Suppose Alice and Bob are building a three-story house, with a big spiral staircase running from floor 1 to floor 3.
Alice: Isn’t it weird how we perceive this staircase as spiraling even though in reality, it’s just sitting there?
Bob: What do you mean “perceive?” This is a spiral staircase. It spirals.
Alice: Not the shape of the whole staircase, I mean it seems like the stair goes in a spiral.
Bob: “The” stair?
Alice: Yeah, the stair. Right now I’m standing here on stair 15, but if I moved up to stair 16, the stair would seem to have gone in a spiral. Weird, right?
Bob: I still don’t get this “perceive” thing. Of course when you go from stair 15 to stair 16 the stairs look like a spiral. That’s because the stairs are a spiral.
Alice: Not the stairs, the stair! The stair that I’m on when I go from 15 to 16. It seems like it goes in a spiral. But there’s actually no spiraling, and no stair. In reality it’s just a bunch of stairs arranged in a helical shape. Sigh. It’s so weird.
Moral of the story: Reality isn’t weird. We’re weird.
So you start off with a static structure, the spiral stair, you inject a dynamic “cursor”, the person who is going up, and then you get some kind of dynamic spiralling.
Now try that without the moving cursor.
Reality isn’t weird. We’re weird
Can we be weirder than the reality we are embedded in?
I don’t think this really addresses the substance of the question. I understand well the concept that we can imagine things which are illusions in general. I have specific mechanics level questions about how it applies to the psychological arrow of time.
The point of the stairs being a spiral is that they obey some relation to each other (like how the laws of physics are a relationship between past and future). The analogue of “time passing” is stair 15 spiraling to stair 16. But the thing is, I’m not committing to agreeing with Alice by saying that. According to Bob, the stairs are already a spiral. Stair 15 already spirals up to stair 16 just by virtue of the stairs being a spiral, which is no illusion.
The analogue of “time passing” is stair 15 spiraling to stair 16.
Yet again , that is direction , not flow. Direction means the stairs have an order...but flow means you can only be “on” one a time, which is an additional property.
Suppose Alice and Bob are building a three-story house, with a big spiral staircase running from floor 1 to floor 3.
Alice: Isn’t it weird how we perceive this staircase as spiraling even though in reality, it’s just sitting there?
Bob: What do you mean “perceive?” This is a spiral staircase. It spirals.
Alice: Not the shape of the whole staircase, I mean it seems like the stair goes in a spiral.
Bob: “The” stair?
Alice: Yeah, the stair. Right now I’m standing here on stair 15, but if I moved up to stair 16, the stair would seem to have gone in a spiral. Weird, right?
Bob: I still don’t get this “perceive” thing. Of course when you go from stair 15 to stair 16 the stairs look like a spiral. That’s because the stairs are a spiral.
Alice: Not the stairs, the stair! The stair that I’m on when I go from 15 to 16. It seems like it goes in a spiral. But there’s actually no spiraling, and no stair. In reality it’s just a bunch of stairs arranged in a helical shape. Sigh. It’s so weird.
Moral of the story: Reality isn’t weird. We’re weird.
So you start off with a static structure, the spiral stair, you inject a dynamic “cursor”, the person who is going up, and then you get some kind of dynamic spiralling.
Now try that without the moving cursor.
Can we be weirder than the reality we are embedded in?
Sure! We just can’t be weirder than reality plus the information required to locate ourselves within reality :P
Anyhow, try what without the moving cursor? Making the stair spiral?
Bob: The stairs are already a spiral, silly.
Getting (so much as an illusion of) flow out of stasis.
I don’t think this really addresses the substance of the question. I understand well the concept that we can imagine things which are illusions in general. I have specific mechanics level questions about how it applies to the psychological arrow of time.
The point of the stairs being a spiral is that they obey some relation to each other (like how the laws of physics are a relationship between past and future). The analogue of “time passing” is stair 15 spiraling to stair 16. But the thing is, I’m not committing to agreeing with Alice by saying that. According to Bob, the stairs are already a spiral. Stair 15 already spirals up to stair 16 just by virtue of the stairs being a spiral, which is no illusion.
Yet again , that is direction , not flow. Direction means the stairs have an order...but flow means you can only be “on” one a time, which is an additional property.