An Experimental Information Gathering and Utilization Systems (IGUS) Robot to Demonstrate the Physics of Now

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the perception of past, present, and future is a psychological phenomenon, not a fundamental property of spacetime, by constructing a virtual reality-based IGUS robot that experiences different nows.

Contribution

It introduces a VR-based experimental system to show that different IGUS robots can experience different 'nows', supporting the idea that temporal experience is observer-dependent.

Findings

Humans can experience the immediate past through VR.

Different IGUS robots can have different perceptions of 'now'.

Supports the hypothesis that time perception is not fundamental in physics.

Abstract

The past, present and future are not fundamental properties of Minkowski spacetime. It has been suggested that they are properties of a class of information gathering and utilizing systems (IGUSs).The past, present and future are psychologically created phenomena not actually properties of spacetime. A human is a model IGUS robot. We develop a way to establish that the past, present, and future do not follow from the laws of physics by constructing robots that process information differently and therefore experience different nows (presents). We construct a customized virtual reality (VR) system which allows an observer to switch between present and past. This robot (human with VR system) can experience immersion in the immediate past ad libitum. Being able to actually construct an IGUS that has the same present at two different coordinates along the worldline lends support to the IGUS hypothesis.