1973.08.x - Hatonn & Oxal

[artichoke]

... First, one needs to remember that in S/T, time is scalar, not a vector. So when we view time as a scalar, it gives the appearance of having a past, present, and future. In reality past, present and future are simply points along the scalar line of time. I think that people make a mistake assuming that they are the underlying axes of 3-Time.

Actually I don't recall seeing it described that way before, nor thought of it that way myself, but that was how I tried to make sense of Oxal's description. Perhaps there's another interpretation, because I'm not especially satisfied with it. Why should the single moment of the present deserve a full dimension, the same as all the past (a half-line in a scalar interpretation of time) and the future (another half-line.)

... Let's now go a step further and assign different perspectives on the three temporal positions of phi, chi, and psi. Consider that displacement along the phi axis represents the experience between the self and other selves at any given scalar space, chi is the experience between the self and the self at that point in space, and psi is the experience between the self and the environment at the same point. The stronger the experience of the entity along any axis, the greater the resulting magnitude of its appearance on that axis.

It makes some sense, because "attention" or "experience" is something tied to a given moment. At one moment one's experience can be one thing, at another moment it can be another thing. Therefore it's possible to map each moment (point in time) in terms of how one (or someone at a given spatial location) experiences that moment. A possible decomposition is self / others / environment, and other such decompositions are possible as well.