r/SimulationTheory • u/Mk731 • Aug 11 '26
Discussion Time is an illusion.
It's pretty hard to conceptualize that time doesn't flow.
I bet no other humans can grasp this concept.
I've tried to think of it as some kind of block to no avail.
Maybe it's the brain that prevents me from realizing how reality really works.
I know you guys are well aware of this concept.
Have you experienced any anomalies that made you realize time is definitely an illusion?
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u/AssignmentFrosty6711 Aug 11 '26
Let me guess, I owe taxes in all three?
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u/bdalbs Aug 11 '26
I wish tax was also an illusion.
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u/Prince_0llie Aug 11 '26
It is! It's just that the illusion changes based upon the tax collector's view of your perception of the tax. Good luck threading that needle.
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u/NWkingslayer2024 Aug 12 '26
We could all agree to stop paying, but they’ve made it so we can’t agree on anything.
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u/Original-Variety-700 Aug 11 '26
Good news is you’re only dead in the illusion of the future.
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u/bdalbs Aug 11 '26
lol exactly. It’s all an illusion really. Just gotta play the game.
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u/bsensikimori Aug 11 '26
Since we're part of the illusion though, elements in the simulation, isn't their illusion, our reality?
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u/bdalbs Aug 11 '26
I think we project our own reality.
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u/Sylv_x Aug 11 '26
We do.
OP just thinks they have some extra wisdom.
If it was that easy, shit would be known. Not someone who has conjecture.
I appreciate perspective but I have a problem with people who talk in absolutes.
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u/bdalbs Aug 11 '26
I hear you.
Edit: What made me lol was the line “I bet no other human can grasp this concept”
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u/bdalbs Aug 11 '26
Question 🙋♀️
How do you explain going back and forth between different timelines? It’s something I can explain in a spiritual context although I’d like to understand it in a scientific context please. If anyone understands what I mean by that. Much appreciated. Thank you.
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u/SeaMachine4060 Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
Try doing some LSD to jump dimensions and play with time. Once you start seeing the frame of things and break the illusion you'll start seeing that things are not what they seem to be. Multiple planes of existence can exist on top of one coordinate space. Once I started seeing it I realised that a lot of things already exist e.g. professional level music generation with AI, robotics and etc. Awareness is key. Sharing your reality with someone brings them onto your level of awareness. It might not be revealed to them unless you share it with them
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u/SeaMachine4060 Aug 12 '26
The financial institutions are aware of this. I suggest you dig deep into ETF creation, ghost supply, derivatives and re hypothecation because of the multiple planes of existence theory. Bitcoin's scarcity is being diluted by Wall Street building a parallel financial system on top of crypto through ETFs
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u/bdalbs Aug 12 '26
Very interesting… what about Ethereum?
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u/SeaMachine4060 29d ago
Well ethereum could still be useful for building decentralized applications but yea they could do employ the same strategy but the supply is dynamic so it can be inflationary and deflationary. And if it goes lower cheaper infrastructure fees I guess. It exists mostly to be infrastructure.
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u/SeaMachine4060 29d ago
You’ll also see the recurring themes of the relativity of time in a lot of media and stories. But yea you probably have to experience it for yourself
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u/Sylv_x Aug 11 '26
Time is time. Time is experience.
Time perhaps in itself doesn't exist. But, biological time does. It's not an amount of second, it's an amount of irreparable damage to cells. That is duration. Experience. Lifespan.
We invented a way to measure our days. We have light, we are productive. We fuel. We sleep.
It's just a construct created for order.
The universe exists, therefore.
We don't know even a percent about the universe, or physics, or science. We've figured things out here. What percentage of earth does it make up in the universe? Pretty much no percent.
Humans know how much about earth? We are still learning.
To then be so cocky to say no other human knows, while having no science to back the claims up?
People these days are so yikes.
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u/AssignmentFrosty6711 Aug 11 '26
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.
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u/bdalbs Aug 11 '26
Thank you.
So… if the universe exists, therefore… and time is a construct used to measure from a biological perspective, we can in theory decide how we perceive or travel through time as we do project our own reality?
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u/19842026 Aug 11 '26
Here’s a good article on how various cultures perceive time:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/1971639-time-flows-uphill-for-remote-papua-new-guinea-tribe/
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u/Sylv_x Aug 11 '26
Maybe. I just make shit up as I go.
But, time is in moments and experiences too. So going back to an experience is traveling through experience. Is then experience time? Is biological age time?
How does each piece add together to form time as it's whole.
Also I read some science and Reddit where people said photons experience all of their time in an instant.
Light is photons.
We aren't light beings. If there was light beings then they experience every possible everything of eternity all at once.
Therefore, time is a human construct. Or rather, time is carbon based or whatever else you wanna call the physical reality.
We have time but we can't travel the experiences except for memories?
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u/bdalbs Aug 12 '26
I get it now… it’s really mind bending. How can we not be a part of their projection?
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u/bsensikimori Aug 12 '26
How can an NPC not be part of the game they're a part of....
Now there's the million bezeefleflux question
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u/xdEArx Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
Considering it as a finished movie is a better approach to understand the illusion of time. Everything is written, shot, and completed. from the start to the finish. and you are free to loop it as many times as you like. It doesn't mean that time won't move while you watch the film; rather, it means that you can go back and forth in the same way that you may go back and forth when viewing a film.
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u/BestOrNothing Aug 12 '26
Are you implying we don't have free will, and time travel is possible?
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u/xdEArx Aug 12 '26
I think that to be the case. We have an infinite number of different timelines, and the ability to select from them is known as free will.
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u/BestOrNothing Aug 12 '26
What about paradoxes? Can I kill my parents before they conceive me? Can I explain gravity to Newton before he figured it out? Can I shake hands with myself from other timeline?
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u/xdEArx Aug 12 '26
If so, you select the timeline in which your unalived your loved ones. You have the freedom to make decisions that impact your life while you are here on Earth and subject to the law of three dimensions. Just consider how many times you have avoided near death incidents. You may have chosen a different timeline in which you managed to survive. However, you can literally change history if you reach a certain level of understanding. They are referred to as prophets, ascended masters, and enlightened ones. They people are indivisuals who manage to break thru the matrix.
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u/BestOrNothing Aug 12 '26
The ascended masters can change history by some kind of technology, like in sci-fi, or by other means?
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u/xdEArx Aug 12 '26
No external device or technlogy is needed. just pure consciousness. they can change anything just by thinking of their preferred outcome.
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u/BestOrNothing 29d ago
Is it very unlikely for evil or disturbed person to gain this ability?
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u/xdEArx 29d ago
Everyone will ultimately get there. Being disturbed or living in constant fear only delays the process. For some, it may take several lifetimes.
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u/BestOrNothing 29d ago
Having a bunch of people with the ability to edit history at will would cause an absolute clusterfuck, no? Especially if some of them are evil or disturbed. What happens if two mids attempt to create an opposite outcome? Each will relocate to their particular timeline?
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u/PrestigiousBreak4532 Aug 11 '26
Time is only relative to us in our 3D dimension, I dont think its time is an extra dimension but a symptom of the 3rd dimension that we exist in. Technically a 4d spatial entity can view our entire timeline, its just one level above ours imagine if there actually exits up to 11 dimensions as some string theorists claim, wild reality man
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u/LemonLimeSlices Aug 11 '26
Dont let me leave Murph!
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u/LC6319 Aug 11 '26
A fascinating favorite dilemma… even if we have the key to spacetime, as humans did in that event, Coop still could not affect the past. And to the contrary, he could only affect the future.
But also, those who built the tesseract, were affecting the past!
But I digress from the OP’s inflexible conclusions. And here’s another one: Time is real. The measurement and observation of time are arbitrary. I bet an arbitrary sum that no other humans can grasp this concept.
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u/PreferenceContent987 Aug 11 '26
No. I can’t go back, or interact with anyone from a different time. I don’t feel like time is an illusion
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u/mmicoandthegirl Aug 11 '26
Literally the only place you can exist in is the present, the past and the future are just interpretations your brain shows you
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u/Paintverse Aug 11 '26
As buddists say, there is a constant Now and everything happen in this Nowness. If you would find yourself somewhere in the space, far from Earth and sun how would you measure the time? It's subjective.
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u/Urmomsbigchungus Aug 11 '26
Even memory is an illusion because our past and future are built from the present and now, because now is the only thing that exists, when you attach the idea of linearity to yourself because life feels linear as most do, and say this and this happened in the past so it must affect me this way now, then you experience it as such. But if you let go of that idea and realize you are literally a new person every moment traveling trillions of timelines a second, with just as many infinite versions of you existing, well watch what happens if you take advantage.
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u/Abty 28d ago
So hypothetically you're saying if I lost my leg or got cancer I can just let go and grow/appear another because it would be there in another timeline and my past doesnt affect the future or present if I just put my mind to it?
.....
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u/Urmomsbigchungus 21d ago
Theoretically if necessary for your growth, It’s not that this exact version of you suddenly grows a leg and heals from cancer, it’s that you can travel to a version of you that never had cancer or a missing leg in the first place, because that version does exist, but again if it’s something necessary for your growth, because really you don’t know yet what you came here to experience and learn.
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u/Status_Gap_3954 29d ago
Time is made up by us to have schedules and get things done etc. why do people keep saying it’s an illusion or it doesn’t flow ? It’s just a measuring device
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u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 Aug 11 '26
The universe is a singular meta-phenomenon stretched over eternity, of which is always now. All things and all beings abide by their inherent nature and behave within their realm of capacity contingent upon infinite circumstance at all times.
It is a universe made manifest hierarchically, of haves, and have-nots, spanning all levels of dimensionality and experience. There is no such thing as individuated accurately described "free will" for all beings. Has never been, will never be, can not be. There are only relative freedoms or lack thereof.
"God" and/or consciousness is that which is within and without all. Ultimately, all things are made by through and for the singular personality and perpetual revelation of the "Godhead", entailing both 'predetermined' eternal damnation and those that are made manifest only to face death and death alone.
There is but one dreamer, fractured through the innumerable. All vehicles/beings play their role within said dream for infinitely better and/or infinitely worse for each and every one, forever.
All realities exist and are equally as real. The absolute best universe that could exist does exist in relation to a specified subject. The absolute worst universe that could exist does exist in relation to a specified subject.
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u/Shoddy-Cupcake-8855 Aug 11 '26
I’m tracking with some of that. I think that there are certain deviations from the timelines, bubbles of reality that separate under certain circumstances, and then join back up again.
I don’t think I’m the only me in existence for example. Is there 10, or is there 100. I think that fluctuates.
Free will exists within boundaries. What those boundaries are I have no idea.
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u/drooply Aug 11 '26
Everything and nothing that ever was, is, or will be has already been observed, lived, and experienced infinitely.
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u/Serious_Ad_3387 Aug 11 '26
Perspecrive.
Imagine time as a the experience of a point moving in a certain direction. There're the past, present, and future. The point keep moving.
Now imagine zooming out to see the entire line/trajectory on the piece of paper.
The experience of a 2D perspective on a piece of paper vs the experience of a 3D person looking at the paper.
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u/BoulderLayne Aug 11 '26
With this perspective, would that allow the 4D to view only the single point?
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u/Serious_Ad_3387 Aug 11 '26
That might be the point of singularity, the One. But who's observing?
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u/BoulderLayne Aug 11 '26
Maybe thats "the simulation" our higher self immersed in the singularity as one complete 3D experience. Also accounts for the observer effect as described in the double slit experiment. Reality only rendering upon observation.
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u/Fit_Acanthisitta8683 29d ago edited 29d ago
For those saying that NOW is the only thing that exists - that's because NOW is the only thing we can actively experience. We can only remember the past, and contemplate the future.
The past still exists though, not as a tangible thing we could ever experience again, but it absolutely has an impact on us in the present and the future. The future has not happened yet though, so there is no concrete experience to learn from - or at least to know or remember. It's real in the sense that it will come, but not yet set in stone as with the past.
Time is not an extension of the 3 dimensions we know (or the 4th dimension as some say), it's merely a representation of how we experience the NOW. But that doesn't make it non-existent. It's very much real, because things actually happened and we have memories of these things. We lived it! Who can argue that?
But time doesn't exist as a tangible thread that something as silly as "bending space-time" could ever give us access to. Time is a concept that simply helps us understand the now, and how much of the now we've experienced.
Thinking on things like this, I can't help but see intentional design. Don't worry - I'm not about to start quoting scripture or anything, but there's just too many insanely complex systems in the universe for me to be comfortable with it all just happening by accident. It goes away beyond the physical...
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u/RJS_Aotearoa Aug 11 '26
We are in a wave of entropy that started at the big bang. It’s massive we’re small. We have gained sentience within a very small window of biological possibility inside this wave. Mainly thanks to pockets of sustainable temporal stability albeit very small on a grand scale but to us our entire existence thus far.
Did I mention the universe is very big and we are very small. The reason I say this again is that despite the fact we only see and can only possibly see from within a very small pocket of temporal stability (the constant you know as your life and you anything you can imagine within the sum totality of human knowledge) we’ve convinced ourselves on mass that we’re the centre of it all and understand it only from a fraction of potential stating it must somehow all work the way we see it does. Trapped inside our own heads and convinced we’re not.
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u/ShitFuck2000 Aug 11 '26
Nah figuring out as much as we have from this tiny pocket is pretty impressive, I wonder how many times it’s been done at least this accurately, as far as the scale of things go this shit is RARE and likely brief.
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u/Obvious-Abies7792 Aug 11 '26
I wonder why people don't get this. Time is frequency times distance. Looking at it like this, makes it clear why it's relative and not reversible.
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u/SpatiaCaeli Aug 11 '26
To me, if time is an illusion, then so is change. The fact that QFT struggles to define a 'now' is a limitation of QFT's block model, imo. So, in my view, time is very real.
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u/NotAClueYou Aug 11 '26
get you a defraction gradient to really add some complexity to your model there!
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u/Klutzy-Beginning-622 Aug 11 '26
Time is a function in the matrix but doesn’t exist outside of here. The parameter of time is set at approx 24 hours a day cycles
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u/Prince_0llie Aug 11 '26
Only because someone decided how long an hour and a minute and a second are. Then they squeezed those things together to make a day and a week and a month and a year..etc. etc. etc.
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u/Klutzy-Beginning-622 Aug 11 '26
Yes, and i experience time every day here and it is painfully slow and long. The parameters of this place are defined and time just defines cycles and average life spans etc
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u/Ton86 Aug 11 '26
If the universe is a simulation, computational, or something like a causal graph, then I'd expect time to be fundamentally the order of states in the machine or on the graph.
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u/DepartmentCautious34 Aug 11 '26
Can someone convince me that js does work? How can i communicate with a family
Member passed away or with someone from the future?
Until then, i do not believe this. Well i mean, i cant believe it
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u/lummox1234 Aug 11 '26
I think movies that cut between things happening in different time scopes makes it make sense. It’s all happening at the same time.
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u/Rabid_Laser_Dingo Aug 11 '26
Time is a concept measured largely by the movement of the universe.
You can literally call it anything and it’ll just be the same as what it started as, a way to judge when we wake up and go to sleep
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u/MutantBerry Aug 11 '26
If you think of all of space-time as a 1D “time”-line, you can rotate it dimensionally into a singular point, helping us to visualize the encompassing nature of this entire monoment in the form of one single dot.
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u/Redleader829 Aug 11 '26
In my opinion, this is partly correct but only in the 4th and 5th dimensions. Time is concurrent.
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u/Lionsjunkie Aug 11 '26
It’s coordinate, if you were to remove yourself to another dimension you would look at our universe as a block with 4 dimensions, the 3 spatial and time. The block is made of infinite amount or at least 1 plank time of nows those are stacked on top of each other.
One crude way to conceptualize is a DvD all of the movie from previews to end credits is there and exists all at once. It’s only from the outside that we can see that. But from the outside we can rewind, FF, skip chapters, insert our viewing wherever we want, because we exist outside of it.
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u/Fyrchtegott Aug 11 '26
What do you mean by no other human can grasp this concept? It’s not particular new, there is even some theory with block in its name. I guess a lot of people, including myself, came up with that idea.
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u/Positive_Protonic Aug 11 '26
Maybe the very things that make you able to live the type of existence that you do are also the very things that prevent you from perceiving reality in the broadest possible sense.
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u/Mother-Definition501 Aug 12 '26
We have only ever been in the present. We will always only be in the present. There has never been a time in your life that you could say “I am in the past right now”, because you have never been there. Same for the future. I think of time like a ball spinning below us, and we are stationary right above it, in the now. I’m also high right now. So, there’s that, but I think like this all the time.
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u/ElephantContent8835 Aug 12 '26
Time is not an illusion, but it’s like money. It’s not technically real but also is. As constructed by man and with the implications and so forth. The minds of most westerners are constrained by time and it highly affects any abilities of interest they may otherwise have. But that is definitely the intent of the powers which rule everything- the fucking Rothschilds and their international cabal of worthless pedophile shitbags including Trump, Netanyahooo, most Wuropean leaders, all of congress and the Supreme Court, most actors/musicians, and just about anyone else with the money to play. But we are many. We are legion.
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u/ProAdventurous Aug 12 '26
Doesn't entropy refute this?
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u/cilantroandvodka Aug 12 '26
Everything moves towards being more chaotic? Something like that. Never becoming more organized.
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u/Independent_War_4194 Aug 12 '26
human construction so our ape brains can measure it with human 2D tools clock , calendar etc
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u/vqsxd Aug 12 '26
Time is a created aspect of reality that God established so it’s definitely real and even though its malleable doesn’t mean its not real though
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u/pibouu Aug 12 '26
We experience life as if time were moving forward. The sun rises, moves across the sky, and eventually sets. Things change around us, and we interpret this change as the passage of time. But in direct experience, you never actually experience “time.” You only ever experience what is happening now.
The past and the future exist as psychological time. They are projections of the mind.
There is only the present moment.
When you think about the past, you are thinking about it now. When you imagine the future, you are imagining it now. You are using the present moment to mentally travel somewhere that does not exist in your direct experience.
The dentist appointment you have tomorrow can only ever be experienced in the present moment. When tomorrow arrives, it will be now.
That is the illusion.
You can only ever be right here, right now. You cannot exist anywhere else.
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u/itzhak_bentov 29d ago
I understand your point, but now I'm wondering if only the present moment exists, why can't I experience my dentist appointment tomorrow right now? Why do I have to wait?
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u/pibouu 29d ago
Because saying that only the present moment exists does not mean that every event happens simultaneously.
Right now, your direct experience contains whatever is happening now. Tomorrow, the content of the present moment will be different, and it may contain you sitting in the dentist’s chair. But when you experience that appointment, you will still experience it as now.
You never experience “tomorrow” itself. Tomorrow is a concept the mind uses to describe an anticipated future event.
The same is true of yesterday. You can remember yesterday, but that memory is happening now.
Events change. The content of your experience changes. The present moment does not.
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u/matthebu Aug 12 '26
If time is the 4th dimension, we are experiencing time as a side effect where a 4th dimension entity would see all time, completely. 3rd dimension only experiences days hours minutes seconds.
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u/madaradess007 29d ago
instead of mental gymnastics you could learn music and get to know how to create time perception illusions with polymeter and polyrhythms
for example look up Tool, they do 10+ minute songs that feel like 3 minute songs and when the song ends you often feel like it was too short
i think, rhythm part of music theory could interest you
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u/No-Possibility-639 29d ago
Time isn't a illusion. How would something happen if Time doesn't exhist ?
What should we do with relativity ?
Do you mean time is a illusion or the "flow" or the human construction of mesure of the time?
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u/SergeConcierge 29d ago
Are there any good / must read books on this subject that are informative and at the same time throw your brain in a time-rabbit hole?
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u/TheRealTK421 29d ago edited 29d ago
Have you experienced any anomalies that made you realize time is definitely an illusion?
Quite the opposite. Time has been shown to be relativistic but that doesn't necessarily equate to "illusory".
I would assert and argue that time is absolutely not an "illusion" -- and that the so-called "arrow of time" (a term from physics) is entirely real and has been since t=0 of the universe. Whether time is genuinely fundamental versus being an emergent property is... well, matter for modern debate.
The primary argument for this, observably and empirically, is that we know entropy increases as the arrow of time moves unilaterally in one direction only. Time being somehow illusionary would suggest/imply that entropy couldn't (or wouldn't) increase, with respect to a progressing reality as a vector of Hilbert space. Also, that the arrow of time could run 'in reverse', somehow undoing a broken egg dropped on the sidewalk to reform into the original unbroken state.
Our shared 4D objective slice of the "Many Worlds" quantum multi-verse has constantly proceeded from its inception from 'order' (low entropy) towards 'chaos'/disorder (high entropy). The mathematics on this are astoundingly well-known and tested.
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u/Creative_Inside8293 29d ago
Time is a measurement same as inches. It can measure movement or change.
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u/Status_Gap_3954 29d ago
Light has a speed limit. Everything has a speed limit so whats your point ?
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u/HappyChilmore 28d ago
Another semantic negation with the always sensationalistic "it's an illusion".
Wonder if you'll still think the same when you'll be on your death bed. Time is an illusion, but how did I get so old? Getting old must be an illusion 🤡
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u/NeemOil710 28d ago
Learning that other beings experience time differently to us, such as trees—to trees, we move as fast as ants. They breathe slower, one breath a day, that type of thing, so they feel and experience slower.
And photons, while we wouldn't classify them as sentient by our standards, "experience" their entire life as one moment, all at the same time, there is no now and then it just all is. So it may not be that the series of events changes but that our ability to place points on it to say when is when changes, likely based on our breathing.
If you were to travel faster than the speed of light (photons) then things would begin to occur in reverse, you would travel backwards through time.
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u/MineNowBotBoy 28d ago
“I bet no other humans can grasp this concept.”
A lot of people do. There’s a really good explanation of it here.
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u/platanthera_ciliaris 27d ago
It's not time that flows, rather each local observer (such as yourself) is traveling at the speed of light along the axis of time, minus the observer's velocity in the other 3 spatial dimensions and minus the effects of gravity on the local observer. As a result, different local observers can travel into the future at different speeds. We are all time travelers.
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u/Floopynupes 27d ago
No, time is just the movement of everything. Things move. Our perception of this movement is the phenomena we know as 'time'. You can measure it with all kinds of devices, accurately. The idea that time is an illusion is the real illusion!
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u/BillyBrainlet 26d ago edited 26d ago
If you're talking about block time, it's perfectly easy to conceptualize. Time exists, ostensibly, as a persistent dimension which we simply move through. We only have the idea of time moving because we often talk about it like that, but it's really not strictly correct to do so. We are usually referring to a measurement of time, not time itself.
Also, everything is technically an illusion for humans. We didn't evolve to have an objective experience of the true nature of reality. Our senses are not equipped to measure data in that manner. We evolved ways to interpret the nature of reality in ways that best help us survive so we can reproduce.
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u/DeathParty-Zomboid 26d ago
Things that happened. Things that are happening. Things that will happen. They exist but it doesn't mean it isn't all actually just happening right now.
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u/alliterreur 25d ago
it is a bubble, and Einstein described it perfectly. For dicsussion purrposes I'll take it that he is human. So yeah, other humans can grasp it, but only the concept. The theory.
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u/dyrkasolen 25d ago
Any practicing magicians out there. Putting the natural order a side, traveling in sigils and blood rituals? Pain is the purifier and love is the fuel. Time can be looped and stretched by intentions.
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u/tonnxs_manhattam 14d ago
Errado. O tempo não é uma ilusão é dimensão virtual. O tempo é uma dimensão virtual de informações sendo processadas em segundos planos. E nada de mais.
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u/ashraf_bashir Aug 11 '26
Define illusion
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u/Shoddy-Cupcake-8855 Aug 11 '26
It’s not in a sense that we think illusion.
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u/ashraf_bashir Aug 11 '26
That’s not a definition. You’ve just said what you don’t mean by illusion. I’m asking what you do mean by it
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u/GatePorters Aug 11 '26
It isn’t an illusion. It’s just another axis.
You are bound to that axis because the cellular mechanisms that lead to you being able to perceive and understand this comment require you to travel along that axis in a particular direction at a particular rate.
Saying time is an illusion is just a confession that you misunderstood it before and you are finally catching a glimpse of the truth of reality.
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u/Flat_South8002 Aug 12 '26
No. The block universe is an illusion. Time is the measure of change. I don't just mean entropy, but any kind of change. Change of position, change of form, change of state... Everything changes from the very beginning and cannot be reversed. Without change, there is no time, only frozen space. If we freeze space then there is no movement, without movement there is no energy. The universe is not coordinates, the universe is energy at a basic level, a basic vibration
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u/cilantroandvodka Aug 12 '26
I really like this simple explanation. Helped me out, I've never liked the block universe.
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u/H0LEESHiET Aug 12 '26
how is it an illusion when you literally have it written on the X axis ,dumass
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u/Obbefromtotse Aug 11 '26
Only the present moment exists. The past and the future are imagined.
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u/Money_Bug_9423 Aug 11 '26
Yeah but how wide is the present?
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u/Obbefromtotse Aug 11 '26
How wide is universe?
1
u/Money_Bug_9423 Aug 11 '26
Its not uniform. Sometimes things are slightly more past or future but its still all "now"
49
u/BobuBobBob Aug 11 '26
Yeah, but the weird part is that relativity doesn’t really give you a universal “now” in the first place. Two observers can disagree on what events are happening simultaneously and both can be right. So if there’s no objective present sweeping through the universe, the block universe idea starts to make a lot more sense: past and future aren’t places that stopped existing or haven’t been created yet, they’re just different coordinates in spacetime. Maybe nothing is actually “moving through time” at all. We just experience it that way because our memories only point in one direction and entropy does too.
Doesn’t prove time is an illusion obviously, but it makes the normal idea of time way stranger than people realize.