The Relativity of Distance
brianlux
Posts: 41,677
Here's the scene:
You live in a house on Manning Hill.
Your mail box is on another hill exactly 100 yards from your house as the crow flies.
There is a gravel path that leads straight from your house to the mail box that undulates up and down over several small rolling ridges (much like a mini basin and range topography).
The crow flies from your house straight to the mail box and travels exactly 100 yards.
You walk straight from your house to the mail box but must traverse up and down the rolling ridges, thus your walk is more than 100 yards.
Your pet ant walks straight from your house to the mail box but not only must traverse over the undulations of the rolling ridges but also the undulations of the gravel in the path and thus must walk much farther than you do.
Your pet microorganism walks strait from your house to the mail box but must not only traverse the undulations of the rolling ridges and the undulations of the gravel but also the many tiny cracks and fissure on each piece of gravel and thus must travel a very, very great distance to get to the mail box.
Distance is relative.
This seems fractal like-- maybe even verging on chaos.
Or it may just mean that some will have to travel farther to get to the same place.
You live in a house on Manning Hill.
Your mail box is on another hill exactly 100 yards from your house as the crow flies.
There is a gravel path that leads straight from your house to the mail box that undulates up and down over several small rolling ridges (much like a mini basin and range topography).
The crow flies from your house straight to the mail box and travels exactly 100 yards.
You walk straight from your house to the mail box but must traverse up and down the rolling ridges, thus your walk is more than 100 yards.
Your pet ant walks straight from your house to the mail box but not only must traverse over the undulations of the rolling ridges but also the undulations of the gravel in the path and thus must walk much farther than you do.
Your pet microorganism walks strait from your house to the mail box but must not only traverse the undulations of the rolling ridges and the undulations of the gravel but also the many tiny cracks and fissure on each piece of gravel and thus must travel a very, very great distance to get to the mail box.
Distance is relative.
This seems fractal like-- maybe even verging on chaos.
Or it may just mean that some will have to travel farther to get to the same place.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.
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08/21/2009: Toronto, ON
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- Christopher McCandless
Traversing from point A to B can't be the same journey for anyone or anything...part of what I love about this life.
(and thanks for the smile, Shorty!)
bing bing bing bing
I look at it this way. Two people, same sized brain - one in a wheelchair, the other not. The former will have a tougher time - a longer or more difficult path to make his way, while the latter won't.
Bing-o?
With that in mind... the person in the wheelchair may be miles ahead, those tougher times and all.
We all walk the long road.
(plus, the ant may be facing tougher times too!)
Free ride!
Right, Hedonist!
No, it's more big picture than that. It's more about things not being what they seem.
Of course, othertimes you really want to have your phyiscal mail. During those times, if the walk is too tough and too long, simply move your mail box closer to home.
"Let's check Idaho."
the postman might get a little upset, because then he has to make a longer trek.
- Christopher McCandless
In that case, move home closer to the mailbox.
"Let's check Idaho."
yeah I wasn't sure, took what he was literally talking about and made an analogy
to our real journey's is all.
the human in this scenario
is the only entity with a concept of distance.
The crow, the ant, the micro-organism,
none of these can gauge the distance to the mailbox
using any concrete form of measurement.
Only the human can estimate the distance
in terms of something that others might understand,
like metres or yards.
To the others, it's simply a LONG way to go.
Distance may be relative,
but it is the awareness of how to conceive + quantify distance
that makes it universal,
at least for humanfolk!
Cheers.
"They" be me.
Possibly. My reality might be similar to yours. On the other hand, if it is not, that's ok too. R. D. Laing put it this way:
“What we call ‘normal’ is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience. It is radically estranged from the structure of being. The more one sees this, the more senseless it is to continue with generalized descriptions of supposedly specifically schizoid, schizophrenic, hysterical ‘mechanisms.’ There are forms of alienation that are relatively strange to statistically ‘normal’ forms of alienation. The ‘normally’ alienated person, by reason of the fact that he acts more or less like everyone else, is taken to be sane. Other forms of alienation that are out of step with the prevailing state of alienation are those that are labeled by the ‘formal’ majority as bad or mad.”
― R.D. Laing, The Politics of Experience
Interesting thoughts here, Dru_Cortez. I do wonder about the theory that humans are the only ones with a concept of distance. Might not they be able to perceive distance through sight or smell or a combination of senses without the use of devices? This also gets closer to at least one objective of the scenario presented which has to do with certain natural as opposed to human processes.
For example, monkeys who make their way by hopping from tree branch to tree branch. It involves calculation on their part.
Or, our cats getting ready to jump onto the counter...they'll sit there, wiggle their butt, contemplate the right move. They know how high they need to leap and are gauging themselves. They won't even try to do a straight jump to the top of the fridge because they know they can't make it. They may not know it's six feet to the jump because we came up with the term of feet, but I think they have their own language, if you will, that does the same.
(PS, Brian - this is a nice little respite for my brain in the midst of...today. Thanks.)
You're quite welcome, Hedonist. The odd thing is that I was up half the night because at the end of the day we watched the movie "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close", a film based a book by Jonathan Foer that takes a fictitious look at a boys struggle to find answers in the wake of 9/11. I can watch horror movies, end-of-the-world movies, The Shining or anything obviously fictitious and sleep just fine. Films about or based on real events that are horrible are much more disturbing to me, so I was unable to sleep and began to meditate on this concept of linear and non-linear distance (and thinking) that relates to chaos theory as well as natural vs human actions.
And then today happened.
Yes most if not all of are in need of consolation and distraction.
The lounge is definitely open and-- at least metaphorically-- the first round is on me.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
How was the term "wormhole" coined? No one else here Time travels?
A Tesseract concept.
:corn:
i time travel all the time.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
How did this brainy thread end up in AET. I'm really enoying the read though.
want to be enlightened"
Because it would deconstruct in AMT.
And speaking of deconstructing- part of the story has to do with equations which, at one point in time were mostly linear. That's where our idea of progress and mechanization comes from and our tendency to place all our chips on technology. The house and the mail box allegory has a lot to do with deconstructing linear equations which, so I'm told, led to the the idea of non-linear equations and eventually led to chaos theory. This has it's best analogies found in fluid dynamics but to fully understand that I'd have to track down my old friend Larry who, at the bright young age of twenty two or three received his PhD in Mathematical Computation of Turbulent Fluid Flow at MIT... (or try reading Manning's Grassland, from where this whole train of thought originated)... but I probably won't see Larry again until 2019 so...
umm, yeah, Chaos Theory. Well that's where nature comes in because most of what happens in nature is essentially chaotic... but a kind of chaos that forms an ever moving flow of change and balance- an intriguing dance that mechanisms- so far- haven't been able to reproduce.
I'm for putting my chips in with nature but I don't run the table so... well... what next?
(And please, I would love it if someone would explain time. Lines are so easy to draw but I can't seem to make a picture of time.)
Basin and range, basin and range. What goes down sooner or later goes up.
on the ant, decimating it, and my neighbor shot the crow for
eating his corn. Damn it!! Got to go get the fucking mail myself.
No seriously.. Animals DO have a contracted sense of distance just not
relative distance. For example.. The ant leaves a tiny pheromone trail so
that regardless of the distance it travels, it can always find the way back
to its nest, and the same, any other ant in this particular
colony can follow the same trail to and fro. Note you always see ants
scrambling over one another along the same path, those WITH burdens, are
returning to the nest. Those unlaiden by burdens are those returning to the
food source. This pheromone trail is what theyarefollowing.
The Crow, has an internal mapping pattern in its brain that literally counts
Out the beats of their wings breaths in drift time and degrees and breaths
during banks. They also use sight mapping, so when you see a Crow land and
start tapping on wood with its beak, they are trying to locate flock mates.
They only do this when the map has changed. However, they have learned to
adapt enough to take that vehicles move into account. They are very clever, and
they are constantly adapting to the changes we make in their world. Not only
does the Crow know how far your hypothetical mail box is, he knows how the fuck
to find it if you were to move it.
The Micro-organism is fucked!