[Serious] Is the Past Real?

[Jehanne]

Unless the burst (say, from a hypernova) sterilizes the Earth, or, a black hole is careening through space and passes through our Solar System.  Many thousands of human beings will due from cancer this year, the sole result of a chance encounter with a cosmic ray that originated in a supernova that occurred long, long ago in a galaxy that was far, far away.

The outcome is the same whether or not those scenarios are the result of something that happened in a ‘real’ past.

If the we-are-living-in-a-SIM-universe crowd are right (another proposition the truth or falsity of which doesn’t matter), then it’s perfectly plausible that our entire existence is re-created instant by instant and that the terms ‘past’ and ‘future’ are meaningless.

Boru

Last Thursdayism may, in fact, be real (at least until Wednesday), but scientific models have made (and, continue to make) testable predictions about past events.  The hypothesis that we live in some sort of simulation, hologram or "God did it" has not yet led to any testable, falsifiable predictions.