A movie can fast forward to future events or flashback to past events, so if our world is virtual, can it do that? It could, but reverse engineering isn’t about speculating what could be but explaining what is. In this case, that quantum events generate time explains how it slows down, but no evidence requires a past or future to exist now. This gives what philosophers call presentism, that only the present exists, so to worry about the past or future is to worry about what is imaginary. We deduce that time extends, but only know the past from the present and the future is uncertain, so a time like ours only requires the now and we infer the rest. A constantly active quantum network can create the present but beyond that, it can’t store what it does because it is too busy doing it (2.1.4).
The quantum network can’t record what it does but in a way, the physical world does just that. Observing a physical event is like querying a database to get the latest update, as it is essentially a report on myriad quantum events. This report can reflect the past, as brain memories today can recall yesterday’s events, and dinosaur fossils today reveal can what happened long ago. Our DNA stores not only the choices of our ancestors, but of all life on earth. Genes (Dawkins, 1989), norms (Whitworth & deMoor, 2003), and memes (Heylighen, Francis & Chielens, K., 2009) record past biological, cultural, and ideological choices, so physical events record quantum history.
How then did the quantum network begin space and time? Physicists propose that our universe began with four equal dimensions, until the first event turned one into time and the rest into space, to break that symmetry (S. W. Hawking & Hartle, 1983). But what were those initial dimensions? Physics has no abstract property that can turn into space or time, but a network does.
The connections of a network can represent two spatial dimensions in a plane, and connect a cube to represent three, so with enough connections, it can represent four dimensions. A quantum network with four degrees of connection allows four equivalent dimensions, any of which can become space or time. If our space is based on three orthogonal rotations, and our time on another rotation, Hawking and Hartle may be correct. Reverse engineering allows equivalent quantum connections to generate the dimensions of our space and time.
It follows that our world has no absolute time, only network cycles that imply time, and it has no absolute space, only network transfers that imply space. Time passes as light completes cycles to reach us, and distance extends as it completes transfers to reach us. Time and space are then outcomes not causes, so space can contract and time can dilate, as relativity experiments confirm.
We deduce a dimension of time but all we know for sure is the present. The quantum network creates the here and now and we do the rest. Physical presentism is not only that we should live in the present, but also that we should theorize in it, because nothing else really exists. It implies a Physics of Now (Hartle, 2005), p101, where only the present exists. We can predict the future and deduce the past, but only based on the present. Likewise, only events here let us deduce galaxies that would take a million years to reach. When we abandon the idea that reality is a space-time block, all that remains is the ever-present here and the eternal now.