24/11/13                               BLOG 16

WHY CAN’T PEOPLE  ‘REMEMBER THE FUTURE’ – REALLY?

RECONSIDERING THE CURRENT CRISIS OF TIME

SUMMARY: Though physicists frequently query why “people can’t remember the future”, this statement as commonly expressed is just a demonstrable oxymoron.

The question is more productively rephrased into anti-memory or pre-call  terms.....

The Tripartite Rift

As I’ve just summarised in Blog 15, there’s a growing consensus that the present large crisis in physics is largely to do with the ‘nature of time’.  Or more precisely with the general puzzlement associated with the same.  There’s conflict between what scientists and philosophers understand about personal or subjective time as formalised by psychology, and the nature of objective time which physics apparently implies. 

And even within physics  there’s still further conflict: the nature of time as apparent from Relativity Theory (RT) conflicts with what Quantum Theory (QT) suggests. 

So that current conceptions of time involve a tripartite rift – between RT, QT, and common experience.  Along with the strong suspicion that “there’s something vital missing”  which might unite them all.

In the next few articles therefore I’ll show how this psycho-physical impasse might readily be resolved.  This requires  a new and dramatic extension of time awareness beyond its current boundaries.  Though one also soundly based on more thorough observation, more accurate description, and a newly informed pragmatism. 

My suggestion forms the core of three books I’ve written over the past two decades, with the latest an ebook containing the argument in final form.¹   In effect these increasingly develop an old proposal, for “A Relativistic Approach to Subjective Time, first advanced by me at the London Parascience Conference 1973 ². This proposal was however left mostly in abeyance over the interim, and largely because the scientific Zeitgeist was never at all ripe for its proper consideration until now....

Relativity is the simplest physics option

Considering therefore the situation within physics first, RT regards future events as fixed and determined just like past ones, with Now a mere local label of no more ultimate significance than Here.  Whereas QT regards future events as indefinite or  unpredictable in principle  – but (somehow?) transforming  into definite past ones through observation at the point of Now.   

But of these two conflicting temporal viewpoints, Occam’s Razor (or even naive realism!)  suggests that the QT viewpoint is likely the  least valid one.  For quantum  ontology – or basis in reality - is notoriously problematic, uncertain, and indeed open to half-a-dozen differing interpretations currently.  Whereas the RT viewpoint  is much simpler, less controversial, and with just one main interpretation generally agreed.

So that in further considering  the great time confliction between physics and psychology, it must seem simplest to adopt RT (and not QT) as the prime physical standard.  

The main problem here is of course that RT’s implications - of a predetermined future and a purely local Now - seem totally opposed to common time notions, and all the psychology which derives therefrom.  

Ultimately however these latter all rest on that prime personal experience of memory.   This is commonly taken to be a strictly one-way process which can only reflect fixed past experience.  And with an unfixed future, which is also unknowable, starting just beyond the point of Now.

Change Physics or Psychology?

Broadly also there can be only two ways out of the main psycho-physical dichotomy.  Either one might change time physics to suit time psychology, as Sir Roger Penrose once agonised³ . Or alternately you might change the psychology to suit the physics, which must seem the simpler course by far. 

For the well-proven laws of Relativity have been tested to exhaustion and always found to work with complete exactitude.  Whereas time psychology has largely accepted those common notions  of ordinary perception, but never with any testing remotely comparable to RT’s experimental proofs......

Rephrasing an Oxymoron

This weakness of common perception  is again evident in an question often posed by physicists over the last few decades. Their ranks range from Richard Feynman, through Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking,  to Sean Carroll and Lee Smolin more recently.  Impelled by considerations of time symmetry, all these have observed that “We can’t remember the future” - and in just those words.⁴  Then typically invoking entropy to explain....

But the scientific art is often one of asking proper questions, with language as its primary tool.  And given further that ‘ wrong words may carry one’s thoughts in the wrong direction’ this frequent statement from physicists clearly requires to be rephrased...

This is because ‘re’ means ‘again or later’, whereas ‘future’ implies ‘not yet experienced’.  So to speak of ‘remembering the future’ is just a confused oxymoron!

A less confused question would therefore be to ask “Why do people have no memory of the future?”  - which at least removes that oxymoronic prefix of ‘re’.  But since ‘memory’ and ‘future’ concern different time realms,  that would still leave a lingering element of illogicality.   

“Why No Anti-Memory?”  

The question can therefore be further refined through the neologism of anti-memory , a term apparently first proposed by me long ago ⁵.  So that the status of memory’s perceived asymmetry can then be rephrased in a still firmer way: “Why have people no anti-memory ?”  

This new theoretical word-concept would of course operate towards the personal future, so mirroring the normal comprehension of memory as directed towards the past. The initial problem here would be that what people term their future is regarded as unfixed and unknowable, though more so by common consent rather than by RT.

But in any case this new idea of anti-memory has two strong advantages over those previous oxymora.  First it coheres well with physics terminology, where other once theoretical constructs like anti-matter are now entirely practical.  Second, and given that ‘words are the shorthand of thought’, it confers new tangibility on an issue which was literally unthinkable before! 

 Pre-call is more precise!

But even though anti-memory may fit comfortably into physics terminology, it  still requires further clarification or refinement when psychology becomes involved.  This is because ‘memory’ is a broad descriptive or summarising term, with various sub-functions like retention, encoding, recognition, recall. 

Of these just the last two - i.e.recall, and the more complex process of recognition -  need concern us here.   Wherefore the former alone soon qualifies, for more precise consideration of the wider anti-memory  idea.... 

This is because to re-call’ means ‘to summon to mind some present-ation from past personal experience’; to ‘pre-call’ would mean ‘to summon from future experience’ likewise.

Such also demotes the term ‘precognition’ (sic), long traditional in philosophy and parapsychology.  For the latter suggests temporal inversion to ordinary ‘recognition’, for which it is the antonym.  A supposed relationship which proper observation can easily clarify as untrue.

So that “People can’t pre-call” then rephrases that hoary old chestnut about “not remembering the future” into a simpler final clarity.   

Not forbidden by ‘time’s nature’

The common response to “Why can’t people pre-call?” is of course that "Such a process would obviously be impossible - because the ‘nature of time’ must forbid it to occur." Which answer can also be extended to explain why people never seem to pre-call anyway.

But such an argument would be illogical or circular.  This is because the common view of time’s nature is based on what people know of memory.  And not the other way around.  So that the initial argument against pre-call rests not on ‘time’s nature’, whatever that may be.  But rather on just the common perception of memory, as a strictly one-way or past-to-present process.

Note finally here that people could hardly form much notion of time if they had no memory at all.  Whereas if they could only exercise pre-call - or even better had a symmetrical memory with both pre-call and re-call - their temporal ideas must differ greatly from conventional  understanding now....

1 – 3 books by Sean O’Donnell:

          1996 - Future, Memory and Time

          2007 - The Paranormal Explained :

          2013 - Five New Experiments with Time - ebook

2 – London Parascience Conference 1973 - “A Relativistic Approach to Subjective Time”

3 - R.Penrose – The Emperor’s New Mind – 1990 - p574

4 – e.g Sean Carroll -- From Eternity to Here – 2010 – p 40

               Lee Smolin – Time Reborn – 2013 - p 204

5 – Internat. Parapsychology Conference –Tufts U – 1987: Poster presentation