Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2024 February 3

= February 3 =

Closer to the future, but farther away from the past
With each passing moment, we get closer and closer to the future, but farther and farther away from the past. For example, the year 2100 is currently only 76 years away, but then it would be 75 years away from 2025, 74 years away from 2026, etc., until it goes down to being just a year away from 2099, and finally, it is exactly the year 2100. On the other hand, today is a little farther away from the event killing the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago than yesterday was, then tomorrow will be even farther away from that dinosaur-killing event than today is, etc.

But is there a name for the above phenomenon? GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 05:12, 3 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Time, marching on. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:17, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, as uniquely formed as this question is, Bugs is right. It's just time passing. And anyone is at liberty to pick moments in the past and in the future that are more distant or closer to the present moment. I posit that in exactly the same amount of time from the present moment (from the arbitrary femtosecond in which you are reading this) there is a non-zero possibility that an event not unlike (or quite unlike) the asteroid impact 66 million years ago will occur. --Ouro (blah blah) 06:39, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Maybe tomorrow never comes? Alansplodge (talk) 15:21, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * That's a hint at Carmen Rizzo's album The Lost Art of the Idle Moment for me, the track is called Easy way out... tomorrow never comes, if you don't make it happen... --Ouro (blah blah) 17:36, 3 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Related to this question is another: does The Present actually exist? {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.208.215 (talk) 21:48, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * — What do we want?
 * — The Present!
 * — When do we want it?
 * — Now! --Lambiam 22:03, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Even if it does, you can never really know what it is as all information about the outside world takes time to reach any observer let alone be processed by said observer. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:05, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * While I was waiting for the future to happen it flew right past me without stopping. --Lambiam 22:00, 3 February 2024 (UTC)


 * One thing is the relative time distance between things, such as will turn up in internet trivia blurbs. For example, we think of Cleopatra as being ancient, yet her lifetime is much closer to the present day than it was to when the Great Pyramid was built. It will continue that way for the next several hundred years. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:39, 4 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Wondering what's going to happen in the future is pretty pedestrian, really. I'm more interested in what's going to happen after the future. -- Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:37, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * That question doesn't Floor me: After Forever is succeeded by ReVamp. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.199.208.215 (talk) 21:56, 4 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I can't seem to find an article on the phenomenon. Our articles on Nostalgia and Chronocentrism get some of it, but not quite. There do seem to be a lot of related articles, so it could well be in the mix. Off the cuff, it seems like the issue is tied to the past's fixedness in comparison to the future's non-specificity. Even with our fixed calendars, the stuff of the future is indistinct and ineffable, so it feels un-anchored to reality. Like, 45 years in the past is exactly as far away as 45 years into the future, but because 45 years in the future is a nebulous concept that we cannot picture, our placement in the timeline feels weird. I dunno. But I can tell you this for free: whatever your feelings are about it now, it'll get stronger as you get older. Matt Deres (talk) 14:30, 6 February 2024 (UTC)