Tal, a conversation with an alien (6 page)

--
He had finished his bottle of juice, and this time when he went to the kitchen, he actually grabbed the entire crate of cherry juice and put it next to his chair, he then opened another bottle, took a drink and continued.

So you see
, your senses give you a conception of a dimension. When you only have a single point of reference, a dimension seems flat. When you have two point of reference, when you can receive and synthesize information from two coordinates in a dimension, you can perceive that dimension more fully, and you will get a sense of immersion in the dimension. You actually have this ability with both space and time. Between points you remember in the past and this current point, you can sense a block of time, and you can sense yourself within that time. With the future however, you have no point of reference, so time seems to stop at the present. Logically, mathematically, we can see that it does not, just like Sue knows the snow is not really falling on a 2D plane in front of her. Imagine if you did not have the ability to remember the past. You would have only one point of reference and thus see time as completely flat, only the moment, nothing before, nothing after, you would have only pure in the moment experience. Since your past is in your imagination, it is your mind that creates a sense of time beyond what you can actually observe at this moment. Just as it is your mind that creates depth in your world even when you close one eye.

So we are
physically experiencing one slice of time, like a frame in the middle of a movie? 

Yes.
Imagine you are watching a dramatic scene in a horror movie you have seen before. The characters do not know what will happen next, yet you as the observer, do. Will it make any difference if during the movie you stand up and yell to those innocent teenagers, "Stop you fools! Don't go in the forest alone at night!" No, there is no point, you can yell at the screen all you want, but their fate is sealed. 

So you are saying we are living
a story that has already been written, we just don't know it yet.

It r
eminds me of those brilliant words of Shakespeare, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances." But don't feel too bad, your experience of the world is just as real whether you know it has happened or not.

I am not so sure
that's any consolation. If time already exists, if there is no free will, if our fate is already sealed, it seems like a bleak picture to me.

I
think that depends on your definition of fate and free will. 

Fate means
that you cannot change what will happen to you. Free will means you had a choice in your actions.

So lack of fre
e will would mean some powerful force outside of yourself was making you act in certain ways?

Yes.

Then lack of free will and fate are two different things. You can have choice in your actions, but not be able to change your future. 

I don't see the difference.
If you are saying that you can see the future, and we are like actors in a movie, we may believe that we have free will, but we do not.

Yes, you are like actors in a movie to me, but your
level of free will depends on what type of movie I am watching. Let's say I am watching a movie and I know the outcome. If that movie was one in which the screenwriter has written the lines for the actors, and the director has told everyone exactly how to move and deliver those lines, then indeed I know the actors are fated to speak those lines, and they have little free will in what they say. On the other hand, what if am watching a rerun of one of your very popular reality shows, like 'Survivor' or 'Jersey Shore'? The people in these shows create their own stories and conversations based on a loose framework set up by the director. Since I already watched the show, I know the outcome. They are fated to speak the lines that they speak, yet in creating those lines, they are making their own individual choices. So simply because all of space and time exists, doesn't necessarily mean that the constituents within it do not have some measure of free will. They can make choices, they simply can't change those choices. Don't feel too frustrated. I am trying to explain with words something you do not feel with your entire self. It will take time for you to assimilate the concept, and your understanding of it will change. The obstacle is not only physical, in that you can't perceive time future, it is also emotional and philosophical. It feels better to think that you control the future, you control your destiny. No one wants to feel helpless or hopeless. No one wants to feel like a pawn in an infinite game of chess. But understand that though you are powerless to change the future, you are not necessarily incapable of free will. Different beings perceive space in different ways, and different beings perceive time in different ways. There are beings in the universe who have a more developed sense of time, and experience it in ways quite different from humans. Aside from beings like yourselves, who only experience time in the current moment, some beings can see multiple coordinates in time. For example, they can see coordinates in the near future. And some beings can see all of the coordinates of time, their entire future, to the end of their consciousness, and even beyond that.

That seems like an amazing power.
To see the future up to or even past your death.

Well if you look exclusive
ly at the ability to observe a time future coordinate, it is not that special, and does not give these creatures a higher level of free will. It would be somewhat akin to the two of us sitting at the front of a train with me looking far forward down the tracks, and you looking straight at the tracks below. You will see the same track I see, just a little later. For those beings who can see all of the time coordinates to the end of their lives, it is like being able to see the destination of the train. Interestingly, already knowing everything that will occur during their trip, and with no choices to make, a human would see some of these creatures in a sense, as frozen, like objects. 

Why frozen?

Because they see all of time, and they can change nothing, they have no impetus to act, they merely observe.

If they can see forward
in time, why would they have no desire to act, to change the outcome of events they don't like? I don't understand any creature making such a passive choice.

Th
ey make the passive choice because they have no other choice to make. It is part of their nature. It is hard for you to understand this in the context of time, so I will give you an example of a creature that gladly relinquishes its freedoms in the dimension of space. And I won't leave your planet this time. Do you know of a creature called the sea squirt?

Yes,
it is a filter feeder. It sits on rocks, shells, and choral, just about anything and filters nutrients from the water. There are many kinds, some with beautiful patterns and colors.

Correct.
The sea squirt attaches itself to something, usually on the sea floor, and remains there all of its life. But in its initial larva form, it actually looks like a tiny tadpole. It has a primitive eye, a primitive backbone, and a tail. It swims around looking for a place to attach itself. Once it does, its eye, backbone and tail dissolve, and it even digests the most developed parts of its brain, the parts used for navigation and movement. The sea squirt eats its own brain. So it is not unheard of for a creature to actually relinquish its freedom, if that is in its nature. Understand that creatures who truly see, not imagine, their future, do not think of the future in the way that you do. There are not a myriad of different possible futures, there is only one future, and they have seen it.

And you are saying that this ability
to see the future is of little benefit, since they can't change what will happen to them anyway.

Right
, they must settle into a peaceful acceptance of the future, much as humans would with a loved one who everyone knows is going to die soon. This still seems unnatural to you?

Yes, the peaceful ac
ceptance of the future does. Because if I can sense that a bus will hit me five minutes into the future when I try to cross the street; I will stop, get in a building, and go up an elevator to the 50th floor.

What these creatures
observe is a fact. These creatures do not attempt to change the future, they accept the future as it is. The only reason you can imagine changing the future is because you imagine many futures, you don't concretely see one future. These creatures naturally accept what will happen in time, they do not dream of anything different and do not attempt to alter their circumstances. How can they change a future that is already set and unchangeable?

I understand, but
this seems completely unnatural to me. These accepting beings, perhaps they may feel this way, but couldn't a creature know what the future will be but still wish it was something else?

That would be equivalent to looking at your chess set, and wishing it was an ice cream cone, what would be the point?

Does there need to be one?

T
his is why I love being around humans, you have such strong feelings. You believe that you can change your fate, that you can mold the universe to your desires. You have an innate sense that your actions determine the form of the universe.

Well, our little corner.
I suppose it does sound grandiose.

Not at all, it is
ingrained within you; it is part of your very nature.

Is our nature just wrong?

No, and you make a very good point about the desire to change your future. It can happen that you know a future, and I mean really know, not imagine, yet still desire it to be something else. I share this nature. I also want to experience futures that I choose. I also would not sit idly by and experience a future I do not want to experience, and in fact, I don't.

Well you just contradicted yourself. Y
ou just said it was impossible to change the future, since it already exists, so how can you possibly experience something else? 

--I was just beginning to think that perhaps he had regained his sanity
and that this last objection would somehow bring him back to reality, when he suddenly got up, walked over to the window, and climbed out on to the ledge. I was too surprised to do anything but sit there for a moment. He then stood up and started walking down the ledge. I started to panic and ran over to the window to see what he was doing. He was standing in front of my neighbor's window, perhaps twenty feet down the right side of the ledge. He was looking down at the street. I was afraid he was measuring for a jump when he suddenly kicked over two of my neighbor's empty flowerpots. They landed on the street below, shattering. I yelled to him.

What are you doing?

Reserving a parking space.

--He walked back to my window and climbed back in while I stood there
, speechless. He went right back to his chair and drank down the rest of the bottle of juice. When he finished he calmly resumed speaking.

I know you think my last action seemed odd. Unfortunately, du
e to your very limited perception of time, you do not understand the reasons I just did that. Since you have not seen the past events that caused this action, nor can you see the future events that this action will lead to, your mind will make up the most likely explanation for my action.  That explanation would be that I am crazy. I assure you that this is not the case. Please relax, have a seat, perhaps you would like some tea?

-- I did not know what to do. In my mind
, this person was capable of anything. The hold his story about time had had upon my attention was broken and my intention to challenge him in hopes of breaking him out of his delusion strengthened.

No thank you, I am fine
, and in fact, since we are speaking about physics, I see another major hole in your argument. What you are really talking about is a deterministic universe where everything is already predetermined. You may not know this, but you are talking to someone who remembers everything they read. I know for a fact that the universe is not deterministic. After all, quantum theory shows that events are actually random, that particles can move in random ways that we can't predict. Since the future is unpredictable, I don't see how it can already be set, or how anyone can possibly know any future outcome.

You are right
about quantum theory. It states that you can never know a particles location and momentum at the same time, thus you cannot predict with complete certainty where it will be in the future. However, simply because you cannot predict what will happen, does not mean it does not happen. The fact that, due to randomness, you cannot predict what the future will bring, doesn't mean that the future cannot exist. Think of randomness as a veil that hides other coordinates of time from your current one.  Because of randomness, you do not know for certain what will happen at another coordinate in time using information from your current coordinate. Still, that does not mean that other coordinates do not exist. Lets say from your current coordinate in time, a photon is bounced off of a mirror and has a 50% chance of going left and a 50% chance of going right, and you have no way of knowing which way it will go. Once you do observe the next coordinate in time, it will indeed have gone left or right. Even if it is random in your universe, there is one definite version that comes from the randomness.