All you have is the state of your brain at that given point in time.
An interesting exploration of time and how we experience it is found in the recent book "Your brain is a time machine, the neuroscience and physics of time" by UCLA neuroscientist Dean Buonomano. This book has been praised by Carlo Rovelli who (with others) is trying to build models of the universe which include quantum mechanics and gravity in which time (and perhaps now) is an emergent phenomenon. According to Buonomano our brains construct our reality by sampling a "temporal window of intergration" of about 100 millisecond (more or less) (See page 219 of the book at "look inside" here.) <https://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Time-Machine-Neuroscience/dp/0393355608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1543444355&sr=8-1&keywords=your+brain+is+a+time+machine> Search inside the book for "temporal window of integration". This brings up an interesting question: did "now "exist before our brains existed in order "to construct it"... But this doesn't make sense if we live in a block universe? A talk on the book by Dean Buonomano at Google: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqwJHasGT9w> Wikipedia discussion of the block universe: The block universe aka Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)> Opposing the block universe is presentism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_presentism> A video argument for the block universe: Space Time Video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO_Q_f1WgQI> A few more recent books on time (but Buonomano's is my favorite) Now: The Physics of Time Sep 19, 2017 by Richard A. Muller
From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time Feb 5, 2010 by Sean Carroll and Erik Synnestvedt
The Order of Time May 8, 2018 by Carlo Rovelli Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation Jan 24, 2017 by Alan Burdick For those who may be interested there is also the International society for the study of time <http://www.studyoftime.org/> which has put out 15 volumes of selected works for the 15 triennial conferences held by the society since it began in 1966. On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 4:03 PM Mike Stay <metaweta@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 1:47 PM Dan Asimov <dasimov@earthlink.net> wrote:
That's probably my preferred view, but there are problems reconciling it
with
everyday experience. It would mean that all ages t of (say) me are living their lives equally, in some sense of equally.
But how does that explain the experience we have of living our lives in the order of the real numbers, and the fact that it keeps getting later?
A too-cute answer is, "Because the arrow of time points in the direction of increasing entropy." More carefully, how could you distinguish the experience of living the events out of order from living them in order, or from living them simultaneously? All you have is the state of your brain at that given point in time. -- Mike Stay - metaweta@gmail.com http://math.ucr.edu/~mike https://reperiendi.wordpress.com
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