Purpose
Give a clean framework that distinguishes what’s assumed (postulates), what’s defined (definitions), what’s proved (theorems), what’s modeled (models), what’s tested (hypotheses), and what would falsify it—without stepping on orthodox physics.
Core posture (two domains)
- Eternal now: the arena of physics and life—motion, change, measurement, temperature, frequency, color.
- The Immutable Past (“she”): the boundary archive of what actually happened—no motion, no becoming, no degrees of freedom. Where physics withholds a number, metaphysics may name the boundary.
Axioms / Postulates (adopted, not proved)
P0. The Past is immutable.
P1. The Past contains actuals only (one settled history; no unrealized possibilities).
P2. The Past/Present/Future separation is a modeling convenience: the Past as a boundary, the eternal now as the domain of measurement, the Future as idea/influence (not yet actual).
Definitions (stipulated meanings)
D0. “Past”: that which has happened.
D1. “Shannon entropy” means Claude Shannon’s information entropy only (no Boltzmann claims here).
D2. “Reality ratio” R means actual over expectation (A/E) in the eternal now; “felt magnitude” S means the natural log of that ratio.
D3. “Willful lens” V means the conscious re-parameterization of the readout (a simple k·R + a control, used only inside the eternal now).
D4. “Undefined here” = the concept does not apply at the boundary (e.g., temperature of the Past).
Immediate deductions / Theorems (pure logic from the above)
T1. (Shannon zero) Because the Past contains actuals only, its self-uncertainty is zero bits. There is exactly one settled outcome; all probability mass sits on it; therefore Shannon entropy of the Past = 0.
T2. (Boundary inapplicability) Temperature/frequency/color and any time-evolution descriptors are undefined for the Past; those belong to systems inside time (the eternal now).
T3. (Lawful readout basics) Inside the eternal now, the sign of S tracks pleasant/unpleasant surprise: when actual < expected, S is negative; when actual > expected, S is positive; equal gives zero. (This is what makes S a useful “felt” scale.)
T4. (Aggregation) Because logs turn ratios into sums, felt magnitudes across episodes add. That’s why sequences of experiences compose cleanly.
Models (how we formalize the eternal now)
M1. Expectation model: expectation E is the magnitude of two unconscious components—prediction (habituated pattern) and idea influence (ideation). We don’t control E directly.
M2. Readout model: reality ratio R = actual/expectation is “given” by the world; felt magnitude S = ln(R) is the lawful readout available to consciousness.
M3. Agency model (willful lens): V = k·R + a represents how we scale/translate our attention, choices, and framing in response to what’s given (zoom, translation, focus).
M4. Symmetry model (for later links): mirror-pair symmetry z ↔ −z captures neutrality/annihilation themes you’ll use for entanglement analogies and Sufi “return to the One.”
M5. Identification model (collapse of distinctions): the contraction map f_t(z) = (1−t)·z illustrates how a world of differences is identified to a point—your visual for “without definition” at the Past boundary.
Hypotheses (testable, inside the eternal now)
H1. Sign hypothesis: Reports of valence track the sign of S; when actuals fall short of expectations (R<1), average self-reported affect is negative, and when actuals exceed expectations (R>1), it is positive.
H2. Scale hypothesis: Equal ratio changes in A/E produce equal additive changes in reported S (because S is a log).
H3. Tension hypothesis: The gap between one’s willful lens and the given readout—|ln(V) − ln(R)|—tracks strain/suffering. Interventions that reduce this gap reduce strain.
H4. Idea/routine hypothesis: Increasing ideation dominance (holding prediction constant) increases the frequency of large |S| swings; increasing routine dominance narrows |S|. (Operationalizable with tasks that prime novelty vs habit.)
Falsifiability / What would break IPT (clean criteria)
F1. Time-travel contradiction (macroscopic): If an agent could travel to a prior time and induce a change that yields contradictory present records of a past event, IPT is false. IPT therefore predicts either (a) such travel is impossible in our world, or (b) only self-consistent loops occur (no contradictory actuals).
F2. Retroactive-change claim: Demonstrated, repeatable, controlled ability to alter already-recorded outcomes (without traceable present edits to records) would falsify P1.
F3. Accessible contradictory actuals: If our present could jointly access two incompatible past actuals of the same event, P1 is false. (Many-worlds talk is not a falsification unless incompatible pasts become jointly accessible in one present.)
F4. Boundary leakage: Any reliable measure that assigns a well-defined temperature/frequency/color to “the Past itself,” not to a record in the present, would violate T2.
Predictions / Corollaries (what IPT expects to see)
C1. All “retrocausal” demonstrations that survive scrutiny will either (a) be correlations explainable within the eternal-now lab frame, or (b) resolve into present record manipulation—not genuine changes to past actuals.
C2. Delayed-choice/eraser experiments won’t change classical past records; they will change correlations conditional on measurement choices—consistent with P1.
C3. In lived experience data, log-additivity will outperform linear difference scores for aggregating felt responses across events.
Measurement plan (how to test, in practice)
- Define actual and expectation operationally per task (e.g., monetary outcomes vs pre-registered forecast).
- Compute S for each episode and collect valence/arousal self-reports plus physiological markers (pupil dilation, heart-rate variability).
- Manipulate k and a (the willful lens) via framing/attention instructions; predict changes in the tension metric and in behavior.
- Pre-register “no retro-change” tests: seal outcomes cryptographically, publish hashes, then attempt post hoc “influence”; IPT predicts failure except by tampering detectable as present edits.
Scope conditions / What IPT is not claiming
- IPT does not declare physical early-universe temperature or Boltzmann entropy. It speaks only about Shannon uncertainty of the Past as an archive.
- IPT does not deny memory distortion; it distinguishes changes to present records from changes to past actuals.
- IPT does not legislate quantum ontology; it only says: if two incompatible pasts become jointly accessible in one present, IPT loses.
Compatibility notes (orthodox physics)
- Past Hypothesis: physics posits a low-entropy beginning as a boundary condition; IPT adds that the Past—as boundary archive—has zero Shannon uncertainty about itself.
- At the E→0⁺ limit in your readout model, the math diverges; at E=0, math withholds a value. That’s exactly where IPT names the boundary “without definition.”
One-minute elevator pitch for students
A theory isn’t just ideas; it’s a package: postulates you adopt, definitions you stipulate, theorems you can prove, models you can use, hypotheses you can test, and clear ways to be wrong. IPT’s postulate is that the Past is immutable and contains actuals only. From that and Shannon’s definition, the Past carries zero bits of uncertainty about itself. Properties that belong to changing systems—like temperature—are undefined at that boundary. Inside the eternal now, we model experience with ratios and logs and test predictions. If anyone ever shows a clean, reproducible change to an already-actual past, IPT is wrong. That clarity is what earns metaphysics a real seat at the table.