I'm not disputing what you're saying, have a read of the OP's paper, if you've not alreadyšš».
Discussion
Firstly, a confession, I've used AI today or at least, that's what it says on my toothbrush lol.
I think this may help, if I add one more layer to this conversation. This might help explain why time feels so real, even though it isnāt any type of knowable object.
I donāt believe there is past time or a future time in any real and literal sense. What exists are different layers of structure formed only by change.
These are memories in harder structures down to softer structures. All of them are memories of what has already happened.
Examples are;-
hardest memory Gold;
Harder Diamond/Rock;
Softer Oil/Water;
Soft Biology and
Softest Code/Language/Recorder/Recordings.
Within that layered memory list is what we experience as the āpastā, obviously that's larger memory collections. We are Soft Biology and have our own observed categories of memories.
The future isnāt time either, itās just potential for change. Take the present, this isnāt a moment in a flowing river, itās simply us observing change as it happens. That blinking cursor keeps changing, I record a soft memory and it moves on, that's what we observe.
So time, as we experience it, isnāt something moving through the universe. Itās our name for the way we see changes leave memory behind.
How we order those memories, now and after, that is just sequencing those memory layers.
Thatās why clocks only measure records of repetitions, theyāre measuring memory formation layers and not time itself.
To me, this is perfectly obvious, does my memory recorded here in soft memory code, make it perfectly obvious to you?
I hope so.
With Bitcoin, what Satoshi did, which was the most brilliant achievement, was this;-
Satoshi took the hardness of thermodynamic energy. 8 minutes 20 seconds from the Sun, that energy then locks in the soft memory records and makes that memory extremely hard. The average time of a Block is supposed to be 10 Earth Minutes, it's hard to find one.
The 10 minute block time isnāt time being proven or measured, itās a consensus rhythm that makes those memories extremely difficult to alter, moreover they are layered order of memories.
Tick-tock, not even a clock.