That's not the way the human psyche works though.
Think of something in the past. It's behind you. Think of something you'll do tomorrow... Next year. You visualise it in front of you, further and further. It's the way the mind deals with the concept of time, no matter how rationally you think of it, it puts it into a spatial perspective. No-one ever thinks of time as a non-linear thing. So once you're gone, you're gone.
( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:52, archived)

You're thinking of time as a two way thing.
Like once you past a postbox on the road, you can always go back if you forgot to post your letter.

In terms of time, you pass the postbox by a footstep and it's gone. Completely. You can never go back and post that letter in that postbox.
( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:55, archived)

but the postbox is still there.

( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:56, archived)

What's the point of it being there if it's unaccessible?
The future is liquid, changeable, you can go where you want. Once it's the past it's fixed and you can never revisit. I'd be a lot more scared of not having those choices in the future than erasing all the choices I remember having made in the past.

Edit- I totally understand what you mean though. In terms of existing in different times and spaces and all that stuff. It's just the way people normally think when they go through their day to day business can't be like that or no-one would get anything done.
( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 21:59, archived)

*shoots blaster at microphone*
this was a boring conversation anyway
( Derek Monte subthread killer: qu'est-ce que c'est, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:02, archived)

But is the blaster still shooting at the microphone?
Hahaha :P
( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:04, archived)

maybe that's why I never get anything done.
but the apparent liquidity of the future is only an illusion produced by the fact that we only remember the past and have no knowledge of the future. If there's a reason for everything, then it was all defined from the beginning to the end.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:04, archived)

Now you're getting spiritual, and I'm afraid I don't subscribe to that.
:)
( hoifbjifbef, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:08, archived)

I never thought of "there's a reason for everything" as being particularly spiritual.
It's largely what drives scientific enquiry. It certainly drives mine.
I don't subscribe to the idea that things happen by chance. I'm not talking about some mystical force of "fate" here, just basic logical necessity. Any wave equation in maths or physics, for instance, has its entire time evolution determined and fixed uniquely from its initial conditions. Quantum mechanics comes in and makes a bit of a mess of that, but even still. I can't think of anything that's ever happened in my life that could logically have happened any differently. People sometimes ask the hypothetical "if you were young again, would you make different choices?" and the answer's no, because I'd still have the same knowledge the second time round as the first.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Tue 9 Jun 2009, 22:13, archived)