3 ms·
"But this sun that feels “now” to you is the sun that shone eight minutes ago. The moon is closer, but it’s still more than a second away from the effect it pro
by mvdwoord 10y ago
"But this sun that feels “now” to you is the sun that shone eight minutes ago. The moon is closer, but it’s still more than a second away from the effect it produces in your body. If this were a starry night, the stars composing the Ursa Major would be scattered between 80 and 128 years away."
Right.. Because the photons hit you 8 minutes ago and you feel them now? or They traveled for 8 minutes and are actually hitting you now?
Stopped reading there.
- givan 10y agoI think that what he wants to say that is difficult to locate the "now", if you read a little more he explains it more clearly. "the quickest neural processes still require tens of milliseconds to complete as electronic and chemical signals travel back and forth across the meters of neural circuitry packed in our brains. So even for the neuroscientists the physical stuff that they view as constituting our conscious experience is spread over space and time, albeit tiny spaces. In fact, if we wanted to be really rigorous and consider only what is present at one instant in time, the world as we know it would disappear. Sounds, light, voices, gestures, actions, words, all require a flexible notion of nowness that encompasses more than a single instant."