0:00 Does time ever feel...0:01 fragile to you?0:02 Like you could reach out and put a finger through it?0:07 Fragile?0:07 I usually think of it as the most solid thing there is.0:12 The one thing you can't stop.0:14 See, I go the other way.0:16 Especially late at night.0:18 It reminds me of what we were talking about last week with beauty.0:23 You know it’s real, you feel it, but the moment you try to hold it and define it, it just...0:31 dissolves.0:32 Ah.0:32 So time is another one of those beautiful, unanswerable questions.0:37 I think I see where you’re going.0:40 Exactly.0:40 Because my gut, my whole life experience, tells me time is an arrow.0:46 It flies in one direction.0:48 There's yesterday, which is gone.0:51 There's now.0:52 And there's tomorrow, which isn't here yet.0:55 Simple.0:56 It's the most intuitive feeling in the world.0:59 It’s the basis of every story we tell, every plan we make.1:04 The idea of cause and effect depends on it.1:07 Right!1:08 But then...1:09 then you read a little bit about physics, and it all falls apart.1:14 This idea that, on a fundamental level, the laws of physics don't really care which way the arrow flies.1:22 Mmm.1:23 You’re talking about spacetime.1:25 The "block universe." Yeah, that.1:28 And I'm hoping you can explain it in a way that doesn't make my head spin.1:34 Because the way I understand it...1:36 it suggests that the past, the present, and the future are all equally real.1:42 That they all exist simultaneously.1:45 That’s a good way to put it.1:47 Imagine a loaf of bread.1:49 We experience the loaf one slice at a time, and we call that slice "the present." But the whole loaf is already there.1:59 The slices we call "the past" and "the future" are just...2:04 other parts of the loaf we aren't experiencing right now.2:08 Wait—so my memory of being a kid, and some hypothetical moment fifty years from now...2:15 they're just different slices of the same loaf?2:19 They're both just as real as this conversation?2:23 In that model, yes.2:24 They have the same ontological status, as a philosopher might say.2:29 They just are.2:31 Our consciousness just happens to be moving through them in a particular order.2:37 Ohhh.2:37 I don't like that.2:39 I REALLY don't like that.2:41 It feels...2:42 I don't know, it makes life feel like a movie we're just watching, not something we're creating moment by moment.2:51 It feels like it removes all the meaning.2:54 Does it?2:55 Or does it give every moment a kind of permanence?2:59 Think about it.3:00 If the past is just as real as the present, then no beautiful moment is ever truly lost.3:07 It's still there, in its slice.3:09 And no painful moment is erased, either.3:13 It's all part of the structure of what is.3:16 So it doesn't take the meaning away, it just...3:20 cements it.3:21 Forever.3:21 Wow.3:22 That's a heavy thought.3:23 It makes every single second feel...3:26 monumentally important.3:28 And maybe it is.3:29 Maybe our feeling of time's passage is just the mechanism by which we perceive that eternal structure.3:38 So we're back to where we started.3:40 This thing that feels like a river carrying us along might just be us walking through a gallery, looking at one painting at a time.3:51 I have to live my life like the river is real.3:55 I can't make a choice if I believe the choice is already part of a static block.4:01 You know?4:02 I do.4:02 And I don't think anyone is asking you to.4:06 The physicist lives by the clock and the calendar, just like everyone else.4:12 There's the reality the math describes, and then there's the reality our consciousness lives inside.4:20 And they don't seem to match up.4:22 And maybe the question isn't "which one is true," but...4:27 how do we live with both?4:29 How do we live knowing that the most fundamental thing we experience—the passing of one second to the next—might be a complete illusion?4:40 Perhaps the illusion is the point.4:42 Perhaps that's what consciousness is.4:45 The experience of the slice.
