Thinking in 50ms Increments (2020) by planksip Philosopher Daniel Sanderson
Plank Time and poetry? This is is a consumptive perspective. Poetic? You be the judge.
I designed a working clock, not quite a reversal of chronology which would be an impossibility and a violation of physics but a counter-intuitive experience; a visual and poetic metronome, a cadence of sorts; illustrative and sometimes monotonous, the actual clock receives protests of tick-tocking keeping the majority of guests and family members up at night. Disrupted pre-sleep rituals are the complaints that I hear most often with the exception of my oldest, who loves the ticking sound to fall asleep to. Go figure! This clock face uses vector graphics with the numbers appearing in reverse order; 11 is switched with 1, 10 is switched with 2, and so on.
Stop, Watch and Go - Time is Ticking, the Reverse Chronology of planksip® and Möbius Maker
The tick-tock of this clock is where the poetry happens and why it matters. On the other hand, and there are two, is another narrative altogether. Related yet poetic, perhaps epic in nature, the narrative is telling. The seconds hand reveals 1,200 distinct yet logically sequential states, the progression of which formes an ontology of sorts laid down in a map of memes; individual and cultural. Multiplying this 50 ms increment by 1,200 and the resulting second is 360 degrees; this particular pattern of time is circular and yet the reasoning is heliocentric and often Hellenic in origin. Consciousness is the other narrative I warned about, hours to defend, rather than seconds to appreciate, the approach is closely coupled to awareness and principles of pleasure and pain. Let’s explore its depths through time, powered by planksip® and consciousness of sorts, an aesthetic sui generis for all conscious creatures. One and the same is all I mean, the foundation of felt experience as the precondition to consciousness itself. Herself if you prefer a personification.
Using a 0.05 degree rotation, 50 ms is the base unit for the following pattern.
Sixteen is significant, for it represents randomness and uncertainty under the idealized standard deviation. For me, this is more of a thought experiment, a pedagogical heuristic. An organic platform for “re”search. But what is it that I am searching for? Truth claims do not require a claimant, only a conscious observer and never a malignant deceiver. Father figures are divine even Freudian at times but the truth of matter is what “truly” matters. If the number sixteen isn’t yet apparent, consider the 68–95–99.7 rule in statistics for a standard deviation (mu). Described as the empirical rule, 32 percent falls outside of the protection of the first standard deviation (100-68=32). Thirty-two divided by two, because of the symmetry of the bell shaped curve, gives us sixteen on either side of the divide, o sepi to poli. Reflective observations reveal the unexpected event(s), black swans events if you insist.[^2] But how is it, you may ask, do we need black swans for a sequence of time? Of course we don’t. The pattern is binomial. On... Off. The space between is called life. The bifurcation is what matters (to us).
Quantifying the unexpected is the topic of much debate and ongoing concern. Time, on the other hand, marches on to the cadence of Einstein’s fourth dimension; space-time to the rhythm, rotations and expansion of the Universe. My intentions of displaying increments of 50 ms was to prime the reader with primacy of action potentials and the role they play in consciousness.
Once per day I decrease the delta of the second by an order of magnitude of two, where one second equals fifty milliseconds. Imagine being able to make time 20 times slower. Not possible you say? Yes you are correct with your nah say, however let’s imagine our perception changing. We know that our attention span is shrinking, making the next perceivable descent of man could be intense concentration. Mindfulness is marketing this procrustean bed of truncated thought. I don’t read maps; I am a GPS junkie. Google is my personal mnemonic secretary. My reliance on technology is self-serving. It’s the actions we do that define who we are and what we become. I am a romantic technocrat with a soft spot for the bohemian.