Member-only story
Time: A Computational Construct of Perceptual Change
The summation of vectors of change-entropy, combined with psychological construction, conjures up a sense that time is similar to a spatial dimension. What if it isn’t?
KEY POINTS
Time isn’t a fourth dimension but rather exists only in the “present moment,” which has some minimal thickness. The past and future exist only as information stored within this present moment.
Instead of a single “arrow of time,” we experience multiple “arrows of change” , or “arrows of entropy”— vectors with direction and magnitude that collectively create our experience of time through their integration.
Our perception of time is fundamentally computational — the human brain processes change at the scale of hundreds of milliseconds, creating a present moment that spans about 2–3 seconds of subjective experience.
Time might be like the color purple — something that exists as a shared perception rather than an objective reality. Just as purple emerges from our brain combining red and blue wavelengths, time might emerge from our processing of change.
The traditional idea of “Big Time” (vast linear spans from past to future) might be…
