Since childhood I am a big fan of time traveling sci-fi books and movies.

WARNING: Spoiler alert for the following text, if you haven't read all of R.Monroe's books.

Maybe my interest about time travels and time paradoxes helped me guess what happened in the R.Monroe's third book, when he met his own versions form various moments in time.

Today I was thinking about "now". What is my "now"? I could not explain it clearly because each explanation itself contained even more unexplained terms. So let's assume that "now" exists so I can continue with my story.

Also I would like to stay close to the idea of "now" here in PMR (with some short jumps out of it).

How did I came to my "now"? I guess, it is the result of a free will of everyone and everything involved. "Free will" is one more unexplained term for me. What is free will in a case where each of my next actions can be computed based on my previous actions? Is there a true random generator? At least in our PMR I haven't seen any mathematical randomizer, which can spit out numbers completely wthout traces to the origin of those numbers.

Maybe my free will in PMR differs from some precomputed sequence outside of PMR in the same way as pseudo random generators in our PMR differ from physical random generators (which seem like pure random generators to us here in PMR, but may still be completely precomputed outside of PMR).

So let's assume, that our free will exists at least in my "now" and at leats in PMR.

The main question about "now" is the following. Is my "now" the same as your "now"? Do we share the same "now"? Just for a though experiment let's assume that we do not share the same "now", and try to find out how it is possible.

One idea that came to me many years ago was the following: what if there is only one consciousness which is reliving various versions of personality here, in PMR? Like so: I live as me, then I die, and at some point I am born as my mom or dad or friend or someone else, and relive the same scenarious from the other perspective. In that case my "now" as I see it, is empty, only I myself am real here, everyone else is just datastream from their actions which they do when this single consciousness comes to their "now". But this thought somehow does not make sense, because then causality and free will becomes completely messed up, and time itself does not make sense at all. If I hit someone, because I have my free will "now", will he hit me back, because I just interact with a "shadow" of his "now"? Hmm, shadows should not have a free will. If they do, then again they are conscious entities themselves. So I guess, the single big consciousness would prefer to live in PMR in a parallel way and not in the way I just described. Also it is more efficient to do things in parallel than in a serial way (says the programmer in me).

The other idea, why my "now" might be different form someone else's "now" is parallel realities. Maybe someone I know "now" actually lives in some other version of PMR, where some other probability came true, but I here am interacting with his datashadow? Well, again, datashadows should not have a free will .. but what if that datashadow is not a real consciousness at all, maybe it is just a "program" to test my reactions? This "program" might correspond to some real entity, which is experiencing completely different "now" in completely different parallel version of PMR, but it could also be something completely artificial, just some data. Oh, isn't that exactly what is happening when we dream - interaction with programs (created by our own imagination or the Big Computer) and perceiving them as real personalities?

At least, I can easily test my dreams versus PMR. If the person I see in a dream is telling me complete nonsense, most probably it's just my self-created program-shadow of this person. And this thought creates two questions:
- is there any way I can recognize when the "program" I am interacting with in a dream (or in the PMR reality) is not my construction, but is a "program" from outside (from the Big Computer)?

- is there any way I can recognize when the "program" I am interacting with is not an empty "pogram" (my representation of someone or the Big Computer's projection of someone's datastream), but is a real coscious entity which shares my "now" and we both have the same shared reality space (although somewhat different experiences)?

So, now I have headaches :D At least I guess, I should keep to the assumption that time is not a total illusion, so we (as parts of some bigger consciousness) are sharing the same "now" and have the same past (of course, experienced from differnet points of view). If this is not the case, then there is no point of the database of the past because someone might say: "oh, that is not MY past, my experienced reality flow consists of completely different events". At least here in PMR I haven't yet met people who have completely different memories of historic events, so it seems, everyone has came to my "now" moving on the same timeline as I was ... if only I am not alone here with some datashadows, and everyone has his own PMR full of such shadows...

I hope, I did not talk complete nonsense here.

Good night to all.

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In order to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.

I think that if you could read and assimilate the model of reality from MBT, a lot of these questions would be answered. http://wiki.my-big-toe.com/index.php/Th ... _Link_Page

Ted

i find it quite suspicious that i just so happen to exist right now, right on the cusp of time. the universe has been around for 15 billion years and i am just lucky enough to be experiencing this precise moment when time is active. it just seems much too convenient to be chance. the probabilities of me being here right now must be infinitesimally minute, yet here i am...

Keep in mind that what you have just said is somewhat on the order of the statement 'where ever you go, there you are'. It is no more amazing that you are here now than that you were also here perhaps 60 years ago and likely will be again at some time in the future. Different lives in PMR but your same you in NPMR. That is presuming that this PMR is functional enough and not so deep in ice and snow that the carrying capacity is starting to be much less. That direction is still open. But there are many other PMRs also.

Ted

So it seems, my "now" is the moment of time which makes future probability collapse into the certain history.

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In order to understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.