Did anyone see this, at Laz's webpage?

http://www.closertogod.net/main/thoughts/s.../Dimensions.htm

That is one bloody smashing idea out of that crazy head of his! Are Psilocybe shrooms that easily available in London nowadays?

Please take this in the best light.

From the webpage the following

> If the 4th dimension is not time, then what is it? It has to be
> something observable in this world...

Why? If you assume that time is not a dimension then we are only privy
to the three that we are currently correctly scaled to inhabit (X,Y and
Z). Arguing that "because we can observe 3 means we should be able to
observe the forth" is recursive. Now because we observe 4 we should be
able to observe the 5th, and so on.

> A wise man called Dan Webber pointed the following out to me, each
> dimension contains the ones before it, so what exists that is greater
> than 3 dimensions and conatains all of the those before it? A
> dimension of movement!

If Dan Webber was a wise man he would have noted the absurdity in assigning the concept of dimensions "before" other dimensions. Dimensions are the very framework that concepts like "before" and "after" are bounded by. Next up, I'm wondering ifhe has any examples looking down-scale that any of our comfortable 3dimensions "contain" any other dimensions "before" them... he seems to be extrapolating his "XY and Z are inside T" logic from a broken interpretation of string theory in which there are small (Planck-length) scale dimensions bounding to the edges of X, Y and Z... not contained within three dimensional space.


> The 4th dimension has to be change, but movement only in 2 dimensions
> like radio waves, and light waves, ahem, particles. It allows for 3
> dimensional objects to exist within it and move in a 2 dimensional
> plane. I don't think that a 1 dimensional movement means anything
> which is why its probably just a characterisitic of the 3rd spacial
> dimension.

Ummm... what? I'm willing to bite at renaming the fourth dimension
"Change" as time and change are related. If there is zero change to the
universe on a subatomic level, it's exactly the same as no time
passing... Time is essentially a relativistic measurement of entropy
(or, if "change" if you will).

The rest of the paragraph I'm going to pretty much ignore though. A few
experiments with my pen clearly show that I have the ability to move a
three dimensional object in all three dimensions. One-dimensional
movement means quite a bit (not nothing)... when I pick my pen up, if I
don't move it backwards or forwards, or left or right, just up and down,
I'm moving it in one dimension. The amount of "change" (ie: roughly 30cm
above where it used to be) is hardly trivial. Next up... wtf is the 3rd
"special dimension" and why do I need it to pick my pen up?


> Given the re-ordering of the dimensions, I can see movement through 3d
> space as the 5th dimension, This allows for the movement of atoms,
> everything we see on the earth, and the univesrse at large.

Hold on a second... I thought we were messing with the 4th dimension
here. All of a sudden we're assuming that the 5th is a product of
movement in XYZ (but not time) and it's interactions with the 3rd
special dimension (and any other dimensions "before" XYZ that are
contained within them?)

> I can see that life could emerge as the 6th dimension. Thus if a
> system moves through 3d space and is sufficiently complex, and its
> movements are controlled by decisions, it will be in the 6th
> dimension.

*puffs the joint and passes to the left*

Duuuuude, and like... thought can be the 7th, and love can be the 8th,
and pizza can be the 9th dimension! Hey, that's like.... almost as many
as string theory... it *MUST* be right!

> The seventh dimension then would be a system that thinks about
> thinking, i.e. consciousness, humans are 7 dimensional beings.

Oh my god, I swear I wrote the above paragraph before reading this bit
on the seventh dimension.

> Time doesn't ever disappear, it is always there. It just changes its
> form from a dimension to a measure of dimensions. For the 3rd
> dimension, one dimensional time exists but means nothing, we currently
> use it for measuring everything and we shouldn't. For the 4th
> dimension, a 2 dimensional measure should be used utilising imaginary
> axis.

Nobody has claimed with any certainty that time is a dimension. It's
sort of a pop-physics staple, but it's by no means gospel. Time could
very well be bounded within the constraints of XY and Z... The rest of
that paragraph is too disjointed to make any sense of.

> 3 dimensional time would be used for the 5th dimension, you can
> imagine this type of time as being a 3d cube. It seems that the
> dimensions of time in this scheme are like those of space but always 2
> dimensions behind.

Yes... it seems so.

> Extrapolating now, if we want to measure life we need 4 dimensional
> time, and I have no idea what that looks like! it would have to be a
> cube moving along a tradjectory or something.

What, you weren't extrapolating before!? You "cube moving along a
trajectory" idea kinda reminds me of this other little theory though.
It's called Time, in which a three-dimensional space is moving through
this "fourth dimension" called "Time" which allows things inside the
three dimensional space to "change"... or something.

> Also, as we use a ruler rather than a clock to measure 3d systems and
> 0 dimensional time, we perhaps need a new set of instruments to
> measure 2, 3 dimensional times and the others up to 7 dimensional
> time. I have enought trouble visualising a 2 dimensional clock, let
> alone a 7 dimensional one

No. We use a ruler to measure one-dimensional systems. We use a
combination of rulers (usually three) to measure three dimensional
systems, and we use a fourth ruler to measure time (it's called a clock).

A clock is very little other than a graphical representation of our
relative movement along the axis of time. If you were sliding forward
at a fixed rate for you could just as easily use a ruler on the floor
next to use to measure the passing of time.

> Ha! spacetime is dead, RIP.

Show me the math.

> I wish i could work out the maths of this and the implications it has
> for quantum mechanics and such.

I assure you. It has no implications at all.