>>13652164imagine a 2d plane with x^2 or something graphed. the left-right direction is time, vertical is just displacement or some shit.
the location of the function graph in one instant in time is, in a sense, determined by the location in the previous instant and the derivative(s) of the function. it's sort of like causality, that way.
of course then you get into the discrete v continuous time conceptual shit like zeno's arrow, but you can understand how if you were a spatially one-dimensional being embedded temporally into this plane, you would only see the point at its current moment, but the "real" nature of that point is the quadratic graph in the space and time graph.
the problem is that this is only conceptual. there is no way to empirically verify this is the fact of reality, that we are just conscious of a 3d slice of a 4d graph at a specific moment or axis position along the temporal axis.
this is the problem with the frontiers of science today: we are approaching the epistemic limits of empirical observation. a one-dimensional being seeing that point from the parabola move in time would have no way of leaving the graph and seeing the whole 2d reality, if that was in fact the case.
in short: epistemic pessimism is the way to go. all is forfeit, there is no conclusion, all axioms are ultimately unverifiable.
