Cause and defect

SignOnSanDiego.com: "Notice something wrong? Are our clocks ticking backward? The known laws of physics say there's no reason why the past, present and future must occur in that order. Backward works, too. By Scott LaFee UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER June 22, 2006 Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era? The answer would seem to be yes, if only because time always moves forward, drawing not just “we few” but everyone and everything “onward to new era.” But what if time is like the palindrome above? What if the so-called arrow of time flies both ways, forward and back? What then? What now? What next? People have debated the nature of time since, well, people invented it. Time is, in many ways, a fabrication of our minds, a superficial construct that helps us explain the universe, plot our course through existence and show up when we're supposed to. “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once,” Albert Einstein once said. And so it goes, one thing happens, then another – a phenomenon called cause-and-effect. “It's a notion so deeply ingrained that it's hard to think about things any other way,” said Daniel Sheehan, a professor of physics at the University of San Diego. But Sheehan does, as do other physicists who are meeting this week at USD to discuss and debate the concept of “reverse causation,” a fantastical notion that suggests effects can precede causes, and the future can influence the past, assuming the past and future actually “exist” in the first place.."