Time, Causality, and Computational Intelligence

Time. We use it to organize our lives, measure our experiences, and impose structure on reality. But what if time, as we conventionally understand it, doesn’t actually exist? What if, instead of being a fundamental dimension, like spatial dimensions, time is more akin to the color purple, a psychological color which does not exist outside of the human mind? And the recent discovery—or invention—of the color "Olo", which can only be seen in the lab, sheds further light on this idea.

There is evidence that temporal illusions are common, similar to familar spatial illusions. For example, just as things that are far away appear smaller, intervals that are further in the future appear briefer¹.

If time doesn't exist in the sense that clocks and calendars lead us to believe it does, how do we make effective choices in the here and now²? Philosophers and physicists³ have long grappled with the nature of time; how often do we stop to deeply ponder what time actually is and means?

The Effectively Infinite Present Moment

Rather than viewing time as the fourth dimension—the corridor of time—imagine that all time may be folded up in the present moment, more slender in duration but far wider and deeper in complex other ways. The lived moment perhaps is an envelope, a blanket enclosing the past, present, and future, akin to the cell membrane around individual cells or the skin encapsulating the body.

Depending on various factors, including how we feel emotionally and our cognitive processes, moments can pile up, as in guilt, rumination, or obsession. Or they can flow smoothly.

Consider memory. When we recall the past, we aren’t accessing a distinct, stored moment in time but reconstructing stored data in the present. Similarly, when we anticipate the future, we’re simulating possibilities using predictive models, all within the perpetual motion of now. Though there are exceptions, it all holds together into a story that makes enough sense. Given that we humans process reality in fractions of a second, based on relatively slow computational power, we have to produce a coherent sense of time, history, and sense of self in order to function, even if this means accepting an approximation of the truth.

Time as a Perceptual Illusion

Most colors match up with wavelengths of light. Purple doesn’t exist as a specific wavelength of light; it's not part of the rainbow. Our brains create purple when we see red and blue photons together. What if it is not an inherent feature of the universe but a function of how our brains work, something we put together in our heads without otherwise objective reality? Would it change the way we move through the world?

Time feels real, just like purple does, regardless of understanding that it is a psychological color—our collective agreement on clocks, calendars, and historical narratives reinforcing its apparent objectivity. From ancient sundials to synchronized digital networks, we have socially constructed time into something more fixed than it might actually be.

The better our clocks, the more effective they are in ensemble, the better able we are to control reality. GPS, for example, which allows for extremely precise positioning, relies on atomic clocks and needs to be corrected for relativistic effects⁴ due to time dilation due to altitude-related gravitational differences. If the timing is off, the positioning is wildly inaccurate.

The Arrows of Change and Better Brains

While entropy, per the second law of thermodynamics, is always increasing, it is also true that, at least in local patches, work gets done and things get created; information is formed, books are written, buildings get built, life evolves. There's a back and forth, a rhythm.

Rather than a big unitary arrow of time moving from past to future, it may be more useful to conceptualize time as a field of countless tiny arrows of change—vectors of growing order (negentropy), and disorder. These countless vectors have directionality (what they do) and amplitude (how big the impact is). Like mathematical vectors, they can be added head to tail to sum up our lived experience, some factors emerging as dominant.

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This "little t" view challenges “big T" time—the grand narrative of a linear progression from the Big Bang to some ultimate fate. What we perceive as vast stretches of time are instead layered structures nested within the ever-tumbling complexity within the emerging present moment.

More sophisticated, particularly faster, computational systems—whether biological or artificial—may integrate broader swaths of simultaneous change. Consider a brain with eight hemispheres instead of two. Would its present moment be more vast, deeper and broader? What would the world look like, and what could one accomplish?

Likewise for emerging artificial intelligences, or aliens of science fiction, who can think faster and more richly than our top-of-the-line mammal brains can? If conscious, their experience of reality would be qualitatively distinct—more nuanced in its complexity, more adept at manipulating causality in ways that might seem supernatural to human cognition. The sheer brute computational force would give rise to wholly different realities, much as human intelligence must in some ways surpass that of many other animals.

The Markovian Present

Only node 5 is within the Markov Blanket, and determines causality

Source: Kirchhoff et al., 2018

Causality operates through Markovian dynamics⁵; small sets of variables at boundary conditions dictate outcomes within complex, nested systems. These variables are the true levers determining what happens.

According to this theory, variables within the "Markov blanket" hold all the causal power⁶. The present moment is the only interface where there is a chance to influence what is happening and, therefore, what will happen. This dynamic boundary—both stationary and moving at many different speeds—is where we have agency, if at all. It is where free will resides.

Nested Markov Blankets determine causality at different scales

Source: Kirchhoff et al., 2018

Implications for Consciousness and Computation

If the thickness of the present moment varies with computational complexity, then more sophisticated minds—biological, artificial, or hybrid—may experience time differently. A faster brain could process more within a given moment, effectively expanding its temporal depth.

However, there are theoretical constraints to how much computational prowess could provide power over reality. The Bekenstein bound⁷, a principle from physics, limits the number of computations possible within a given volume of space-time. It raises profound questions about the relationship between cognition, information processing, and temporal experience.

Living on the Edge

While we may be riding the crest of an ever-breaking wave of entropy and order interplaying, none of this negates the practical utility of time as a social tool. We still need schedules, calendars, and coordinated mechanisms to function collectively. But recognizing time as a constructed experience rather than as an immutable dimension may allow us to navigate it with greater flexibility.

Our experience of time is shaped by the depth of our present-moment perception, the complexity of our memory, and our capacity for future simulation. Perhaps the greatest insight lies in understanding that we are not simply moving through time—we are generating it, moment by moment, through our processing of change.

While entropy marches on, our experience of the arrow of time may be best understood as a pragmatic, probabilistic, sociological and psychological construction, a neurological approximation requiring constant review and updating, arising from the interplay of myriad, effectively infinite interactions in the present moment.