Retrocausality, and what it says about time.

Recently, I found a strange theory called retrocausality. It states that the present affects the past, and the future affects the present.

Common sense tells us that influencing the past is impossible -- what's done is done, right? Even if it were possible, think of the mind-bending paradoxes it would create. While tinkering with the past, you might change the circumstances by which your parents met, derailing the key event that led to your birth.

Such are the perils of retrocausality, the idea that the present can affect the past, and the future can affect the present. Strange as it sounds, retrocausality is perfectly permissible within the known laws of nature. It has been debated for decades, mostly in the realm of philosophy and quantum physics. Trouble is, nobody has done the experiment to show it happens in the real world, so the door remains wide open for a demonstration.

Here's the link to the full article. If this is true, that means the future currently exists, and the past currently exists. This also means that time is an illusion, and right now, you are being born, but you are also dead. Any thoughts about this?

reply to post by TheThinker101


While I would agree that time is indeed an illusion I don't believe aspects of time other than present can really be manipulated, how do you manipulate an illusion? Time is a perspective and only exists to those concerned with the movement of objects through space. Being "tool" using beings we are very concerned with the movement of objects through space so we will always perceive time as it will always be useful to do so.

Yes, you can technically say you are being born, living, and dead all at the same illusionist time but they are all unalterable aspects of your existence. As of right now, you have been born you are alive and you are going to die. You cannot travel through time and unborn yourself, un-live yourself, so you don't die. The second you are born you have committed to living and dying. They are interlocking mechanisms of existence.

The only way time travel with the ability to manipulate it could possibly exist is if there were infinite parallel universes where infinite alternative past,present,and futures could exist. This is probably impossible to substantiate or prove.

My thoughts: We travel through time as we travel through space, only with more ignorance, with more hidden. Time is three-dimensional, just like space. We can move freely through space, but our travel through time is more like travel by train - in a single direction, at a relatively fixed rate (though we can of course alter how fast time passes via relativistic phenomena), and such that you only have one window to look out and only one angle to look out of it at.

Cool theory, I didn't know there was a name for it or anything like that. But yeah dude that's very close to my ideas about time.

reply to post by TheThinker101


The ancients called this fate. Everyone believes in it, whether you admit it or not. Giving it a new name doesn't change what it is.

Originally posted by Sly1one
reply to post by TheThinker101

 

The only way time travel with the ability to manipulate it could possibly exist is if there were infinite parallel universes where infinite alternative past,present,and futures could exist. This is probably impossible to substantiate or prove.

Oddly, this infinite universe theory is actually acknowelged, but not thought to be true or false, by scientists. It's called the multiverse or something like that.

OK, I'm going to be extremely lazy and just post my thoughts on time & the Universe as an image with very little explanation. Make of this image what you will, hopefully it's pretty self-explanatory, maybe even eye-opening but to get the gist of what I mean imagine we are in the bubble. The bubble has been created by some temporal event (like a time machine for ex) which has caused time (the horizontal line) to close into an infinite loop (our observed Universe).
Technically all within the temporal bubble or paradox is non-existant when viewed from outside the bubble & vice versa.

Are we going to/have we already invent/ed a time machine & cause our reality to collapse into groundhog day??
Is our observed Universe a temporal paradox?

Discuss/feel free to ask questions (or not! )




EDIT: I guess I should have added this too:

Crowley's Thoth Tarot card 'The Aeon' (aka Judgement)

Some thoughts I have pondered about spiritual time travel and the physical affects thereof:

If a person can "visually" think, or look forward in time and know/calculate the consequences/affects of an action that they carry out in the present moment of thought, (NOW) which is based on the outcome of the same or a similar action carried out in the past... is that not spiritually manipulating time which affects the physical plain?

Bear with me:

If you know, that by releasing the grip of the glass in your hand RIGHT "NOW" that it WILL break, is this not a 100% future event which has not yet happened?
By going to that future event mentally, the result of your minds eye traveling back into a past event/experience, has brought you to the PRESENT/NOW decision and situation.... not to drop the glass?
BUT...
By NOT dropping the glass, you have inevitably seen into the future and changed it because:

NOW, you have seen into the future that the glass did not-has not and NOW can/will not break in the future,
so,
you have manipulated the future and present based on the past which in turn will affect the future?

God I must going nuts...

Hmmmm

More Deeep thoughts going deeeeeper

This could be the key to prediction/prophecy. Think about this for a minute..

If our subconsciousness records ALL information we are exposed to,
meaning everything from the day of birth until NOW, which is a scientific fact,
we do not use /"access" MOST of the stored information/memories which we cannot easily recall/access without some form of assistance, concentration. meditation. drugs, hypnosis etc.., because the human mind tends to only "SAVE" the important information on the "conscious active memory drive" only that information we NEED to OPERATE with!!
The rest is stored on the "secret no access administrator only" disc.. in the back of you mind...

I believe our brains are indeed complex and clever enough to sometimes consciously or unconsciously unlock the logical and obvious paths of learned experiences and knowledge.
Even in the space of 1 single hour walking through a city center, the input via our conscious 5 senses, is an absolutely HUGE amount of DATA/Information). Most of which we put in the "Trash" .. but the fantastic operating system we possess still keeps and stores "Back up ghost copies of ALL input information"!!

During the course of a few years and indeed during a long lifetime, our subconsciousness must be full of 1000's of terabytes of information putting anyone in the position to access this information and calculate results and consequences of all the stored sequences of information of previously stored events/knowledge from the past (hidden in the deep subconsciousness.. the secret disc.Pineal gland?).

Finding the right passwords to ACCESS and unlock all this stored data/information on our "HIDDEN HARD DRIVES" must inevitably mean that, given the right "state of mind" we could/should be able to recall and calculate an equation to what may happen in the future and travel mentally into the past into a vast sea of infinite knowledge.
Of course, accessing to too much information at one time on our "operating system" would cause a serious System CRASH and instead of predictions an prophecy we would have to completely re-format the machine... but I imagine the motherboard would be absolutely smoked and useless anyway..

ooops,, excuse me if I lost you there...

reply to post by HelionPrime


That's pretty cool, reminds me of an eye of a needle, or the symbol in the movie Logan's Run.

That alpha and omega point, that would represent, as a temporal event, a first/last cause over history, transcendant of life and death.. very interesting. Thanks for sharing this.

Reminds me of a statement from the Book of Revelations.

Personally I do not mind being trapped in eternal life and freedom, it's a good thing. Frees up a lot of creative energy and makes me feel like a kid again.

This also means that the future already exists. If it it already exists, it is predetermined, so what does that say about free will? But remember, this is just a theory, so we don't know if it's true or not.