When Time Gets Off Track

2002 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Jan Faye

Over the last forty years, philosophers have argued back and forth about backward causation. It requires a certain structure of time for something as backward causation to be not only possible but also to take place in the real world. In case temporal becoming is an objective feature of the world in the sense that the future is unreal, or at least ontologically indeterminate, it is impossible to see how backward causation can arise. Th e same difficulty does not hold with respect to forward causation. For even though it is assumed according to one dynamic view of time, the instant view or presentism, that merely present events exist—and past events therefore are no longer real or have become ontologically indeterminate—such a view can still maintain that past events once were there to cause present events. Future events, however, are still to come, and being indeterminate or nothing at all, they cannot cause any events in the present. In other words, causation backwards in time can occur only if we think of time as static; that is, no objective becoming exists, and the world consists of tenselessly occurring future events that exist in the same sense as past and present events. Backward causation requires the so-called full view, or possibly the half-full view, of time.

There are hundreds of technologies today. Companies and brands continuously try to create and bring something innovative in the market to attract consumers to them in order to get a rise in market share. In the world where people have started getting used to hundreds of technologies, if asked about those which have affected them the most in last ten to twelve years, no one will miss mentioning blockchain. Blockchain has gained very much popularity after the introduction of bitcoin and ethereum in its environment. Blockchain mainly has two types of functionalities. One that involves transactions and the other which talks about contracts. This work highlights some of the very much talked about applications of this technology in the real world. The work also considers various factors and methods by which this technology can be introduced to the audience by suggesting ways in which blockchain can be introduced in the lives. Discussion on how this technology can affect human lives in the future is also an important part of this paper. Because blockchain has huge number of applications that the paper has tried to inculcate, it can be a technology of future which many scientists and industrialists have already started to believe. That is why this work finds a unique and all in one collection of applications and possibilities of Blockchain.


2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Paul Gee

This article addresses three questions. First, what is the deep pleasure that humans take from video games? Second, what is the relationship between video games and real life? Third, what do the answers to these questions have to do with learning? Good commercial video games are deep technologies for recruiting learning as a form of profound pleasure, and have much to tell us about what learning could look like in the future should we relinquish the old grammars of traditional schooling. They are extensions of life insofar as they recruit and externalize some fundamental features of how humans orientate themselves in and to the real world when operating at their best. Video games create a projective stance in the sense of a stance toward the world in which we see the world simultaneously as a project imposed on us and as a site onto which we can actively project our desires, values and goals. A special category of games allows players to enact the projective stance of an ‘authentic professional’, thereby experiencing deep expertise of the kind that so widely eludes learners in school.


Mäetagused ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 155-184
Author(s):  
Nikolai Anisimov ◽  
◽  
Eva Toulouze ◽  
◽  

In Udmurt culture sleep (iz’on, kölon, um) as well as dreams (vöt, uyvöt) have occupied a significant place. According to ordinary understandings, dreams are not subjected to this world’s rules of time and space: in a dream, places and spaces may suddenly change, and time moves quickly, or it does not move at all; it has stopped. Sleep and dreams are not thoroughly explained phenomena, and as such, they play a significant role in the communication between the world of the living and the world of the deities (spirits). Their importance is confirmed by the rules one has to follow when going to bed. The dream becomes a sacred space, in which it is possible to acquire sacred knowledge and skills. The narratives we are acquainted with tell us that during sleep one of the person’s souls, called urt, can fly away. Probably this is the reason why it is forbidden to suddenly awake a person sleeping: they may not wake up at all or may even lose their reason. Earlier the Udmurt even organised special rituals to catch the second soul. In the Udmurt culture, sleep and dreams constitute a non-real space, in which the living and the dead are able to meet and communicate. The initiators of the dreams can be both the living and the dead, in different situations. Through dreams, the dead are able to transmit to the living their wishes, their knowledge about events or accidents to come; they may complain about certain circumstances, etc. Today, the Udmurt are attentive to all dreams; they see in them signs connected to the real world and given from above, and they must be considered in order not to disturb the balance between the worlds.


2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 19-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abadir M. Ibrahim

From the backwaters of stagnation in democratization, the Arab Spring countries carried the day and became trailblazers to be replicated by activists all over the world. A couple of seasons after the initial revolution/revolt, Egyptians had transformed their political system, written themselves a constitution, and apparently destroyed the same constitution. While all sectors of society played a role in shaping the revolution, the latter has also affected society. Egypt’s 2012 constitution, one of the outcomes of the revolution, captures a moment in the process and also reflects an attempt to install an Islamist ideology in a constitutional democratic form. The constitution’s attempt to negotiate between Shari‘ah and democracy and its outline of a human rights regime make the future of democracy and human rights ambiguous, as the Islamist stance promulgated has yet to be tested in the real world of politics. As it stands today, the constitution is too ambiguous to allow one to draw a clear picture of the future of constitutional practice. What is clear, however, is that the revolution and subsequent constitution have affected the Islamist discourse about democracy and human rights.


2019 ◽  
pp. 175-201
Author(s):  
David Wood

This chapter discusses the future as another site of contestation. Jacques Derrida insists that people understand the “to-come” not as a real future “down the road” but rather as a universal structure of immanence. However, such a structure is no substitute for the hard work of taking responsibility for what are often entirely predictable and preventable disasters. It is important to steer clear of the utopian black hole, the thought—or shape of desire—that the future would need to bring a future perfection or completion. To avoid the trap set by such a shape of desire, it is not necessary—indeed is necessary not—to reduce the future to a universal structure of immanence. What is equally disturbing is not people's inability to expect the unexpected but the failure of the institutions to prevent the all-too-predictable. Too many of the institutions have conditions of sustainability that are unhealthily insulated from the real world, or indeed coconspirators in the fantasy that people can go on like this.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brilian Putra Amiruddin ◽  
Denisse Rochmad Romdhony

Since the world transformed into the digital era, e-commerce is the real thing to concern for everyone, not only limited to the business people but also for people who want to buy something without hassle. Furthermore, as an estimation global retail e-commerce sales almost grow doubled in range of three years from US\$ 1.3 trillion in 2014 to US\$ 2.3 trillion in 2017 and this growth trend will still last until the future. However, this trend demands innovative solutions, applying automation technology to e-commerce logistics is one of the solutions which significant to the future of e-commerce. Based on that, this study principally talks about the real-world implementation example of automation technology in logistics as well discuss the effects that will be faced by e-commerce towards using the automation technology in logistics so the e-commerce industry will be ready for facing future disruption.


2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 19-47
Author(s):  
Abadir M. Ibrahim

From the backwaters of stagnation in democratization, the Arab Spring countries carried the day and became trailblazers to be replicated by activists all over the world. A couple of seasons after the initial revolution/revolt, Egyptians had transformed their political system, written themselves a constitution, and apparently destroyed the same constitution. While all sectors of society played a role in shaping the revolution, the latter has also affected society. Egypt’s 2012 constitution, one of the outcomes of the revolution, captures a moment in the process and also reflects an attempt to install an Islamist ideology in a constitutional democratic form. The constitution’s attempt to negotiate between Shari‘ah and democracy and its outline of a human rights regime make the future of democracy and human rights ambiguous, as the Islamist stance promulgated has yet to be tested in the real world of politics. As it stands today, the constitution is too ambiguous to allow one to draw a clear picture of the future of constitutional practice. What is clear, however, is that the revolution and subsequent constitution have affected the Islamist discourse about democracy and human rights.


1969 ◽  
Vol 2 (04) ◽  
pp. 598-599
Author(s):  
Michael Haas

Hollywood applauds Glendon Schubert's script for a possible soap opera in his pre-view ofApproaches to the Study of Political Science. Stereotypic characters, miscasting of actors, words put in the mouths of fictitious persons, and maudlin grief are all present in his poignantad hominenremarks, while a task which I regard as important — the development of a science of politics — is curiously overlooked by Mr. Schubert as the main purpose of the volume. And, in a manner similar to David Easton's eloquent 1969 presidential address, it is important to tune out Mr. Schubert's solipsisticOne Man's Familyand to discuss instead the real reasons for all the current fuss about postbehavioral options.My own view is that political science has achieved considerable maturity as a discipline in recognizing a fundamental symbiosis between three facets of science as the 1970's begin. At one level, a scientist may seek to describe an individual case, to calibrate measuring Instruments, and to engineer specific changes in the real world. At a second level a scientist can search for relationships between two or more variables across several cases in order to state generalizations that will serve as guides to the future and to cases as yet unexamined. Yet myriad generalizations do not cumulatively add up to higher and higher levels of scientific achievement until we consider a third facet of science, wherein one seeks analytical explanations for empirical findings and smooths out the idiosyncracies of particular research investigations into analytically parsimonious paradigms, models, and theories concerning how the world is put together. These three levels or types of science may be calledclinical, empirical, andtheoretical, respectively.


Author(s):  
Matthew Rendall

It is sometimes argued in support of discounting future costs and benefits that if we gave the same weight to the future as to the present, we would invest nearly all our income, but never spend it. Rather than enjoying the fruits of our investments, we would always do better to reinvest them. Undiscounted utilitarianism (UU), so the argument goes, is collectively self-defeating. This attempted reductio ad absurdum fails. Regardless of whether each generation successfully followed UU, or merely attempted to follow it, we could never get trapped in endless saving. The real problem is different: without the ability to foresee the end of the world, UU cannot tell us how much to save. Discounting is a defensible response, but only when coupled with a rule against risking catastrophe.


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