I always wondered if memory did not exist how could we prove time exists? If you look at a clock and the hand changes you wouldn’t know it because you would forget where it was before so it would always appear to be in the same place. Same with looking at two photos, one of the same person young and old, you would forget what the other photo looked like when you looked the other one so you really could not prove time exists without memory and if that relies totally on memory how do we know the memory is not tricking us, that we are in fact going backwards in time but our memory makes it seem like we are moving forward much like images going through our eyes are really upside down but our brain flips it right side up?
Does a wilted flower remember bloomimg?:)
“how do we know the memory is not tricking us, that we are in fact going backwards in time but our memory makes it seem like we are moving forward”
Causality. Moving through time in the forward direction, we see things happen and we can determine what caused them in a logical fashion. However, if we were seeing those events played backwards, there would be no logical agent of causation much of the time.
For example, if I throw a ball to you, we see that I was the cause of the ball’s movement. If we replayed those events backwards, it would look like you threw the ball to me and were the cause of the ball’s movement. So far, we have preserved some logical determination of cause, even if it is backwards, it can at least appear plausible.
However, consider that instead of catching the ball, you missed and the ball fell on the ground. If we replayed that backwards, then there is no logical agent of causation. A ball that was at rest just randomly flew into the air and I caught it. Newton’s laws of motion no longer consistently apply in such a universe.
So whether the rules of causality work in a logical fashion (and whether the other laws of physics work consistently as a consequences of that) is the “tell” that you are watching time move in the proper direction.
There was an experiment many decades ago in Scientific American (when it was still a prestigious magazine) that had a rectangle with a moving ball in it. The ball would bounce off one side and then off another side. Which direction in time was it moving? At least that’s all I remember about the article - there was more, but it was over 40 years ago.