Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1exp 11/4/83; site hlexa.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxl!houxm!ihnp4!hlexa!hsf From: hsf@hlexa.UUCP Newsgroups: net.books,net.philosophy Subject: Time and Immortality (part 7) Message-ID: <512@hlexa.UUCP> Date: Wed, 9-Nov-83 18:38:17 EST Article-I.D.: hlexa.512 Posted: Wed Nov 9 18:38:17 1983 Date-Received: Fri, 11-Nov-83 02:28:54 EST Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Short Hills, NJ Lines: 78 (c) Copyright 1983 by Henry Friedman (Copying for personal use by users of net is authorized.) The Perpetual Moment (continued) No, the view of time as a movie shown only once does not seem consistent with the current physical model of time. A more appropriate analogy would appear to be that time is like an infinitely long movie film threaded, all at once, through an infinitely large number of movie projectors. Each projector with its associated movie screen would be showing the same movie as the others, but the screens would be slightly out of phase with one another. If one could view one of the earlier screens, he or she would eventually see scenes that were already visible on a later screen; and conversely, the later screens would have already shown what was appearing on the earlier screens. The infinite strip of movie film can be compared to all of spacetime. And each projector with its corresponding screen can be compared to a single virtual moving wave of cons- ciousness, among an infinite number of such waves, flowing through time. Such an analogy of an infinite number of mov- ing wavecrests of awareness is, of course, only a figurative model for a subjective experience of time. The assumed per- petual awareness at each infinite moment of time, throughout spacetime, would, it seems, exist in some type of timeless reality beyond time -- as does all of spacetime itself. However, if the theory of parallel universes is correct (see parts 1 through 3 of the series), then the movie analogy for the waves of consciousness must be again modified. We would still have an infinite number of projectors, each with its own movie screen. But instead of a single infinitely long strip of film threaded through all of the projectors, the effect (of the infinite branching of the single film) would be of an infinite number of different films, each threaded through its own movie projector. No two screens would show the same movie, although many of the movies would be similar. Many of the screens could be showing scenes from the same period of time, but (because the screens would be offset "sideways" in time) the scenes would be slightly different from one another. A screen whose movie was offset earlier in time from some of the oth- ers could, as in the earlier analogy, be showing scenes that had already appeared on the others; but if we stayed to watch the movie, we would discover that it had a "different ending," as it were. The model of spacetime as a single, unchanging strip of film is simpler than that of the infinitely branching film of parallel universes. But since both models share the concept of an infinite number of waves of consciousness passing through time, they raise similar questions: Why aren't we aware of the other "versions" of ourselves that exist for- ward, backward and (perhaps) sideways in time? And with respect to parallel universes, one would wonder why he or she is not aware of the replications of himself/herself in the other universes. For according to the concept of paral- lel universes, every time there is a (probabilistic) choice of action, the universe branches into as many different universes as there were possible courses of action. And each of these universes would contain a replication of our- selves. Yet, we are never aware of more than one "us." The other "versions" of us are separate persons, for all practical purposes; there is no physical contact or communication among the parallel worlds, nor among the different times. That is, if the "me" of an hour ago or a week ago is "still" conscious in the past, I am not aware of the fact. So the "me" in the past is as much a different person, as far as everyday reality is concerned, as the other "me's" of the present, in parallel worlds, would be. (Chapter to be concluded in part 8.)