I’m trying to wrap my head around these concepts and it seems like they are basically one in the same.
If all points in time exist at once, this implies determinism?
If the universe is deterministic, that implies all “choices” are already made and so all moments in time already exist?
In: Physics
It is worth understanding the history of (scientific, causal) determinism – that all future events can be predicted from the present. A key way into understanding this is Laplace’s Demon.
Now imagine a version of eternalism where time is a sort of physical dimension, with the perceived present moving through that dimension. It doesn’t follow that we can determine the nature of things further along that dimension based on what we observe in other points along the dimension.
A nice illustration of what I mean is to look at choked flow in a fluid. This is a situation where fluid passing through an orifice travels at the speed of sound. In normal flow the flow rate through the orifice depends on pressure in the downstream section. Thus in normal flow we can determine downstream pressure from upstream pressure and flow rate. In contrast in choked flow we cannot make that determination from the measurements because flow rate becomes independent of downstream pressure.
If perceived time corresponds to the dimension along the pipe (with downstream being the perceived future) then choked flow is sort of like a situation where we can’t determine a downstream (future) condition despite it really physically existing.
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