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Folks are asking about the practical import of time not passing---if indeed it does not. I know of this rather substantial one: my fear of death, and I guess th

Folks are asking about the practical import of time not passing---if indeed it does not. I know of this rather substantial one: my fear of death, and I guess that of other people too, depends on the notion that my own annihilation in time, and that of everything I care about, is absolute and definitive. Existence no longer has me as one of its inhabitants, and that's that. This picture is in its turn grounded on a presentist theory of time (the idea that only the present exists), or at least an A-theory of time (the idea that the present is somehow special, in absolute terms.) Nothing like that is true if time does not pass: all of the moments that make me and everything I care about are still there, occupying their own spacetime regions, eternal, in a way. Realizing this has helped me see death from a slightly different perspective. It still sucks, but it no longer feels like the absolutely unaceptable deal I used to think it was.

bambataa 8y ago
While I can see that that's comforting, perhpas in the same way as believing that all your deceased loved ones are in heaven, does it really make a difference if we can't perceive those other 'there's?
- Schiphol 8y ago
  Well, supposing that heaven doesn't exist, it's very different at least in that they really are in those other, fully existing times. Re: your suggestion that whatever cannot be perceived does not make a difference to us, I care deeply about the future wellbeing of my family, including those years I won't see because I'll be long dead. I'd bet you do too.
  - Omnus 8y ago
    You seem to miss the point with every response to your original comment. You keep saying things about the importance of things that can't be perceived. No one is suggesting that things don't "make a difference to us" if they aren't perceived. That's silly and doesn't even make sense - of course we care about certain things that we don't (or won't) perceive. The point is that we experience time as flowing in a certain direction and can't experience it any other way. Knowing that we continue to exist in some tiny sliver of spacetime doesn't change that fact, and so it is not very comforting, for easily understandable reasons. If you're on your deathbed, with your conscious experience about to flicker and die, no one in the room is going to be comforted by you saying "well look at it this way, my 2 year old self still exists somewhere that you can't ever access and that I'll never return to, and even if I did, none of us would have any idea that this conversation was going to happen in 90 years".
announcerman 8y ago
How do you decide that your new view is valid and is not based on your need to lessen the fear of death. I have problems with this with every new thing I try to use to make death more palatable, be it religion, philosophy or anything else. I just cannot believe in anything because I feel its just a convenient way to make the fear smaller. How can any view be valid if its based on self interest?
- Nursie 8y ago
  I find it weirdly comforting to know that nothing in this universe is really eternal. If you could live literally forever, you'd witness the end of all life on earth in about a billion years, and eventually the slow heat death of the universe. I'd love a lot more life than I have in front of me - a few millenia at least - but even with a traditional, linear view of time there's no point, need or possibility of eternity.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    Even if the universe were eternal, the way I see it eternity is just another kind of ending. I think the important thing to realize is that a thing does not cease to have value simply because it is impermanent.
    - goatlover 8y ago
      It will cease to have value when there's nobody left to value it.
      - icebraining 8y ago
        Why? Can't we value things that will exist in a future where we no longer belong?
        goatlover 8y ago
        We can value whatever, but eventually there won't be anyone left to do the valuing. Impermanence doesn't stop us from valuing, but impermanence does guarantee that value won't last. Which may or may not bother us now, depending on how existentially grumpy we feel in the moment. But luckily, those feelings are impermanent as well.
reificator 8y ago
If time is not a straight progression where the past is what happened and the now is reality and the future is what might happen, that's interesting and changes a lot about how we model things. But as long as you can only perceive it as such, it's a meaningless distinction from a practical view.
- Schiphol 8y ago
  Hm, I would have expected more respect to the importance of the unperceived from a reificator.
  - reificator 8y ago
    Fair enough, I can't argue with that. But outside of something like serializing events in an application, I don't think I can reify time. If you've got an idea for it, please clue me in because the possibilities are endless.
navaati 8y ago
> all of the moments that make me and everything I care about are still there, occupying their own spacetime regions, eternal, in a way. Yes but not evolving anymore. What sucks isn't really not existing anymore, what do sucks is having no future. If a supervillain's evil plan was eternally freezing the universe right now, I would be as sad as if it was making it disappear.
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  The block universe doesn't mean a specific moment in time is all that is, it means that they all coexist. Dynamics in block universe is like reading a book: it seems things happen as you move your attention over the pages, but in truth the story was fixed before you even started.
  - Ntrails 8y ago
    Which is fine but it's not a meaningful change to the perspective of me on page 120 when I think "when we reach page 163 I will no longer feature in this novel". Our problems with death are, basically, ego. How you mentally model time and the universe doesn't take that away
    - SiempreViernes 8y ago
      While I agree that death will feature no matter how you model time, the difference between the flowing time and the block universe in this regard is that in the block universe you never cease to exist. In the model of flowing time, once you are dead you've passed out of existence, only to be clinging on trough the memories of others.
    - gowld 8y ago
      M. Williams wrote a well-regarded treatise on this topic: https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Book-Elephant-Piggie/dp/1423133080 https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Book-Elephant-Piggie/dp/142313...
- Koshkin 8y ago
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
There's a better way to look at your mortality, I think, which is to realize that your conception of self is flawed. Try this as an exercise: determine precisely which part of you is "you", the part that if it were to change or cease to exist would make you a different person. What you'll find is that there isn't one. Every part of what you are has changed and evolved over time. Then ask yourself why it is that people are often willing to die for their family, community, nation, or even ideology.
- azeirah 8y ago
  There's one conception of self that I consider fairly constant, my ability to consciously perceive what's going on around me. Despite the fact that all of my body's cells get replaced completely every 7 years, _the fact that I perceive the world from "my" perspective remains constant_ Apart from that, I don't believe in a self. I assume, that when I die, this perspective goes away as well, I consider death to equal a total loss of consciousness ability to percieve.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    > _the fact that I perceive the world from "my" perspective remains constant_ That's only your perception because you have memory. If we copied your memories right now and put them in a robot body 3000 years from now, it would also have the illusion of a single continuous perspective.
    - gowld 8y ago
      And that robot would be me.
      - tylerjwilk00 8y ago
        What if we put "me" into 2 robots? What if one robot "killed" the other "me"?
  - CuriouslyC 8y ago
flatfilefan 8y ago
“but it no longer feels like the absolutely unaceptable deal I used to think it was.” May I suggest this feeling has more to do with biochemistry than the philosophy? :-) In the sense that this can do with the hormonal level and the anxiety or anger that are controlled by it.
- Schiphol 8y ago
  I think you are right. The philosophy is just in realizing the relevance of certain theories in physics to how death should be conceived. But then, yeah, psychology takes over :)
joe_the_user 8y ago
Whether all moments of time exist in a hypothetical fashion or not, only one now exists to me subjectively - or at least so my memory of my subjectivity claims. Further, memory itself gives the impression of irreversible time.
- mcguire 8y ago
  Entropy gives the impression of irreversible time, as well.
sime2009 8y ago
"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." -- Mark Twain
- taeric 8y ago
  Cute, but I think there is a substantial difference between not born and dead.
  - trgv 8y ago
    I don't know why you think that. I think the safest assumption is that being dead will be exactly like not being born.
    - wrcwill 8y ago
      one state is indefinite and the other is not.
    - Koshkin 8y ago
      It's like saying that the future is exactly like the past. (Which is true when applied to the question of non-existence, because what did not exist will cease to exist or continue to be non-existent.)
      - taeric 8y ago
        But that is only true of things which do not come into existence, no? I can safely say I did not exist a thousand years ago, nor will I exist in a thousand years. Further, I can say that from my point of death on, I am non-existent. Similarly, before my birth, I was non-existent. However, my state of non-existence ended at my birth. Just as my state of existence will end at my death. In this regard, the future is not exactly like the past. In the past, there was never a time in which I came into existence. In the future, there was a time where I came into existence. Neither of those statements transfer between past and future.
gerbilly 8y ago
You should fear the absence of death, if people never died, the earth would be a pretty crowded place. (The dead greatly outnumber the living, with estimates ranging from 50-108 billion). To go further, if nothing living ever died, the whole biosphere couldn't work at all. Life exists because of death. Saying we like life, but not death, is like saying: "I love breathing in, but I hate breathing out."

bambataa 8y ago

While I can see that that's comforting, perhpas in the same way as believing that all your deceased loved ones are in heaven, does it really make a difference if we can't perceive those other 'there's?

Schiphol 8y ago
Well, supposing that heaven doesn't exist, it's very different at least in that they really are in those other, fully existing times. Re: your suggestion that whatever cannot be perceived does not make a difference to us, I care deeply about the future wellbeing of my family, including those years I won't see because I'll be long dead. I'd bet you do too.
- Omnus 8y ago
  You seem to miss the point with every response to your original comment. You keep saying things about the importance of things that can't be perceived. No one is suggesting that things don't "make a difference to us" if they aren't perceived. That's silly and doesn't even make sense - of course we care about certain things that we don't (or won't) perceive. The point is that we experience time as flowing in a certain direction and can't experience it any other way. Knowing that we continue to exist in some tiny sliver of spacetime doesn't change that fact, and so it is not very comforting, for easily understandable reasons. If you're on your deathbed, with your conscious experience about to flicker and die, no one in the room is going to be comforted by you saying "well look at it this way, my 2 year old self still exists somewhere that you can't ever access and that I'll never return to, and even if I did, none of us would have any idea that this conversation was going to happen in 90 years".

announcerman 8y ago

How do you decide that your new view is valid and is not based on your need to lessen the fear of death. I have problems with this with every new thing I try to use to make death more palatable, be it religion, philosophy or anything else. I just cannot believe in anything because I feel its just a convenient way to make the fear smaller. How can any view be valid if its based on self interest?

Nursie 8y ago
I find it weirdly comforting to know that nothing in this universe is really eternal. If you could live literally forever, you'd witness the end of all life on earth in about a billion years, and eventually the slow heat death of the universe. I'd love a lot more life than I have in front of me - a few millenia at least - but even with a traditional, linear view of time there's no point, need or possibility of eternity.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  Even if the universe were eternal, the way I see it eternity is just another kind of ending. I think the important thing to realize is that a thing does not cease to have value simply because it is impermanent.
  - goatlover 8y ago
    It will cease to have value when there's nobody left to value it.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      Why? Can't we value things that will exist in a future where we no longer belong?
      - goatlover 8y ago
        We can value whatever, but eventually there won't be anyone left to do the valuing. Impermanence doesn't stop us from valuing, but impermanence does guarantee that value won't last. Which may or may not bother us now, depending on how existentially grumpy we feel in the moment. But luckily, those feelings are impermanent as well.

reificator 8y ago

If time is not a straight progression where the past is what happened and the now is reality and the future is what might happen, that's interesting and changes a lot about how we model things. But as long as you can only perceive it as such, it's a meaningless distinction from a practical view.

Schiphol 8y ago
Hm, I would have expected more respect to the importance of the unperceived from a reificator.
- reificator 8y ago
  Fair enough, I can't argue with that. But outside of something like serializing events in an application, I don't think I can reify time. If you've got an idea for it, please clue me in because the possibilities are endless.

navaati 8y ago

> all of the moments that make me and everything I care about are still there, occupying their own spacetime regions, eternal, in a way. Yes but not evolving anymore. What sucks isn't really not existing anymore, what do sucks is having no future. If a supervillain's evil plan was eternally freezing the universe right now, I would be as sad as if it was making it disappear.

SiempreViernes 8y ago
The block universe doesn't mean a specific moment in time is all that is, it means that they all coexist. Dynamics in block universe is like reading a book: it seems things happen as you move your attention over the pages, but in truth the story was fixed before you even started.
- Ntrails 8y ago
  Which is fine but it's not a meaningful change to the perspective of me on page 120 when I think "when we reach page 163 I will no longer feature in this novel". Our problems with death are, basically, ego. How you mentally model time and the universe doesn't take that away
  - SiempreViernes 8y ago
    While I agree that death will feature no matter how you model time, the difference between the flowing time and the block universe in this regard is that in the block universe you never cease to exist. In the model of flowing time, once you are dead you've passed out of existence, only to be clinging on trough the memories of others.
  - gowld 8y ago
    M. Williams wrote a well-regarded treatise on this topic: https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Book-Elephant-Piggie/dp/1423133080 https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Book-Elephant-Piggie/dp/142313...
Koshkin 8y ago

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

There's a better way to look at your mortality, I think, which is to realize that your conception of self is flawed. Try this as an exercise: determine precisely which part of you is "you", the part that if it were to change or cease to exist would make you a different person. What you'll find is that there isn't one. Every part of what you are has changed and evolved over time. Then ask yourself why it is that people are often willing to die for their family, community, nation, or even ideology.

azeirah 8y ago
There's one conception of self that I consider fairly constant, my ability to consciously perceive what's going on around me. Despite the fact that all of my body's cells get replaced completely every 7 years, _the fact that I perceive the world from "my" perspective remains constant_ Apart from that, I don't believe in a self. I assume, that when I die, this perspective goes away as well, I consider death to equal a total loss of consciousness ability to percieve.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  > _the fact that I perceive the world from "my" perspective remains constant_ That's only your perception because you have memory. If we copied your memories right now and put them in a robot body 3000 years from now, it would also have the illusion of a single continuous perspective.
  - gowld 8y ago
    And that robot would be me.
    - tylerjwilk00 8y ago
      What if we put "me" into 2 robots? What if one robot "killed" the other "me"?
- CuriouslyC 8y ago

flatfilefan 8y ago

“but it no longer feels like the absolutely unaceptable deal I used to think it was.” May I suggest this feeling has more to do with biochemistry than the philosophy? :-) In the sense that this can do with the hormonal level and the anxiety or anger that are controlled by it.

Schiphol 8y ago
I think you are right. The philosophy is just in realizing the relevance of certain theories in physics to how death should be conceived. But then, yeah, psychology takes over :)

joe_the_user 8y ago

Whether all moments of time exist in a hypothetical fashion or not, only one now exists to me subjectively - or at least so my memory of my subjectivity claims. Further, memory itself gives the impression of irreversible time.

mcguire 8y ago
Entropy gives the impression of irreversible time, as well.

sime2009 8y ago

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." -- Mark Twain

taeric 8y ago
Cute, but I think there is a substantial difference between not born and dead.
- trgv 8y ago
  I don't know why you think that. I think the safest assumption is that being dead will be exactly like not being born.
  - wrcwill 8y ago
    one state is indefinite and the other is not.
  - Koshkin 8y ago
    It's like saying that the future is exactly like the past. (Which is true when applied to the question of non-existence, because what did not exist will cease to exist or continue to be non-existent.)
    - taeric 8y ago
      But that is only true of things which do not come into existence, no? I can safely say I did not exist a thousand years ago, nor will I exist in a thousand years. Further, I can say that from my point of death on, I am non-existent. Similarly, before my birth, I was non-existent. However, my state of non-existence ended at my birth. Just as my state of existence will end at my death. In this regard, the future is not exactly like the past. In the past, there was never a time in which I came into existence. In the future, there was a time where I came into existence. Neither of those statements transfer between past and future.

gerbilly 8y ago

You should fear the absence of death, if people never died, the earth would be a pretty crowded place. (The dead greatly outnumber the living, with estimates ranging from 50-108 billion). To go further, if nothing living ever died, the whole biosphere couldn't work at all. Life exists because of death. Saying we like life, but not death, is like saying: "I love breathing in, but I hate breathing out."