
What Time Looks Like to Philip Glass - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/61/coordinates/the-larger-the-theater-the-faster-the-music
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ericsoderstrom
Reminded me of this interview with a japanese garden designer, and his
consideration of how the elements in a garden change at different rates.
Plants that grow/bloom seasonally, moss that spreads over the years, and rocks
that don't change at all in human time scales.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWcmuk2tN7M&t=529s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWcmuk2tN7M&t=529s)

~~~
Bromskloss
The contrast between old Japan and new Japan is unbelievable. Such a large
difference in such little time!

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elliotec
What an absolutely beautiful conversation.

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andrepd
>PG: Yes, so then I was reflecting on the universe expanding. We know that it
is and can measure it, by the way time is operating, or by the way we see a
star exploding far away. For various reasons, when a physicist tells me that
the universe is expanding, I say “ok, let’s go back to the dance floor.” The
dance floor is getting bigger, what does that mean? It means that time has to
slow down.

>FF: And that is exactly what the physicists tell us is happening.

>PG: Yes, but when I talk to my son Marlowe and he says the summer went by
very fast, and in my childhood the summer went by really slow—what if it’s
really true that time is actually speeding up? One can say, oh, you’re just
imagining it; of course I’m imagining it, but what if it’s really happening?
In other words, for the universe to keep expanding, maybe time has to go
faster too, in order to keep up.

>FF: It certainly feels that way.

>PG: Many of us have that feeling. Yesterday I was 20. Where did all the years
go? “How can it go by so fast,” we say. But what if time is actually speeding
up? If everything is changing at the same speed, there is no way to measure
it. The summer of 1947 went by very slowly for me, and this summer flew by for
both Marlowe and me. What I suggest is that these are not subjective, but
rather objective experiences. It’s also a little terrifying. What if 1,000
years from now, a life span felt like it was only a few days?

Such quackery. Why do people feel it's valid to come up with fantastical
conjectures about physics with absolutely no reason to do so?

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whiddershins
Of all the hacker news comments I’ve ever read, yours made me feel the worst.

One of the greatest living artists talking about the subjectivity of
perception and you refer to it as quackery.

It hurts my heart.

~~~
braythwayt
Also, his so-called "music." It's just basic arithmetic. Scales, for example,
can be reduced to a simple 12-bit number:

[https://ianring.com/musictheory/scales/](https://ianring.com/musictheory/scales/)

All this fluff about a "major" scale and its "modes" when we could just say
"2741" and derive other relationships from rotating bits and a few other
simple relationships.

Everything else, like the "subjective feeling of a Persian Scale" is just
quackery. It's just someone who doesn't understand numbers making up nonsense
words.

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ggg9990
Hehe... nothing more HN than putting “music” in square quotes to summarily
dismiss it. Please link ur Soundcloud

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braythwayt
You got me! I am not a musician, I'm a bassist.

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clebio
While I like it, this isn't the title of the linked article.

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privong
> While I like it, this isn't the title of the linked article.

The current post title "What Time Looks Like to Philip Glass" is the web page
title, though it's not the in-page heading on the article.

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dang
Right, the HTML doc title is legit to use for HN, especially when it's more
neutral and factual, which it often is.

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Jedi72
So many people arguing here, completely missing the point of science. Whether
to attempt to prive OR disprove Glass' ideas, one must think 'how can I test
this idea experimentally?'

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s-shellfish
I honestly don't think a lot of people here know how to think artistically,
which is to think in a completely free way, independent of all existing rules,
systems, comparisons, judgement. The latter aspect (rules, judgement) is
fairly essential for the engineering aspect of technology as well as the
business aspect of starting/developing/running a company - at least just to
get the thing running to begin with.

HN tends to gravitate towards these ideas in terms of conversation, even
though much of the science aspect of 'what we do here' has or is being dealt
with by a lot of people - enough that one can begin to be much more creative
than say, a construction worker building a stage according to a predesignated
specification, or a painter who has to make his/her paint from berries and
leaves. Most discussions I've read here, most topics posted here - more often
than not are extensions of this, having to do with hard science, physics,
engineering, structure, building, designing, etc. Art is often only celebrated
once it has achieved a certain degree of celebrity, or if it really ties into
the hard science/engineering/business/systems side of things.

Kind of ironic(?) considering Paul Graham's essay:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html)

Art is a process, as is experimentation. Mistakes will be made. They get
corrected over time. It shouldn't matter who sees you make those mistakes as
you do, but all of this is a consequence of 'groupthink' and feeling as though
people are always watching you, judging every imperfection as though making
errors are somehow detrimental to your entire functioning as a creative being.
Errors teach, and as Bob Ross said, 'We don't make mistakes, just happy little
accidents.'. That's a terrible philosophy when you have to calculate risk
precisely, but not everything in life is about balancing risk.

