by AnonYMous
You know that to be true, but from their point of view it is not so obvious. Remember that they are solitary creatures, moving ever forward to the light side of the planet. Since they communicate with no other creature, they only have one point of reference, themselves. But you are right, being intelligent, they would have several ways of interpreting what is happening in the world around them. The most simple is that objects come into existence when they touch them, and then the objects are gone as soon as they lose touch with them. The more subtle idea would be that they are walking on a road that actually stretches farther than they can sense, objects already exist but they simply haven't come in contact with them yet.
I am not sure it is so subtle, it seems very obvious to me that any semi intelligent alien would realize that the world isn't being created just for them as they walk around. It already exists but they just haven't experienced it yet.
Yet this is how you think of time, as the world popping into existence when you touch the present moment. Now when we are talking about space, the answer seems obvious to you, but to these creatures, until they meet someone who tells them of things further down the road, they would have no reason to believe that there is any world outside of what they are touching at that moment. To them, the entire world is their world of touch, things will appear within their world when they touch them, and disappear again. The concept that there is a massive world outside of what they can touch is a more subtle idea that only comes about once they have interacted with others, or develop the ability to see far away objects. Until they reach the warm and lit lands where they can see the vast expanse of their planet, the idea that there is a massive world beyond the surface of their body would be too much to imagine.
I see what you are saying.
Now imagine what happens in a hypothetical encounter between two such creatures walking from slightly different directions. After bumping into each other, one would say "Wow, hello I am sure glad you came into existence, I have been quite lonely." The other would say, "Hello, but it is not I who just came into existence, it is you. I have been alive a long time." At that point, if neither attempted to kill the other for usurping their privileged place at the center of the universe; after much discussion and experimentation, both could come to the realization that things do not come into existence, they already exist. Once you get close enough to sense them, their existence is, uncovered. Still this would be a logical understanding only. Wouldn't it be much more pleasant for them to continue to believe that they were the center of the universe, that all things appear and disappear but they were constant? Would it be so easy for them to change their egocentric worldview to one where they were just one thing amongst many things?
Well they would have to, if they were logical. Perhaps they could modify their view. After all, their world would still be very small. Even if they realized it was bigger than just what they touch, they would have no idea how big it really is, they could still be the major part of it.
Yes, direct sensory observation would be far more dramatic and enlightening. Imagine what happens when these new friends finally climb over the summit of a hill, and below them lies an illuminated valley. Their dormant organs of sight awakening, they see for the first time the true expanse of space.
It would surely be an amazing experience.
Just as these creatures can only know the existence of what they can touch, you can only know the existence of what you can sense with your mind at the present moment. You cannot actually observe the future, hence you naturally believe time exists only at your location. Time only pops into existence when you experience it.
Well you can't fault us for understanding things according to how we sense it.
The nature of a dimension, whether time or space, can be easily misunderstood if you lack the senses to understand it properly. Your sense of sight gives you a very good understanding of the spatial dimension. Yet humans do not all have the same ability to see. Those who have problems with their sense of sight often get nearly as confused about the nature of space as these alien creatures do.
Yes, since I have my own space perception issues, I have read quite a few case studies about spatial perception in people who have vision problems.
Do you recall one of the most famous early cases, documented in the seventeen hundreds, about a boy who gained vision late in life?
Yes, he was born blind because of cataracts in his eyes, and had them removed at thirteen. When he first regained his sight, he thought that the new images he saw with his eyes actually touched his eyeballs. As if they were pasted onto his eyes.
Right, even though he had lived for thirteen years, all that time touching, listening and moving in space, he had very little understanding of space and distance. To him space was flat. Humans who have spent their entire lives in rain forests or places where they are enclosed, also tend to misunderstand space. When they are removed from the enclosed spaces of the forest and first see objects far away from them, they believe those objects are still close, but just very small. Your understanding of a dimension depends on your brain's interpretation of the sensory information it receives. Even what you might consider a subtle change in your sense perception of space can have a very meaningful impact on how you understand it. One of the greatest abilities humans have when observing the spatial dimension is their ability to observe it from two distinct coordinates. You gain information from two eyes that are spaced apart from each other. Your brain creates a coherent image by combining the images from these two different perspectives of space. When it does so, you gain a sense of depth perception, what your scientists call stereoscopic vision. However, there are humans who only see from one coordinate, one eye, and this creates a more limited ability to see depth.
Yes, that’s a condition called stereo blindness. People who lose an eye for instance, will lose some of their stereoscopic vision. They lose depth perception, and they can't judge distance accurately. I know of a well-documented story of a woman named Sue Barry, a neurobiologist and writer who gained stereoscopic vision only as an adult.
Yes, she is a pretty famous case. She was born with a condition called stabismus, or misaligned eyes, one well known type of stabismus is crossed eyes. Though her eyes were later realigned with surgery to cosmetically appear as if they were straight, her brain did not correctly combine the two images from her eyes. Instead of combining images, her brain switched from one eye to the other. If you cover one eye, you will actually see everything in two-dimensional space, there is no depth in the image. The image will still appear to you as three-dimensional because there are other depth cues besides seeing from two different perspectives such as the size of objects, shading, or one object blocking the view of another. These cues give you a sense of 3D space, and you brain will use those cues to create a coherent 3D image; it will simulate depth. This makes the condition of seeing space from one perspective minor or even unnoticeable to most people. If you had stereo vision all your life, your brain will give you a simulated sense of depth even if you cover one eye. But if you never had this type of vision, you literally live in a two dimensional world. Due to the closeness of your eyes to each other, the angles at which they see the world are not that different, hence as you look farther away, that three-dimensional perception fades. So distant objects, past a few hundred feet, are always seen in a two-dimensional way by everyone, though your mind will still create a sense of depth. When you look at the moon at night for instance, you cannot really perceive its distance from you. If a cloud happens to then float over and partially obscure the moon, you can get a sense of the vast space between you.
Is that very important?
I think you will see the value. Sue writes that she often tried to use her imagination to visualize what truly seeing in three dimensions would be like. When she found out there were newly developed vision therapies that could teach her brain to synthesize the images of the eyes instead of switching back and forth, she pursued them. She was shocked when her st
ereo vision first began to manifest itself. Even though she was in the field of neurology and understood her condition, the actual experience of stereo vision was nothing like what she had imagined. As things began to randomly pop out at her, the world began to look completely different. Though she logically knew that she existed in a three-dimensional world, and she used other depth cues to function; without being able to see space from two different locations, she did not actually see it the way you do. She writes eloquently about how she and others who suffer from stereo blindness perceived space before and after gaining stereo vision. Before, she felt separate from what she saw, for instance in a snow storm, snow fell in a flat sheet in front of her instead of all around her. Though she didn’t specifically feel her visual detachment from the world, she found herself drawn to activities where she could at least physically feel herself within a medium, for instance swimming in water. Other people who regained their stereo vision had similar stories. They felt separated from what they were looking at. They also did not sense the space around them and between objects, the negative space. The interesting thing is that though she never had stereo vision, Sue’s world seemed complete and natural. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary at the time, it was just the way it was. Only in retrospect did she become consciously aware of these shortcomings. Her change in vision even changed the way she thought. Feeling detached from her surrounding, she tended to look at each object separately. She could see the details of a thing, but not easily understand it as a whole. Her thinking had evolved to work in a very sequential way, object by object. After gaining stereo vision, she was able to take everything in at once, instead of having to look at one thing and then the next. She got the big picture.
--He had finished his bottle of juice, and this time when he went to the kitchen, he actually grabbed the entire crate of cherry juice and put it next to his chair, he then opened another bottle, took a drink and continued.
So you see, your senses give you a conception of a dimension. When you only have a single point of reference, a dimension seems flat. When you have two point of reference, when you can receive and synthesize information from two coordinates in a dimension, you can perceive that dimension more fully, and you will get a sense of immersion in the dimension. You actually have this ability with both space and time. Between points you remember in the past and this current point, you can sense a block of time, and you can sense yourself within that time. With the future however, you have no point of reference, so time seems to stop at the present. Logically, mathematically, we can see that it does not, just like Sue knows the snow is not really falling on a 2D plane in front of her. Imagine if you did not have the ability to remember the past. You would have only one point of reference and thus see time as completely flat, only the moment, nothing before, nothing after, you would have only pure in the moment experience. Since your past is in your imagination, it is your mind that creates a sense of time beyond what you can actually observe at this moment. Just as it is your mind that creates depth in your world even when you close one eye.
So we are physically experiencing one slice of time, like a frame in the middle of a movie?
Yes. Imagine you are watching a dramatic scene in a horror movie you have seen before. The characters do not know what will happen next, yet you as the observer, do. Will it make any difference if during the movie you stand up and yell to those innocent teenagers, "Stop you fools! Don't go in the forest alone at night!" No, there is no point, you can yell at the screen all you want, but their fate is sealed.
So you are saying we are living a story that has already been written, we just don't know it yet.
It reminds me of those brilliant words of Shakespeare, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances." But don't feel too bad, your experience of the world is just as real whether you know it has happened or not.
I am not so sure that's any consolation. If time already exists, if there is no free will, if our fate is already sealed, it seems like a bleak picture to me.
I think that depends on your definition of fate and free will.
Fate means that you cannot change what will happen to you. Free will means you had a choice in your actions.
So lack of free will would mean some powerful force outside of yourself was making you act in certain ways?
Yes.
Then lack of free will and fate are two different things. You can have choice in your actions, but not be able to change your future.
I don't see the difference. If you are saying that you can see the future, and we are like actors in a movie, we may believe that we have free will, but we do not.
Yes, you are like actors in a movie to me, but your level of free will depends on what type of movie I am watching. Let's say I am watching a movie and I know the outcome. If that movie was one in which the screenwriter has written the lines for the actors, and the director has told everyone exactly how to move and deliver those lines, then indeed I know the actors are fated to speak those lines, and they have little free will in what they say. On the other hand, what if am watching a rerun of one of your very popular reality shows, like 'Survivor' or 'Jersey Shore'? The people in these shows create their own stories and conversations based on a loose framework set up by the director. Since I already watched the show, I know the outcome. They are fated to speak the lines that they speak, yet in creating those lines, they are making their own individual choices. So simply because all of space and time exists, doesn't necessarily mean that the constituents within it do not have some measure of free will. They can make choices, they simply can't change those choices. Don't feel too frustrated. I am trying to explain with words something you do not feel with your entire self. It will take time for you to assimilate the concept, and your understanding of it will change. The obstacle is not only physical, in that you can't perceive time future, it is also emotional and philosophical. It feels better to think that you control the future, you control your destiny. No one wants to feel helpless or hopeless. No one wants to feel like a pawn in an infinite game of chess. But understand that though you are powerless to change the future, you are not necessarily incapable of free will. Different beings perceive space in different ways, and different beings perceive time in different ways. There are beings in the universe who have a more developed sense of time, and experience it in ways quite different from humans. Aside from beings like yourselves, who only experience time in the current moment, some beings can see multiple coordinates in time. For example, they can see coordinates in the near future. And some beings can see all of the coordinates of time, their entire future, to the end of their consciousness, and even beyond that.
That seems like an amazing power. To see the future up to or even past your death.
Well if you look exclusively at the ability to observe a time future coordinate, it is not that special, and does not give these creatures a higher level of free will. It would be somewhat akin to the two of us sitting at the front of a train with me looking far forward down the tracks, and you looking straight at the tracks below. You will see the same track I see, just a little later. For those beings who can see all of the time coordinates to the end of their lives, it is like being able to see the destination of the train. Interestingly, already knowing everything that will occur during their trip, and with no choices to make, a human would see some of these creatures in a sense, as frozen, like objects.
Why frozen?
Because they see all of time, and they can change nothing, they have no impetus to act, they merely observe.
If they can see forward in time, why would they have no desire to act, to change the outcome of events they don't like? I don't understand any creature making such a passive choice.
They make the passive choice because they have no other choice to make. It is part of their nature. It is hard for you to understand this in the context of time, so I will give you an example of a creature that gladly relinquishes its f
reedoms in the dimension of space. And I won't leave your planet this time. Do you know of a creature called the sea squirt?
Yes, it is a filter feeder. It sits on rocks, shells, and choral, just about anything and filters nutrients from the water. There are many kinds, some with beautiful patterns and colors.
Correct. The sea squirt attaches itself to something, usually on the sea floor, and remains there all of its life. But in its initial larva form, it actually looks like a tiny tadpole. It has a primitive eye, a primitive backbone, and a tail. It swims around looking for a place to attach itself. Once it does, its eye, backbone and tail dissolve, and it even digests the most developed parts of its brain, the parts used for navigation and movement. The sea squirt eats its own brain. So it is not unheard of for a creature to actually relinquish its freedom, if that is in its nature. Understand that creatures who truly see, not imagine, their future, do not think of the future in the way that you do. There are not a myriad of different possible futures, there is only one future, and they have seen it.
And you are saying that this ability to see the future is of little benefit, since they can't change what will happen to them anyway.
Right, they must settle into a peaceful acceptance of the future, much as humans would with a loved one who everyone knows is going to die soon. This still seems unnatural to you?
Yes, the peaceful acceptance of the future does. Because if I can sense that a bus will hit me five minutes into the future when I try to cross the street; I will stop, get in a building, and go up an elevator to the 50th floor.
What these creatures observe is a fact. These creatures do not attempt to change the future, they accept the future as it is. The only reason you can imagine changing the future is because you imagine many futures, you don't concretely see one future. These creatures naturally accept what will happen in time, they do not dream of anything different and do not attempt to alter their circumstances. How can they change a future that is already set and unchangeable?