Why do you remember the past but not the future?
The answer to this paradox lies in how entropy and memory function in physical systems. Entropy, a measure of disorder or randomness in a system, tends to increase over time, according to the second law of thermodynamics. This increase in entropy provides an arrow of time from the past (with lower entropy) to the future (with higher entropy). Brain processes and memory formation are influenced by this increase in entropy and the correlation between events, which in turn affects our perception of time and how we remember the past but not the future.
The laws of physics do not define an arrow of time; that is, they do not distinguish between the past and the future. The equations we use to describe how a system evolves forward in time also perfectly describe its evolution backward in time. In theory, these equations are time-symmetric: the behavior of physical systems does not change if we reverse the direction of time.
The brain, like any other physical object, is governed by the same laws of physics. This raises an interesting question: why do the brain and the conscious experience that arises from it perceive the arrow of time so clearly? In other words, why do we remember the past but not the future?
To understand this, it's necessary to consider that, although the laws of physics themselves don't impose a specific temporal direction, the fact that our brain perceives time in a particular way is related to how certain processes manifest in the real world. In our daily lives, we experience time unidirectionally: we remember past events but cannot predict or recall future ones. This asymmetry in our experience of time seems to contradict the temporal symmetry of the laws of physics.