Duluth would have shown Green Bay what a REAL Ice Bowl was on a weekly basis . <| sep |> Replaced it with weed , never looked back . I ' m much more functional as a stoner than an alcoholic . <| sep |> I think time is more than just one of many mysteries . To begin with , changing how we think of time changes how we think of causation . In Aristotelian times people thought of causation as being pulls towards a purpose each thing had a telos and all its actions were pulling it toward that . Then when Newton came along , there was a paradigm shift in the basic tenets of thought , and we started to think of causation as pushes past events causing prevent events which will cause future events . Einstein came along and told us these distinctions between past , present , and future are largely a matter of perspective because of relativity . But this shift in scientific theorizing hasn ' t made it into your cognition , I think we still tend to see causation on the Newtonian , mechanistic framework . The heptapods know that causation is neither pushes nor pulls . Future events can cause past events , and past events can cause future events on their physics . They all exist at once on their way of thinking , and that will be reflected in their physical theorizing . To think that this is just a minor change or just one small mystery of many I think is not right because the variable of time figures into absolutely every scientific theory that exists . What if we are just wrong about how that works ? What if the math we use is entirely wrong ? On the heptapod ' s framework , there has to be an understanding of the deterministic nature of the universe which is why I said everything is as it should be perhaps I should have said everything is as it must be . If you don ' t accept this I don ' t think you will fully understand the language , because that is built into their physics . This is why it has to happen slowly , it ' s a paradigm shift even larger than the shift from Aristotelian to Newtonian ways of thinking about causation . It ' s not just scientists who are affected by these kinds of paradigm shifts . They are built into the way we conceptualize what we think of causation is one of those things we learn as a tiny baby before we ' ve learned how to make sense of the world . Having a full understanding of the nature of time and causation is built into learning their language , and I actually do think having that knowledge will help us understand life , consciousness , and our own mortality . For a lot of reasons , I literally think that heptapod ' s language is more than just a language . It is a completed physics , mathematics , and philosophy . I get that this seems extreme though and requires a LOT more defense than I ' ve given it here . I do get your point that I might be idealizing , even IF the heptapod language is a complete understanding of the universe some people might just be happy the way they are , and see no need to radically change . I am not sure how far that goes , but I think the heptapods at least want us to all be unified and able to unify with one another despite our differences . And having the same language and framework of thought is one way to do that but perhaps not the only .