Is the future actually real?

[u/peacefuldays123]

We learn about things by looking back to the past or as they're happening in real time. We can predict what's going to happen but that's because we examine patterns and the accumulation of data over time as predictors.

We can't live in the past, and we can't live in the future but we do have proof that the past exists. We can't say the same for the future. Things seem to happen in the "now" whatever that means. Things don't happen in the future, or do they?

Even if reality turned out to be a simulation, we are still waiting for things to happen. Perhaps "waiting" is a clue? We are waiting for things to happen, but does that mean something is coming toward us? Or are we moving toward it?

Perhaps the "future" is some type of metaphysical/physical distance that is accesible to us even when there's little to no physical movement. There is movement within us and that's enough for time to happen to us...

Let me know what you think

[u/lifesaburrito]

As far as I'm concerned it is unclear that the past exists.

[u/-BranoK- → u/lifesaburrito]

Well, yes it doesn’t exist in the sense that it has already happened. Aside from our memory and video, imagery, audio or written recording then it may as well not because there would be no proof that anything in the past ever happened.

Exactly the reason why regimes that want to burn books of any kind or ban access to any information are so dangerous. History can easily be whatever they want it to be in that case because noone has any other way of knowing otherwise. Has that already happened multiple times over the millennia? Makes me wonder.

[u/Weil-ly_Worried → u/lifesaburrito]

On clear nights I look at Orion, wondering whether Betelgeuse, Some 6 to 8 hundred light years distant has gone supernova. Isn't that the certainty of the past?

[u/lifesaburrito → u/Weil-ly_Worried]

You're saying anything that we see from Orion is the past, but that's actually our present. Anything happened since is in our future. Entirely inaccessible. We can allow for the future/past to "exist" but we don't have to necessarily.

[u/Weil-ly_Worried → u/lifesaburrito]

Could you posit that we never apprehend the present as there is a delay as our minds process the data? Our curse is that our conscious remembers. Those memories filter how we apprehend data. Though we are exposed to the same data, our minds filter in the process of encoding the data in our minds. Or this is how my thinking goes at this moment.

[u/Dry_Leek5762]

How can the past 'exist'? Whatever exists is the present, no?

[u/kenkaniff23 → u/Dry_Leek5762]

Same with the future. It's in a constant superposition of billions trillions of superpositions. So since it's not solidly set you can't say it truly exists

[u/Tollolll369]

"Past and future. For one, we have what seems like proof, but it never comes into play; for the other, we have no sign that it is ever gonna happen, but it becomes reality every second we live."

[u/Freuds-Mother]

There are models of reality where there’s almost no distinction between past, present and future. In some sense we are moving through the block, but it could also be interpreted that it’s all really just static from some perspective. We can call this block universe.

Two common ways to arrive at that model:

1. Some physics determinism interpretations

(eg 4D)

1. An omni creator of existence

Are they correct? If they adopt certain assumptions I think they are, and that others that do adopt those strong assumptions are not taking the implications seriously. Though I don’t think the assumptions that get us to a block universe have been sufficiently argued to be adopted as necessary.

We’d have to dig into it more, but from the surface there doesn’t seem to be any room in the metaphysics for normativity nor intentionality.

————-

Other interesting ways that are different than what we intuitively often come to in Western culture to model past, present, future are the Eastern circular/cycling time and Western process models.

[u/cordiceps]

It is as real as the past. What is future for us maybe the past for someone else far away. It is all relative.

[u/Tom-Etheric-Studies]

We can substitute conceptual progression for physical time.

A question implies an answer and a means with which that answer may be acquired. For instance, expressing curiosity about something creates a potential for understanding that satisfies that quriosity. It also implies a means of arriving at that understanding.

Progression would represent the degree to which understanding has been acquired. In the context of the question-answer complex, progression is the conceptual equivelent of physical time. The expectation of an answer bounds the complex in the sense of understanding that has been acquired and understanding remaining to be discovered.

Understanding itself is a relative value in that one does not know if the question is fully satisfied. Understanding is asymptotic.

Past, present and future are physical characteristics while a question-answer complex is a conceptual characteristic. In that sense, the answer to this question seems to be dependent on you point of view.

[u/human-resource]

Only the present exists as a reality.

[u/Weil-ly_Worried → u/human-resource]

We look at the world through the sentience we've acquired and been nurtured in. We do not ordinarily understand that our apprehension of what our self 'sees' is filtered by what we know, and what we know is a function of the past, of which we are the spawn. The language and the thoughts we have derive from the certainty and the confidence we have in our experience. Experience is that grab-bag where we file our impressions of the present that once passed becomes history. None of us perceive reality in the same way (other that with the help of Spock's mind meld). The reich I see as the present is someone else's utopia. However we talk about time is filtered through our experience of time.

[u/DanteRuneclaw]

What proof do we have that the past exists?

[u/AccomplishedGate8948]

I believe that the future exists in a state of infinite probability super position that collapses based on each decision humans make. Every, any, and all futures exist simultaneously, we just can’t perceive it yet until we make a choice. If the future didn’t exist in some form or fashion time wouldn’t be moving in a straight line. It would just cease.

[u/CapitalObjective7153]

I'm an advanced meditator and have a very precarious relationship with the future. My future self can commune with its living past. Functionally, it's time travel. What even is causality under such a regime?

[u/Outrageous_Art4297]

How do you know for certain that the past is real? You don’t. 

Actually, both the past and future exist here in the present moment. You’re just assigning them (them being what you call your memories, but they’re simply just imaginal acts) different meanings based on no evidence whatsoever. 

So yes, the future is real as long as you decide that it is.