WHAT IS NOW?
Retrocausality: a concept of cause and effect in which an effect precedes its cause in time and so a later event affects an earlier one. In quantum physics, the distinction between cause and effect is not made at the most fundamental level and so time-symmetric systems can be viewed as causal or retrocausal. [1]
Even though we cannot access memories of the future, the future does exert a sort of gravitational pull upon us. It’s a weak force, not a solid state as the past becomes for us. We have complete freedom in the present to choose what our next move will be, but there is a sort of leaning towards or perhaps an intuition that influences and shapes our decision making.
It has been scientifically demonstrated that our brains arrive at a decision a micro second prior to us making a choice. We are all in a sense exhibiting precognition all the time.
Published in the prestigious Nature journal, an experiment carried out in the Future Minds Lab at UNSW School of Psychology showed that free choices about what to think can be predicted from patterns of brain activity 11 seconds before people consciously chose what to think about.
The experiment consisted of asking people to freely choose between two visual patterns of red and green stripes – one of them running horizontally, the other vertically – before consciously imagining them while being observed in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine.
The participants were also asked to rate how strongly they felt their visualisations of the patterns were after choosing them, again while researchers recorded their brain activity during the process.
Not only could the researchers predict which pattern they would choose, they could also predict how strongly the participants were to rate their visualisations. With the assistance of machine learning, the researchers were successful at making above-chance predictions of the participants’ volitional choices at an average of 11 seconds before the thoughts became conscious.
The brain areas that revealed information about the future choices were located in executive areas of the brain – where our conscious decision-making is made – as well as visual and subcortical structures, suggesting an extended network of areas responsible for the birth of thoughts.
Lab director Professor Joel Pearson believes what could be happening in the brain is that we may have thoughts on ‘standby’ based on previous brain activity, which then influences the final decision without us being aware.
“We believe that when we are faced with the choice between two or more options of what to think about, non-conscious traces of the thoughts are there already, a bit like unconscious hallucinations,” Professor Joel Pearson of UNSW says. [2]
This experiment shows that there is some sort of substance to the future than just a complete unknown. In fact if you examine the universe and how we observe distant objects, according to the block universe theory, at vast distances and depending on the direction of travel towards or away from an object, we are looking at either that object’s past or we are observing that object’s future. The past, present, and future are all real. If the future is observable across the universe then one observing our universe can also see our very real past or very real future.
One of the greatest changes in my life was a result of such a force. This pull seemed to always be there waiting just under the surface, but became so intense of a pull that resistance towards it would only strengthen its gravitational force upon me and I felt as though I would eventually be crushed by it. For many years after, what I thought was the reason for the seemingly abrupt change turned out to only be an instrument through which the real reason for the course correction could accomplish its ultimate goal. For that powerful tsunami has receded back into the ocean and has not near the effect upon me anymore. But as the wave receded, it becomes clearer more and more that it was about so much more than I ever thought possible.
New discoveries are constantly changing our perceptions of what is real. And a lot of times they reveal something completely outside of our expectations.
Anthropomorphizing everything does not always reveal objective truths. We are repeatedly reminded of our limited frame of reference. And when it comes to time, the way time behaves versus the way we think about it, can be disorienting.
Knowing that there is a real future and that we all access it in small ways unknowingly is further evidence that the future can indeed have influence over the present.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality.
[2] https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2019/03/our-brains-reveal-our-choices-before-were-even-aware-of-them--st
RECOMMENDED READING:
THE MERCHANT AND THE ALCHEMIST’S GATE BY TED CHIANG
“The story I have to tell is truly a strange one, and were the entirety to be tattooed at the corner of one’s eye, the marvel of its presentation would not exceed that of the events recounted, for it is a warning to those who would be warned and a lesson to those who would learn. ”
"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" is a fantasy novelette by American writer Ted Chiang, originally published in 2007 by Subterranean Press and reprinted in the September 2007 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. In 2019, the novelette was included in the collection of short stories Exhalation: Stories.
A Baghdad merchant encounters a mysterious alchemist who claims to have invented a device that can transport him across time and space. But what is the true nature of this marvelous invention, and what are its consequences?
CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO READ:
https://images.shulcloud.com/1202/uploads/Documents/TheMerchantandtheAlchemistsGate.pdf
