That’s a nice trippy example. 
Actually that is not quite correct still as the particular outcome for both the water and the cloth was caused by the other. The cloth got wet by the water and the water got absorbed by the cloth 
haha yes, awesome 
never thought of it that way.
that’s a great way to put it actually. it’s like in actuality instead of A cause B, it’s like A and B interact, there’s no priority of which one is ‘first’, and it’s like that with all of the infinitude of matter rearranging itself all at once.
but for practical purposes we can use intelligence to make a model and use that to navigate. but that’s different from what is actually happening
final thought… When I order a package – does the mailman deliver the package or does the package bring the mailman?
Yes I think that is as close as I can summarise what I have been coming to as well 
And the last thing which comes back here is that the model inevitably requires a frame of reference (which does not apply when talking about infinitude, hence the potential for confusion).
The model cannot exist without the frame of reference, for example if I am interested in why the cloth is wet I will say the water caused it, if I am interested in why the water is missing from the counter I will say the cloth caused it! If there was no frame of reference (as it is when talking about infinitude) then there is simply things happening of their own accord.
In the same way that in order to operate in the world I need to use a concept of here and there (so that I can direct my friend to me when he is lost for example) even though in actuality there is only this place. So in this model I am the reference for here and there and equally cause and effect requires one to take a viewpoint from which to asses - a reference point, the reference is ultimately arbitrary in each case which is why it will be a model only.
I think this issue may go back to inertia, “an object at rest tends to stay at rest / an object in motion tends to stay in motion”
This works pretty well at the scale we live in, shoot a pool ball it hits another one and they bounce around. They weren’t moving until someone used the cue to hit the ball.
But an ‘object’ is really a structure made of trillions+ of tiny ‘particles,’ which are made of smaller ‘particles,’ which are made of smaller ‘particles,’ and we don’t even know what those particles are really or exactly how they interact.
We can model their interactions somewhat, but that still doesn’t tell us exactly what they are or what they’re doing.
So it just goes back to being a useful model, which gets us by from our frame of reference. It doesn’t tell us ‘what’s going on.’
Especially at those micro scales it’s apparent that a lot more interactions that are happening than purely A effects B. Things are heating up, cooling down, state-changing, vibrating constantly, giving off radiation, decaying, attracting other particles, etc. etc. etc., and our models have gotten increasingly complex trying to keep up with observation… theoretical physics still can’t shake that ‘theoretical’ label.
Models are an abstraction away from the actually-observed, once we start filling in our intellectual reasons for why things are happening, “oh that’s because of protons,” we’ve made a leap into imagination-land. You can make some accurate predictions in imagination-land, but it’s still a projection.
What makes the actual experience the actual experience is that that ‘escape’ isn’t made, it’s sticking with the firsthand experiencing of what’s happening.
Another point is that there isn’t such thing as an ‘object,’ that’s again a useful shorthand. Every object is interacting with every other object constantly, this is most obvious with heat exchange. If you have a heat differential, there is movement on the heat gradient. All the time.
So again you have a ball hitting another ball, but those two balls didn’t exist ‘separately’ until ‘something else’ ‘came along’ and moved it. It’s all one system of everything moving all the time, sometimes colliding. But the collisions don’t come ‘from the outside,’ outside & inside are convenient shortcuts that we invent to simplify situations.
That’s where point of reference comes in, ‘I’ invent the static situation in which something must come ‘from the outside’ and bump into ‘an object.’ This is also ‘an event,’ something that happens in my own projected time.
The person that was coming to hit the balls had been moving for a long, long time before that particular interaction occurred. Really I have /physically/ always been moving. Just like this entire universe has always been moving.
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In apperception it is always now. Each moment of movement is now.
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Yeah I think this pretty much sums up what we have been getting down to, there is quite a few things I need to segregate and hold in a certain way, from a certain viewpoint to then be able to say this event is caused by this event (these are the tools of the intellect), whereas in actuality there is the entire universe where things are simply happening of their own accord as they always have been, without any outside help and without a direction. Isn’t that incredible to contemplate, all this happening eternally and without a cause.
This is way better than any explanation involving a god or some ‘special force’, this is way more wondrous.
Man what would science be like if the entire population was free long enough to study the actual universe, surely it would make the current knowledge seem like the scribblings of a cave-man.
We can’t measure “actual time” with atomic clocks.
Only a consciousness being conscious of being consciousness, (the universe, conscious of itself as a sentient being) can experience that “time doesn’t move, and has no duration”.
So there is time we measure with the rotation of the planet, and with clocks, and there is the universe which only happens now.
A clock, even an “atomic clock” is measuring it’s relationship in space and matter to it’s relative frame of reference.
It was interesting to read that gravity, speed and distance are all affecting the operation of these atomic clocks.
Even though, locally, the clock is running perfectly, when compared to another perfectly operating clock in another frame of reference, they are running at different speeds. Even though they use atomic interactions to do it.
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However, because it’s unfalsifiable experimentally, experiences of “actual time” are experiences. They are factually experienced, but will never be in a scientific journal.
Unless of course, the “action at distance” quickening experience reported on the AFT is repeated somehow in experimental conditions.
Imagine that! Consciousness having faster than light communication at distance.
actualism reports assert that consciousness is a product of the actual world, so would that mean that it is subject to the same time dilation effects?
What is being experienced then? Time not moving, yet technically speaking, it’s “not moving” relatively faster at see level?
Hmmmm, hahaha 
It would mean the “arena” concept of time has no scientific use, and is another concept.
A experience, for sure. A scientific statement? Probably not.
For time or space to be arenas for things to move in, isn’t that privileging them?
Anyway, I like that I saw the “feeling” hiding in the cause and effect thought. There is no actual time or distance between events which are always happening now. Sure, I can observe the ball rolling across the billiard table, but it was always now. ‘I’ filled in the time/distance with a feeling, to create a space for ‘me’.
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You’re conflating actual time, which always is still, with the rate that things move relative to each other.
When the earth rotates 360 degrees, it’s not that time has passed, and we measure that amount of time that has elapsed. It’s that the earth has rotated 360 degrees, all the while the “time” was always now.
We can then create another device, say a circular apparatus with a radial line that moves in a “clockwise” direction (
), and tune it so that for each degree the earth rotates, the radial line also rotates one degree. This is called an “analog” device, because the rotating radial line is an analog (“a person or thing seen as comparable to another”) for the earth rotating.
But it’s not measuring time elapsing… it’s measuring the earth rotating.
(BTW I just realized that holy shit, each time the hour hand moves one degree, the earth rotates one degree!!! LOL)
As such this is non-sensical:
Time doesn’t move in just the same way everywhere. But things apparently (experimentally verifiably) move at different rates relative to each other based on various factors like velocity and gravity.
To reiterate, nowhere nowhen anywhere in the entirety of the universe is time passing. All there is are objects moving. And all we can do to measure anything is to compare one object relative to another object.
Also made me curious, what does an atomic clock actually measure?
Here is how the atomic clock actually works:
A “cesium(-beam) atomic clock” (or “cesium-beam frequency standard”) is a device that uses as a reference the exact frequency of the microwave spectral line emitted by atoms of the metallic element cesium, in particular its isotope of atomic weight 133 (“Cs-133”). The integral of frequency is time, so this frequency, 9,192,631,770 hertz (Hz = cycles/second), provides the fundamental unit of time, which may thus be measured by cesium clocks.
…
According to quantum theory, atoms can only exist in certain discrete (“quantized”) energy states depending on what orbits about their nuclei are occupied by their electrons. Different transitions are possible; those in question refer to a change in the electron and nuclear spin (“hyperfine”) energy level of the lowest set of orbits called the “ground state.” Cesium is the best choice of atom for such a measurement because all of its 55 electrons but the outermost are confined to orbits in stable shells of electromagnetic force. Thus, the outermost electron is not disturbed much by the others. The cesium atoms are kept in a very good vacuum of about 10 trillionths of an atmosphere so that the cesium atoms are little affected by other particles. All this means that they radiate in a narrow spectral line whose wavelength or frequency can be accurately determined.
…
In a cesium clock like these, liquid cesium is heated to a gaseous state in an oven. A hole in the oven allows the atoms to escape at high speed. These particles pass between two electromagnets whose field causes the atoms to separate into two beams, depending on which spin energy state they are in. Those in the lower energy state pass through the ends of a U-shaped cavity in which they are irradiated by microwaves of 3.26-cm wavelength.
The absorption of these microwaves excite transitions of many of the atoms from the lower to the higher energy state. The beam continues through another pair of electromagnets, whose field again divides up the beam. Those atoms in the higher energy state strike a hot wire, which ionizes them. Thereafter, a mass spectrometer selects only the cesium atoms from any impurities and directs them onto an electron multiplier.
The frequency of the microwaves is adjusted until the electron multiplier output current is maximized, constituting the measurement of the atoms’ resonance frequency. This frequency is elctronically divided down and used in a feedback control circuit (“servo-loop”) to keep a quartz crystal oscillator locked to a frequency of 5 megahertz (MHz), which is the actual output of the clock, along with a one-pulse-per-second signal. The entire apparatus is shielded from external magnetic fields.
http://gisweb.massey.ac.nz/topic/webreferencesites/gps/usnavy/cesium.html
From what I was able to gather, the idea is you have these cesium atoms. One of the possible frequencies of light that can excite the lower-energy electrons in the atoms is 9,192,631,770 hertz. The idea with quantum theory is that light with frequency of 9,192,631,769 hertz or 9,192,631,771 hertz would not excite the electrons, it has to be exactly one specific frequency.
(To see this in action see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm1iZqLmOnc for example. The zinc plate is negatively charged (i.e. more electrons are added to it). Visible light, no matter how intense, fails to dislodge any of the electrons. But ultraviolet light, even if it is weak, does dislodge the electrons (remove the negative charge). Therefore it is the frequency of the light that is relevant for these quantum electric effects, not the intensity.)
Light with a frequency of 1 Hz, i.e. oscillating at a rate of once/second, would have a wavelength of 299,792,458 meters (as that is how far light travels in one second). Therefore to get a frequency of 9,192,631,770 Hz you will need light with a wavelength of 0.03261225571 meters, or 3.261225571 cm. This is in what’s called the microwave range of light (“Their frequencies (wavelengths) are in the range from 300 MHz (λ = 1 m) up to 300 GHz (λ = 1 mm).” (source)).
Therefore the way the clock works is to first select out appropriate candidate atoms, then blast them with microwaves and measure the output (i.e. how many atoms got excited). The clock works by maximizing the energy output at the end by tuning the frequency of light emitted.
The way this works is by coupling the frequency of a quartz oscillator to the frequency of the wavelength of light emitted, using a servo-loop, i.e. a feedback loop. A quartz oscillator is also known as a crystal oscillator:
A crystal oscillator relies on the slight change in shape of a quartz crystal under an electric field, a property known as electrostriction or inverse piezoelectricity. A voltage applied to the electrodes on the crystal causes it to change shape; when the voltage is removed, the crystal generates a small voltage as it elastically returns to its original shape. The quartz oscillates at a stable resonant frequency, behaving like an RLC circuit, but with a much higher Q factor (less energy loss on each cycle of oscillation). Once a quartz crystal is adjusted to a particular frequency (which is affected by the mass of electrodes attached to the crystal, the orientation of the crystal, temperature and other factors), it maintains that frequency with high stability.
Crystal oscillator - Wikipedia
This is used in an atomic clock as follows:
In an atomic clock, the frequency of the quartz oscillator is transformed into a frequency that is applied to a collection of atoms. If the derived frequency is correct, it will cause many electrons in the atoms to change energy levels. If the frequency is incorrect, far fewer electrons will jump. This will determine if the quartz oscillator is off-frequency and by how much. A “correction” determined by the atoms can then be applied to the quartz oscillator to steer it back to the correct frequency. This type of correction is calculated and applied to the quartz oscillator every few seconds in the Deep Space Atomic Clock.
What Is an Atomic Clock? - NASA
Based on the first source, it looks like the clocks use a 5 MHz quartz oscillator, which is used to derive the frequency of 9192.631770 Mhz for the microwave beam. If the energy output decreases that means the frequency of the light emitted must have changed, which means the quartz oscillator frequency changed, so it self-adjusts until it’s back in sync again.
Incidentally, how was this magic number of 9,192,631,770 Hz found? The answer is experimental observation:
When the cesium second was defined in 1967, it was based on a measurement of the number of cycles of the radiation from a particular cesium-133 transition with reference to the second commonly used in civilian timekeeping, which at that time was based on astronomical observations. […]
In making this decision, the committee relied primarily on a measurement first reported in 1958 that compared the cesium transition frequency to the second of ephemeris time, which is defined by the orbital motion of the earth about the sun. […] Louis Essen of NPL had just developed the worlds first reliable cesium-beam atomic clock, and William Markowitz of USNO had developed a moon-position camera that provided a way to easily access ephemeris time, something that had been previously very difficult to do.
[…] Essen received funding for his clock project in 1953 and had a very reliable version running within two years. In a collaboration between Essen and Markowitz, the relative durations of the astronomical and atomic (cesium) seconds were measured over an averaging time of 2.75 years with a final determination that the cesium frequency was 9,192,631,770 20 [sic] Hz.
How does one arrive at the exact number of cycles of radiation a cesium-133 atom makes in order to define one second? | Scientific American
To explain a bit further, based on this conversation at si units - How do cesium atomic clocks measure time? - Physics Stack Exchange it appears that the signal generator that feeds into the microwave transmitter, is able to accurately measure how many cycles it has emitted:
sci-guy: I am trying to understand cesium atomic clocks better.
I am not getting HOW the cesium oscillation is actually being counted. [… snip attempted description …] So great – but how is this actually being counted?
John Rennie: The counting is done by the signal generator. The clock contains a signal generator that generates the 9,192,631,770 Hz signal going to the microwave transmitter. This generator contains a counter that counts every cycle the generator creates […]
sci-guy: But this seems circular – how does the signal generator know what 9,192,631,770 Hz is, if it doesn’t know what a second is yet. […]
John Rennie: the signal generator doesn’t know what frequency it is, it just knows that it’s frequency gives the maximum absorption by the caesium vapour. It counts its cycles […]
sci-guy: Final question, so what exactly is cycling in the signal generator - like what is it counting?
John Rennie: the signal generator generates an oscillating voltage. The counting is just counting how many times the voltage oscillates through one complete cycle.
So, in short, the experiment of 2.75 years counted the number of cycles that it was running which maximized the energy output of the circuit, and this was compared with the number of seconds as counted by the “moon-position camera” that measured ephemeris time. Ephemeris time is:
[…] obtained by observing the orbital position of any planet or satellite and then using an ephemeris, which lists calculated orbital positions as a function of time. The orbital position of the Earth about the Sun, as developed mathematically in the American astronomer Simon Newcomb’s tables of the Sun (1898), were selected as the standard to define the numerical measure of Ephemeris Time. […]
Values of Ephemeris Time were also obtained from observations of the Moon by using the lunar ephemeris for the calculated position. […] Very accurate positions of the Moon were obtained visually by observations of occultations of stars by the Moon. By the time Ephemeris Time was superseded in 1984, it had served two important purposes: (1) the definition of a second of Ephemeris Time served as the basis for the redefinition in 1967 of the SI second on the atomic time scale […]
Ephemeris Time | Astronomical, Solar System, Coordinates | Britannica
To summarize everything:
- One second was initially defined to roughly mean 1/240th of a degree of the earth rotating about its axis (such that 24 hours = 1,440 minutes = 86,400 seconds equals 360 degrees, a full rotation).
- The orbital position of the moon around the earth was then used as an analog for the earth’s rotation, to calculate this second very accurately.
- While the orbital position of the moon was being measured, a signal generator’s number of cycle outputs used to generate a microwave beam of light such that it maximized the electrical output of a circuit involving cessium atoms, was also measured, and it was determined that on average, 9,192,631,770 cycles corresponded to one second.
- Thus a second is now defined, in scientific norms, as “the time it takes to output 9,192,631,770 cycles of a signal generator when that generator is running at a rate that maximize the energy output of this particular circuit involving a type of cessium atom”.
A few questions come to mind for me:
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if exactly 9,192,631,770 Hz are needed, and even one Hz above or below does not do the necessary transition, then why does is the output of the circuit not binary (all-or-nothing) but rather dims when the frequency gets slightly off?
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The paper publishing the results of the Hafale-Keating experiment says:
In addition to short term fluctuations in rate caused mainly by shot noise in the beam tubes, cesium
beam clocks exhibit small but more or less well defined quasi-permanent changes in rate. The times at which these rate changes occur typically are separated by at least 2 or 3 days for good clocks. Some clocks have been observed in the laboratory to go as long as several months without a rate change.
http://www.personal.psu.edu/rq9/HOW/Atomic_Clocks_Experiment.pdf(note that the experiment accounted for these drifts)
My question is, what causes these rate changes??
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The paper shows how there is already time drift between the various clocks… whence the time drifts in the first place??
Now that we know what is measured, we can say what the experiment actually shows…
For the westward trip, “The westward trip […] lasted 80.3 hours with 48.6 hours in flight” ( http://www.personal.psu.edu/rq9/HOW/Atomic_Clocks_Predictions.pdf ) .
On average, the clocks on the westward trip were calculated to have “gained” 273 nanoseconds, i.e. they ticked faster. That is, during those 80.3 hours as measured by the ground clock, the clocks on the plane measured 80.3 hours plus 273 nanoseconds.
Or in more precise terms, while the signal generator of the clock on the ground emitted 2657405992071600 cycles, the signal generators of the clocks on the planes on average emitted 2657405992074110 cycles (2,510 more cycles).
Although it’s not quite as cut and dry as this as they had to do a bunch of math and handling of the data to account for inaccuracies in the clocks (e.g. the aforementioned rate-changes), all the while converting back and forth between the times measured by the various clocks…
(source)
For example this shows the average time difference between the 4 clocks that went on the planes, vs. the clock on the ground. They start off with a pre-existing time drift already, which appears to have remained mostly constant before&after the trip. Using the predicted time drift they could see how many cycles the clocks were expected to have, if all else remained equal, and they attribute the difference to the relativistic effects (which were predicted quite accurately by the theory).
So it’s more like, if right before the first flight we re-set all the cycle counters, then by the time 2657405992071600 cycles go by on the ground clock, we would expect (with same rate of drift) that the plane clocks would have averaged 1,379 fewer cycles (~150 ns equivalent less), but they actually averaged 505 more cycles (~55ns equivalent more) which means ~205 ns equivalent more than the expected reading of ~150ns equivalent less.
(The 205 ns vs 273 ns difference is due to the different ways of interpreting the results, with 273 ns reported to be the more accurate method).
The point being that, this was determined within experimental limits to account for all other possible known discrepancies (inaccuracies with the clocks themselves, the clocks are shielded from magentic fields, etc) such that the only possibility left to account for it is the difference in strength of gravitational field plus relative velocities between the clocks as compared to a hypothetical center-of-the-earth still-point observer, which difference was reported to have been predicted to within acceptable error margin by integrating the changes due to these gravity & velocity factors across measured points along the flight paths of the planes.
Which is all really cool of course, but it doesn’t mean that time-space is a fabric where time passes at different rates based on who’s asking and how fast you’re going and if you’re near a planet or not… rather it means that the observed behavior of these clocks coincides with a model that says that, but all we can definitively factually say happened is what we observed, and even that is (as should be obvious by now) not straightforward at all as there are multiple complications and technical details involved at each step of the process!
OK that’s it for now lol.
Holy moly, do I get a certificate or something for reading that?
I was also reading that general relativity and special relativity give two different numbers. One a whole lot more, and one a little bit less. Then one is taken from the other.
I am going to have to read that post of yours a few times again.
The take away so far, whether one is using the planet, a watch or atomic clock, they are all within the constraints of the material universe, rather than measuring the material universe. There is no “outside” to determine whether time moves or is effected objectively.
Which makes me wonder if consciousness is somehow “privileged” in that it is the universe being conscious of itself.
That was the main idea I was getting at introducing atomic clocks. They are not the universe experiencing itself, anymore than this phone is.
I don’t see that, short of a degree in science, I would want to be arguing the science, as that seems as silly as walking into a hospital to perform brain surgery because I watched a YouTube video on it.
Consciousness is “special” somehow. Atomic clocks are not “special” in the same way.
Nice post, though. I will need another drink first. 
No, I am linking to experiments which prove that all our measurements of time “dilate”.
Agreed. It’s also noteworthy that the rotation of the planet isn’t constant. Or the orbit of one year.
How would we know it’s “clockwise” before we invent a clock?
Not directly. It’s either mechanical or quartz, so it’s approximating the appropriate rotation of the earth. Your point stands however.
Agreed. However, my point was there is no experiment that can prove this. It makes sense to me that things can only ever happen now, and that now is infinite in scope, and eternal in endurance. It happens everywhere, perfectly.
Regarding the science, I will defer to scientists.
I was musing that I could sync up a couple of quartz stopwatches and send one of them around the world a few times. Probably more than a few, to see if an amateur could reproduce the experiment with domestic grade watches.
I wonder if anyone has tried that?
The actual guys doing the experiment were sceptical, apparently.
A smaller scale experiment.
I love that he gets a result, but it’s not what the sums he uses expected, and says why. Then, he concludes “I don’t know”.
I love the amount of work that went into the experiment.
Hmm should work. Or two laptops. Multi-GHz cpu means each cpu cycle is less than a nanosecond. So you can set the cpu speed steady … count cpu clock cycles … and see how they differ.
I don’t know the error rates on that though
Hmm, sounds like I need a trip to America! For science, of course.