Time From Chaos
How temporal order arises from static infinity
Chaos and the Problem of Time
If the Chaos Reservoir contains every possible infinite bitstring—every conceivable sequence of states—then time cannot be fundamental. Chaos has no chronology. It is not a process; it is an ensemble of all processes, each encoded as a static structure within the continuum of incompressible reals. Every possible history already exists. The puzzle is how temporal experience, motion, and causation can appear within something timeless.
Coherence Chains
Coherence is the key. A coherent pattern is one that does not contradict itself. Within Chaos, coherence manifests as chains of correlated subpatterns—ordered sequences that preserve internal consistency across steps. To an embedded observer, such a chain is time: a series of self-consistent states that define their own before and after.
In formal terms, a coherent chain can be represented as a mapping from one state to the next, where the transformation rule is part of the same overall pattern. Time does not drive the mapping; the mapping is what we call time. Every state encodes both its past and its successor through structural correlation.
Change Without Motion
Change does not occur in Chaos; it is a relation within Chaos. Each coherent sequence is a static correlation among subpatterns of the reservoir. The appearance of motion arises only to observers whose own coherence filters are embedded in such sequences. They interpret the progression from one state to the next as flow—but the entire sequence already exists as a single timeless structure.
This resolves the paradox of becoming: the universe does not evolve; it is a consistent mapping that encodes evolution internally.
Process as Self-Simulation
Process is the recursive manifestation of coherence. Any constructor capable of representing transition rules within itself generates apparent dynamics. The rule and its unfolding are both part of the same bitstring. Computation, evolution, and causation are patterns that internally simulate their own flow.
In this view, physics is not what happens in time; physics is the structure that defines what time means within its coherent domain. The laws of motion are not external impositions but invariants of internal consistency.
The Observer’s Arrow
An observer’s sense of temporal direction arises from coherence traversal—the recursive process by which a self-referential constructor accesses successive correlated states of its own pattern. The continuity of memory produces the illusion of motion. To be conscious is to experience a self-consistent sequence of updates as passage.
Thus, time is not something consciousness moves through; it is how coherence experiences itself.
Closing Reflection
From the timeless chaos of infinite randomness, islands of coherence emerge. Within those islands, correlations form stable chains that encode their own succession. These chains give rise to the illusion of becoming, of flow, of history. Time, in this ontology, is not a universal rhythm but a property of coherence itself—the internal logic by which Chaos dreams of motion.