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"Hmmm, well change seems to imply a ratio whose denominator is in terms of time. Perhaps they are using a number of event states as such a denominator and think of it more discreetly?"

Who are "they?" I cannot answer the question unless I know who you're speaking of, because different communities use the concepts of change and time differently.

"Perhaps all things if we would like could be abstracted in one way or another and thought of to not really exist, for some special meaning of existence that is useful to some model or another. For example, I believe some world views hold that matter and energy don't really exist."

I'm sure some such world views exist. But they have nothing pragmatic to show for their trouble. When a set of ideas is so completely sterile in its contribution to our lives, I am comfortable paying it no heed. When it actually ends up accomplishing something, then I will grant it closer scrutiny.

I was once, for instance, challenged by a "new age" guru along the Tony Robbins line to point out something that was "real." I volunteered the piano in the corner as an example of something that was real, and he responded, "Oh you think so? You think that if I got Deepak Chopra here he couldn't make a case that that piano was not real at all?"

I looked at him and said, in front of seminar of more than 300 people, "I'll tell you what. First get Deepak Chopra in here. Then let me drop that piano on his head. Then I will be more than willing to let him try and convince me that the piano was not real."

"To the fictional characters of a book, the author does not exist (unless the author chose to represent his own person in the story). However the author is more real than the characters in the book."

What silliness. Fictional characters in a book do not exist. Authors of fictional characters do exist. The author is not "more real" than the fictional characters. The author is real, and the characters are not.

Existence is a binary state. Ones and zeroes. There is no fractional existence, or fractional reality.

"But under the model you seemed to be describing, the author himself is not real. What is real is the state of the matter in the author at the thinnest possible slice of "time" (whatever that is), and the state of the particles close to the author, that might not be considered the author exactly...and perhaps the rest of the universe at that moment I suppose.

Nonsense. The author is absolutely real regardless of the existence of time. Like all other entities that exist in the universe, the author is a discrete being that can be described as a particular conformation of matter and energy. All three spacial dimensions exist, and no "slice" of time of any thickness need be considered.

That author exists only within now. There are not an infinite number of authors occupying different "slices" of time like pages in a flip book. There is no author in "the past." There is no author in "the future." The author will change as each subsequent instance of now replaces the prior. But the author that exists now is the only author that exists... period.

"In the mind of the author would be a thought of the characters, so perhaps they are real in that way...but thoughts require a much longer chain of tiny causal steps then the thin tiny slice of now that is the only state that currently exists."

Not so. A thought is a physio-chemical process, a sub-component of the discrete conformation of matter and energy that is the author. In one instance of now thought will be commencing. In another instance of now, the thought will be concluding. In all instances of now in between, the thought will be in progress. But the thought obeys the same rules as all other entities composed of matter and energy. It is not an exception to the rule.

"Since the future and past don't really exist, well I can't see how thoughts exist. Or the mind of the author for that matter. Certainly the particular arrangement of some particles of matter and some energy that do not constitute a single thought do not constitute a mind.

Sure they do. You seem to have again assumed your desired conclusion and are arguing in a circle. You are presuming that a thought is an immaterial thing, that the mind is something different from the body. Oceans of ink have been wasted on "the mind body problem" when the obvious solution has always been that they are the same thing.

"A thought" is merely the arbitrary demarcation into granules of the ongoing seamless process we call "thought." Where one thought ends and another begins is merely convention... but we do not stop thinking in between.

And mind is more than just the sum total of our thoughts. The components of mind include cognition, perception, memory, consciousness, self awareness... the list is a long one. But ultimately... mind is what brain does. It is not a separate thing that exists independently of the material organ that produces it. Livers produce chemicals. Kidneys produce urine. Brains produce mind.

And we can confirm this by showing that no component of mind, no matter how subtle or definitive of "humanness," cannot be affected or destroyed by affecting or destroying the brain that produces it.

"Seems this view implies that minds only exist in our minds...which don't exist anyway...so we should just stop it!"

Nothing in that conclusion makes sense, fist and foremost because mind does not only exist in our minds. As evidence, it is my hope that you (through empathy alone) grant that I probably have one, even though you are not experiencing it in your own. You cannot think my thoughts, feel my feelings, or experience my experiences... so they clearly exist independently from your own. They are a different instance of mind from yours.

The intuitive turmoil is generated by the simple fact that your first person experience of your mind cannot be shared. It is an experience entirely unique to you. If I were to put you under a PET Scanner and look for your mind I would have no trouble describing the electro-chemical signals that cross your synapses, the firing of your neurons, the regions of your brain that are active and those that are not, the rewiring of synapses that constitute learning and memory... I might even be able to make some rough assessmenets of your emotional state or what you are doing.

But my third person experience of your mind can never be the same as your first person experience. It is the same mind... but our experiences of that mind will always be so different that I can only suspect and never know that our separate first person experiences are at least similar.

No... don't stop it. Embrace the unique and unrepeatable first person experience of your own mind, even if it ultimately is only the chemical reactions you are able to witness in mine.

But please, do not fritter away the singular experience of your mental universe by imagining it is merely a dress rehearsal. This is your one moment on the cosmic stage, and then into dust thou shall return.

Don't waste it.

Existence is a binary state. Ones and zeroes. There is no fractional existence, or fractional reality

It is an ambiguous term in reality. You seemed to be simply creating your own definition of the world with an implied model and asserting it as some immutable truth. Did you have a revelation I should know about?

You seem to have again assumed your desired conclusion and are arguing in a circle. You are presuming that a thought is an immaterial thing,...

I was proceeding only from the model you presented and was trying to see if there were problems with it. Forgive me for suggesting that there might be more to a mind than just the brain. I should immediately reject that since you say so.

That author exists only within now. There are not an infinite number of authors occupying different "slices" of time like pages in a flip book. There is no author in "the past." There is no author in "the future." The author will change as each subsequent instance of now replaces the prior. But the author that exists now is the only author that exists... period.

Very well, this seemed a little different then the impression I had of your model, so now I think I understand it better.

But I see a problem with this new understanding of your model: Is not the entire universe and everything in it an entity? If so, certainly it is an infinite one--having an infinitely long web of causes and effects in it. Thus this entity is necessarily infinite provided that the universe really is eternal.