                                                 timelessness, world lines, and the 4D block theory


                                                 ok so a few yrs ago i was watching tibee's yt vid
                                                 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRDZK4DPhdM) and she mentioned this book:
                                                 "Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension" by Rudy Rucker. No one
                                                 really talks abt Physics concepts w meditation so it always stuck to me,
                                                 somewhat. Now looking back at it I realised it has a lot of correlations w
                                                 a few of the "unsolved problems in neuro"
                                                 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_neuroscience)..
                                                 Heres why:

                                                 the idea: world lines.

                                                 instead of thinking of yourself as a bunch of atoms sitting relatively still,
                                                 rucker says think of yourself as a path. a world line. you're not a thing,
                                                 you're a trajectory through space and time. every version of you — 8am you,
                                                 lunch you, 11pm you pretending to sleep — is a point on one long, non-linear
                                                 line through 4D space-time.

                                                 like this kinda:

                                                    time
                                                     ↑
                                                     |         you at 11pm
                                                     |       /
                                                     |      / you at 4pm
                                                     |     /
                                                     |    / you at 8am
                                                     |   /
                                                     +----------------→ space

                                                 (very scientific diagram (ᵕ—ᴗ—))

                                                 Everything that ever happened or will happen is already there, contained in
                                                 one complete..block.

                                                 so why does time FEEL like it's moving?

                                                 because of memory. we can only remember the past, not the future. so our
                                                 brain keeps comparing "now" to "a second ago" and goes "ah yes, movement."
                                                 it's like your brain is diffing two frames of a gif and calling it animation.
                                                 but the gif is just... sitting there. (ㆆ_ㆆ)

                                                 then the meditation part. this is the bit that actually made me remember this
                                                 vid even after 3 years..

                                                 rucker talks about timelessness. if you can stop making new thoughts (or
                                                 alternatively, focus on one repetitive loop like a mantra) you stop being
                                                 able to tell one moment from the next. no new input. no new memory being
                                                 written. no "before" and "after" thus the "mental" clock stops ticking.

                                                 and suddenly you're not a person moving through time. you're just... a point
                                                 on the world line. not going anywhere... (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)

                                                 i started looking into whether neuroscience actually has anything to say
                                                 about this. and it does..

                                                 I: The binding problem.

                                                 (quick disclaimer: rucker is not a neuroscientist and he's not predicting the
                                                 DMN. it's a geometry/philosophy thought experiment. i'm just noticing that it
                                                 correlates w what we now know about the brain :))

                                                 this is one of the biggest unsolved questions in neuroscience. your brain has
                                                 ~86 billion neurons. they all fire in parallel. separate areas process color,
                                                 shape, motion, sound, emotion. but you don't experience "red" + "round" +
                                                 "moving" + "loud." you experience a red ball rolling past you while you're
                                                 annoyed. one unified thing.

                                                 how?? how does distributed parallel processing become ONE experience?

                                                 that's the binding problem. wikipedia's list of unsolved problems in
                                                 neuroscience has it as "How exactly is it that objects, background,
                                                 and abstract or emotional features are combined into a single experience?"

                                                 and here's the thing. the "binding" of your self — the feeling that you are
                                                 ONE person having ONE continuous experience — might be the same kind of
                                                 problem. the wikipedia list also asks: "What is the neural basis of self?"

                                                 there are proposed mechanisms for binding:

                                                   - neural synchrony: neurons representing the same object fire together in
                                                     gamma oscillations (~30–80 Hz). "cells that fire together, wire together"
                                                     but for momentary binding.
                                                   - attention: selecting which features belong together.
                                                   - thalamocortical loops: the thalamus coordinates different cortical areas.
                                                   - reentrant signaling: higher areas send predictions back down to lower
                                                     areas.
                                                   - predictive coding: the brain constantly predicts and corrects, and the
                                                     "binding" is the best guess.

                                                 (none of these fully solve it, though. they're answers to "how are features
                                                 grouped?" not "why does grouping feel like one thing?" neural synchrony,
                                                 attention, thalamocortical loops, reentrant signaling, predictive coding —
                                                 they're all mechanisms. they describe what the brain does. they don't explain
                                                 why doing it feels like anything, that's the hard problem of consciousness.
                                                 the binding problem is similar.)

                                                 so the "you" that feels like it's moving through time might itself be a
                                                 binding… (ㆆ_ㆆ)

                                                 II: the default mode network (DMN).

                                                 this is the part of your brain that turns on when you're NOT doing a task.
                                                 it's your "resting state" network. and it's responsible for:

                                                   - self-referential thinking ("what am i like? what do people think of me?")
                                                   - mind-wandering
                                                   - remembering the past
                                                   - imagining the future
                                                   - mental time travel in general

                                                 aka: the DMN is the part of your brain that creates your sense of a
                                                 continuous self moving through time.

                                                 Through a 2013 study, we can infer that meditation quiets the DMN. the study
                                                 used real-time fMRI neurofeedback to watch meditators' brains while they
                                                 meditated. when people reported "undistracted awareness" and "effortless
                                                 doing" — basically the good meditative states — their posterior cingulate
                                                 cortex (a core DMN region) was deactivated. when they reported "distraction"
                                                 and "efforting," it was active.

                                                 other research shows that during meditation, the DMN's typical patterns
                                                 "flatten". the network becomes less topographically distinct and its dynamics
                                                 change. this flattening correlates with decreased "mental time travel" and a
                                                 reduced sense of a self existing across past and future.

                                                 so when rucker says "stop making new thoughts and you stop experiencing time,"
                                                 he's basically describing what happens when you quiet the DMN. the brain
                                                 region responsible for constructing your "self across time" goes "idle".
                                                 no DMN → no mental time travel → no felt sense of "before" and "after."

                                                 so here's the synthesis that's currently in my head:

                                                 rucker's 4D block universe = the static, already-there structure of space-time
                                                 the DMN = the brain machinery that creates the ILLUSION of moving through it
                                                 meditation = the technique that quiets the DMN, revealing the stillness underneath

                                                 and the binding problem ties it all together. your sense of self. your sense
                                                 of time. your sense of being ONE thing moving through ONE timeline. all of
                                                 these are bindings. constructions. vry convincing ones, but still
                                                 constructions.

                                                 when you meditate, you're not "achieving" timelessness. you're just...
                                                 temporarily not constructing time. the 4D block was always there. you just
                                                 stopped rendering the "gif". (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)

                                                 it means the feeling of "everything is going too fast" isn't objective truth.
                                                 it's a construction. your DMN is overactivated, binding moment to moment to
                                                 moment, narrating a story of a self being chased by time.

                                                 you're not actually being chased. you're just narrating the chase.

                                                 so yeaa. meditate a little and think nothing… sometimes :)


                                                 [1] (rando) abt me
                                                 [3] games to play when ur at skl and all games r blocked on skl wifi ˙◠˙
                                                 [4] exit and touch grass 🌱

                                                 > pls select a number:_
