How memories are formed without time.

Surely the fact we can even form memories in the first place, i.e. right now, constantly, suggests that time must exist and constantly flow, if not, how can we possible form strings of memories of the events that happen one after another all around us, without the Time in which to do it?

Figure: An roller leaves clear evidence of its motion, just by rearranging existing ink. Your mind creates 'memories' by rearranging it's contents.

Can you prove that these two kinds of evidence really prove there is a third 'invisible' record of all past events - created and stored somewhere ?

There is so much more to being a human being or any other living thing than just existing observing our surroundings and refining our understanding of the world around us. We seem to have a ‘soul’, a ‘being’ and an ability to question and at least try to understand the world and universe around us.

Quite what a soul may and may not be is a deep and genuine mystery way beyond the scope of this book but whether our existence proves the existence of time is a valid question. If we consider ourselves, our souls, and our ‘memories of the past’ all at once they may seem linked, in fact the mystery ‘of what is a soul’ is a separate and different mystery to that of ‘what it means to remember the past, and why we may believe in time’.

This can be seen more clearly if we first take out the human element from ‘memories’ to simplify the situation.

If we have a battery powered digital video camera set to ‘record’, and moving the length of a corridor on a set of rails. We can see that by the end of the corridor the camera should hold a visual representation of its short journey. And thus contain a record, or memories of ‘the past’. We might want to say here that the amount of information within the video cameras memory had been added to just as we imagine the ‘temporal past’ is constantly added to, but in fact the total amount of memory and (electrons) in-formation in the camera remains the same but some of it is just changed in an orderly way.

For this to happen however it does require the ‘one way’ flow of something else within the camera, it requires the highly organised flow of electricity, electricity that must initially ‘be’ in the cameras batteries. This electricity[1] must flow around the circuitry, and be used to carry some version of the formation of light reaching the cameras sensor to, and to switch parts of, the cameras silicon memory or flip the magnetic polarity of specific areas on the cameras storage disk.

In simple terms I'm saying here that if the running camera is moved along the corridor images of the corridor will be stored in its memory but for this to happen everything in the entire scenario, right down to the light that carries images of the corridor to the camera, and the electrons in the batteries that amplify the images and make versions of them in some silicon chip or on the surface of a magnetic disk, need only ‘exist and move’ and not exist and move ‘over a thing called time’.

This analogy is meant of course to show impersonally or in isolation how the internal contents of our own minds are constantly modified not over time but just as things move and change, and that this is ‘just’ happening

The process does require a flow of energy for it to happen, because one thing, an image, has to be amplified so it has the power to change the formation of another thing, a chip, disc, or set of chemical levels within some neurons in our brains, but that is all.

This example can be further simplified if you imagine a running an inked roller over a clean flat sheet of paper.

11‑1 An inked roller leaves clear evidence of its motion. But does this also prove that Time and a temporal record exists?

At the end of the ‘run’ the roller would have left an undeniable record or ‘memory’ of its short journey on the paper by the simple fact that it transferred patterns of ink as it rolled along. This record would be formed purely as the result of ‘matter existing, moving, changing and interacting’. There would be no need for a ‘future’ for the ‘events’ of the blobs of ink marking the paper to ‘come out’ of, there would just be a need for everything involved to exist and move, change or interact as some existing energy made the roller move.

Although these camera and roller analogies may seem too simple to compare to the operation of a human mind creating memories hopefully you can see that the principles, of ‘some thing’ being used to carry information from one place to another where it is amplified so as to in-form another, or just the simple process of physical, mechanical transference are all that happen in our minds. They happen in a much more detailed, sophisticated and intricate way but nonetheless no extra principles are used. All that happens with a camera is photons carry images to light sensitive paper where chemical reactions make the image stable and fixed, and in a human they carry an image to the retina where again electro-chemical reactions move and ‘fix’ formations of matter to record the image.

Camera and roller with and without time.

It’s hard to simplify the process of how records or evidence/memories of events can be created without time beyond the ink and roller analogy, (trust me I have tried) and even if you agree with the entire explanation here you may still insist or presume that this does not disprove time, and that the events described must still happen ‘over time’.

If this is the case it may be because your thinking equates to the idea of ‘trying to see how magic does not exist’ from a point of view that ‘magic does exist’, which will never make sense. Progress in this direction will be very hard, and essentially could only be made if you could prove that magic ‘does exist’ which in terms of time means presenting some evidence ‘here and now’, that is not ‘here and now’.

Given this line of reasoning might not be the easiest and most fruitful available, instead we can review the requirements of time and timelessness with an unbiased mind and see which one might be said to satisfy our observations most neatly, succinctly and with the fewest loose ends.

‘Time’ requires the existence of the past, present and future. It requires events to come out of the invisible future, to happen, in one direction only, in the infinitely thin slice of time that is the present, and then to be constantly added to and stored in the ever accumulating and also invisible and unchangeable ‘past’.

‘timelessness’ requires everything around and within us, matter and energy, to ‘just’ exist here and now, be this objects that are stationary or moving, and energy that is trapped (e.g. in a battery) or flowing (as in a rolling ball). Timelessness also requires that as anything moves it affects everything it physically interacts with just as nature dictates. But timelessness explicitly and categorically denies the existence of the invisible, undetectable[2] and surreal properties and entities that time insists do exist.

Figure 11‑2 The evidence that an Inked Roller has moved is obvious on the physically changed sheet of paper. However else the scene or event is 'witnessed' all the 'evidence' will always just be 'changes in physical matter' existing now.

We may ‘assume’ that there is also some other ‘temporal’ record created. But if we haven’t proven this assumption it is unscientific to take it as a fact.

Can the ‘Time-based’ view be dis-proven?

With an open mind, the Time-based view of the ‘ink and roller’ experiment (and camera experiment) cannot in fact be disproved! it could be claimed that with the props set up ‘the idea’ to start the experiment and to push the inked roller over the paper may have ‘come out of the future’. And as the experiment runs it does so ‘over time’, and while at the end the ink stained paper is some proof of what happened there is also another invisible fourth dimensional temporal record that was created. Ironically its very invisibility preventing its existence from being disproved.

However, for completeness we should also note that the Time-based view cannot be proven! It is indeed an ‘idea’ that perhaps the impetus to start the experiment may have come from the invisible future, but then it is also an idea that ‘I can fly just by willpower’. The presence of an idea does not mean it is, or is not, true. Likewise the idea that there is some extra invisible record of the experiment created and added to the unchangeable past cannot be proven.

But what can be proven is the existence of the ink blobs on the paper, relating precisely to the roller’s simple journey, and it can also be proven that these not only could lead to the creation of the idea that there is some other ‘temporal’ record but also that these ink blobs, and the similar though more complex changes in your mind – are the only reasons you may be led to believe in this other invisible record.

So (oddly) the Time-based view cannot be either disproved or proven, but the reasons for coming up with the Time-based view can be explained in terms of presently existing evidence.

Another consideration is that if the trigger for ‘when’ to start the experiment was the detection of some random emission of a particle from a decaying radioactive lump of uranium, then even here as the particle was detected we would have to agree that the particle ‘did exist inside the source’ and ‘came out of it’ as the constantly changing conditions it was surrounded by happened to be just right for it to be expelled[3], but not that the particle triggering the experiment ‘did not exist’ but then ‘came out of the future’, or was freed by a future event – so that it could trigger the experiment.

In other words, any apparent ‘time delay’ mechanism, be it some device meant to produce a ‘random time delay’ or a carefully controlled and defined time delay, will always be a mechanism in which there is motion happening. So it is not, that nothing happens, and then something happens, it is that something is constantly happening which then changes nature at a physical point. E.g. an ‘alarm clock’ is just a machine that has constant motion while it has power, and its hands just keep rotating, until internally some cog lines up with some lever allowing some energy to be diverted and released to make a bell ring etc. But there is never a ‘future event’, just things happening now.

Can the ‘Timelessness’ view be proven or not.

The timeless view of the ink and roller experiment meets with very few problems, it needs only what we observe, objects, matter, energy, transference either of actual matter or sometimes just physical impressions or changes in other matter. Timelessness also doesn’t require any temporal past record to be created or needed to explain what is observed.

This may seem that by attacking the idea of Time I am taking something mysterious and wonderful from the world but I don’t think that is necessarily so, surely if it is true then it is amazing that the world can work move and change and work and exists everywhere all at once in one constant ‘moment’.

But here you may still be unconvinced partly because we haven’t considered the nature of ‘the future’ yet and also because I have suggested that things can move and change all in this one moment but surely don’t things take Time to change?

SEE > - 'X'-plaining away 'The past'.

[1] I say ‘electricity’ here because information in such a system is carried not exactly by the movement of particular electrons, but by far more rapid ‘impulses’ travelling through moving electrons.

[2] Many invisible things clearly exist, such as gravity, magnetism or even air but the presence and effect of all these things can be reliable demonstrated in many different ways.

[3] As the changing conditions in a lottery machine result in some particular ball being expelled?