Does the past still exist?

[C C]

https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/0...exist.html

EXCERPTS: . . . Let’s then put all those together. If you are comfortable with saying that something, anything, exists “now” which isn’t here, then, according to Einstein’s fourth assumption, this must be the case for all observers. But if all the events that you think happen “now” exist and all other observers say the events that happen at the same time as those events, then all events exist “now”. Another way to put it is that all times exist in the same way.

This is called the “block universe”. It’s just there. It doesn’t come into being, it doesn’t change. It just sits there.

[...] If you find that somewhat hard to accept, there is another possibility to consistently combine a notion of existence with Einstein’s Special Relativity. All that I just said came from assuming that you are willing to say something exists now even though you can’t see or experience it in any way. If you are willing to say that only things exist which are now and here, then you don’t get a block universe. But maybe that’s even more difficult to accept.

Another option is to simply invent a notion of “existence” and define it to be a particular slice in space-time for each moment in time. This is called a “slicing” but unfortunately it has nothing to do with pizza. If it had any observable consequences, that would contradict the fourth assumption Einstein made. So it’s in conflict with Special Relativity and since this theory is experimentally extremely well confirmed, this would almost certainly mean the idea is in conflict with observation. But if you just want to define a “now” that doesn’t have observable consequences, you can do that. Though I’m not sure why you would want to.

Quantum mechanics doesn’t change anything about the block universe because it’s still compatible with Special Relativity. The measurement update of the wave-function, which I talked about in this earlier video, happens faster than the speed of light. If it could be observed, you could use it to define a notion of simultaneity. But it can’t be observed, so there’s no contradiction.

Some people have argued that since quantum mechanics is indeterministic, the future can’t already exist in the block universe, and that therefore there must also be a special moment of “now” that divides the past from the future. And maybe that is so. But even if that was the case, the previous argument still applies to the past. So, yeah, it’s true. For all we currently know, the past exists the same way as the present... (MORE - missing details) ..... RELATED: Growing block universe

https://youtu.be/GwzN5YwMzv0

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/GwzN5YwMzv0

[Magical Realist]

So, yeah, it’s true. For all we currently know, the past exists the same way as the present

I hate the past and would just as soon see it fade away. It does this already to some extent, all the matter and energy making it up now making up new things and events. But what I hate I guess is how we are powerless to change it. I lie on my bed at night and tally the events of my life, things that weren't, things that were, and things that might've been, and I end up feeling hollow and empty inside, helpless to make any difference on those things whatsoever. So I guess I just need to content myself with the frozenness of my past, as well as my future, if the block universe model is the current scientific view of things. There is a contentment and sense of resignation to that, freeing us from the illusion that we can really control anything.

[C C]

So, yeah, it’s true. For all we currently know, the past exists the same way as the present

I hate the past and would just as soon see it fade away. It does this already to some extent, all the matter and energy making it up now making up new things and events. But what I hate I guess is how we are powerless to change it. I lie on my bed at night and tally the events of my life, things that weren't, things that were, and things that might've been, and I end up feeling hollow and empty inside, helpless to make any difference on those things whatsoever. So I guess I just need to content myself with the frozenness of my past, as well as my future, if the block universe model is the current scientific view of things. There is a contentment and sense of resignation to that, freeing us from the illusion that we can really control anything.

There's actually a lesser-known fourth view in philosophy of time, in which the past doesn't exist, called the "shrinking block universe". In that context, the future is what exists and an advancing "now" is destroying it moment by moment.

However, its future still conforms to the fixed "configuration" of those erased events that it retains as information. Just as the "now" of commonsense presentism stays coherent with the events of a fixed past that it retains as records in the environment (even though neither future nor past substantively exist in that "temporally solipsistic" view).

Which is to say, there seems to be no thought orientation about time that really escapes the restraints of the past.

The changes of an acausal or completely random and unregulated form of being apparently would. But thereby no cognition or intelligent awareness of any degree could be the case in it. The latter is dependent upon memory and retained conceptual templates -- a maintenance of inter-consistency and organization over sequences of changes or differences. "Existence" devoid of all pattern and constructiveness would have nothing available in it to reflect upon such being the case.