What is time and why does it flow from the past to the future? Every person has asked this question at least once in their life. But what if time is stationary and, in fact, it is matter that moves through it, just like through space? If this is so, then why does this movement always occur in only one direction? Science defines time as the fourth dimension of the space-time continuum. From this point of view, the properties of each of the dimensions are equal. In any of them, matter, including u
s as beings consisting of it, can move in one direction or the other, with the exception of time. But is this really so? Let's take a look at this video footage. Now it is moving in the direction familiar to us. The consciousness of every person captured on this film perceives the passage of time in the same way as we do - from the past to the future. But what happens to the perception of these people when we pause the film, that is, stop them in time? In this frozen moment, nothing changed in t
heir perception . They are still confident that they are moving forward in time. Now let's run the film in the opposite direction. Now it is obvious to us that these people are moving back in time, but their consciousness does not perceive this change, and the people on the film still seem to be moving from the past to the future. But from our point of view, from the point of view of an observer from another coordinate system, what seems to them to be the future is their past, and what they perc
eive as the past is their future. From this we can conclude that our personal experience does not reflect the real direction in which we are moving through time. What seems to us like a continuous movement in one direction can actually be a completely arbitrary movement, we are simply not able to perceive these changes. Not only that, but the people on the film aren't just moving back in time. From our point of view, they predict the future almost perfectly, knowing it as well as we know our pas
t. In fact, from the point of view of quantum mechanics at the micro level, there is absolutely no difference between the past and the future. The properties of matter do not depend on the direction of movement in time, just as there is no difference between the direction of movement in other dimensions of the space-time continuum. Moreover, in reality there is no past or future, there is only the present. And in this case, the idea of what happened in the past and what may happen in the futur
e exists only in our minds. Our brain draws conclusions about what happened or will happen based on its current state, that is, from the form and structure it has at a given specific moment in time. But if the physical properties of matter do not depend on the direction of time, then from the point of view of analytical or computing power, an equal amount of them is required, both in the case of predicting the past and predicting the future. Moreover, in this case, nothing prevents you from doin
g this with equal success for both the past and the future. But why then do we predict our past so accurately, and cope so poorly with the future? There must be a very good reason for this. And she is. If at the micro level the direction of time is symmetrical, then at the macro level on which our bodies exist, the directions of time have a fundamental difference. And it is determined by the balance within our universe, or scientifically, by entropy. Let's look at a glass of liquid. Initially, t
he water molecules inside are evenly distributed. Such a system is in equilibrium, and in this state practically nothing happens to it. But if you add salt crystals to the system, then places will appear in it where there are more salt molecules and fewer water molecules, that is, the equilibrium inside the glass will be disrupted. From this moment on, the system will begin to restore balance. Molecules of salt and water will tend to the area where there are fewer of them, and this process will
last until the glass again reaches a state of equilibrium, where the molecules of water and salt are equally distributed inside it. The same is true for everything in our Universe. Moving from the past to the future, the level of balance in it increases, and in the opposite direction it decreases. Physicists call the Universe’s desire for balance, or in other words for an increase in entropy, the arrow of time. It is this property that makes the fundamental difference between the directions of m
ovement in time in the macrocosm. If this is the only difference, then it must be the reason why we see time as flowing from the past to the future, and not vice versa. Increasing equilibrium in the system entails another consequence - the complexity of the system decreases. That is, if after adding salt, there were crystals of different shapes and places of different density in the glass, the description of which would require a lot of information, then over time there were fewer such structure
s. Until the entire contents of the glass have turned into a homogeneous solution, the properties and structure of which can be very accurately described in a few words. The same thing happens with the Universe. When moving from the past to the future, from a nonequilibrium state to an equilibrium state, the complexity of the universe decreases. But this property of the arrow of time comes into confrontation with the properties of living matter. Moving from the past to the future, living matter
strives not only to maintain its complexity, but also to increase its volume in the Universe, due to reproduction. That is, the properties of living matter are opposite to the properties of the arrow of time. One of the phenomena in which the arrow of time manifests itself is competition in living nature. Competing for resources in the struggle for survival, some organisms destroy others, thereby increasing the entropy of the universe. On Earth, where environmental conditions are favorable for l
iving matter most of the time, competition has become a major factor in the pressure of the arrow of time. Thus, the Universe uses extremely complex strategies of some living organisms to destroy others, thereby reducing the total volume of living matter and making its influence on the movement towards equilibrium insignificant. A side effect of competition is the fact that the surviving part of living matter is forced to become more complex. To survive, it must confront the complex strategies o
f its competitors. This requires complex behavior, and complex behavior requires complex structure. As a result, representatives of living nature, winning in competition, accelerated in their complication, many times overtaking the natural course of events, in which only inanimate nature would oppose them. In such conditions, maintaining the trend toward complexity as we move into the future meets with increasing resistance, as already incredibly complex systems compete. To maintain and increase
its complexity in such conditions, a combination of many unlikely circumstances is required, the coincidence of which is almost impossible. Consequently, living organisms need tools to influence and respond to the environment. At the same time, the random course of events is unable to make modern organisms more complex. This means that the desire of living matter to simplify when moving into the past does not meet resistance even in the random course of events. Therefore, for living matter, the
ability to change events in the future, making them non-random, but favorable for complication, is much more important than the ability to influence the past. The nervous system is a decision-making tool that allows its owner to influence events. Before making a decision in the present, the nervous system must receive information about both the past and the future. If the nervous system has no information about the past, then even perfect knowledge of the future does not make it possible to mak
e a rational decision in the present. Since for such a nervous system any knowledge is a set of uninterpreted images. While the lack of information about the future, even with excellent knowledge of the past, makes any decision in the present no more useful than a random one. The same rules apply when moving into the past. Based on the fact that for living matter the ability to influence the future is much more important than the ability to influence the past, it is logical to assume that in an
evolutionary perspective, nervous systems that predict the future better than the past should win. But why is it the other way around in reality? The nervous systems of animals, including ours, Are they great at figuring out the past, but extremely bad at figuring out the future? The answer lies in the previously voiced desire of living matter to simplify when moving into the past. In order to be able to predict something, it is necessary to save a certain amount of information for analysis. Whe
n moving from the past to the future, the human nervous system analyzes the surrounding reality and stores the experience gained in the form of new neural connections, thereby becoming more complex. This does not contradict the tendency of living matter to become more complex as it moves into the future. Since in reality there is no past or future, in order to make an informed decision, the brain must predict them. With his first action, based on the shape of neural connections and the current s
tate of reality, he predicts the past. And then it interpolates the received information and predicts the future based on it. Thus, the brain receives data to make a decision. This model of the nervous system works. However, in terms of efficiency, it is much weaker than a model in which the nervous system did not interpolate the past in an attempt to predict the future, but was initially structured in such a way that it predicted the future as well as the past. But the formation of such a nervo
us system faces an insurmountable obstacle. When moving from the future to the past, living matter tends to simplify, but in order to preserve information for subsequent analysis, the system must become more complex. Because of this fundamental contradiction, the accumulation of experience becomes impossible. And since it is impossible to accumulate experience, it is also impossible to predict events based on it. Time is one of the four dimensions in which our bodies live. Its difference from ot
her dimensions is that, moving into the future, the universe becomes simpler, and living matter becomes more complex. Animal nervous systems have evolved as tools for making decisions that affect the future. Because it is more difficult for living matter to resist the arrow of time in this direction than in the direction of the past. Our nervous system's first action is to predict the past, and the second, using the information received, predicts the future. And the third, having information abo
ut the past and future, makes a decision. It is because predicting the past always precedes predicting the future that we perceive time as moving from the past to the future. But the fact that we perceive time in this way is not proof that in reality we and the entire Universe are moving only in this direction. In fact, this movement can be completely arbitrary. But we cannot feel the changes, just like the people in the video cannot feel in which direction the film is scrolling. Perception, inc
luding ours, is simply a tool through which some living organisms have acquired an advantage over others. This tool does not have to be an accurate reflection of reality. It just has to work better than its competitors, helping living matter in the endless confrontation between entropy and the arrow of time!
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