Beau Lotto, professor of neuroscience and author of Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently. His terrific TED talk is Optical Illusions Show How We See.
I believe we see in a way that is circumscribed. If time is an iceberg, we see only where it intersects with the surface of the water. In a sense, we see only a single MRI slice. But beyond the shape our eyes describe, the iceberg has a tip and a base—time’s height and depth.
We should not take the images our brains create literally. We should take them seriously, but not literally. The cognitive scientist who hit this point home for me is Donald Hoffman.
In other words, we have to learn to see in a new way. We have to see not the single MRI slice, but to envisage the entire iceberg.
One technique to envision the sun and the moon in a new way, a way that is more holographic, is to see the moon as the homunculus and the sun as the halo. If light is the medium, for our arrow of time, the moon represents maximum density, and the sun represents maximum speed.
Time, here, represents optimum density, a degree of dilation. The past (the tip of the iceberg) is too narrow. The future (the mouth of the iceberg) is too wide. When we look backward in time, we see less than what was. When we look forward in time, we see more than what will be.
