Introduction
You are a four-dimensional being.
And it’s fitting, because you live in a four-dimensional world. Three spatial dimensions, plus time, the dimension we all move through at a nearly-constant rate. In Einstein’s famous relativity equations, time is treated much like the three spatial dimensions. And those are the best equations we have for modeling the physical world. So even though we experience time much differently than we experience space, that may be more a quirk of our own minds rather than “how things really are.”
Consider how you can cast your consciousness around three-dimensional space: you can pay attention to what’s happening in some distant area of space that you think is important, using your eyes and ears to construct the picture as if you were right over there. In some sense “you” really are over there. Not your body, but your consciousness, your self. (And many would argue the self is an illusion, but we’d still say the illusion is presenting itself over there).
Now notice that you also have the phenomenal ability to cast your consciousness in the fourth dimension: forward and backward in time. You can be conscious of the past through memory, and of the future through prediction and planning.
“But memories are faulty, and prediction is often very difficult.” That’s true, especially as you go further away—but that’s really no different than with space! It’s difficult to see or hear things that are far away, and even more difficult to smell or touch them, but that doesn’t stop us from trying. And of course we use technology to extend the range of our awareness in space. So too with time! In the next two posts I’ll list all my favorite technologies for augmenting your time-traveling ability.
You can become a consciousness that extends across time, dancing in and out of moments in no particular order, like the aliens in that popular 2010s movie [redacted, spoilers].
The shape of a human
You think of your body as something like this:
But this is a more accurate illustration of what you are:
This is your four-dimensional body: a continuous chain of 3D body-instances, each connected to its neighbor as surely as your head is connected to your neck. You have definite bounds in length, width, height, and time. This is the shape of a human.
You can look down your vertical axis and see your feet. And your conscious mind is connected to your feet, sending neuromuscular commands and receiving sensations as feedback. And your unconscious is also connected, regulating the exchange of blood, lymph, and everything else with your feet. Up and down the vertical axis, you are in sync with yourself. What about the time axis?
What do you see when you look at me? A grumpy old man who never answers questions? Who mixes everything up? Who’s kept busy by getting his meals? That’s not me. Me… I wear shorts. I’m nine years old. I can run faster than the train. I can’t feel my aching back anymore. I’m fifteen. I’m fifteen and I’m in love.
Why think about this?
You were there in the past. You’ll be there in the future. Are you acquainted with your one-year-ago self? Do you judge it? Does it judge you?
Would you like to talk to your future self? Send messages forward in time? Would you use something more reliable than just your future self’s memory of old thoughts?
It’s a terrible affliction to be disconnected from your past and future selves—as serious as being disconnected from your feet. I know someone who struggles a lot with personal organization. “Why are these labeled this way?? Let’s look in the history and see who labeled them… I probably did…” They talk about “I” as if it’s “those mischievous elves”: someone foreign and incomprehensible. How terrifying it must be, to wake up everyday completely new, not knowing what you’re walking into! That’s the extreme, but we all have moments of forgetfulness like this—moments of disconnect.
When it’s working, on the other hand, mental time travel is one of our superpowers as humans. I’ve heard it argued that it’s the superpower that led to humans dominating the earth: A proto-human starts trying to make sense of their past or future self, but that requires them to see themself “from the outside.” So they develop a theory of mind, which they can then use to understand other people, too. Soon everyone starts trying to understand and influence each other, and this recursive social reasoning game creates the long-term evolutionary pressure to promote more and more powerful minds. And here we are.
In the next two posts, we’ll look at specific ways we can communicate and coordinate with our past and future selves, and what superpowers we can unlock.