[W. M.]

Time, Free Will, and Unshared Presents

Computational irreducibility states that the only way to work out how as system will behave is to perform this computation with the result that there can be fundamentally no laws that allow one to work out the behavior more directly. This is the origin of apparent free will.

Time and free will are two primary perceptions that govern our lives. Perception is a barrier, or wall, that brings things down from the abstract level to the definitive level, the level at which we live our lives. In essence, on one side of the perception wall there is God's realm (reality), which houses simultaneity and predestination (pre-determinism), while on the other side of the wall (our side) we are shepherded by perceptions: time and free will. The reality side of the wall is abstract to us, while the perception side is definitive from our viewpoint.

The present is an individual perception because one person's present is another person's future. For example, two people, John and Sarah are standing four feet apart. John is going to tell Sarah that he's getting married. So we have:

1) John is four feet from Sarah.
A)Light travels at one ns/ft (one nanosecond, or billionth of a second per foot).
B) Sound travels at 700ft/sec.
C) John and Sarah are four Lns (four light nanoseconds) from each other.
D)John and Sarah are 0.006 Ssec (sound seconds) from each other.

2) From John's perspective it's the present when he tells Sarah his good news. However, he sees Sarah four Lns in the past. Time's arrow for John's vision cone is toward his past, but he sees his own time moving forward.

3)When Sarah hears John she hears him 0.006 Ssec in the past and sees him four Lns in the past, even though John thinks it's the present.

4) The reaction John observes from Sarah is from Sarah's past (four Lns and 0.006 Ssec) so Sarah thinks that she's in the present now.

The conclusion: The present is an individual perception; everyone except you exists in the past or the future. But since light and sound do not travel instantaneously, it seems to John and Sarah that they share a common present. In a free will system time would be a dimension instead of a perception.

Bibliography

"A New Kind of Science" by Stephen Wolfram
Excerpts from my notes