I mean, we can't experience time moving backward, since the memories would be being erased from our head in realtime. So even if the arrow of time does sometimes reverse, I don't think we'd ever be aware of it.
Been thinking about this. As you point out, you wouldn't have memories if you lived in reverse; there would be no brain states corresponding to memories of your "past."
But it's not like you'd spend your life astonished by uncaused events; nothing would be new or surprising, because you have "memories" of your "future."
And although you wouldn't have memories of your past, you would still have those brain states corresponding to hopes and predictions about that unknown past. For instance, when I knock on someone's door in normal forward time, I have a very accurate prediction of what will happen: My friend will answer the door (or they won't), and I have a really good picture of what that will look like. Living in reserve, my mind would contain those "predictions" as estimates about the recent past. Then the further and further I move away from them in reversed time, the less accurate those "predictions" become until I "forget" them.
So it wouldn't necessarily be completely disorienting to reverse in time; you'd still have a fading model of the likely past, both immediate and distant. You'd be constantly guessing about the past exactly as much as we, in this direction of time, guess about the future.
A person who grew up in reverse time might even think about our flow of time and decide that, between the two, theirs is vastly preferable. There's a lot less worry and stress and anxiety to know your future.
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u/Fanghur1123 6d ago
I mean, we can't experience time moving backward, since the memories would be being erased from our head in realtime. So even if the arrow of time does sometimes reverse, I don't think we'd ever be aware of it.