---
title: "Block universe · Library · Simulation Hypothesis"
url: https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/block-universe
description: "The block universe is the view, encouraged by relativity, that past, present and future are all equally real, and that time passing isn’t a basic feature of the world."
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
credit: "Ross Allan Dahl, Simulation Hypothesis (simulation-hypothesis.com)"
---

## Time & causality

# Block universe

Definition

The block universe is the view, encouraged by relativity, that past, present and future are all equally real, and that time passing isn’t a basic feature of the world.

On this site

The Render start slider treats everything before the start as backstory. In a block universe, all of it is equally present.

Role in the model

If all of time already exists, the Render start slider measures the wrong thing. There’s no “before switch-on”, only earlier pages of a book that’s already printed. The sandbox uses the other view, where time unfolds, because it’s the one you can attach a number to.

Related

[Causality](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/causality)[Arrow of time](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/arrow-of-time)[Determinism](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/determinism)

## The people behind the terms

14 short pages, one per thinker, each with its matching dial. See also the [reading list](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/reading).

[Plato’s cave](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/plato)[Zhuangzi’s butterfly](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/zhuangzi)[Vasubandhu’s dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/vasubandhu)[Shankara’s māyā](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/shankara)[al-Ghazali’s doubt](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ghazali)[Ibn Arabi’s imagination](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ibn-arabi)[Calderón’s life is a dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/calderon)[Descartes’ demon](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/descartes)[Berkeley’s perceiver](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/berkeley)[Borges’ circular ruins](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/borges)[Nozick’s experience machine](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/nozick)[Putnam’s brain in a vat](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/putnam)[Bostrom’s trilemma](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/bostrom)[Chalmers: virtual worlds are real](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/chalmers)