My favorite psych question:

[Icefire]

Answer this question as best as you can with plenty of explanation. your response will give significant insight into how you think.

 

 

If "Tomorrow never comes," does that mean that yesterday never was?

[Sisyphus]

Sure, in the same trivial sense. At no point is the statement "it is [meaning the present time] yesterday" valid, by definition. The time we today call "yesterday" did occur, but at the time we called it "today," because that's what the word "today" means: the day on which the word is communicated.

 

If it's meant in a non-trivial sense, that existence is in fact only composed of what we think of as the "present" while other times are illusory, well, then that can't be disproven. However, it's also kind of silly. All we have to go on points at the reality of different times, and it's not like we are incapable of moving beyond our instinctive conceptions, because modern physics is all about just that.

 

Let's see, what else could "tomorrow never comes" mean? Why "comes?" The statement takes a view of time as moving past us, rather than us moving through time. The alternative would be "we never reach tomorrow." Or "tomorrow doesn't exist," if you think of time similarly to a spatial dimension.

 

Or.... in a more figurative sense? What we imagine the future to be never quite comes to pass? I agree with that. Then the analog would be that the past is never quite as we remember it, which is also true, though not directly related, so a conditional statement isn't appropriate. I suppose it's similar though, in that "the past" and "the future" have these psychological auras about them that we never actually experience in "the present."

 

So. What significant insights about me have we gained?

[Icefire]

IDK I'm not a psychiatrist.

 

But what I did gather is that you are not one to take an unusual question trivially with only a passing thought. Instead, you try to pick apart the question as much as possible to try to see what the different meanings to be.

 

Which I'm guessing to be a cut and paste answer for the majority of the responses, due to this being a science forum. If I asked at a forum that is more about the artistic side of the brain, or at other forums such as truck modding or gossip forums, then the answers would be vastly different because the people there would be taking a different approach to the question.

[bobhikes]

Tomorrow for sure never comes as no matter how much or acurate my predicting is it will never be 100%.

 

Yesterday, is real. My yesterday though is not the same as your yesterday but they are both real things. Our decisions today are made on our yesterdays. Science itself can only be proven with past results or yesterdays. The problem with yesterday is there is no way to prove that what happened actually happened. We all agree something happened but have differences of opinions on what it was.

[Zolar V]

Considering that our perception of time and the associated words with it are really just imagined words to explain and imagined phenomena, I would have to say that in your present ideology of time that NO, "yesterday never was". even if there is not future, "If "Tomorrow never comes" there was still a "yesterday" because there is time that has elapsed.

 

However if you remove yourself from the Time argument and place yourself as an outside viewer you would say that neither yes or no is the correct answer.

it is not yes because tomorrow never comes however the present is always here. and ,yes, yesterday never happened because what can you even have to prove its existence when the word yesterday just describes an imagined event?

But being an outside viewer you could also say no. No to the question of if tomorrow never came then there was no yesterday because it is just the present, and there was no yesterday nor will there be a tomorrow.

[TheDrBraniac]

Yesterday once was tomorrow and if tomorrow never comes, yesterday never comes. Besides, there is always a tomorrow and a yesterday. OR Today was once tomorrow. If there is no tomorrow, there is no next day and thus, no yesterday as yesterday once was today

 

(It's alright if you think I am talking gibberish.)

[Genecks]

If you told me that today, then I'd reason that by your belief that is no tomorrow. Nonetheless, there is a yesterday for me.

 

Even if the reality were that there is no tomorrow (someone found a way to destroy the universe), I'd assume there was a yesterday.

 

Any further than that, and we're getting philosophical.

[Icefire]

Any further than that, and we're getting philosophical.

 

That's the idea. you can interpret it as any type of question as you wish.

[padren]

I'd have to say that if time is just a distance along another dimensional axis, along which you can always measure a fixed distance out (either due to an infinite plane, or space/time being curved and spherical) then both 24 hrs ahead and behind any given point always exists - they just may not be accessible from any person's given vantage point.

 

However, since you stated that as "if tomorrow never comes" which implies the term is relevant to one's specific perspective in a given moment, and it can only make sense to define "yesterday" by a similar metric which is effectively the memory pattern imprint in a person at a given moment (present) resulting from the cause and effect relationship to events in the past.

 

So yesterday "isn't" but it certainly "was" since, that was specifically a past-tense term.

[TheDrBraniac]

Actually if you think about it;

 

How can tomorrow never come?

 

If tomorrow never comes, today never was.

[iNow]

It's always "right now." The concept of tomorrow and the concept of yesterday are just that... concepts, and they are concepts which are experienced in the present moment, and no where else.

 

It depends on perspective. I treated the question from the perspective of the individual. If you treat it from the perspective of the system... of the universe maybe... then tomorrow is just another location on a map which absolutely can be reached... just as yesterday is merely a location on the map... from the perspective of the system, it's just coordinates.

 

However, from the perspective of the individual, it's just concepts. It's always right now, and all concepts are included within this present.

[pioneer]

If "Tomorrow never comes," does that mean that yesterday never was?/QUOTE]

 

No. For example, a person is on death row. Yesterday he had only orange juice. Today he is eating his last meal. Later today will be his termination. But tomorrow will never come, unless the governor calls.

 

Tomorrow can also represent a symbolic continuity between the past-present and the future. For example, the young ball player is in training camp working each day avoiding the cuts. The day before the final cut, he is let go. His tomorrow never comes. The symbolic continuity to what should be the logical future is broken. The result is a rebirth into a new today.