Time Traveler's Dilemma - Is the future fixed?

I know there's some in scientific circles who desire determinism. They want a theory of everything that will explain the universe with elegant and simple laws of physics.

Sadly for them, quantum mechanics has thrown a monkey wrench into this desire.

Einstein didn't like the random nature and uncertainty of quantum mechanics and he said,"God does not play dice."

This leads us to the Time Traveler's Dilemma.

Say you have a time traveler called Swami. Swami can traverse the 4th dimension and this means he can travel up and down our world line. He can see the future just by traveling 24 hours into the future and seeing what choices we will make.

So he sees that Diane gets up every morning and brushes her teeth. He predicts she will do this and he's correct for 50 days straight. He makes his 51st prediction and he's celebrating. Diane gets up and walks toward the bathroom just like Swami predicted. Then....the phone rings. Swami starts to panic when he sees Diane walking to answer the phone and she didn't go to the bathroom as he predicted. Swami is so upset that he stops making predictions.

So how can the future be fixed and not fixed at the same time? Why couldn't Swami accurately predict the future every time if he could see the choice we would make before we made them?

The answer is quantum mechanics.

You have to factor in randomness and uncertainty. So Diane can make the choice to get up and brush her teeth every morning but her cousins choice to get married and call and tell her will become entangled with Diane.

Quantum mechanics tells us in order for Swami to predict the future, he needs to know Diane's choices and her cousins and everyone's choice in the world as well as natural disasters that may occur.

Say the phone call is from a bill collector who's calling the wrong number.

So the future is predetermined but not fixed. I think we will follow our predetrmined paths most of the time but you have to account for those times when uncertainty will enter the picture.

Our predetermined path is determined by the choices we make before we make them (think about that one for a second).

Welcome to the dice game!

they say every choice we make results in a split universe right?

but it seems like an all powerful dimension traveling Swami would have unplugged this chicks phone before he started to party. Thats just sloppy prophecy

It can be argued that the future is fixed and that choice is just an illusion. If something happens, it means it was always meant to happen, because it did. Just like I was always destined to write this post... and here is the proof!

I guess you could call the big bang the big unzipping file. Maybe everything that ever was and ever will be is simply too 'compressed' for us to see it ahead of time.

IRM

The future doesn't exist until it happens. All events leading to a future even are required to take their course before those events can come to fruition.

How can this magical swami travel along a time-line that hasn't occurred yet? Let's factor in the whole QM thing... which time-line would the magical swami travel down with an infinite time-lines?

What if he went down the three hundredth trillionth iteration of an event, went back to his original time-line, made his prediction, but it was wrong because the choices made stopped at the three hundred thousandth iteration of events...

There is no future and there is no past, you can't travel back to something unless you can reverse entropy for the entire universe nor can you travel forward into something that hasn't occurred yet.

The only thing that exists is reality.

Can anyone point to a fundamental unit of "time"? Not even a physicist can accomplish that.

if life is quantum mechanics then there is not beginning nor end everything is in between

reply to post by sirnex


We might as well call Kaku and Hawking and tell them to retire because you have figured everything out.

What you're saying doesn't make sense in light of what we know about information.

I agree that traveling through time would be difficult if not impossible if we were just talking about space-time. Sadly for your entropy everything theory we have to deal with information, the weakness of gravity, dark matte/energy, anti-matter and more but just for the sake of this discussion let's stick to information.

It's true, space and time evolve into infinity at planck's constant. So there's no fundamental unit of time or space but there's a fundamental unit of information called a Qubit.

See, information is not bound by time and everything is information. So from the 4th dimension we could gather information about the future and the past of the 3rd dimension.

For instance, we know how to manipulate matter on a macroscopic scale and we're good at building houses, boats and cars but we can't manipulate matter on a microscopic scale. We will be able to manipulate matter on a microscopic scale through things like nanotechnology or claytronics. This means you could replicate a table or TV from a microscopic level.

This is information and information from the past as well as the future exists.

You are looking at this from the stand point of matter and energy and just forgetting about information.

Let me ask you, did the information to build a TV and to build a car exists 2,000 years ago? If you say yes then you agree with me that information is not bound by space or time.

In a given volume, there is an upper limit to the density of information about the whereabouts of all the particles which compose matter in that volume, suggesting that matter itself cannot be subdivided infinitely many times and there must be an ultimate level of fundamental particles. As the degrees of freedom of a particle are the product of all the degrees of freedom of its sub-particles, were a particle to have infinite subdivisions into lower-level particles, then the degrees of freedom of the original particle must be infinite, violating the maximal limit of entropy density. The holographic principle thus implies that the subdivisions must stop at some level, and that the fundamental particle is a bit (1 or 0) of information.

en.wikipedia.org...

Information is not bound by space or time.

Interesting point.

What do you mean in regards to the "future"... You mean the future of ones self or the future of the entire world?..

[I do realize both are entwined]



People make small changes... Sometimes I brush teeth right away, sometimes I get a glass of milk... but that's at a personal level and not going to effect is Obama decides to attack Iran and "change the future".

There are difference levels and experiences at a lower level than at a earth changing level... I often think about if I went back 10 years, how many things would I have to do different or people I'd have to talk to to change the actual world for today, 2010.



I hope this makes sense. Sometimes I ramble

reply to post by Matrix Rising

Let me ask you, did the information to build a TV and to build a car exists 2,000 years ago? If you say yes then you agree with me that information is not bound by space or time.

I appreciate you answering for me, I really do, but I would have appreciated even more the ability to answer on my own.

My answer is no. How can the knowledge of how to build a tv or a car exist 2,000 years prior to that knowledge coming to be?

I think I get what your saying, sort of...

The capacity for atoms to form together into the various parts of a car are bound by the laws of physics, meaning if it should happen it would happen if it's made to happen.

Yet, the information on HOW to bring those atoms or parts of a car and turn them into a car were not in existence 2,000 years ago.

Your over thinking thing's. And a Qubit is nor more meaningful than a megabyte in your argument. You can't just take any quantum computer terminology you want and attempt to make it out as something it's not describing.

But hey, if you really believe what you've just told me, then can you PLEASE get some information for me? I need to know how to build a spaceship that will be able to explore the entire universe and I'd like to know how to increase my lifespan indefinitely. Thanks!

reply to post by sirnex


Sadly, you have done what many people do. You're trying to debate against something that was never said. You said:

My answer is no. How can the knowledge of how to build a tv or a car exist 2,000 years prior to that knowledge coming to be?

First, I never said anything about knowledge. Of course the people back then didn't have the knowledge to build a car. I know why you said this because it makes no sense in this context.

So I never said knowledge and if I did please quote me.

I said the information is present to build a car 2,000 years ago. Just like the information exist today for future technologies that we will gain knowledge of in the future.

So, if a person had the knowledge to build a car, could he build a car if he were to get into a hypothetical time machine and go back in time?

Of course the answer is yes. Information is not bound by space and time. It takes time for knowledge to increase but that's debating a point that was never made.

[edit on 12-5-2010 by Matrix Rising]

The biggest problem with time travel is that the farther you go either into the past or the future (and you don't have to go very far), the more reality will likely break down into a chaotic fog of probabilities because there are fewer and fewer points of view to stabilize it. This is particularly the case if only you or a few of your colleagues are doing the time travelling.

This might not be a problem, however, if there are more conscious beings traveling in time than we imagine. And this might very well be the case if micro-wormholes can get big enough to suck living things (even a bacteria will do) forward and backward in time and space. And if that's the case, then time will be a relatively stable dimension that continues to push forward and backward against plusfinity and minusfinity.

Is the future constructed/fixated/created out of the present [past?] or is it a preexisting construct?

All of our perceptions would say it is kinetic & being created. Our imaginations must suppose alternate possibilities or there would be no 'reason' to have them.
That isn't necessarily to say that perception is true, but if we even operate at all, then we operate [virtually always] upon that presumption/basis.

I think the passage of time is kinetic & animate or at least partly so. There is the static infinity of integers, but then there are all the infinities of fractionalizing integers even unto irrationality. And the interaction between all those infinities makes complete containment of action [time transition] nearly impossible. It has to go fuzzy.

Clearly there is some continuity between the seeming instants of our Universe's time. No instant seems to arise without being within some limited factor of change from the previous instant. It might be like a leap limitation capacity. Or a degrees [range] of freedom thing. Each microscopic thing can change up to a certain amount between instants but no more. Of course quantum hyper-micro has things appearing & disappearing without any seeming continuity of existence.

My thought is that the future is constructed out of a kind of somewhat easy inertia from the past coherence as well as aggregating coherifying [identificatation] from disparate near-nothingness.

So instantaneous macro change is very unlikely, but the ability to steer things into an altered direction/configuration is quite possible given dedicated, relatively continuous application of resources.

It is probably a lot like the hills and vales of chemical constituent stability,
trying to find a nearby alternate stability possibility that is more preferred & dedicating the sufficient resources to do so. If we try to go too far we may not have the resources or personal dedication to see it through. Or we could spend a lot of resources on an unnoticeable difference.

What path of alterations do/can we take to some shorter or longer term presumed better placement, based on our necessarily limited perspective of that place of presumption? Sometimes what one thinks one wants turns out not to be nearly so triumphant.

My thought is there may be more of a context gradient manner of improvement. Where the particulars are not so important, but the possible outcomes of one swath of the future is far better than another.

The mission of ethos rather than some explicit, a particularly highly detailed design.
Sometimes i think those are traps or at least trappish.

Accuracy instead of obsessive precision.

reply to post by Matrix Rising

Sadly, you have done what many people do. You're trying to debate against something that was never said. You said:

Oh boy... semantics.

First, I never said anything about knowledge. Of course the people back then didn't have the knowledge to build a car. I know why you said this because it makes no sense in this context.

You asked if the information still exists. I'm not sure what definition of 'information' your going by, so here's a dictionary entry on information.

Noun
* S: (n) information, info (a message received and understood)
* S: (n) information (knowledge acquired through study or experience or instruction)
* S: (n) information (formal accusation of a crime)
* S: (n) data, information (a collection of facts from which conclusions may be drawn) "statistical data"
* S: (n) information, selective information, entropy ((communication theory) a numerical measure of the uncertainty of an outcome) "the signal contained thousands of bits of information"

Now, when you ask me if the 'information' on how to build a car exists 2,000 years ago, I naturally and rightfully assume the proper definition in context to the question. No, the information i.e. knowledge acquired on how to build a car did not exist 2,000 years ago.

Do you mean information as in data? Again, I would have to say no, it didn't exist as there is no scientific basis to assume the universe is capable of storing such data or how it is accessed or when it can be accessed or why only at certain time periods it is accessed.

Why not have access to such information as data 2,000 years ago? If knowledge has nothing to do with it, then all data is equally accessible from the fabric of space, assuming of course that this is where the data is stored and accessed from.

Then we're left with the problem of showing that the brain is accessing this stored data rather than utilizing acquired information in the form of knowledge in order to construct said car.

Can you show me where this data is stored and how it's accessed? If not then I think your claims are rather tenuous and unfounded. If you can't show something to be true, then you can't argue it to be true. If this is nothing more than a personal opinion of yours, the so be it.

To answer another question you posed. If hypothetically one *could* travel back in time with the *knowledge* of how to build a car, then yes he could build a car, but such hypothesis is rather moot to the case your attempting to make from my understanding. If this information already exists in the past (regardless of course that the past doesn't exist anymore), then it need not matter whether one has the knowledge to build a car so long as one can access this information freely.

If what your saying is true, then how can we go about testing your idea? What do we need to do to build a machine that can access this information that unassumingly already exists about future events and technologies? I'll tell you what, we'll split all subsequent profits made from such a venture 40/60 with you receiving the 60% since you were the one who posted it.

reply to post by sirnex


I can tell you are just making it up as you go for the sake of argument.

Of course the information existed on how to make a car 2,000 years ago as well as how to make a satellite or build a computer. As well as Information theory Quantum Mechanics and Classical physics. It's just like the information for future technologies exist today. Information is not created when it's discovered.

Have you ever heard of Information Theory?

Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Historically, information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and communicating data.

A key measure of information in the theory is known as entropy, which is usually expressed by the average number of bits needed for storage or communication.

en.wikipedia.org...

Are you saying that Relativity didn't exist until Einstein discovered it?

We just reverse engineer the information that's inherent in nature.

In a paper entitled: “Solid-state quantum memory using the 31P nuclear spin,” published in the October 23, 2008 issue of the journal Nature, an international team of scientists that included researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) reported the first relatively long (1.75 segs.) and coherent transfer of a superposition state in an electron spin 'processing' qubit to a nuclear spin 'memory' qubit. This event can be considered the first relatively consistent quantum Data storage, a vital step towards the development of quantum computing.

Again, this information is inherent in nature. This information is not created when it's discovered.

What about quantum mechanics? Did quantum mechanics exist 2,000 years ago?

Here's M.I.T. Professor Seth Lloyd talking about information.

You've jumped from working on quantum computers to saying, oh, by the way, the universe is a gigantic quantum computer.

When you zap things with light to build quantum computers, you're hacking existing systems. You're hijacking the computation that's already happening in the universe, just like a hacker takes over someone else's computer.

How do you explain Programming to your kids?

I tell them that it says everything in the universe is made of bits. Not chunks of stuff, but chunks of information - ones and zeros.

I've just put on your magic glasses, and looking around I see that, oh my gosh, everything is computing. Is this just fashionable?

Computers are our favorite metaphor at the moment, so maybe we see everything as computers. But this view is not that facile. Statistical mechanics, which underlies all chemistry, grew out of the realization that the world is information. The mathematical definition of a bit was first postulated not during the 1930s and '40s when Claude Shannon and Norbert Weiner started information theory but by James Clerk Maxwell and Ludwig Boltzmann during their 19th-century explorations of the nature of the atom. They were working on thermodynamics, but they discovered that the world was made of information.

www.wired.com...

So whether you study about Einstein, Newton or the Wright Brothers, they just discovered information that was already inherent in nature. When we are able to manipulate matter on a microscopic scale, we will be able to construct a computer out of a pile of junk because of information.

Sadly for you, information is not bound by space and time.

It's really a no brainer unless you're saying information comes into existence when it's discovered.

[edit on 13-5-2010 by Matrix Rising]

reply to post by Matrix Rising

I can tell you are just making it up as you go for the sake of argument.

Wait, what? What am I making up?

You tell me information exists outside of time and space and cite the construction of a car as an example implying that the information to build a car existed 2,000 years ago.

I then counter that the information in form of knowledge did not exist 2,000 years ago, which you promptly went and argued semantics. So I thought to myself, AH, he must mean data as information.

Yet I even saw a problem there as well. If information is stored as data, then where is this data stored? You then tell me I'm making up things without even clueing me into what I am making up?

Of course the information existed on how to make a car 2,000 years ago as well as how to make a satellite or build a computer. As well as Information theory Quantum Mechanics and Classical physics. It's just like the information for future technologies exist today. Information is not created when it's discovered.

Statements like that implies information as data, which implies a storage medium.

Have you ever heard of Information Theory?

Yes, I have, but never have I seen it used in the manner your discussing. I did notice you emphasized the word 'storage' in your wiki quote. So was my previous assumption that your defining information as data in a storage medium is correct?

Are you saying that Relativity didn't exist until Einstein discovered it?

We just reverse engineer the information that's inherent in nature.

I don't quiet understand what your trying to tell me there. I personally don't subscribe to Einsteinian physics.

Again, this information is inherent in nature. This information is not created when it's discovered.

OK, so information as data, which implies a storage medium that can be accessed, am I correct in my assumption? I only can understand what your trying to put across what your willing to clearly put across. Telling me I'm making things up for assuming thing's your evading to discuss is not helping either me or anyone else to better understand what your trying to say.

What about quantum mechanics? Did quantum mechanics exist 2,000 years ago?

I personally don't subscribe to QM, so my answer would be no.

Here's M.I.T. Professor Seth Lloyd talking about information.

I personally don't subscribe to the notion that the universe is some gigantic quantum computer.

So whether you study about Einstein, Newton or the Wright Brothers, they just discovered information that was already inherent in nature. When we are able to manipulate matter on a microscopic scale, we will be able to construct a computer out of a pile of junk because of information.

I understand that the physical laws exist regardless of knowing the laws whether at all or in full, they still exist. So the capacity for atoms to be brought together into an airplane exists, but I do not see how the information as knowledge exists or the information as data exists unless your willing to propose a storage medium.

Sadly for you, information is not bound by space and time.

I personally do not subscribe to notions of time as a dimension of travel, which for me is probably why I'm having trouble grasping your concept.

It's really a no brainer unless you're saying information comes into existence when it's discovered.

Well, in retrospect, I find it a no brainer that your idea is implausible as the past doesn't exist nor does the future. So I don't see how information today can exist in the past nor how information can exist in the future when the events leading to the future have yet to even occur.

But like I said earlier, if you can propose a storage medium for this information, I'll go 40/60 with you on profits we will make on bringing future technologies into the present. Just imagine the discoveries we can make if we can access this information that exists outside of time and space.

reply to post by Matrix Rising


I'm still wondering whether there even is such a thing as past and future, perhaps there's just a very big complex now?

I have studied time effects ever since I was very young and saw the movie, time machine (the original). Time is never fixed. The future is an innumerable bundle of possibilities. Each person travels through time differently and they are in their own special reality. These realities can and do interact with other realities. So if you have tow people walking down the road together, they are each walking in a completely separate universe yet occupying the same space and time.

Time future is not fixed and the course of time and the universe you choose to exit and enter into is made by the decision you make. If you have the choices of being a cop or a thief, once you make your decision you leave the one reality only to appear instantly in another. This is shown by the fact that electron and sub atomic particles blink in and out of existence all the time.

Time past is also not fixed. If you were to go back into time to say, 1942, you could in fact give the Japanese the designs for making a hydrogen bomb, a power more destructive than the bomb the USA used on them. They could win the war and rule the world. Time would have cause a major decisive shift on a world scale into another future where the one it was on ceases to exist. You yourself would no suddenly disappear because you already left your personal universe when you made the decision to go back in time. In that time you would have simply been a missing person. If you went back no one would know you or if they did they would know why you were so different. If you met another version of you, you would blow up, because neither of you would be from the same universal existence.

Now, if you wanted to visit time past and return to an almost exact future where you left, you would have to not interfere at all in the past where you went. You will never return to you exact place and time, but you could return to a universe very similar to it.

This is why when a time traveler like John Titor comes to town and tells us of the future it doesn't matter because our future, though it could possibly be similar will not be his future. Anything he alters here changes the direction of our future to the point that the interference effected the populations as a whole. Or only in a minor way with a single person.

The sum total is this. Time is never fixed. Anything is possible. Each person has to himself a complete interactive existence with everyone else in complete and separate universes. Only when contact is made between people is the experience shared, to a point. And this existence is spread out over an innumerable amount of universal realities for each person and thing.

And the bridge to cross over to each is found in the Quantum level. Control of the quantum level allows for movement between universes, and through time, at will.

I believe this is the purpose, the real purpose of the LHC at CERN.

reply to post by sirnex



All the knowledge that ever was, is now, or could ever be, exists at all times throughout time itself. It is always there in total.

reply to post by Fromabove

I have studied time effects ever since I was very young and saw the movie, time machine (the original). Time is never fixed. The future is an innumerable bundle of possibilities. Each person travels through time differently and they are in their own special reality. These realities can and do interact with other realities. So if you have tow people walking down the road together, they are each walking in a completely separate universe yet occupying the same space and time.

That's like me saying that ever since I saw Lord of the Rings, I stared to learn magic spells. Movies are movies, people need to realize that movies do not depict reality. That's what makes movies so enjoyable!

Time future is not fixed and the course of time and the universe you choose to exit and enter into is made by the decision you make. If you have the choices of being a cop or a thief, once you make your decision you leave the one reality only to appear instantly in another. This is shown by the fact that electron and sub atomic particles blink in and out of existence all the time.

Can you scientifically verify the existence of these alternate possibilities equally existing as the reality that was collapsed at the moment of a choice being made?

If you can't show these realities to exist, then the basis is unfounded and unscientific. If you can show they exist, then you would possibly be more intelligent than the scientists who proposed the idea to begin, as not even they can show these various realities.

Time past is also not fixed. If you were to go back into time to say, 1942, you could in fact give the Japanese the designs for making a hydrogen bomb, a power more destructive than the bomb the USA used on them. They could win the war and rule the world. Time would have cause a major decisive shift on a world scale into another future where the one it was on ceases to exist. You yourself would no suddenly disappear because you already left your personal universe when you made the decision to go back in time. In that time you would have simply been a missing person. If you went back no one would know you or if they did they would know why you were so different. If you met another version of you, you would blow up, because neither of you would be from the same universal existence.

Now, if you wanted to visit time past and return to an almost exact future where you left, you would have to not interfere at all in the past where you went. You will never return to you exact place and time, but you could return to a universe very similar to it.

Are you claiming it's possible for one to obtain more energy than is in the entire universe in order to reverse entropy for the entire universe? Can you back up such a claim?

This is why when a time traveler like John Titor comes to town and tells us of the future it doesn't matter because our future, though it could possibly be similar will not be his future. Anything he alters here changes the direction of our future to the point that the interference effected the populations as a whole. Or only in a minor way with a single person.

That was a hoax.

The sum total is this. Time is never fixed. Anything is possible. Each person has to himself a complete interactive existence with everyone else in complete and separate universes. Only when contact is made between people is the experience shared, to a point. And this existence is spread out over an innumerable amount of universal realities for each person and thing.

The sum total is actually this:

All that exists is *now*, there is no past and there is no future. We can determine rate of decay to figure out how long ago (and by long ago, I mean how many rotations around the sun) something was around, like a burst stick in a neolithic campfire. That neolithic campfire though, doesn't eternally burn, it's gone never to be seen again. There is no future, either fixed or infinite possibility. You can't travel into something that has not occurred yet. It's like trying to cross a canyon thinking a bridge will be there on your first step even though the bridge hasn't been built.

And the bridge to cross over to each is found in the Quantum level. Control of the quantum level allows for movement between universes, and through time, at will.

I believe this is the purpose, the real purpose of the LHC at CERN.

I don't subscribe to Quantum Mechanics as many if not all of the "proven" aspects of QM can and have been explained classically.

All the knowledge that ever was, is now, or could ever be, exists at all times throughout time itself. It is always there in total.

That's an empty statement and holds no meaning to me. If your going to claim such, then you need to provide evidence for such.

[edit on 13-5-2010 by sirnex]

reply to post by sirnex


We are debating in the science and technology section. If your going to throw out Einstein, Quantum Mechanics, Information theory and Quantum Computing out of the window, you have to replace it with something else that has been published or tested.

I love new theories and open debate but you're saying you don't subscribe to these things and everything is entropy doesn't make any sense.

If you have a theory that's been tested and published that replaces Einstein or Quantum mechanics then present it. I want to read these papers and experiments that explains everything and I can e-mail friends who are interested in these things and tell them to throw out quantum mechanics and Einsteins theories even though they has given us everything from transistors to lasers.

We should call up the colleges and tell them to cancel class because sirnex on above top secret message board has figured it all out.

Again, if we're going to debate these things, we will not debate them based on your belief that doesn't make any sense. You keep saying only now exists and everything is entropy and you don't subscribe to quantum mechanics, Einstein, etc.

Please, if you want to start a thread debating your personal beliefs then start one. we're debating physics not magic.

This thread isn't about you and your belief system. If you throw out Einsten, Quantum mechanics, information and more then you're just being silly.

If your smarter than Einstein, Bohr, Heisenburg, Lloyd, Hawking, Kaku, Shannon and more and you have a theory that will make everything from information theory to quantum mechanics obsolete, then I suggest you contact Nature and get your paper published ASAP. Until then, lets debate science and technology and not your belief system.

It makes no sense to debate someone about physics who throws out everything we know about physics in favor of their belief system. If you have the equations and the theory that explains the weakness of gravity, dark matter/energy, unifies the forces of nature, the origin of mass and more then the world is waiting for this ingenius discovery.

You keep repeating this nonsense

All that exists is *now*, there is no past and there is no future. We can determine rate of decay to figure out how long ago (and by long ago, I mean how many rotations around the sun) something was around, like a burst stick in a neolithic campfire. That neolithic campfire though, doesn't eternally burn, it's gone never to be seen again. There is no future, either fixed or infinite possibility. You can't travel into something that has not occurred yet. It's like trying to cross a canyon thinking a bridge will be there on your first step even though the bridge hasn't been built.

This nonsense hinges on throwing out everything from quantum mechanics to Einstein.

Please don't muddy up my thread with this nonsense.

Originally posted by curioustype
reply to post by Matrix Rising

 

I'm still wondering whether there even is such a thing as past and future, perhaps there's just a very big complex now?

You make a good point and I agree with Einsten when he said the distinction between the past, present and future is a persistent illusion.

The past, present and future exist now. It's called the simultaneous nature of time.

So the past, present and future exist simultaneously in time but not in space. In space we experience time from moment to moment. So there's no distinction between now, 10 hours from now and 10 hours ago in time. Space is a different story.