"Awareness arises when a system begins not only to retain records but to model them - to use past correlations to shape future ones." You got me thinking about the symmetry of this statement, and about the notion of not remembering the future, or that the future does not affect the past. Maybe the future does affect the past. The past isn't static; you add to it. It is the medium in which you record. The models created from one past cause us to choose, control, and shape a future. A future that immediately becomes the past. The notion "to avoid" makes this interesting. Past decisions affected by their future outcomes. So, which is it, past correlations that shape future ones, or models of futures that shape their pasts?
Jamie! This is excellent, and it’s fantastic to see your brain in action again. 😊 You’re zeroing in on the same tension I’ve been wrestling with: if awareness is “using past correlations to shape future ones,” what do we do with the very real sense that futures also seem to reach back and reshape how the past feels and functions for us?
A quick note on wording first: I think you’re riffing on my line about “the question that cannot be avoided,” rather than anything like “to avoid [some future].” But your point stands either way — we clearly do live as if we’re steering toward some futures and away from others.
For me there are a couple of layers here:
1. Physics side: the dimension of time vs the arrow of time.
In the underlying equations, time is just a parameter — the “dimension of time” is largely symmetric. You can evolve states forward or backward in the math. The arrow, though, comes from record-writing: decoherence, entropy, energy being irreversibly spent to make redundant records. That’s the jagged edge I talk about in the essay. On that level it really is past → present → future: new records get written at the edge and you don’t go back and overwrite old ones.
2. The modeling observer: future models as present records.
Where it gets interesting is with a modeling agent like us. Our awareness isn’t just “having records,” it’s running models over them. A big part of those models is about possible futures: we simulate what might happen, what to seek, what to avoid. But those “futures” don’t live in the future — they’re patterns in the present state of the system. They’re already written in the ledger as expectations, plans, fears, goals. Those present-tense models absolutely steer which future correlations get written next.
3. Ledger as canvas: the growing past vs changing interpretations.
This is where the “ledger / canvas” metaphor comes in for me. The “past” isn’t a static picture, it’s the canvas we keep painting on: every new interaction adds more records and more structure. We don’t repaint old strokes, but we do keep adding new layers about them — annotations, reinterpretations, “ah, now I see what that meant.” In that sense, future outcomes seem to “affect the past” because they change the meaning and clustering of earlier records, even though the raw events themselves stay put.
So when you ask:
“Which is it, past correlations that shape future ones, or models of futures that shape their pasts?”
My answer is:
• On the physics / causality level, it’s still past correlations shaping future ones through that one-way record-writing process.
• On the modeling and meaning level, our present models of possible futures shape which futures become real, and then those realized futures let us rewrite the story we tell about the past. The ledger entries don’t change, but the way we group, label, and draw lines between them does.
That’s the sense in which the canvas feels symmetric: the arrow of time is in the brushstroke, but our awareness keeps wandering back over the painting, finding new patterns and connections in what’s already there.
"Awareness arises when a system begins not only to retain records but to model them - to use past correlations to shape future ones." You got me thinking about the symmetry of this statement, and about the notion of not remembering the future, or that the future does not affect the past. Maybe the future does affect the past. The past isn't static; you add to it. It is the medium in which you record. The models created from one past cause us to choose, control, and shape a future. A future that immediately becomes the past. The notion "to avoid" makes this interesting. Past decisions affected by their future outcomes. So, which is it, past correlations that shape future ones, or models of futures that shape their pasts?
Jamie! This is excellent, and it’s fantastic to see your brain in action again. 😊 You’re zeroing in on the same tension I’ve been wrestling with: if awareness is “using past correlations to shape future ones,” what do we do with the very real sense that futures also seem to reach back and reshape how the past feels and functions for us?
A quick note on wording first: I think you’re riffing on my line about “the question that cannot be avoided,” rather than anything like “to avoid [some future].” But your point stands either way — we clearly do live as if we’re steering toward some futures and away from others.
For me there are a couple of layers here:
1. Physics side: the dimension of time vs the arrow of time.
In the underlying equations, time is just a parameter — the “dimension of time” is largely symmetric. You can evolve states forward or backward in the math. The arrow, though, comes from record-writing: decoherence, entropy, energy being irreversibly spent to make redundant records. That’s the jagged edge I talk about in the essay. On that level it really is past → present → future: new records get written at the edge and you don’t go back and overwrite old ones.
2. The modeling observer: future models as present records.
Where it gets interesting is with a modeling agent like us. Our awareness isn’t just “having records,” it’s running models over them. A big part of those models is about possible futures: we simulate what might happen, what to seek, what to avoid. But those “futures” don’t live in the future — they’re patterns in the present state of the system. They’re already written in the ledger as expectations, plans, fears, goals. Those present-tense models absolutely steer which future correlations get written next.
3. Ledger as canvas: the growing past vs changing interpretations.
This is where the “ledger / canvas” metaphor comes in for me. The “past” isn’t a static picture, it’s the canvas we keep painting on: every new interaction adds more records and more structure. We don’t repaint old strokes, but we do keep adding new layers about them — annotations, reinterpretations, “ah, now I see what that meant.” In that sense, future outcomes seem to “affect the past” because they change the meaning and clustering of earlier records, even though the raw events themselves stay put.
So when you ask:
“Which is it, past correlations that shape future ones, or models of futures that shape their pasts?”
My answer is:
• On the physics / causality level, it’s still past correlations shaping future ones through that one-way record-writing process.
• On the modeling and meaning level, our present models of possible futures shape which futures become real, and then those realized futures let us rewrite the story we tell about the past. The ledger entries don’t change, but the way we group, label, and draw lines between them does.
That’s the sense in which the canvas feels symmetric: the arrow of time is in the brushstroke, but our awareness keeps wandering back over the painting, finding new patterns and connections in what’s already there.