Energy goes past to future. Information goes future to past. Think about the atoms vs. the event. Our brains, as material reality, are the energy going from past to future, while our minds, as the record of the events created, go from future potential to past circumstance. That’s why ‘We live life forward and see it backward.’

Agreed regarding ordering of events. And I do think that the nature (and direction) of time is tightly bound to information flow. How this may be quantified is quite interesting.

e.

The arrow of time goes from what comes first, to what comes second. As observers, we witness past events(cause) prior to succeeding events(effect), so the arrow of time for the observer is past to future. On the other hand, these events are first in the future, such as the 9th of January, 2008 is currently tomorrow. Then they are in the past, as tomorrow will be in two days. So the arrow of time for events is future to past.

To a certain extent, our understanding of time is a cultural artifact. There are native peoples in South America who view the past as in front of them and the future as behind them. The logic of this is that their point of reference, the hands of their mental clock, is the energy, not the observer. Since it records the observed event first, then transmits the information to the observer, their conceptual arrow of time is front to back, not forward.

Your descriptions are clever but to my mind misleading. I believe time goes from the past to the future only and that the flow in this direction is fundamental. Are there relative measures of the flow to be taken into account? Yes but the direction cannot be reversed. Just because a train going west at 100 mph passes another train going west at 80 mph does not mean the slower train is going east although it might appear so to an observer on the faster train.

Elliot

But which way?

If two atoms collide, it creates an event in time. While the atoms proceed through this event and on to others, the event goes the other way. First it is in the future, then in the past. To the hands of the clock, the face goes counterclockwise, just as the sun appears to go from east to west, when the reality is the earth rotates west to east.

So which is the real direction? If time is a fundamental dimension, then physical reality proceeds along it, from past events to future ones. On the other hand, if time is a consequence of motion, then physical reality is simply energy in space and the events created go from being future potential to past circumstance.

This isn’t presentism, because the only absolute time would be the absence of any motion, just as the only absolute temperature is absolute zero and every clock is effectively its own dimension of time.

yaw eno swolf ylno emit taht dna ytilasuac ni eveileb llist I

I still believe in causality and that time only flows one way.

e.

I certainly agree that order exists independent of the human mind and have no problem with different approaches yielding the same patterns. The point is whether the patterns are a consequence of process, or the reason process yields repeatable results.