Consider machines that operate in States.
All the parameters that were set for the “me” that was having this conversation got switched to OTHER parameters once my ne came out and started talking pokemon and roblox. “Set Shifting” is the psychological term but same notion.
Then, surprise, there’s a birthday party in the kitchen with a bunch of ppl around (not mine) and I have to be…
…
..
social. An entirely DIFFERENT set of parameters. I’m a state machine. My machine is set to a different state.
I think of less of a ‘series” of you’s but rather a set of “states of you” which switch around.
I have different sets of thoughts. Different memories. Different reactions to what otherwise might be the same external events.
But information/time is a relationship, not an abstraction. It’s a part of the system.
So now that I am sitting back here in this conversation, I am remembering what we were talking about. My state machine has the parameters set for this conversation.
Is it me? Are they all me? Yes. It’s all me.
Time is dependent upon the needs of the subject (or another subject’s needs on another subject. In short… my ne needs created a DIFFERENT time for me, he brought “me” into himself for his needs… and, being a nice uncle, once I got over being annoyed with being ripped away from this conversation with you I was enjoying, I created time *for* him through transactions and setting my machine’s state to match not just the ‘situation’ but to match specifically the needs of the one I am transacting with.
This takes away the issue of consciousness altogether. In a very real sense, it allows all things to have a kind of free will, regardless of their predictability or not.
The states are set from within, dependent upon the needs of the system as they negotiate with the world outside of the subject and take IN information (whether that information be chemicals, words, electrons, whatever) FROM whatever it is from the outside that provides it.
The articles use of the DATIVE case is, indeed quite perfect in explorations of the emergence of Time as a property of information transfer based upon a subjects needs.
It could be a form of pantheism but honestly, there’s no need for that, unless one wants to go there. Just goings from and comings to.