absolutely nothing to do, schematically, with binary 0s and 1s, the structure of a computer drive, or electric currents. And from the standpoint of that simulation there would be no way to infer the existence of this underlying reality. So if we are part of some sort of simulation on a much larger, alien supercomputer, we fundamentally have no avenue for drawing any sort of conclusions about it. Enough arguing about how light may 'actually act' - for all we know light may not exist. It may be a mathematical coding of a concept that has nothing to do with underlying reality. So I don't think you can use the simulation argument to say anything about our physics, really.

 

[alethea]

katabasis, my friend, I think you are missing the point.

The observer is the center of the universe. The center is not the sun. It is the observer. This is neither new nor controversial. The Copernican model is outdated and inaccurate. To continue to invoke Copernicus and Newton is to cling to the rails of a sinking ship.

The observer is not only the center of the universe; the observer is creating the universe. This is something we absolutely know. It is not original to me. If your brain (your pineal gland) misunderstands the speed of light, you will create the universe at the wrong speed. If your pineal gland is too dense, you will create a world that is too fast.

If the universe is emergent, and it is emerging from light, then the most important thing our brains can do is to have an accurate understanding of light's speed.

For matter to emerge as light requires speed. For light to emerge as light requires nothing. For energy to emerge as light generates speed. The perception of light's speed is dependent upon an observer, and varies. It varies the way the perception of the speed of water would vary. To ice, water has speed. To water, water has no speed. To vapor, water has "reverse speed."

Even without the damning implications of the so-called 'axis of evil'—which, as I'm sure you know, was so dubbed because it implies that there is something deeply flawed with our models—we know, and can demonstrate, that the observer and the creator of the universe is the brain.

It is in that way, in my opinion, that the universe is akin to a simulation. It has nothing to do with alien supercomputers. It is being simulated by us, by consciousness. Are you familiar with the work of Klee Irwin? His paper, "The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics," is brilliant. https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247

 

[alethea]

One strong possibility is that it's a coincidence

Ah, yes. The old "coincidence" explanation. The old coincidence explanation always makes me smile. I strive to have childlike eyes, and to look at the world with beginner's mind, but if you honestly see "coincidence" in the following, you possess an innocence I can only admire and aspire to.

Moon’s size: 27.27% of earth’s size. Moon’s orbital period: 27.27 days. The sun is 400 times larger than the moon—and also 400 times farther away. Hmm. And hey, look at this. More coincidence?

“The black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, has the largest angular size in the sky, followed by M87. M87’s black hole is 1000 times bigger, but roughly 1000 times farther away.” —Feryal Özel, Harvard University Black Hole Initiative

The world is being rendered, my friend. The sooner we accept this, and look more deeply at the mechanics of its rendering, the sooner we can solve our illnesses.

 

[alethea]

 

[alethea]

 

[katabasis]

The observer is the center of the universe. The center is not the sun. It is the observer. This is neither new nor controversial. The Copernican model is outdated and inaccurate. To continue to invoke Copernicus and Newton is to cling to the rails of a sinking ship.

The observer is not only the center of the universe; the observer is creating the universe. This is something we absolutely know. It is not original to me. If your brain (your pineal gland) misunderstands the speed of light, you will create the universe at the wrong speed. If your pineal gland is too dense, you will create a world that is too fast.

To begin with, I never claimed the sun is the center of the universe. Like I said, we observers are the center of the observable universe by definition. It's an essentially meaningless label. It has more to do with the fact that light has a constant speed and that the universe as we know it began abruptly at one instant (as far as we can tell).

You keep bringing up this concept that human perception is tied up with apparent changes in the speed of light. Is there some observation or experiment that shows this all to be true (and would show it to not be true if things were not so)?

If the universe is emergent, and it is emerging from light, then the most important thing our brains can do is to have an accurate understanding of light's speed.

For matter to emerge as light requires speed. For light to emerge as light requires nothing. For energy to emerge as light generates speed. The perception of light's speed is dependent upon an observer, and varies. It varies the way the perception of the speed of water would vary. To ice, water has speed. To water, water has no speed. To vapor, water has "reverse speed."

Please explain to me how and when matter or energy 'emerge as light' and how this effects the speed of light.

Even without the damning implications of the so-called 'axis of evil'—which, as I'm sure you know, was so dubbed because it implies that there is something deeply flawed with our models—we know, and can demonstrate, that the observer and the creator of the universe is the brain.

It is in that way, in my opinion, that the universe is akin to a simulation. It has nothing to do with alien supercomputers. It is being simulated by us, by consciousness. Are you familiar with the work of Klee Irwin? His paper, "The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics," is brilliant. https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/22/2/247

To be clear, when I say 'alien supercomputer', I just mean any all-encompassing substrate which serves to encode the simulation that we may be a part of. In any case, what this paper is describing, in fewer words, is a variant of the simulation hypothesis which posits that the substrate of computation is information itself (much as might be described in the mathematical universe hypothesis), while also following the panpsychist interpretation that all information is epiphenomenally conscious.

I don't know if I agree with this but it's not a totally unreasonable idea. The problem is that it's completely unfalsifiable. You still need to address my point about the simulation hypothesis, namely that there is no way for a simulation to gain information about its own substrate. In the near future we could program a computer with near human consciousness, and absent of us telling the computer otherwise, it could easily come to its own conclusion that it is a simulation whose substrate is information itself. And, at least looking at this first-order simulation, this is magnificently false, since we built the computer out of matter.

So while it's an interesting topic, I don't see how it actually informs any of the other stuff we are discussing, such as the speed of light etc.

Ah, yes. The old "coincidence" explanation. The old coincidence explanation always makes me smile. I strive to have childlike eyes, and to look at the world with beginner's mind, but if you honestly see "coincidence" in the following, you possess an innocence I can only admire and aspire to.

To begin with, I said coincidence was one possible explanation.The 'axis of evil' is not the damning evidence you think it is. To begin with it's disputed - this paper from 2016, for instance provides good evidence against there being any anisotropy. And further it's only one piece of evidence against an extremely coherent web of other evidence which supports the role of the CMB in inflationary cosmology. Drawing some other conclusion from the axis of evil is like thinking your cat speaks English because you thought you heard it say 'hello'.

Coincidences happen - in fact in a statistical sense we ought to expect them to happen. When it comes down to it, not all coincidences are meaningful.

Moon’s size: 27.27% of earth’s size. Moon’s orbital period: 27.27 days. The sun is 400 times larger than the moon—and also 400 times farther away. Hmm. And hey, look at this. More coincidence?

Well, it could be coincidence. But I think I can also explain further about some of these facts. To begin with, moon's apparent size relative to the sun's is not constant. It varies quite a bit, which is why eclipses are not always total eclipses. So this 'coincidence' is helped by the fact that the apparent size ratio occurs in a range, and the exact correspondence just has to be somewhere within the range.

Furthermore, the anthropic principle contributes to the likelihood of this coincidence. The exact correspondence of the apparent sizes of the sun and moon relies on earth having a moon, and a fairly large moon at that. Without a sufficiently large moon, it's entirely possible that highly complex terrestrial life (and therefore human consciousness, at least) would never have developed due to the huge influence of the tides in the vertebrate evolution. Without that we wouldn't even be here to ponder the question, which further biases the likelihood of the apparent correspondence.

And finally, the moon's distance from earth (and thus its apparent size) has varied greatly over the time of earth's existence. There is geological evidence that during the Precambrian era, for instance, the distance between the earth and the moon was only 205,000 miles, compared to 239,000 miles today - about 16% larger apparent size.

“The black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, has the largest angular size in the sky, followed by M87. M87’s black hole is 1000 times bigger, but roughly 1000 times farther away.” —Feryal Özel, Harvard University Black Hole Initiative

This argument epitomizes the notion of coincidence. There are billions of celestial objects in our view which have thousands of apparent properties - size, albedo, distance, color within all sorts of light spectra, etc. There are so, so many ways to pick out a category and see if, say, the two largest objects match in some property, or have a pair of properties that relate in a reciprocal way like in your example. It is overwhelmingly likely that by sheer statistical fluke there will be a coincidence here or there.

 

[alethea]

Ok. Please explain to me how and when matter or energy 'emerge as light' and how this effects the speed of light.

katabasis, though we passionately disagree, I trust and respect you, and admire your intelligence. So I will assume, in spite of the occasional suggestion to the contrary, that you actually read the paper whose contents we are discussing here, called "The Speed of Time in Health and Disease." It is posted at the top of this thread. There is also a peer-review paper, "What We Call the Moon: Cognitive Science Meets Human Health," forthcoming; and a second peer-review paper that was published in January. "Holographic Universe: Implications for Cancer, Parkinson’s, ALS, Autism, ME/CFS DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23756/sp.v9i2.694

In the paper posted above, which I will assume you read, I ask the following:

What if light functions like a plasma? A plasma is something that possesses a dual character, such as a gel. In some ways, gels behave like a liquid; in other ways, like a solid. We see a similar indeterminate quality in stem cells. A plasma’s relationship with time is that of an open gate: not limited to one direction. Neither chicken nor egg, it is a kind of chickenegg.

Perhaps light functions similarly. It can display characteristics of matter, or characteristics of energy. When time (the background fabric) is slow, light can acquire speed, like matter. When time (the background fabric) is fast, light can acquire density, like energy. At the speed of light, the perception of the background fabric flips, from “slow,” to “fast.”

“[O]ur observable universe is at the threshold of expanding faster than the speed of light.” ―physicist Lawrence M. Krauss

Light behaving as a plasma is what I believe we are observing in the fourth state of matter experiment.

I also suggest that we can test this hypothesis that light has a "plasma" quality—whereby it may appear as matter, or light (light qua light), or energy, depending on the observer's location in time—by looking to the mathematics of total solar eclipses. I argue that 27,729 days—the number of days between total solar eclipses—is the distance above or below which light will undergo a state change.

Here is the precise passage.

We don’t seem to have a solid grip on time. We need leap years—even leap seconds—to make our calendars work. But there is a “cosmological constant” when it comes to time. Was there a total solar eclipse on a certain date? Add or subtract 27,729 days, and see if there was also a total solar eclipse on that date (spoiler alert: there was).

27,729 days is ~76 years, about the length of a human life. It’s also roughly 70 times 360 plus 7 times 360 days. Could it be the number of days between branes of time—the distance above or below which light undergoes a state change?

I don’t know. But here’s something interesting. The Tunguska Event took place on June 30, 1908. The largest explosion the world has ever seen, it flattened 80 million trees. No one knows what caused it. But if you add 27,729 days to the date of Tunguska, you get another date—May 31, 1984. What happened on this date?: US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.

Are we living inside a singularity? Beats me; I’m a short story writer. I barely understand what a singularity is. But I do know this. I was sixteen years old in 1986. When I was a teenager, I used to love Mary Chapin Carpenter, especially a song called When Halley Came to Jackson. “It came from the east just as bright as a torch / She saw it in the sky from her daddy’s porch / As heavenly sent as it was back then / When Halley Came to Jackson in 1910.”

Funny. Halley’s Comet “comes around” every ~76 years, almost like a nuclear reaction slicing backward through the branes of time. Almost like … Chernobyl.

Halley’s Comet: 1910 Image (left): Wikimedia Commons; 1986 Image (right): Bob King

 

[alethea]

To be precise, I am not arguing that matter or energy may "emerge as light." I am arguing that light may emerge as matter or energy.

Within a certain bandwidth—27,729 days—light will appear as light (light qua light). But if we were to eclipse that limit—i.e., to view the present moment from the perspective of the past or the future, respectively—we would observe what we now call "light as light" to be nuclear fission or nuclear fusion, respectively. Above the speed of light, light is splitting into many worlds. Below the speed of light, light is fusing into one.

I also mention in the paper that I’m a fan of physicist Sean Carroll and his defense of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, first proposed by Hugh Everett in 1957.

 

[alethea]

To go back to the beginning, and our discussion of Einstein, I am an adherent of those who believe this is a singularity, wherein everything happens at once. When you speak of "that first moment of the Big Bang," you lose me. (You also lose me when you question the consciousness of dinosaurs, but let's let that go.) That "first moment of the Big Bang" in these models, is now. Everything is now. What changes is the distance from which we observe it. As distance from its source increases—as time "lengthens"—the perception of light's speed changes.

 

[alethea]

In terms of Einsteinian relativity, what I am talking about—as you aptly noted, in the beginning—is frame of reference. Past, present, and future are not linear in the way we imagine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speci...File:Relativity_of_Simultaneity_Animation.gif

 

[katabasis]

Let me assure you I did read your original link in its entirety.

What if light functions like a plasma? A plasma is something that possesses a dual character, such as a gel. In some ways, gels behave like a liquid; in other ways, like a solid. We see a similar indeterminate quality in stem cells. A plasma’s relationship with time is that of an open gate: not limited to one direction. Neither chicken nor egg, it is a kind of chickenegg.

I have never heard that definition of plasma before. In physics, plasma refers to the state of matter consisting of ionized particles, with properties distinct from that of an electrically neutral gas.

Perhaps light functions similarly. It can display characteristics of matter, or characteristics of energy. When time (the background fabric) is slow, light can acquire speed, like matter. When time (the background fabric) is fast, light can acquire density, like energy. At the speed of light, the perception of the background fabric flips, from “slow,” to “fast.”

From the perspective of light, time is never slower or faster, since light always maintains the same speed. This is empirically verifiable, and consistent with relativity which itself is empirically verifiable in other respects.

Also separately, in what sense does energy have density? Maybe you've heard the term 'energy density', but that refers to the amount of energy in a given volume of space, say. It does not mean that energy itself has a density. Please explain what you mean by this.

“[O]ur observable universe is at the threshold of expanding faster than the speed of light.” ―physicist Lawrence M. Krauss

Yes, this is true, but it also doesn't contradict relativity. The speed of light is the maximum possible speed of things in the universe, things moving through spacetime. Spacetime itself is not a thing in the universe, so it's not beholden to such a restriction.

Light behaving as a plasma is what I believe we are observing in the fourth state of matter experiment.

To be clear, this is the fourth state of water, not of matter. The experiment shows individual water molecules quantum tunneling. Which is to say that their quantum properties - particles acting as waves - become very apparent. But for matter to act like a wave does bear a relationship to light. Literally all matter has wave-like properties, it's a fairly basic outcome of quantum physics. Matter waves and light waves are really distinct things.

I also suggest that we can test this hypothesis that light has a "plasma" quality—whereby it may appear as matter, or light (light qua light), or energy, depending on the observer's location in time—by looking to the mathematics of total solar eclipses. I argue that 27,729 days—the number of days between total solar eclipses—is the distance above or below which light will undergo a state change.

Conventional thinking surmises that solar eclipses occur regularly because the earth's orbit and the moon's orbit are both regular and thus meet the combined criteria for solar eclipses at regular intervals. Lots of astronomical events happen regularly - it's an outcome of the regularity of orbits (Newtonian physics is sufficient to explain this one). Why would the regularity of eclipses have any relationship with the properties of light?

We don’t seem to have a solid grip on time. We need leap years—even leap seconds—to make our calendars work. But there is a “cosmological constant” when it comes to time. Was there a total solar eclipse on a certain date? Add or subtract 27,729 days, and see if there was also a total solar eclipse on that date (spoiler alert: there was).

The quirks of the calendar do not imply anything about our 'grip on time'. Leap years and leap seconds are necessary because the orbital period of the earth is not neatly divided by the rotational period of the earth.

Coincidences seem meaningful because we never take into account all the things that could have been a coincidence, but weren't.

27,729 days is ~76 years, about the length of a human life. It’s also roughly 70 times 360 plus 7 times 360 days. Could it be the number of days between branes of time—the distance above or below which light undergoes a state change?

I don’t know. But here’s something interesting. The Tunguska Event took place on June 30, 1908. The largest explosion the world has ever seen, it flattened 80 million trees. No one knows what caused it. But if you add 27,729 days to the date of Tunguska, you get another date—May 31, 1984. What happened on this date?: US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.

Why do you think any of this is significant? It's all incredibly arbitrary - it reminds me a bit of this image:

What an incredible correlation! Don't you see that highway fatalities and lemons imported from Mexico match exactly?

When it comes down to it there's a ton of data, measurements, figures, statistics, etc. about all kinds of things. All kinds of things have spurious relationships like this. The way you can confirm a meaning behind a correlation is to examine the connection between the two things. It's pretty easy to see there's likely no connection between highway fatalities and lemons imported from Mexico. If you want to prove otherwise, you need evidence of some connection between the two things, some compelling chain of reasoning that allows one to effect the other.

To go back to the beginning, and our discussion of Einstein, I am an adherent of those who believe this is a singularity, wherein everything happens at once. When you speak of "that first moment of the Big Bang," you lose me. (You also lose me when you question the consciousness of dinosaurs, but let's let that go.) That "first moment of the Big Bang" in these models, is now. Everything is now. What changes is the distance from which we observe it. As distance from its source increases—as time "lengthens"—the perception of light's speed changes.

That isnot what a singularity is.
And furthermore, how is everything now? The conscious experience of a 'now' is an illusion, one which only exists within human consciousness. The fact of the matter is that there's plenty of evidence that suggests that spacetime, including what we perceive as past and future, actually exists.

Also for the record, I wasn't questioning the consciousness of dinosaurs. I was asserting that they were in fact consciousness, which throws a wrench into your idea that consciousness is somehow tied to the synchronicity of the sun and moon's apparent sizes (as at that time the moon was a different average distance from earth).

In terms of Einsteinian relativity, what I am talking about—as you aptly noted, in the beginning—is frame of reference. Past, present, and future are not linear in the way we imagine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speci...File:Relativity_of_Simultaneity_Animation.gif

I already addressed this in my second post:
"It seems like you might be basing this on Einstein's 'relativity of simultaneity', and if so it's a huge misread. The upshot of that theory is that we can't say whether some events occur simultaneously or not, as relativistic reference frames produce different results. It does not speak to past, present, and future as a whole, and in fact only applies to events that are 1) spatially separated and 2) causally unconnected. The vast majority of things we care about here on Earth about are neither of the two."

 

[alethea]

I share Miriam Freud's belief that psychoanalysis is outdated and narcissistic—and, I would add, has contributed greatly to the death of empathy, teaching five generations of souls to assign psychiatric labels to other people instead of trying to imagine what it feels like to be them.

I realize it is perhaps threatening, maybe even frightening, to consider that reality is being rendered, and that what we perceive as taking place in linear fashion (past-->present-->future) is, in fact, when viewed from another perspective—i.e. the speed of light—simultaneous. But it is worthy of consideration. I am not the author of this idea—it dates back to Einstein, and before him, to religious sages throughout history—I am merely one of its advocates.

Again, areas that future research into the core etiology of ME/CFS might include are:

-- The brain's perception of pH

-- The body's core metabolic rate, which is acid-generating, and may be limited by the brain's perception of pH

-- The principle of the metabolic cul-de-sac and feedback looping

-- Damage to the pineal gland

-- Cerebrospinal pressure, and/or mineral calcifications on the pineal gland, masking its ability to accurate gauge the strength of forces

 

[alethea]

From the perspective of light, time is never slower or faster

Precisely. What I am arguing is that time is only slower or faster from the perspectives of energy and matter, respectively; and that this difference in the perception of time's speed is balanced by the "state" (speed) of light in matter and energy. At the speed of light—when light is light—time is simultaneous.

This is part of the idea of a holographic universe, where matter and energy are emergent, and it is light from which they emerge.

At the speed of light—when matter is playing the role of light, in locus light—the universe will appear to be accelerating and expanding.

At the speed of light—when energy is playing the role of light, in locus light—the universe will appear to be decelerating and contracting.

At the speed of light—when light is playing the role of light, i.e. when foreground and background are as two parallel trains—the universe will appear to be stationary.

I am arguing that there are different ways of seeing, that the perspectives of matter, light, and energy will afford different views of time. But that light's perspective—at least, in the Platonic sense—is the "truer" perspective.

 

[alethea]

in what sense does energy have density?

With energy, we speak of density.
With matter, we speak of speed.

 

[alethea]

To be clear, this is the fourth state of water, not of matter.

Water is a form of matter.
This is widely referred to as a fourth state of matter in the literature. A simple search on Google scholar should generate the articles for you.

 

[alethea]

Why would the regularity of eclipses have any relationship with the properties of light?

Because I am arguing that time has a fundamental unit, 27,729 days (or ~76 years). Next, I am asking: Might time's fundamental unit have a relationship to a "fundamental unit" of light? Might a "fundamental unit" of light be measured from eclipse to eclipse?
To date (trying to save you some time here, and to protect your finger strength) we consider the length between eclipses to be neither a fundamental unit of time nor a fundamental unit of light.
That is right.
Nor do we have a theory that allows us to view the cosmos in a unified way. Perhaps using the length of time between eclipses as a fundamental unit could help to facilitate this.
Furthermore, perhaps eight concentric solar eclipses—also see the number of dimensions in an E8 crystal—"completes" the singularity (black hole).

 

[alethea]

Many people believe this is a singularity. Many believe we could be living inside a black hole. My favorite is Nikodem Poplawski. https://www.insidescience.org/news/every-black-hole-contains-new-universe

"In 1915 Einstein wrote the leading description of gravitation in modern physics, also known as the general theory of relativity. This theory describes the universe so well that it never fails, except for the Big Bang and at centres of black holes, both are singularities where the mathematics of general relativity breaks down. The mathematics used to describe both events are so similar, that some physicists argue that the big bang is in fact the singularity of a gigantic black hole." —https://www.deeconometrist.nl/physics/are-you-living-inside-a-black-hole/

You might think that the brain's perception of the way the speeds of light and time titrate—its perception of itself in time, i.e. where we are in the singularity—has nothing to do with human illness. I believe you are mistaken.

 

[alethea]

The quirks of the calendar do not imply anything about our 'grip on time'.

I disagree. We need to constantly play catch-up, we have had to re-calibrate, omit entire years, omit years again, wonk around with the labels (October should be 8; November should be 9, etc.) when trying to get a working calendrical system. Because we do not have a fundamental unit of time that remains constant across time. I am suggesting a new fundamental unit—27,729 days—and suggesting that time ("singularity time") should be measured from eclipse to eclipse.