Gödel and the unreality of time
Folks are asking about the practical import of time not passing---if indeed it does not. I know of this rather substantial one: my fear of death, and I guess that of other people too, depends on the notion that my own annihilation in time, and that of everything I care about, is absolute and definitive. Existence no longer has me as one of its inhabitants, and that's that.<p>This picture is in its turn grounded on a presentist theory of time (the idea that only the present exists), or at least an A-theory of time (the idea that the present is somehow special, in absolute terms.) Nothing like that is true if time does not pass: all of the moments that make me and everything I care about are still <i>there</i>, occupying their own spacetime regions, eternal, in a way.<p>Realizing this has helped me see death from a slightly different perspective. It still sucks, but it no longer feels like the absolutely unaceptable deal I used to think it was.