[Image: “Map (May, 2023),” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river:

It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil—which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.

(Richard P. Feynman [source])

…and:

If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don’t. It’s like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don’t hurt it. Not even major surgery if it’s done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.

(Douglas Adams [source])

Not from whiskey river:

#87: An exercise, requiring only the use of a camera (a smartphone camera will do):

Take a photo of a wall in your home. Any wall will do, but a familiar wall is best, from a perspective and with a view unlikely to change over the next few weeks — a wall you look at several times during every day on which you’re at home. Having taken the photo, look at it a few times. Then email it to yourself — just the photo, no text. Leave the email unopened for a week; set a reminder for yourself just to be sure you don’t forget.

After the week has passed, on a morning after you’ve just awoken and indeed before you’re even out of bed, picture that same wall, from the same perspective, in your mind’s eye. Note the placement of the window, if there is one, and the books on the shelves, and the location of the calendar and wall clock relative to each other, and so on — whatever details you can remember. (Ideally, write these details down as you “see” them.)

Now go ahead and open the email message you sent yourself, and blow up the photo so it fills the screen on which you’re looking at it…

You did a pretty good job remembering, didn’t you? Everything is, yes, just as you recall— Well, yes, all right, technically there’s a wall switch just to the left of the window (but that doesn’t count because you never actually use it, just leave it in the On position all the time); and technically the wall-mounted TV’s power cord hangs down on the right, not the left (but that doesn’t count because the extension cord into which the power cord is plugged does hang down on the left); and, true, the window curtains are blue-gray, not pale greenish (but that doesn’t count because the whole wall is painted pale green)…

Now: extrapolate from this experience to every other experience in your life. Do you really believe — really, now — that it all unfolded as you remember?

Furthermore, if you’re feeling ambitious: what do you make of all of recorded history? what do you make of all of unrecorded history?

(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists)