ACTUAL description, ACTUAL description composite, ACTUAL description elementary, daily routine, everyday scene, machine time, time machine (clock), time marker, time structure explicit, time structure implit

OKSIMO.R – EVERYDAY SCENES – Daily routine (temporal structure(s))

eJournal: uffmm.org
ISSN 2567-6458, 26.November 2022 – 26.November 2022
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

Parts of this text have been translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version), afterwards minimally edited.

CONTEXT

This post is part of the book project ‘oksimo.R Editor and Simulator for Theories’ and represents a continuation of Part 2 of the everyday scene ‘Going out to eat’ as well as the explanation box ‘World, Space, Time’.

CONTENT

This text is about using an ‘explicit time structure’ in addition to the ‘implicit time structure’ when describing a process in everyday life. An ‘implicit’ description of time is given when one arranges different events in the narrative one after the other without explicitly stating time (Peter is standing in front of the door. He opens the door and goes in.) An ‘explicit’ time statement uses such expressions as agreed ‘time markers’ (It is early in the morning. Peter wakes up. After 15 minutes he goes to the bathroom. At 12:00h he has to be at the store….).

A Daily Routine

Time of Natur – Machine Time

In the previous example, a process is described (going out to eat), which can be understood as ‘part of a day’: A ‘day’ is usually understood as the ‘time’ between getting up in the ‘morning’ and ‘going to bed’ in the ‘evening’, where ‘evening’ is fuzzy; for many, the time to ‘go to bed’ extends to ‘midnight’ or even later. While the activities ‘getting up’ and ‘going to bed’ as such have a reasonably concrete meaning, it is a bit more difficult with ‘morning’ and ‘evening’. Originally ‘morning’ was the time when the ‘sun rises’ and ‘evening’ when the ‘sun sets’ (‘time caused by nature’). With the progress of ‘urbanization’ and the ‘mechanization’ of the living world, a stronger and stronger uncoupling of the daily routine from ‘periodic natural events’ (sun, moon, …) takes place and simultaneously a stronger and stronger coupling to ‘artificial environments’, with ‘time machines’ (clocks) as ingredients. [1] The ‘periodic signals’ of these time machines (‘machine time’) then serve more and more as a substitute for natural periodic processes. My ‘morning’ is then perhaps no longer the ‘sunrise’ but the ‘ringing of my alarm clock’ at e.g. 7:00h. The ‘lunch time’ is then no longer the highest sun position but e.g. 12:30h to 13:30h as the ‘official lunch break’ of the respective institution. etc.

A Timely-Structured Day

If you want to work with explicit time specifications in an oksimo.R text, then these must occur as a ‘property of a situation’. A simple example:

Gerd is sitting in his office. It is 12:30h. Gerd is hungry.

One could then continue with e.g.:

Gerd decides to go to the Greek restaurant around the corner. Gerd goes to the Greek. It is 12:40h when he leaves his office.

In this way, one can let a clock run the whole day until the time when Gerd goes to sleep.

It is 23:35h. Gerd falls asleep. At 7:00h the alarm clock rings.

Let’s assume the simple case that the daily routine is largely regulated by ‘fixed points’. Then one could describe with few rules any number of daily routines one after the other.

A first demo example

Let’s assume the following simple daily routine [2]:

  • Morning, waking up
  • Leaving the apartment
  • Morning, office
  • Noon, snack
  • Afternoon, office
  • End of work
  • Evening errands
  • Late evening free time
  • Sleeping at night

ACTUAL description

A baseline situation could start at any point in time, e.g. at the end of work:

ACTUAL DESCRIPTION (end of work)

Name: end-of-work1
It is the end of work.
Gerd leaves the office.

GOAL description(s)

The actor can have many goals at the same time, e.g.:

GOAL DESCRIPTION(s) [3].

GOAL 1 (Shopping)

Name: g-shopping1

It is the end of work.
Gerd has made his purchases.

GOAL 2

It is late in the evening. Gerd has been playing music.

GOAL 3

It is after 23:00h. Gerd has gone to sleep.

Rules of change

Now you have to think about which change rules – based on the ACTUAL description – can be used to achieve the various goals.


… for GOAL 1

To achieve GOAL 1, one could perhaps adopt the following change rule(s):

CR Purchasing

IF

It is the end of work. Gerd leaves the office.

THEN

Added: Gerd goes to the store around the corner.

Away: Gerd leaves the office.

A change rule in the oksimo.R format:

Rule: cr-shop1
Conditions:
It is the end of work.
Gerd leaves the office.
Positive Effects:
Gerd goes to the store around the corner.

Negative Effects:
Gerd leaves the office.

Rule name: vr-ladencr-shop2
Conditions:
It is the end of work.
Gerd goes to the store around the corner.
Positive Effects:
Gerd is in the store
Gerd picks up everything he needs.
Gerd goes to the cash register and pays.
Gerd has made his purchases.

Negative Effects:
Gerd goes to the store around the corner.

Unify the change rules so far in a rules document:

rd-shopping1

cr-shop1
cr-shop2

A first partial Simulation

name of stored simulation: shopping1-sim1

Your vision:
Gerd has made his purchases.,It is the end of work.

Initial states: 
It is the end of work.,Gerd leaves the office.

Round 1

Current states: Gerd goes to the store around the corner.,It is the end of work.
Current visions: Gerd has made his purchases.,It is the end of work.
Current values:

50.00 percent of your vision was achieved by reaching the following states:
It is the end of work.,

Round 2

Current states: Gerd has made his purchases.,Gerd picks up everything he needs.,Gerd goes to the cash register and pays.,Gerd is in the store,It is the end of work.
Current visions: Gerd has made his purchases.,It is the end of work.
Current values:

100.00 percent of your vision was achieved by reaching the following states:
Gerd has made his purchases.,It is the end of work.,

Differentiation of the concept ‘ACTUAL description’.

It can be seen from the ACTUAL description of round 2 that in this ACTUAL description actually ‘several state descriptions’ were summarized. The individual statements {Gerd goes to the cash register and pays, Gerd collects everything he needs, It is the end of work, Gerd is in the store} are such that each describes an ACTUAL situation that can stand alone and which in everyday life ‘presuppose’ a certain sequence:

  1. It is the end of work.
  2. Gerd is in the store.
  3. Gerd picks up everything he needs.
  4. Gerd goes to the cash register and pays.

This raises the fundamental question of whether such a ‘summary’ of individual ACTUAL descriptions still constitutes an ACTUAL description that meets the following requirements: (i) A set of properties that are unchanged within a time interval. (ii) All actors involved in the situation can confirm the statements. If one introduces the distinction between ‘Elementary ACTUAL Descriptions’ and ‘Compound ACTUAL Descriptions’, then one could agree:

  1. Def: An ‘elementary ACTUAL description’ is an ACTUAL description.
  2. Def: A ‘composite ACTUAL description’ represents a ‘collection’ of elementary ACTUAL descriptions’.
  3. Truth criterion: The parties involved in a common situation must decide whether they accept the elementary/composite IS descriptions.

… !! Not yet finished !! …

COMMENTS

[1] To work as part of a larger society all the individual time machines have to be ‘coordinated’ such that every single time machine’ shows every moment the same ‘time marker’.

[2] On the one hand, this daily routine is extremely simple, but at the same time, in its simplicity, it describes a daily routine that looks completely different for many other people. It would certainly be interesting to see a daily routine as a ‘building block’ of an everyday life process, by which for the acting actor is determined to a large extent what he/she/x ‘experiences’, what he/she/x ‘does’, which social and societal interactions he/she/x experiences, and so on.

[3] Normally we formulate goal descriptions as wishes, in a form in which we express what we positively want without that it having already occurred: “I want to go shopping later”, “I want to play music after shopping”, “I will go to bed after 23:00h at the latest”. In the context of an oksimo.R text you have to formulate wishes in a way that describes the ‘result of the wish’, e.g. instead of “I want to go shopping later” you have to write: “I went shopping” or instead of “I want to make music after shopping” you have to write “I made music after shopping”, etc. The ‘logic’ behind this is that an oksimo.R text is a ‘theory’ that refers to an ACTUAL situation (e.g.: “It’s the end of work. Gerd is leaving the office,”), which then applies possible ‘change rules’ to an ACTUAL situation, and by applying change rules to an ACTUAL situation, a ‘new ACTUAL situation’ then arises. And then it can happen that after a certain sequence of ACTUAL situations an ACTUAL situation occurs in which the original desire to shop has taken place, i.e. in the ACTUAL situation there can then be the property “Gerd has shopped”. If there is then a TARGET description that says “Gerd has shopped”, then the system can immediately determine that this goal has been achieved. If, however, the TARGET description would have the format “Gerd wants to shop”, then this goal could never be achieved, because it is not clear when it would then be fulfilled.