Eco-Time Theory: Context & Meaning
Why is Postulate #1 from Eco Time Theory so Controversial?
Data Stream Analytics independent of Material Source
Quantifiable Behavior: An Action’s Data Stream: Time over Time
DS Content unrelated to DS Math
Postulate #2: Actions discontinuous through Time; Matter continuous
Attention invests Mental Energy in Event Series to generate Experience – Food for Mind
Restating Postulate #1: DS Math independent of Biology
Stumbling upon my first Science Notebook, Spiral Time, I was stunned by what I found. This work set the stage for everything that followed – more specifically, my work with Data Stream Dynamics as applied to living systems. Not only did it lay the mathematical foundations, this earliest of Notebooks also introduced useful constructs, e.g. horizontal and vertical time, that I had forgotten. This Notebook (#51) as a whole is devoted to incorporating these ideas from my 1994 Spiral Time Notebook into my Information Digestion Model. This particular article explores the radical 'controversial' first postulate of Eco-Time Theory.
Bizarre as it might seem, I’m treating my first Notebook (Spiral Time) as ‘sacred text’. Rather than edit, I provide commentary upon the original unadulterated, almost unintelligible manuscript.
Why?
The Notebook was written in a state of ‘divine’ inspiration (shên) so many decades ago. I don’t want to tamper with its verbiage because they house the constructs. Change the wording too much and the content can shift slightly and not mean quite the same thing.
I will instead provide commentary where appropriate (text is not that dense). We will focus especially upon his ‘5 postulates’.
Most of the following sections were written years ago in reaction to my first reading of Spiral Time in decades. The prose captures my astonishment at the profundity of the contents.
Before we clarify the 5 postulates from the original text, let us examine the context.
The name our young author gives to his first ‘scientific’ Notebook is “Spiral Time or Ecological Time Theory, Its Implications for Behavior”. (Such a bold name!)
What does he mean? At the time he was studying the interactions between the variety of behaviors (Actions) that he regularly participated in on a monthly level, e.g. Tai Chi, Waiting Tables. From daily tabulations of hours spent on each activity, he generated a data stream of monthly hours spent on each Action, e.g. 86.5 hours of Waiting in October 1978. He then found the correlations between the data streams of each behavior over 10 years (120 numbers in each data stream).
One particular insight derived from this analysis: Actions (repetitive behaviors) compete for time slots in a particular cycle. For instance, Reading competes with Viewing in the after-dinner time slot of a day.
Many identifiable patterns are associated with this time-slot competition. In addition to competing, behaviors can augment each other. For instance, Exercise can enhance Creative Time. Sometimes, there are also interactions between time slots. A vacation from Waiting Tables had a negative impact upon Creative Time, presumably due to an increase in Viewing and Interaction.
He developed a unique mathematical system (Data Stream Math) to characterize his insights. As it was based in the competition between Actions for a particular time-slot, he named his mathematically-based model – Ecological Time Theory.
Over the subsequent decades, our aging ‘scientist’ developed the model associated with DS Math. An examination of DS Acceleration yielded the Creative Pulse, which a decade later resulted in an Attention model based upon the Triple Pulse. Then came the Attention Realm as an equivalent plane of existence to the Material Realms. Finally, this same maturing DS Math became the famous Living Algorithm of the system that Life employs to digest information. This first Notebook Spiral Time initiated the whole shebang.
Having established a historical and experimental context, let us now examine the famous 1st postulate of Eco-Time Theory.
What can I say,
But I’m blown away!
Again.
Here in February 2021, am rereading my first scientific document, Spiral Time – written almost 3 decades ago – in 1994. Rather than immature, I find it to be brilliant – in some ways an even more foundational understanding of Spiral Time than my current 21st century incarnation. This early sophistication is more amazing still, as my Person has continued to develop this significant concept during his 30 years of research and writing.
Let us provide a concrete example:
My current 70-year-old Self comes to page 20. The section heading (H3) simply reads: ‘E. Postulates’. No intro – no foreshadowing - no explanation. The Author must have assumed that we the Reader remembered the chapter title (H2): ‘3. The Theory of Ecological Time’. It seems reasonable to infer that this theory is presumably based upon these postulates. Bold claims considering it his first work!
A quick scan – seems to be 5 postulates (all in Heading 4).
So what’s coming?
Unrefined gibberish or unsophisticated conceptualizations?
No! Not at all. Rather he, the relatively young author (only 44), states nonchalantly –without presumption – yet emphatically (Bold print): “1. Quantifiable Behaviors, activities, exist independently of the Source.” He immediately follows by saying that this is probably “the most controversial of the postulates.” Never ever says why – just follows with an example of how this statement violates the common sense notion that Behavior and Source are integrally linked.
Initially, my 2021 model (me, the current human writer) was mystified. Yet after thinking a bit, I realized how incredibly profound this simple ‘postulate’ was. And yes, as our young author claimed, this postulate is the heart of the controversy – but not as he had imagined in the early 90s. His vision was limited. Not only does it contradict common sense, this so called ‘postulate’ also violates the current paradigm of scientific materialism, as well as the conventional wisdom of the educated.
Why? Before discovering why it is controversial, some clarifications are in order of his relatively opaque statement. Let us first suggest some plausible re-definitions of his terms.
“Quantifiable Behavior, activities”? Judging from the article’s context (the author provides no clues): ‘quantifiable behavior’ are presumably activities that regularly consume time. For instance, Sleep consumes between 6 to 8 hours a night. As such, it is easy to generate a data stream based upon hours of slumber in successive nights. This data stream of numbers (Quantifiable Behavior) has a numerical logic that is revealed by DSD, the LA’s mathematical system.
“Source”? In his personal context, he, the young author, his Body – his Matter was the source of his actions. Matter and biology obey material logic.
“Exists independently”? Although it conveys a rough yet accurate image, the choice of words due to connotation is incredibly misleading. A better way might be ‘independent existence’ in the sense that the two entities obey an entirely different set of rules. Although the Source performs the Quantifiable Behavior, the logic of their existence is independent.
With this contextual understanding, let us restate his first postulate in more specific terms. ‘The logic of Quantifiable Behavior is different than – incompatible with (≠) the logic of the Source.’ In algebraic form:
Logic of Quantifiable Behavior ≠ Logic of Source
To highlight the controversy, let us further generalize. The Logic of Quantifiable Behavior is the Logic of Data Streams. The Logic of the Source is at least partially the Logic of Body’s Matter. These logics are incompatible (≠).
Logic of Data Stream Mathematics ≠ Logic of Matter
Restating the same equations in the context of the current book. The Logic of DS Math is the Logic of our Information Digestion System. The Logic of Matter reveals the Logic of our Biological Systems. Hence the Logics of the two systems are incompatible.
Logic of Info Digestion System ≠ Logic of Biological Systems
Implication: Life has a (immaterial?) numerical component that behaves according to a different (independent) set of laws than does Matter. This statement violates the prime paradigm of scientific materialism: Life is a subset of Matter. Under this mindset, every phenomenon has a material cause. The perspective also permeates current conventional wisdom.
Our young ‘scientist’s’ first postulate, not only violates common sense (as he anticipated), it also contradicts the prime materialist paradigm that has infected the educated on our fair planet. He underestimated, or at least understated, the inherent rebellion of his first postulate.
What is the reasoning in support of this paradigm-busting 1st postulate? The young author provides no justifications for his bold claim – no connective tissue whatsoever.
Maybe he really didn’t understand. While the postulates are profound, the young author’s descriptions of the postulates indicate an immature understanding of their significance and profundity – perhaps even ignorance concerning the insights he is channeling.
He probably just intuited this unusual statement after 16 years of examining data streams. Perhaps called it a postulate so that he didn’t have to explain his intuitions?
But here we are over a quarter of a century later. What is the reasoning behind his intuitions? How did his inference become an assumption (postulate)?
Let us offer a simple example that supports the 1st Postulate of Ecological Time Theory. Restating the first ‘postulate’: quantifiable behavior (the dynamics of a data stream associated with behavior, e.g. hours/day of Organ Practice) and the Source of the behavior (the Body) are independent.
Data Streams are not unique. Unlike fingerprints, the same data stream could have many different Sources. Hypothetically, it is possible, not necessarily plausible, that the same data stream could characterize activities (quantifiable behaviors) that are very different, for instance hours of Sleep every night and the amount of water consumed daily.
Every data stream consisting of the same numbers has the exact same central measures/derivatives. These probabilistic analytics are independent of the data’s Source, and instead completely dependent on the data.
These central measures describe the trajectories of the data stream’s current moment. On the most basic level, the central measures indicate the location, range and tendencies of the moment. This group of statistics has been deemed the Predictive Cloud. In describing trajectories, the Predictive Cloud, as the name suggests, also predicts the trajectories of the next moment (instant) in the stream.
While these predictions are rough (not even close to the precision of material predictions), they are far better than random, as they narrow the range of possibilities. Rough analytics are better than no analytics, as witnessed by the importance of stock or horseracing tips.
These analytics are generated solely by the data stream. The source of the data stream is inconsequential. The data stream descriptors, while providing a rough prediction of the future behavior of the Source, i.e. tendencies and such, are not a function of the Source. The Predictive Cloud is solely a function of the data stream.
Predictive Cloud = ƒ (Data Stream) ≠ ƒ (Source)
The Predictive Cloud provides a rough prediction of future behavior, e.g. the likelihood of repetition of the activity and for how much time. For instance, the Predictive Cloud for my daily organ practice indicates that it is almost certain that I will tickle the keys from 1 to 2 hours tomorrow. The Source (my body and fingers) tells us nothing in this regard.
This is because the Source of the Behavior and the Behavior’s Data Stream are always and forever independent of each other. No touching. No argument. No challenge. Rather than an opinion, the 1st postulate is true because of deductive necessity.
Let us revisit Postulate #1 in more detail. When the Author says ‘quantifiable behavior’, he means a repetitive behavior that consumes a discrete period of time on a regular basis. For example, Sleep consumes a distinct amount of hours in our day. It generates a data stream consisting of hours spent each night sleeping. He is not referring to behavior that can be quantified in some other way. He is solely referring to an activity’s data stream.
Data streams come in many forms. The classic is location over time – velocity. One could also create a data stream consisting of the change in mass over time. However, data streams in Eco-Time are in one form only. Each data point comes in the form of time spent per cycle, e.g. hours spent per day or week on some activity. (We are employing the term ‘cycle’ for the set time period, for instance a day. The Author employs the term ‘Duration’ to refer to the length of the cycle. 24 hours in the case of a day.)
Another aside, the hours spent on an activity aren’t related to the quality of the session. For instance, a restless and sound night of sleep might register the same number of hours on a set night, for instance when the individual goes to bed and gets out of bed at the same time. A writing session might be inspired, productive or confused. Hours spent writing does not take these variations into account. Further time tabulations are approximate, not precise. Despite this lack of precision, they have utility. If nothing else, they indicate relative values that could have been used for some other activity.
Our data stream consists of daily readings of the amount of time spent upon an activity. Let us call each data point (hrs/day) an ‘event’. Following are examples of ‘events’: 2.0 hours of watching news, 1.4 hours practicing organ, or 0.5 hours reading a book.
In Eco-Time, each data stream consists of a series of events (‘quantifying’ the time spent upon the same ‘behavior’ each cycle). The numbers in the data stream are not related in any way to the quality of the behavior. The type of behavior merely labels the data stream. The data only indicates time spent. Nothing else. It is certainly possible to categorize data streams by their qualities – the Author certainly did. For instance, Creative Time included Art, Music, Science and Writing, each with their own data stream. Yet this quality is not a factor in the mathematics of data streams.
This isolation is why Postulate 1 states that quantifiable behavior (the data stream of hours spent on said behavior) is separate from the Source (the quality of the behavior, the biology, the electrons, the molecules, et al.) Data streams have a different set of rules than do matter or psychology.
Spiral Time: 1994, the author’s first Notebook, regularly employs a set of terms to communicate some key concepts. Because of their relevance to our ID model, let us re-examine these significant terms. They revolve around the notion of time: Vertical Time, Horizontal Time, Time Density, Time Ecology and especially Time Momenta.
What does the author mean when he says ‘Time Ecology’?
Activities are competing for limited resources, in this case the limited resource of a set time period, such as a day, week, month or year. In other words, activities are competing for a limited amount of time. Hours spent on one activity take away from hours on another activity. For instance, screen time competes with other activities. More specifically, watching the news for two hours every night could easily undermine human interaction, reading, music practice, and/or homework.
When the Author says ‘quantifiable behavior’ in Postulate 1, he means a repetitive behavior that consumes a discrete period of time on a regular basis. For example, Sleep consumes a distinct number of hours in one day. It generates a data stream consisting of hours spent each night sleeping. He is not referring to behavior that can be quantified in some other way. He is solely referring to an activity’s data stream.
Data streams come in many forms. The classic is location over time – velocity. One could also create a data stream consisting of the change in mass over time. However, data streams in Eco-Time are in one form only. Each data point comes in the form of time spent per cycle, e.g. hours spent per day or week on some activity. (We are employing the term ‘cycle’ for the set time period (day). The Author employs the term ‘Duration’ to refer to the length of the cycle.)
Another aside, the hours spent on an activity aren’t related to the quality of the session. For instance, a restless and sound night of sleep register the same number of hours on a set night, if the individual goes to bed and gets out of bed at the same time. A writing session might be inspired, productive or confused. Hours spent writing does not take these variations into account.
Further time tabulations are approximate, not precise. Despite this lack of precision, they have utility. If nothing else, they indicate relative values that could have been used for some other activity.
Our data stream consists of daily readings of the amount of time spent upon an activity. Let us call each data point (hrs/day) an ‘event’. Following are examples of ‘events’: 2.0 hours of watching news, 1.4 hours practicing organ, or 0.5 hours reading a book.
In Eco-Time, each data stream consists of a series of events (‘quantifying’ the time spent upon the same ‘behavior’ each cycle). The numbers in the data stream has nothing to do with the quality of the behavior. The type of behavior merely labels the data stream. The data only indicates time spent. Nothing else. It is certainly possible to categorize data streams by their qualities – the Author certainly did. For instance, Creative Time included Art, Music, Science and Writing, each with their own data stream. Yet this quality is not a factor in the mathematics of data streams.
This separation is why Postulate 1 states that quantifiable behavior (the data stream of hours spent on said behavior) is separate from the Source (the quality of the behavior, the biology, the electrons, the molecules, et al.) Data streams have a different set of rules than does Matter.
"Postulate 2. Activities exist through Time independent of continuity."
The data stream of any Action is discontinuous, in the sense that it only consumes a small part of the overall cycle. For instance, Tai Chi practice only consumes a few hours a day on certain days of the week. It comes into existence for a brief period on Friday and then disappears until it comes into existence again on Saturday. An Action’s existence is punctuated rather than continuous. In contrast, Matter’s existence is continuous, never disappearing. Matter exists; Actions come into and go out of existence on a cyclical level.
This qualitative difference is why the Author says that Matter’s Time Density is 100%, while an Action’s Time Density is Partial – far less than 100% - even for Sleep, which consumes a third of the hours in every day. It is also why he claims that time has two dimensions: horizontal for matter and vertical for events/Actions.
Matter’s ordinary horizontal time does not acquire density. It is already 100%. The Vertical component of time acquires density through repetition and refinement.
Each event generates a Partial Time Density (time’s vertical dimension). Time Density seeks to sustain itself. So it has built in momentum – Time Momenta. The Action’s Time Density accumulates/grows with each repetition of the event. So the Action’s Momentum grows simultaneously with the growing accumulation of Time Density.
However, Eco-Time’s Time Density along with its Momentum also decays with each repetition. This is not true of Matter’s Time Density, which is always 100%. As such, an Event’s Time Momentum must be replenished, else it eventually fades to nothing.
This is where Data Stream Dynamics merges with Eco-Time. DSD reveals the mathematics of Time Momenta via Data Stream Momentum – the topic of the Author’s second Notebook.
From our discussion of Eco-Time, the Time Momenta of Events has forward motion in vertical time that both decays and can be replenished. More importantly in some ways, this Momentum can also accumulate. What is decaying and accumulating? And what replenishes? Where does this time-forward energy come from?
According to our ID model, Attention’s mental energy can be invested in the individual events of a data stream. In such fashion, the event acquires Time Momenta.
This momentum decays. However, if Attention invests enough quanta of mental energy (mentons) into a series of events of sufficient duration, this mental energy accumulates to create an Experience. This is when the accumulated mental energy sparks the gap and becomes physical (an actual memory).
Mind can then draw upon these Experiences to create models of reality that help him to satisfy Feelings. Experiences are the food of the Mind. Without Experiences, Mind has nothing to work with.
As long as we are awake, we generate these Experiences that give Mind meaning. (If we don’t generate reality-based Experiences, Mind might begin creating his own Experiences from past Experiences. This is when we get into trouble.)
If enough Experiences of similar nature are repeated enough times, the accumulation of mental energy stabilizes the Memory-Experience (more permanence). If Attention is not sustained, the mental energy quickly fades into Oblivion, i.e. remains virtual. Similarly, if an Experience is not repeated, its momentum could also fade.
Experiences, whether mini or maxi, have their own momentum. This momentum operates through Eco-Time, not Space. Space is material, not experiential. This is why we call it Time Momenta.
The relative magnitude of Time momentum is revealed by DS mathematics. It is not something physical that can be measured. If it is not repeated, it fades to nothing.
Behavior also has the same momentum through time. Even a single behavior creates probability of repetition. The more it is repeated the more likely it is to be repeated.
Sorry for this obsession with understanding Postulate #1 from Spiral Time. Just seems so foundational.
Here it is again: “1. Quantifiable Behaviors, activities, exist independently of the Source.”
Restated in Data Stream terminology: the Mathematics of Data Streams is independent of the Source of the Data Stream.
DS Math independent of DS Source
The Source is really the Source of the behavior or activity in question – the Action that is being quantified as a data stream. The Source is a general term that could refer to three distinct aspects: 1) the type (e.g. Sleep), 2) the biology (physiological systems), and 3) the emotions that drive the behavior (e.g. urge for mastery).
Biology is driven by the mechanistic behavior of Matter (electrons and molecules). Restating the first postulate from this materialist perspective: Matter and Quantifiable Behavior (the mathematics of data streams) are independent of each other.
DS Math independent of Biology (Matter)
The Author countless hours in subsequent decades developing the mathematics of Data Stream and its connection with living systems, more specifically human behavior, and even more specifically intentional behavior.
Already in this first incredibly obscure ‘postulate’, the Author posits the existence of a math of DS that is independent/separate from the Body (the Source that produces of the behavior).
DS Math independent of Body