What if we could move through time in both directions but not notice it because when we went back to the past our brains and the environment would return to their state at that moment?
The block universe theory states that the passage of time is not real; our consciousness only traverses portions of this static block, creating the sensation that events occur one after another. The perception of linear progression and increasing entropy is due to the laws of thermodynamics and the workings of human memory, not to a fundamental property of time itself. Our brain processes information sequentially, creating the sensation that we advance second by second, and the constant increase in entropy gives us a clear direction, like a film that can only move forward, but doesn't change the fact that the entire film has already been shot.This makes me think that even if we could move into the past, we wouldn't be able to change it, as if we lost our memory, like when you rewind a film—it won't change, it will repeat itself because it's already been filmed.Since we are part of this block, if we were to travel back in time, our current state would also have to be undone.
>>17042213Correct. The universe is a static object. We're just traversing it endlessly, causally bound to perform the same actions over and over. Possibility did not come into being at any point in time, what is possible has always been possible, therefore the block is immutable from the greater perspective, and forms a set of every possible causal chain, which are also static. There is no life in the universe, but a bunch of atoms who will complain when they hear that.
>>17042213>>17042220If frozen block universe is true, then consciousness is a phenomenon that exists in the passage of time. Each individual “frame” of the block would be non-conscious as a separate entity, and only conscious in succession.It also throws a loop into the idea of what happens after death. If death is 0 (the absence of perception) and the block is 1 (the presence of perception), that is heavily block-sided. Zero plus one equals 1. You would be effectively immortal because the conscious parts of the block remain conscious eternally, but the unconscious parts might as well not exist.
>>17042264Category error during Markov step; prediction rejects
