You have a subjective distinction between “now” and all earlier times. Evolution made you that way. At any given moment, much of the maximally informative information about what do now will have arrived in the past fraction of a second. Information from a minute ago, or last week, may be useful, but our mind makes a distinction between the freshest information and the old stuff. The freshest information is called “now”. We feel like we’re deciding things and doing things “now” because the upcoming fraction of a second is the time over which we have the most influence.
”Now” is not a fundamental fact about the universe, it’s a useful abstraction in an algorithm that has to steer a body through a difficult world. Its subjective salience is what it feels like to be that algorithm.
You have a subjective distinction between “now” and all earlier times. Evolution made you that way. At any given moment, much of the maximally informative information about what do now will have arrived in the past fraction of a second. Information from a minute ago, or last week, may be useful, but our mind makes a distinction between the freshest information and the old stuff. The freshest information is called “now”. We feel like we’re deciding things and doing things “now” because the upcoming fraction of a second is the time over which we have the most influence.
”Now” is not a fundamental fact about the universe, it’s a useful abstraction in an algorithm that has to steer a body through a difficult world. Its subjective salience is what it feels like to be that algorithm.