{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3682", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 3682, "subject": "Silk Out of Time?", "messages": 5, "voices": 3, "first": "2002-12-17T15:14:53+00:00", "last": "2002-12-17T18:35:01+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2002-12-17T15:14:53+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk Out of Time?", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 04:19 PM 12/16/2002, Blattid wrote:\nDon Doggett wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "So again I ask, why did time stop on the Whorl?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Ummm ... I don't think it did. Silk had an experience which\ntook place outside of Time, i.e., in Eternity, the perspective\nfrom which the Outsider (==the Christian God) views spacetime.\nThus, while he experienced the passage of time in his personal\nconsciousness, the \"time\" that passed for him had no meaning\non the Whorl or, presumably, the rest of spacetime.\n\nThink of it like this. Silk (like the rest of us) watches\nspacetime occurring in an orderly fashion, rather like someone\nparticpating in an interactive computer game, one where the\nplayer participates _as_ a character. Then the phone rings --\nthe Outsider \"calls,\" and the game goes into \"pause\" mode,\nwhile the Outsider tells Silk a number of things -- including,\nas it happens, some \"spoiler\" information about the game\nitself. When the call ends, the game comes out of \"pause\"\nmode, and continues exactly as it had been. No time has\npassed in the game, but no time has been skipped or lost in\nthe game either; the time the player has spent on the call\nhas nothing to do with the internal time of the game. Similarly,\nthe seeming duration of Silk's enlightenment has nothing to do\nwith the \"passage\" of \"time\" in the spacetime universe." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm not sure we're supposed to think time \"passed\" for Silk either. He had \nan instantaneous and transcendent \"moment\" that sorted itself out in his \nmind afterwards into its various components, some of which he could not \nremember. This may not be correct, but I don't see any reason what it is not.\n Moreover, if something happened to the ship at this moment, like \ndipping through a black hole and coming out a white fountain (or whatever), \nand everyone went \"out of time,\" then everyone should have had a \ntranscendent moment.\n Time did not \"stop\" for anyone. Silk had an transcendent moment, \nand the only way a temporal being can understand such a thing afterwards is \nto sort it out into various pieces and temporal events.\n\nNutria" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-12-17T17:53:22+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Silk Out of Time?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Nutria wrote:\nI'm not sure we're supposed to think time \"passed\" for Silk \neither. He had an instantaneous and transcendent \"moment\"\nthat sorted itself out in his mind afterwards into its various\ncomponents, some of which he could not remember. This may not\nbe correct, but I don't see any reason what it is not." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"You may be right about this, and certainly I would not go\nso far as to say that you were wrong, but still ...!\" (Place\n_that_ quote for double credit.)\n\nWhat makes me think that Silk's experience has some kind of\ninternal sequentiality: he has the sense of someone (the\nOutsider) speaking into both his ears. Now, I may simply \nput too much emphasis on that detail, but it seems to me that\nspeech has a kind of inherent sequentiality to it. \n\nOf course, this may simply mean that he _remembers_ it that \nway.\n\nWafflingly," } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2002-12-17T18:21:08+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Silk Out of Time?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 11:53 AM 12/17/2002, you wrote:\nNutria wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I'm not sure we're supposed to think time \"passed\" for Silk\neither. He had an instantaneous and transcendent \"moment\"\nthat sorted itself out in his mind afterwards into its various\ncomponents, some of which he could not remember. This may not\nbe correct, but I don't see any reason what it is not." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"You may be right about this, and certainly I would not go\nso far as to say that you were wrong, but still ...!\" (Place\n_that_ quote for double credit.)\n\nWhat makes me think that Silk's experience has some kind of\ninternal sequentiality: he has the sense of someone (the\nOutsider) speaking into both his ears. Now, I may simply\nput too much emphasis on that detail, but it seems to me that\nspeech has a kind of inherent sequentiality to it.\n\nOf course, this may simply mean that he _remembers_ it that\nway." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah, that's how I took it. The event looked like a moment of \"eternity,\" \nand having nothing to do with the passage of time, but Silk could only \nunderstand it in temporal terms. I can go with the other option, that Silk \nhad a minute or two of \"sempiternality,\" but I thought the instantaneous \nview was simpler. Perhaps a very close reading of the text would solve the \nissue.\n\nNutria" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Chris", "address": "rasputin_ at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2002-12-17T18:18:35+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Silk Out of Time?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Both seem reasonably compatible, if one looks at it from the perspective \nthat \"sequentiality\" is a function of our perception of time - a limitation \nthe Outsider does not share. Silk perceives it as sequential because his \nmind sorted things out that way, true, but then again Silk (and we) perceive \nnormal events in the universe as sequential for the same reason. In that \nsense, as far as Silk's impressions, the sequentiality of his enlightenment \nis just as \"real\" as the sequentiality of the real world.\n\nIs that quote Silk speaking to Dr. Crane in response to his theory about \nSilk's enlightenment?\n\nChris" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Nutria wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I'm not sure we're supposed to think time \"passed\" for Silk\neither. He had an instantaneous and transcendent \"moment\"\nthat sorted itself out in his mind afterwards into its various\ncomponents, some of which he could not remember. This may not\nbe correct, but I don't see any reason what it is not." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"You may be right about this, and certainly I would not go\nso far as to say that you were wrong, but still ...!\" (Place\n_that_ quote for double credit.)\n\nWhat makes me think that Silk's experience has some kind of\ninternal sequentiality: he has the sense of someone (the\nOutsider) speaking into both his ears. Now, I may simply\nput too much emphasis on that detail, but it seems to me that\nspeech has a kind of inherent sequentiality to it.\n\nOf course, this may simply mean that he _remembers_ it that\nway.\n\nWafflingly,\n\n--Blattid\n\n\n--" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-12-17T18:35:01+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Silk Out of Time?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Both seem reasonably compatible, if one looks at it from the \nperspective that \"sequentiality\" is a function of our\nperception of time - a limitation the Outsider does not\nshare. Silk perceives it as sequential because his mind\nsorted things out that way, true, but then again Silk (and\nwe) perceive normal events in the universe as sequential for\nthe same reason." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "H'mmm ... I occasionally make my brain hurt by trying to\nunderstand this stuff, the idea of a Being with an eternal\nnature becoming incarnate in-Time and the idea of creatures\nwith a temporal nature taken up into Eternity. How any of\nthis might actually \"feel\" I really do not know." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In that sense, as far as Silk's impressions, the\nsequentiality of his enlightenment is just as \"real\" as\nthe sequentiality of the real world." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thank you; you remind me of my fundamental principle of \n\"binocular vision,\" attempting to understand such things\nsimultaneously from the eternal and temporal points-of-view\n... a way of understanding which offers insight not only \nfor religious purposes, but also for grokking some of the\nimplications of modern physics." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Is that quote Silk speaking to Dr. Crane in response to his \ntheory about Silk's enlightenment?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "... noooo ... It's about seven decades older than that, and\nnot Lupine a-tall, though a writer I suspect Wolfe of in all\nprobability enjoying." } ] } ] }