If time has no arrow and does not flow, it will rank as the greatest illusion that humanity has ever labored under. Likewise, its effects for humanity and the universe we experience will be monumental. And this is the very reason why our need to believe that our experience of times arrow is absolutely real is so overpowering and persistent. But if time does not flow, there must be some evidence for this, outside of the equations that physicists use in their defense of the notion that it should not. 

With our newly coined definition, antIs, for the bio-sensory experience created and used by the observers own biology, we can now search for that evidence, but we must also realize that it will not comport with any antIs experience we have ever had. In fact, because we have imbued antIs reality with the imprimatur of actual reality for so long, such evidence will appear as nonsense and/or counter-intuitive.  Additionally, we will have to search for this evidence using the only data we have, that is, the data amassed by human observers engaged in and interpreting as real, humanity’s antIs experience of reality. Fortunately I believe we have advanced far enough along our scientific path as observers that such experimental evidence does indeed exist. The very fact that learned physicists believe that time should not flow gives us some reason for hope.

To look for such evidence, let’s begin at the locus of time’s force, the so called ‘now’ moment (I will use this quotational ‘now’ to refer to the moment between the future and past where reality is manifest, otherwise the word now will be used in its common form without quotations). This is the place of ‘manifest reality’–the future is not yet here, the past has already transpired. The ‘now’ is where everything becomes actual. For an observer this is the place in the flow of time where ‘Is’ lives. Our first hint that a ‘now’ moment is suspect came when we saw that the antIs experience is incapable of actually partaking of a ‘now’, that in fact everything the organism’s antIs experience interprets as happening ‘now’ has already happened. The ‘now’ that the observer experiences is the actual biochemical/bio-sensory interpreted product being supplied to it. But does the fact that the observers experience isn’t an actual ‘now’ prove that there is no ‘now’ moment? This would seem a reasonable question until we realize it is being asked from an antIs perspective. To ask this question outside of the antIs view we would need to ask “what evidence is there for a ‘now’ moment outside of an observers experience of it?

The phenomenon of ‘simultaneity’, that is, two or more events happening at the same ‘now’ in time would be an excellent candidate. For clarity, two observers experiencing one event ‘simultaneously’ is equivalent to one observer observing two events occurring simultaneously. As long as Newtonian physics ruled the universal stage of physics, this would have been proof of just such a ‘now’ moment, but once relativity theory assumed that stage, and space-time became the operative field within which events occur, everything changed. Observers must now be stationary in space-time, relative to each other, in order to experience, simultaneously, a shared ‘now’ moment. They must share the same ‘reference frame’ in space-time. All other observers traveling at different speeds and directions in space-time relative to each other will not be able to agree on simultaneity. Two simultaneous events experienced by one observer will not be simultaneous for all other observers not sharing that observers reference frame. So when do these various ‘now’ moments occur? Depending on the relative speed and direction of the observers, they will occur in some past or future point of all other observers ‘now’ moments. So not only is the antIs experience incapable of partaking of a ‘now’ moment, even if it does exist, but the antIs experiences of different observers can’t even agree on when any ‘now’ itself actually exists.
In chapter 5 of TotIs we reported on Brian Greene’s use of the metaphor of a loaf of bread as a three dimensional representation for space-time’s four dimensions. This representation depicts space, in two dimensions, running along a vast length of time in the third dimension. Slices in that ‘loaf’ represented reference frames in space-time on which observers, stationary with respect to each other, can agree on simultaneity. Using the vast distances in the universe, we saw two observers agree on simultaneity, then with a slight adjustment of speed and direction, we saw the ‘now’ moment of one of the observers shift to include events that occurred in the distant past or the distant future of the other observer and vice versa. This surfeit of ‘now’ moments permeating space-time make a mockery of anything we might call a ‘now’. But we have to remember that these are antIs results of an observers experience. As promised, these results appear nonsensical and counter-intuitive. In looking for evidence of the reality of a ‘now’ moment outside of an observers experience of it, we find a nonsensical infinity of relative now moments permeating the observers universe.

So the indications are that there is no evidence, outside of an observers experience, for an actual ‘now’ moment, let alone an all powerful, universal, ‘now’ moment by which all others are parsed. This would indicate that any ‘now’ moment an observer experiences is unique to them and not an attribute of actual reality. It is a product of their own bio-sensory system, an interpretation of reality manufactured for the organism’s benefit. But what about all the comings and goings of matter and energy we experience around us and the equations we use to describe it all? This is why we had to shift the perspective of our question away from an antIs-centric one to look for evidence outside of an antIs experience. The matter and energy in the universe are not observers, they do not experience anything, unless and until we can communicate with them to ask if they are experiencing a ‘now’ moment or not. All we can do is observe them. The antIs experience is absolute. There is no part of an observers reality that is not colored by the interpretation antIs creates of it, and critically, that includes time.

So what have we got? Time, as we experience it, contains this all important ‘now’ moment where manifest reality becomes present, yet the results of experiments in the physics of relativity show that ‘now’ moments exist all around us in space-time. There are ‘now’s’ in our future, and our past, even as we stand here ‘now’. The foundation upon which time flows, the ‘now’ moment, crumbles, and so its very nature comes into question. What then might be the nature of this thing we call time if it does not flow? Can we discover its nature if all we have is our antIs experience with which to do it? If you’ve read TotIs you know we can try.