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Is the past just as maliable as the future?
- Thread starter kylixguru
- Start date
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
My thoughts are that it is not.
Right, and therefore I wonder to what extent this could actually alter things.
Actually alter things in what way? I ask because this line of thinking has some very absurd implications. No amount of historic rewriting of "dinosaurs did not exist" will change the fact that they did.
Yes, I agree it is absurd to the average mind. It is absurd to mine as well.
I guess I can try and put it in a religious context. The Lord says when we repent of our sins and are forgiven that the Lord remembers them no more. Some people are of the idea that the mind of God is the entire reality in existence so if God remembers things no more, does that actually constitute an altered past?
MD
qualiaphile
Do you mean mentally? Or phyiscally?
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
Does it wipe everyone else's memory? Does it undo the damage of the misdeed? If we convinced everyone that the moon landing wasn't real, would the footprints vanish from the lunar surface? If I wrote down on a sticky note that I had won the lottery a week prior, would the millions materialize in my bank account?
Good questions! I don't think things can be tampered with very easily.
But, is there a point at which things do become blurry and malleable?
If there is someone who does revisionist history on a pivotal event and centuries later that becomes part of the standard curriculum and is taught as truth for 1,000 years and billions of people think that way, does the fabric of the past remain totally fixed and unalterable or will that huge magnitude of mind power actually bend some things around?
PS. I'm a dork because I couldn't even spell the thread title correctly.
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
Supposedly, yes.
Well, probably only mentally since what's past is past.
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
Some quantum physicists might disagree with you there.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Most people aren't avid followers of history, so I doubt rewriting the history books would cause much of an issue, except for school history departments.
No matter what is forgotten, actions of the past cannot be undone. Even if you forgive and forget, that does not mean the past is erased.
MD
qualiaphile
If you mean mentally then yes the past is easily malleable. You can brainwash someone into forgetting the past and believing only what they have been told.
Can anyone share what they know that would cause them to?
I know some about this but only in a fuzzy way...
I know it has something to do with "reality" requiring an observer to maintain its existence. If something isn't being observed then it is as if it ceases to exist.
So, could quantum physics hold the answer to what it means that "God remembers it no more"? If God, which represents the collective mind of man, is not observing something (remembering it) then it ceases to exist.
It's my understanding that all this "reality requires an observer" is a bunch of misappropriated New Age BS. No offense to the New Age community, but movies like "What the Bleep do We Know?" really are misappropriations of the science. Quantum mysticism =/= actual quantum science. I just don't touch it.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
A lightning strike may not have an observer, but the tree it strikes will still be damaged. And although no one saw the lightning bolt to remember it, the damaged tree is still damaged.
It is. If the past needed an observer to exist, then we would never find any long-forgotten settlements. If the statement of needing an observer to exist was true, then these places would cease to exist entirely the moment the last person to remember them died. But we not only find these settlements, we find remains of various sorts that have escaped all memory for thousands of years.
One of the earlier cognitive developments in humans is called object permanence, in which we begin to realize that objects still exist outside of our own perception of them. If reality required an observer, then we could never gain what is a very basic understanding of our world.
MD
qualiaphile
This is true but isn't the tree damaged and undamaged? Does it not take the act of something to decohere all other possible wave functions? I mean MWI says that the tree is damaged in one universe and undamaged in another while copenhagen says that it is either through consciousness/environment/observation that all other possibilities collapse and only one is possible.
I remember reading something Robert Lanza said in his biocentrism theory that an experiment found evidence that the action of something in the future can affect the quantum actions of the past.
How can we define what an object is? I mean it's only an object once we perceive or observe it. Wouldn't an object just be in a superposed state if nothing is decohering all the other possibilities?
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Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Multiverse theories have not been proven, and still only lie within the realm of theoretical physics and are highly debated. If I walk through the woods, and I discover a tree that appears to have been violently torn apart and it has scorch marks throughout, it is damaged. And just because I may forget about it does not mean the damage will heal, or the tree will go away. It will still be there, just as damaged if not more damaged from decay, for the next person to stumble upon it.
And there are no leading, testable, or credible theories of physics that revolve around someone someone needing to be around to observe it. Largely because it does not fit in with any scientific knowledge. If perception was key the Titanic truly would have been unsinkable, and we would not have any knowledge of the dinosaurs as their fossils were not observed by any cognitively aware beings for millions of years.
First, he is a biocentrist and not a physicist. And the future cannot effect anything, as it is not hear yet. And if the past could be altered, we would not have any sort of stability in the present, as even a slightly altered past could have tremendous effects on the present.
And how could you possibly set up such a study as the future has not happened for us to have any knowledge of it (and precognition is outside of the laws of physics), and we do not have any links to the past except for what is left behind. And why is such a finding, if it was valid, not found on nearly every news source archive and not found to be featured on TV shows like Nova? But rather you will not hear any credible physicist even mention anything that even remotely comes close to the ideas of quantum mysticism.
I suppose saying an object on solid-mass may work for a definition. But indeed the universe existed before anyone could observe it, or else there would be nothing as there would have been nothing to allow for any living organisms to arise and perceive the world around them. If it took perception to create the universe, then how did anything ever come to be as there would be nothing to observe which means nothing to create.
An example would be cholesterol. If everything required observation, then eating saturated fats would not clog our blood vessels because no one knew or saw this until Da Vinci. But because things happen without direct knowledge of or observation of, he was able to make the observation of clogged blood vessels while he would be dissecting bodies he exhumed to study them.
I think the past may actually be more malleable than the future. Why? Because a person can change the story of what happened in the past to fit his or her agenda. It is also dependant on who is telling the story: A Native American sees American History differently than others do, for instance.