If it makes you feel better- if you weren’t bound by linear time things could be much worse.
Just because you aren’t bound by linear time doesn’t mean everyone else isn’t- just imagine that. At any given moment you might seem quite bonkers to the other people around you. I suppose if you have the option of experiencing linear time but not being bound by it- that might(?) be a little easier to deal with- but you would regardless experience the world in a profoundly different manner. Your ability to relate to others and their ability to relate to you would be questionable at best. Then we enter the unknowns- the things we can only theorize about until we can really experience non linear time. We understand very little about time- and many theories exist. Would you simply experience every possible moment at once- similar to being “all knowing?” Could your mind handle that or would it be overwhelmed? What would that be like as far as your ability to enjoy life without surprises and…
.. knowing all that has ever happened or ever will- or at least everything you’ll ever experience? How does death work? How does your body work? Do you age or die? Can you heal wounds or replace cells or even function biologically? Does your biological age merely change to the moment you choose to inhabit- if you’re able to inhabit individual moments in time at all? Do you “die” the moment you become untethered from linear time- or is that what death already is? If we take the view that all time happens simultaneously and we perceive it in a linear fashion- you’re already dead and you just don’t know it yet. If you suddenly escaped linear time, would you see your entire life in an instant and then cease to exist as your death and the eternity after also exist in that instant? I won’t even get in to how the concept of reincarnation could complicate all this….
But even if we take it to mean that you are “immortal” from aging and can jump around through time as you please- visit the past or future or any possible pasts or futures that can exist for you- what does that look like for you- maybe more importantly… what does that look like to those still in linear time? Let’s say that at 14:05.061….. on January 14th 2007 you had a conversation with someone you want to relive or change. Ok. So “you” were there at that time and that person perceived that. If you go back to that time- do you simply take on the “skin” of yourself or, from the perspective of those in linear time… would there be two of you? How might that impact things? So- in theory if you merely experience time in a non linear fashion you may not be able to “change” events you already experienced- you may simply be able to experience them again even though they passed. This is different than a memory as a memory is your recollection of the experience. This would be a new memory…
.. but identical to a previous memory. Well- perhaps not identical as you may not remember certain details or over time have mixed some things up. So it is the same embody you could have had but the information you retain might be different. Assuming your memory works the same or at all without a reference of time acting on it. Memory becomes an interesting question as well. Let’s look at a scenario where you CAN “change” events- “relive them over.”
It’s common in time travel movies that when the past changes- everyone in the future forgets memories that disagree with the changes to events. We don’t have the science to say- but this is only really true when we take a very linear view of time where causality functions as it does in every day life. This can’t be taken as an absolute truth though as we can’t say how causality functions definitively when one starts messing with the underlying mechanism of causality- time.
Most familiar with memes know if the mandala effect- huge numbers of people swear up and down that pikachu had a black tail end or that There was a show called “Sex in the City” etc etc. Now- if EVERYONE in the world remembered something a certain way and there is no way to prove otherwise- in effect- it doesn’t matter how it actually happened in practical terms. So let’s say you and your friend are fighting over a conversation you had where you think they said a movie was good and they swear they said it was bad. You will both believe that what you think is correct. So if you think back to something that happened in 2019 right now in 2022 and remember it a certain way, if I changed what happened would you remember it any differently? Your memory doesn’t have to change because we know people can remember things that never happened or recall details wrong. Why would changing the event change the memory when often times our memories don’t match the event anyway?
So wether you changed an event in 2019 that only 2 people witnessed or you changed something that tens of thousands witnessed- if everyone in 2022 had the memory they had before the change- you’d be the only person who would say the event happened any differently than it did “the first time” no matter what the change was. In theory. Fiction usually uses the device of “alternate time lines” so we can make sense of this sort of thing easily and because it allows a lot of room for the story maker to wiggle around and tell a story vs. a theoretical physics paper. But are “alternate timelines” a thing? They aren’t really a thing to someone who doesn’t experience linear time since a timeline at all implies linear time. It also implies that any given person could experience more than one reality at a time separately. If there are 2 time lines and you live in both you are experiencing both at once but only aware of one in either.
That becomes a complex thing and we start asking things like what is he self or individual or a person etc- but there are few answers to the existence of multiple timelines that don’t basically end up with each being a completely different reality. That is to say “you” do not exist in any alternate timeline. That person might look like you and have similarities to you, but they aren’t you. It’s coincidence. Twins look alike and to some point may share similar lives but aren’t the same person legally or in our perception. Most people wouldn’t feel no loss if their mother died but her very similar twin took the role of mom over.
Somewhere in the world is usually at least one person who looks very much like you or is otherwise very similar. They aren’t you though.
So I’m that case- establishing timelines themselves are a linear concept- even if your experience of time was non linear, nothing about that inherently suggests you can experience realities you don’t exist in. IF such divergent timelines existed at all, those experiences could be said to belong to a completely different person who happens to be similar to you. If you couldn’t experience such timelines- you’d be limited to exists in your “time line” aka… what already happened.
Well… not entirely. This is where things get trickier. What is the “future?” It’s “what comes next” right? In theory- ignoring linearity etc- classic “time travel” rules- if you traveled back to 1850, you’d be in the “past.” However 1860 would become your future. If you stayed in 1850, any events that happened after 1850 would be “new” to you.
when i dream i'm not always bound by linear time, which messes me up for about 10 min after i wake up. I have to go check what time and day it is, remember what was real and what wasn't,
Just because you aren’t bound by linear time doesn’t mean everyone else isn’t- just imagine that. At any given moment you might seem quite bonkers to the other people around you. I suppose if you have the option of experiencing linear time but not being bound by it- that might(?) be a little easier to deal with- but you would regardless experience the world in a profoundly different manner. Your ability to relate to others and their ability to relate to you would be questionable at best. Then we enter the unknowns- the things we can only theorize about until we can really experience non linear time. We understand very little about time- and many theories exist. Would you simply experience every possible moment at once- similar to being “all knowing?” Could your mind handle that or would it be overwhelmed? What would that be like as far as your ability to enjoy life without surprises and…
It’s common in time travel movies that when the past changes- everyone in the future forgets memories that disagree with the changes to events. We don’t have the science to say- but this is only really true when we take a very linear view of time where causality functions as it does in every day life. This can’t be taken as an absolute truth though as we can’t say how causality functions definitively when one starts messing with the underlying mechanism of causality- time.
Somewhere in the world is usually at least one person who looks very much like you or is otherwise very similar. They aren’t you though.
Well… not entirely. This is where things get trickier. What is the “future?” It’s “what comes next” right? In theory- ignoring linearity etc- classic “time travel” rules- if you traveled back to 1850, you’d be in the “past.” However 1860 would become your future. If you stayed in 1850, any events that happened after 1850 would be “new” to you.